Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  Sherry thrust her arms into the air and shouted to the phosphorescent track lights, “Are you kidding me? You want a promotion for this?” She looked back down at me with her mouth agape again.

  We negotiated for an hour and when I reframed the promotion as a lateral transfer and title change with no raise she agreed to take it to our executive director. In exchange I agreed to bring Abdul in for an interrogation.

  THE SECOND PERSON TO HOLD ME ACCOUNTABLE WAS SARAH, who, on the same day of my confrontation with Sherry, stayed up until I got home at 11:33 PM, even though she had an early morning shoot.

  Sarah had a map of avenues to express frustration with me: she could tease, laugh, shout, discuss, dismiss with a hand wave, cry or wrestle her anger in the form of me to the ground or bed. On this night she chose seduction and shifted to a more violent tack when I fell asleep, at which point she put a chokehold on me and screamed into my ear, “Why can’t I seduce you anymore?”

  I told her about Abdul, the lab tech, Sherry, and my eleven-hour work day. She told me that she missed Friday night dancing, wrestling, cuddling, love making, QT. “You’ve disappeared,” she said.

  I held her because I knew her complaint was legitimate. I held her and she cried and I fell asleep with Yaty on my mind. I wondered if she still missed Bumi.

  WHEN I WOKE UP I WAS ALONE AND LATE FOR MY APPOINTMENT with Abdul. I wrote out a devious progression of increasingly probing questions to shift Abdul’s victim-mode thinking so that he could better understand his own agency in determining his fate. It would be a painful but empowering process for Abdul.

  Packed tightly between a young mother singing in Chinese to her sleeping infant and a forty-something Latino guy in workman’s grease-monkey denim, I felt no disgust at my fellow Torontonians’ lack of conscientiousness or will to offer the mother a seat. I didn’t feel annoyed that the Toronto Transit Commission was an abysmal failure at providing any sense of comfort to its loyal customer or that its fifty-year slogan, ‘The Better Way,’ was a crock. And I felt no stress at being late or dread at facing Sherry or succumbing to her will and tearing Abdul’s fragile confidence to shreds for the sake of my own role shift. I felt none of the usual regret or numbness for having hurt Sarah to the point of tears. Fuck Sarah. Fuck everything. I was psyched.

  Abdul would provide my redemption and resurrection as a social worker. Whatever our executive director decided about the fate of my career, I would accept her verdict gladly. At least I would have role clarity and could end my clownish juggling act. I would streamline and simplify. People were getting hurt in the process but their pain was a means to a greater end. They were collateral damage.

  I popped free from the people sandwich and disembarked from the bus to run the two hundred metres to the health centre. With my head buried in my list of questions, I ran full flush into Sherry, who grunted and staggered backward, then invited me into her office.

  “I have Abdul,” I said.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “Come on.”

  I followed her once more past the cubicle wasteland, wondering if it was for the last time. “What happened to Abdul?” I asked when we reached her office.

  “He’s with Connie,” she said. “You got your wish. We’re creating the new position: Business Development Coordinator. You even got your raise.”

  Sherry’s perfect smile popped out from behind her stoic lips and she pumped my hand up and down in a deal-sealing congratulatory shake. I felt like I’d just negotiated the purchase of a 1985 rusted-out Lada with no tailpipe, one that I’d taken great pains to find. I got my wish. I got my monopoly on the paint-by-numbers sets and all it cost me was a bunch of needy people. Accountability.

  THE OFFICIAL TRANSFER OF THE LAST OF MY CLIENTS LEFT JUST two needy people in my life: Sarah and Bumi. Sarah wasn’t needy by nature, just by the circumstance of having fallen in love with me. Bumi also wasn’t the type to cling to others. His circumstance was the result of genes, corrupt politics and nosy neighbours. In both cases I had stumbled onto the scene flexing my paltry brain like some diplomat landed in the wrong country.

  I suppose the same had been true for my clients, none of whom had asked to be put in a situation of dependency. Regardless of whatever role they may have played in their own demise, nobody wakes up one day and says “Hey, screw this independence. What I need is someone to tell me what to do.”

  In the last months before my departure I surrendered my limited capacity to meet Sarah’s needs in exchange for Bumi, who in all his years in my country had never had a Canadian offer a hand or take any interest until I invaded his fortress of extreme privacy. Sarah’s acquaintances provided ample interest in her dark beauty, depthless drive, noble character and innovative mind. She would be fine without me.

  Bumi agonized through his behavioural therapy with the same willpower he had shown slaving through the discards of the patrons of the restaurant for a single, long-distance hope: family. The result was a new Bumi: more cantankerous, irritable and confused. He limited his washing rituals to once a day and resisted checking the alarm with Bang’s help, but he lived in an intensified fear of infection and further tragedies befalling his family.

  Bumi was afraid to call them and have his worst fears confirmed. As long as he had doubt he had hope. Only when his debt was repaid would he allow himself the luxury of proof of their safety or demise.

  Bumi looked haggard. Red lines through the whites of his eyes and yellow sacks of skin underneath a layer of slick sweat gave a grotesque sheen to his eroded features. What started as vibrant discussions during chess degraded into lectures by Lady Juanita. It took all of Bumi’s deteriorating concentration to make a move. The duration of the matches continued to lengthen because Bumi often fell asleep on his bench. Lady Juanita kept talking until Bumi’s head snapped forward and he woke up. Lady Juanita’s lectures were fascinating but I had neither the knowledge nor the fortitude to contribute much. If Bumi had been his old vibrant self he would have drawn out what knowledge I did have. He would have steered the conversation toward the realms where I could participate.

  The haze over Bumi was profound and impenetrable. For two months we had beaten back his obsessions with drugs and denial and they had come back with a vengeance that sank their victim. Dr. Biachari suggested a second anti-depressant and sleeping pill to accompany the initial prescription. Bumi was doubtful that more of a failed tactic was a wise prescription. He was already severely constipated and sweated like a thousand-round prize-fighter. Dr. Biachari recommended staying the course until the end of the trial because the drugs could still kick in at the last moment. His recommendation was another reminder that I lacked the patience for real health care.

  On the administrative side Sherry and I distributed grant proposals at an unprecedented rate with preliminary positive responses. It was robotic and lonely work in which my telephone became my only lifeline. In synch with the automation of my new position I called Michelle every second Tuesday morning at 11:15. She always answered groggily and we always complained about our jobs, made fun of our parents and bragged about our girlfriends. We never discussed the real past, the scars of a loving kinship gone wrong.

  I always ended the call before the risk of opening those wounds became greater than the comfort of illusion, which usually took about fifteen minutes.

  Two weeks before Bumi’s drug trial period was up, I caught Michelle in the early stages of a hangover and in a mood bitter enough to break our protocol and complain about her girlfriend. I sensed trouble and told her to sleep it off, hung up in a hurry and called Sarah.

  “Why don’t I have the guts to talk to Michelle about OCD?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you have the guts to dump me or marry me or make up your mind?” she said.

  “Fuck,” I said. I was about to be held accountable again.

  Sarah apologized. “I just got canned,” s
he said. The lady-razor maker didn’t approve of the appearance of varicose. “The gig is up,” she said. “I’m too old.”

  This was a conversation too profound and complex to navigate without careful planning, contingencies and safety equipment. It was about her life and mortality and her career and its mortality. It was about reincarnation and transformation, about new opportunities, about her business plan. It was about insecurity and vanity and patriarchy, and it was too hot to touch while I still suffered from excessive self-interest. Sarah’s termination needed long, careful, open, sensitive analysis—but later.

  “Did you hear me?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “That’s it?” she said.

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “Look we should discuss this, but I’m at work right now.”

  “Nice. I just got fired,” she said.

  “It’s just one contract,” I said. This was not obfuscation. It was poking around the outside of the wound with a short stick. I awaited a verbal barrage that never reached me. She said nothing.

  “It sucks,” I said. “And I’m really sorry. I just mean that you have other contracts on the go, more coming down the line as usual. This isn’t a career killer.”

  “They said I’m too told, Mark. That’s the kiss of death for a model.”

  “Sarah, I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

  “Right, why you’re a coward.”

  “Maybe we could sponsor Bumi’s wife and kids to immigrate,” I said.

  It was Lily’s suggestion, the last resort to bring in a sweatshop labourer with no education, no proficiency in either of Canada’s official languages and no legal relatives in Canada. If we pledged financial responsibility for Yaty, Bunga and Baharuddin for ten years and thus guaranteed that they wouldn’t drain the system, Canada would consider taking them as landed immigrants. The severity of the consequences of being caught without papers would increase for Bumi because being deported would then mean leaving his family behind a second time. However, it would allow them to be reunited earlier. If Bumi was destined to suffer from his obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviours, at least he could do so with the support of his family.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Sarah said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the naïve idealist you fell in love with,” I said. “For once I would actually like to act on my ideals.”

  “The man I fell in love with, Mark, was not a paper shuffler, and he would have gladly been there for me when I needed support, regardless if it was during his work hours, which were by the way not so extensive when I fell in love with him.”

  She hung up. I wondered if I should call her back but the phone rang again. I picked it up and Michelle’s long-distance voice asked me, “So, why are you suddenly so interested in my life anyway, Little Brother?”

  ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY DEGREES IN CHAPTER 21

  I asked Michelle what she liked best about her new home, and she told me it was the mountains around the city. She said they reminded her that there were bigger things in life than her daily routine. She never went near them but she could always see them.

  I saw them myself, in the distance, as I stumbled off the city bus. They were splendiferous green, peaceably tranquil, ominously big. The city itself was an even flow of logical materialists not letting things get to them. There was a mild yet exciting disturbance that turned out to be a small anti-invasion protest. In the city Bush called ‘Little Beirut’ for the verve of its protestors, the small gathering of doe-eyed hippies was nothing to the thirty thousand dub poets, street theatre puppeteers, stilt workers and Bay Street bankers that marched on Toronto’s U.S. Embassy in the face of a long line of heavily armed police on horses and snipers.

  Portland had all the makings of a real city with the added benefits of old-growth trees, enviable public transit, an overground network of tantalizing greenery and sparkling waterways. It had open-air junkies and harm reduction clinics offering free clean needles, mega-shopping complexes, backpackers, yuppies, hippies, chai and latte, passive-aggressive commuters with explosive personality disorder driving through bike and car lanes, music, festivals, multiculturalism, fine dining and an abundance of homeless people.

  But it lacked the self-righteous action I’d grown to love about Toronto, the sense of purpose with which Torontonians walked. Whether it was work-bound on Bay Street, past the homeless drop-in centres in the west end or shopping in Chinatown, every Torontonian seemed to be on a mission for the betterment of the world and that certainty never wasted a moment pondering philosophy in a coffee shop.

  Michelle’s apartment was extraordinary in its neatness. Both it and she had adapted to their environment and culture. Gone were the city models and demolition projects. It was as if she’d found a real version of her best attempt and given it all a rest. Gone were the sporadic towers of dirty clothing connected by fallen articles of underwear and blue jeans. Gone were the holes punched in walls and doors. In their stead was pure white wall-to-wall carpeting and floor-to-ceiling pure white walls with tasteful portraits and nature scenes, all neatly framed so that the viewer knew it was but a glimpse into a world he wasn’t a part of. The clothes had been picked up, seared under a hot iron and hung in a closet segregated by colour. Michelle’s girlfriend Toni could have used the image as a segregation symbol in one of her anti-racism educational videos.

  The sheer size of the place made me feel like an echo. Most of Sarah’s and my flat could have fit in the living room. There was a full kitchen, a four-hundred-square-foot bedroom and a slightly smaller office, and a bathroom with a deep old-fashioned tub that Michelle never used because she hated the idea of soaking in her own filth.

  We sat at the round white kitchen table while Michelle put on some tea. The springtime rain drummed on the windows and put us both in an Earl Grey mood.

  “Did you just move in here?” I asked.

  “Just two years ago,” Michelle said.

  “Since when are you so fucking neat?” I said.

  She laughed and stared through kettle steam at the wall. “Ever since I got cured I’ve become a lot neater,” she said.

  “Cured,” I said.

  “I used to feel this need to arrange my things in a certain way on the floor. It just felt wrong if they weren’t that certain way. If they got disturbed it was a major problem. Now I just like it neat. It’s more efficient that way.”

  When I’d told Michelle on the phone about Bumi and my discovery of OCD I expected her to be angry, or shocked, that I would imply that she was mentally ill. Instead she said with deathly calm, “Yeah, that’s what I got.”

  I explained from my learned social worker’s stance that she couldn’t be sure until she received diagnosis from a psychologist or physician.

  “I did,” she said. “Years ago.”

  A FEW YEARS AGO MOTHER LEARNED ABOUT OCD FROM OPRAH. The goddess of television herself told my mother to take her loved one in for analysis immediately because of her compulsive hand washing.

  “I always felt she needed loving professional help instead of harsh words,” Mother said to the television, as if Michelle wasn’t sitting right next to her. Apparently Mother even attended some therapy with Michelle and discussed some of her own issues.

  Michelle tried several prescriptions over several years before finding an effective one. She finally responded well to a combination of drugs and behavioural therapy, and then she got as far away from home as she could without leaving the continent.

  In Portland, with a mind that had been vacuumed of nagging fears of contamination and a unique sense of order, Michelle found herself staring at a university job board with nothing but the new dress she wore (the first she’d owned since puberty), the tattered blue suitcase in her hand, a pocketful of maxed out credit cards and a high school equivalency certificate. Her cross-country fligh
t from the sticky weight of personal history had burned what little social capital she’d had in Nova Scotia. In Portland she had no connections and no knowledge of local people, institutions or ways of being. Her knowledge and skills were limited to the artistic drive of the angst of youth and mental illness. She was clean, free, lost and empty.

  She pulled the few positions for which she was nominally qualified down from the board: childcare, housecleaning, roadside construction, tutelage of foreign students learning English, assisting the immobile and physically handicapped. None of these required formal education or training, only a willingness to stand in the dust of passing vehicles holding a sign, or to clean people’s shit, play with their kids or help them with their homework. Michelle instinctively chose the option that involved machinery rather than people. She figured that all the dirt and fuel emissions would be a good test of her tolerance for invasive particles.

  She lasted two months in construction, two-and-a-half including the two-week, unpaid roadside safety course. Her freed mind, having once been so fraught with purposeful worry, wandered aimlessly while her rooted body held its sign.

  SHE WONDERED FIRST HOW HER LIFE WOULD BE DIFFERENT IF she had never been afflicted. She remembered the nightmare of her paper route, which she thought would be an easy way to earn money, and having to re-check every house to ensure that she hadn’t missed any deliveries. All that wasted time cost her a burgeoning relationship with Martin Bellamy, the cute new boy who had just moved from Quebec with his cute new Quebecois accent. Martin had gone on to marry the high school valedictorian before doing a PhD in male breast cancer, while Michelle languished at her parents’ house.