Girl in Shades

by Allison Baggio

  They tell me after my last day of high school.

  “Maya, Buffy and I want to give you your graduation gift.” Aunt Leah pushes me down onto the living room chair. She’s still in her polyester work vest that barely buttons down over her breasts.

  “But I just got back from school. Can’t I even take my shoes off first?”

  “This is too big,” Aunt Leah says. Buffy smiles at us from the other corner of the room, where she leans against the wall. “We found your father.”

  “What do you mean? I already know, he’s got a new family, he wants me to go visit him, but I told you —”

  “No, your real father.”

  “What?”

  “Amar Ghosh. Your real father. We found him.”

  “But how . . . when . . . how did you even know his name?”

  “I read your mother’s journal. Don’t be mad, Maya. This could be really good.” Aunt Leah stands over me with her hands hugging her chest, as if protecting herself from my reaction. “Buffy was the one who had the idea. She thought it would be good for you to meet him. So we made phone calls, put pieces together. We looked through records of changes of address by men with the last name Ghosh who used to live in Toronto but moved to India around 1972. We called them all, and we found him.”

  “You talked to my real father?” The bite of this news feels like a full set of teeth digging into my throat.

  “Leah talked to your grandfather in India,” Buffy says. “He knows where your father is and if you go there, he can take you to him.” My throat lets barely any air through when I try to speak.

  “But I can’t go to India. I have no money.”

  That’s when Aunt Leah pulls out the ticket from her back pocket. In a thin white folder with the words “Air India” written on the front. “That’s what our gift is. We bought you a plane ticket.” She hands me the folder and I take it; there are bills of money sticking up from the top.

  “And we saved up so that you would have spending money.” A block has formed at the bottom of my throat, maybe a lump of fish, or a lump of coal.

  “Thank you. But I can’t go to India,” I say again. “If I wanted to go, I would have gone by now.”

  “Don’t you see, Maya?” Buffy says, feeling her way along the back of the couch and over to me. “This is the perfect thing to do now. You said you wanted to take time off. Why not use the time to figure out these things about your past?”

  “I’m not sure I want to see my father, though.” My blood starts to bubble from my feet up over my calves and into my stomach.

  “I know you don’t want to see Steven,” Aunt Leah says. “And I understand that . . . what he did, well, I see now that it was awful. I’ve told him you don’t want him in your life. But I thought this would be different.”

  “Why is it different?” I say. “He abandoned me too, didn’t he?”

  “But he didn’t even know you existed! You should hear how excited your grandfather was when I told him.”

  “I’m not sure I can accept this,” I say. I put the ticket back on the table without opening it. After sitting with them quietly for a few minutes, I stand up and take a step towards the door.

  “Maya, stop!” Buffy says to the wall. “Don’t leave like this.” I turn towards them, pick up the ticket again, take out the bills, and put them in my pocket.

  “I’m sorry, I just need to think,” I say. I shut the door behind me and stand alone in the hallway. Someone’s cooking curry and onions, which makes my eyes water as I look down at the money in my hands.

  I decide then to go get drunk.

  I pay some scruffy guy five bucks to buy me a mickey of vodka from the LCBO. I take the subway to Nathan Phillips Square — where the homeless people hang out. Because it’s June, the air has warmed up and the rains have almost stopped. I push my back up against a window of a building. All the lights are out on the inside and a man wearing a grey toque is slumped beside me over a grate. The sun has just gone down and the voices of the homeless people are growing louder and more frantic.

  I take my first sip of vodka. It burns a path into my body and immediately gets picked up by my blood stream. My feet buzz with warmth and I laugh to myself, waking up the sleeping guy.

  “Keep it down,” he says. “I’m trying to get a little shut-eye.” His words are slurred, and I see then that his eyes are red and his face a mess of grey stubble.

  “Sorry,” I whisper, hugging the bottle closer to my chest.

  “Do I know you?” the man asks then, rubbing his greasy hands over the front of his sweatshirt and adjusting the garbage bag at his feet.

  “I don’t think so.” I look in the other direction.

  “I think we’ve met before.” I take another look at him — he’s mistaken. I have never seen him before in my life.

  “Maybe I’m your daughter,” I say. The vodka soaks into all my cells, lighting me up.

  “That’s it,” he says. “You’re my daughter. Nice to see you again, daughter.” He holds out his hand, cuticles chewed up to his knuckles, black stuff shoved under the nails. I shake it.

  “Nice to meet you, too, Dad,” I say.

  “You sure have turned into a beautiful girl,” the man says. “So exotic looking, with the black hair and all. And your eyes like glowing sunflowers.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I guess I take after you.” We laugh together, me and the homeless man who doesn’t even seem to have a name. I raise my bottle to him. “It’s my first time getting drunk.”

  “Congratulations!” he shouts, and we laugh again, our backs bouncing against the office windows behind us.

  “Got to start some time.” I take another swing and feel my eyebrows start to droop down towards my eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Maya.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Maya. How’s your mother?”

  “My mother?” I’m stunned by the question and choke a bit on the vodka going down. “My mother is just fine. Beautiful, happy, successful, like you always remembered her.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember her.” The homeless man pulls his toque back over his eyes and slumps his body to the side, resting his head on his garbage bag. I take off my green sweater and drape it over his shoulders. Then I stand up, throw my half-empty bottle into the garbage can and start walking. So far, I have been homeless for two hours.

  I start walking up Yonge Street. Flashing lights that make my head spin, loud voices that crash their way into my thoughts, men who look like ladies. I look to the left and think I see an older Corey Hart wearing a black leather jacket and slumped against the wall in an alley. Something contracts in my head behind my eyes. The man turns his head to show me he’s not Corey Hart at all, just some middle-aged man with spiked hair and a hopeless frown. He starts to walk towards me, shouting, “Young lady, young lady!” I pick up my pace away from him — past sex stores, Chinese restaurants, meat shops with naked chickens slapping against windows. Then, I stop. I stop right where I am supposed to.

  The sign above the store says “Yonge Street Tattoo,” and a smaller sign reads, “We make your dreams a reality.” White lights flash from all corners of the window, making me wonder if it’s there at all. Is it just a mirage? I open the heavy door and go inside, my fingers numb to everything I touch.

  “I want a tattoo,” I tell the man sitting behind a small desk smoking a cigarette. He’s got fifteen earrings in each ear and even more in his nose, lip, and the little piece of skin between his eyebrows. A tattooed lion raises a claw at me from the top of his shaved head; colourful vines peek out from under his sleeves.

  “How much ’ya got?” he asks. I pull the bills out of my pocket and lay them on the desk so he can count them. “Twenty, forty, hundred, two hundred bucks. That’ll do.” He points to the diagrams of eagles, crosses, and skulls taped to the wall behind his head.
“What do you want?”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Depends. If you’re religious, you could get Jesus on the cross. If you like animals, why not get a snake wrapped around your arm or curled up on the small of your back. Barbed wire is always attractive as well.” He takes a deep drag of his cigarette and puts it out into an ashtray filled with butts.

  “I want to get someone’s name. On my chest, here.”

  “So, on your tit you mean?”

  “No, here. Over my heart.” I lay my hand on the left side.

  “Get on the table then.” I lie down on the cold silver table, which seems to be spinning in place.

  “Does it matter that I’m a little drunk?”

  “Nah, as long as you can stay still. Now, whose name do you want? A boyfriend’s?”

  “No, I want the name ‘Mari’ – M-A-R-I – as pretty as you can make it.”

  “Take off your shirt then.” I remove my blouse and pull my bra strap down off my shoulder. My nipples protrude through white cotton, but I’m not embarrassed. I’m feeling too much to feel anything. He uses a cotton swab to disinfect my skin and pulls out an electric needle from his drawer. “Black ink okay? It’s all you can afford.”

  “Aren’t you going to draw an outline or anything?

  “I prefer to go freehand. Now, just relax and it won’t hurt too much.” The man leans over me on the table, red light sticking to his body, breathing the smell of nicotine smoke in my face. I close my eyes as the needle pricks me in and out. My ears feel like they are vibrating up and down, my whole body is swimming in invisible waves.

  I think about my father with the straight pin and ink . . . pushing it in and out by his own hand.

  “It hurts,” I tell him, even though my skin feels mostly numb.

  “Just hold still.”

  When he has finished the M and A, my guts start to churn. I put my hand on my stomach, roll to the side and throw up orange chunks onto the man’s lap.

  “Ah, Christ, why’d you have to do that?” he says, reaching for some paper towel. “I’m only halfway finished.”

  “I just need to get a drink of water and splash my face.”

  “Feel free.” He points to the sink at the back of the room. I slide off the table and walk until my mouth hangs open over the running tap. Rusty water slides down my throat. I look up at myself in the mirror. I’m in my bra, my eyes are puffy slits, my hair has matted around my face, and my lips are dry and cracked.

  This is not me.

  On the left side of my chest, two black letters have formed in the middle of red blotches. “M” and “A.” MA. Two black letters that weren’t there when I woke up this morning, or when I went to my final English class, when Mr. Henry wished us “all the best for the future and a million bright tomorrows,” or when Alicia Silver wrote “Wish I had gotten to know you better” in my yearbook. No, these letters, this drunk girl in the mirror, this is not me. I splash my face with water but I don’t go away.

  “You ready, girl?” the tattoo man asks me, and at that moment I know that I am. Something is different. I walk back to the table.

  “I changed my mind. I want the last two letters to be Y and A, not R and I.”

  “So you want me to finish it with ‘YA’?”

  “Yeah, finish it with ‘YA.’”

  “All right, lie back on the table.”

  Buffy and Aunt Leah are still awake when I put my key in the lock of the apartment door. It’s 2 a.m. They are sitting in the living room, across from each other.

  “Maya, you’re back!” Aunt Leah says when I push open the door. “Look, I’m sorry, kid. I should have been way more sensitive to you.” I sit on the floor between them.

  “Maya, have you been drinking?” Buffy says first. “You smell like booze.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I have been drinking.”

  “Oh gosh,” Aunt Leah says, her voice high and screechy. “I drove you to drink! This is all my fault.”

  “I got my name tattooed on my chest.” I pull my collar down and peel the gauze to show her.

  “So you did . . .” Aunt Leah says, for lack of anything else.

  “Did it hurt?” Buffy asks.

  “Not really, I was drunk.” We sit in a triangle, in silence. Until I decide to speak again. “I want to go to India.” Aunt Leah picks up the ticket and hands it to me.

  “We want you to go to India,” she says.

  “But I spent my spending money on this tattoo. I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll get you some more, Maya,” Buffy says. “I’ll get you some more.”

  That night Buffy’s voice comes back. Her nighttime voice. Her voice that speaks from her mind and doesn’t even need an open mouth. Before I hear the words, the blackness above my head starts to fill with colour: pinks and oranges, greens and blues, zipping around when I close my eyes and when I open them too. And in the middle, Buffy’s thoughts. Find your family, she says.

  Chapter Thirty

  My plane slips between the clouds, down, down, and onto the parched beige land below. Ten minutes on the tarmac makes my eyeballs ache and the inside of my mouth start to sweat. Entire families scurry up and down the aisles, pushing small children towards the washroom, while old women in leather sandals limp behind. Beside me, a fat man in a business suit snores with his hands crossed on his large belly, the smell of onion blowing out from between his parted lips. The air inside the cabin grows thicker with every minute, curry lingers in the air from the in-flight meal, the plastic door from the bathroom continues to slam shut after use.

  If they don’t let us out soon, I may not make it out at all.

  As I slip my arm out of my zip-up sweatshirt (useful when the air conditioning was on), I hear the door slide back at the front of the plane. The people in the aisles move towards the front, all of them murmuring frantically in words I can’t understand. A man puts his fingers flat on another man’s back and pushes him forward. This causes the man to throw his body backwards, pushing the first man to the ground. They argue. The man’s wife helps him up, then adjusts her pink sari and looks towards the floor. Where have I sent myself? I rub my fingertips over the flat stones in my hand and imagine my mother holding my other hand.

  I’m sure she would have quoted something from the Gita at this point, and tried to change the subject when I asked her what it meant.

  “It just means you can get through anything,” she may have said if I persisted.

  Buffy would say the same thing.

  I make it into the Delhi airport, which is like a large warehouse packed solid with people: people yelling, people hurrying, people throwing bags and boxes around with no apparent system. I clutch the backpack Aunt Leah helped me pick out at Mountain Equipment Co-op. She made me sew a Canadian flag to the outside as well, as if that hasn’t been done before.

  “People respect Canadians,” she had told me. “You’ll get treated better.”

  But this isn’t a sightseeing trip. I do not care how others perceive me, or if I get a discounted fare somewhere. I am here for one reason only: to meet my real father.

  I find the place where I think my bag will be spit out and wait. Men stare at me — tall men, short men, dirty men, men with beards, men with long noses and greasy hands. Their eyes run up and down my body as I try to create a protective ball of light around myself. Their thoughts are loud, in other languages, and not coated with respect of any kind.

  Where have I sent myself?

  I think back to Buffy’s directions spoken at a coffee shop in Pearson Airport. “Get to New Delhi. Take a taxi to the address on the paper. Find your grandfather, Raj Ghosh — he will take you to where your father is.”

  I look at the paper in my hand. A scrap pulled from the junk mail pile, there’s an advertisement for steam cleaning on the other side. An address: 13 Brahma Road.

>   After picking up my duffle bag, I push myself through the crowd and out towards the curb outside the airport. A huge crowd waits for taxis on the street. Families, children, the staring men. Babies cry out in frustration and are hushed by stern voices. I feel hands slide down my shoulder, on my back, and across my breasts as I walk. Though their thoughts are in a different language, I still get a clear sense of what they’re thinking — dirty things about my breasts and ass. I slap them away like I’m swatting hungry mosquitoes.

  A young English couple takes pity on me and invites me to share their airport limo into town. I only smile while they chat about their impending yoga retreat and the peace it will bring them. I don’t talk, because I don’t think I am able to at this point. They stop and drop me on a busy street in New Delhi. I thank them with a nod and emerge into the outside air.

  The smell hits me first. Armpits, burning garbage, incense floating in dust, one combined smell like nothing that has entered my nose before. It chokes itself down and churns up my stomach. I cover my face with my hand, trying to avoid the smoky air and breathe in only that which is on my palm. I feel small and insignificant against the many faded signs above me for travel companies and sandwich meat, the dark boys pedalling rickshaws, the thin men without helmets on motorcycles and the tiny half-yellow, half-green vehicles with no doors screeching by in furious streaks.

  Men touch their hands to the heads of emaciated cows as they pass, kiss their fingers and then touch their own heads. Women squat in the dirt while their urine creates yellow rivers that intersect on the ground. I look down at my sandals to see my toes already covered with grime from the street.

  There’s a monkey looking at me now. Sitting on a curb, silky grey, with a black face and sagging nipples. I smile at the way he crosses his feet in front of him like a person.

  “Hello, little monkey.” These are the first real words I have managed to say since I got off the plane. They stumble out of the dryness in my throat. I take a step towards the beast, which is watching me. He holds out his palm for a handout. I reach out to grab his hand when I hear a voice: “Don’t touch him!” It’s a cab driver, and he’s laughing. “Those monkeys will bite you if you don’t watch it.”