The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “Spread your legs! Spread your legs! Come! Open up! Come! Open up!”

  And they obeyed him. BJ could feel the dust from the side of the cruiser, which needed a wash, entering his nostrils. He could feel the policeman’s stick moving around his legs, around his crotch, up and down, up and down. Touching his penis. He could feel the policeman’s hands, tough and personal, strong as ten pieces of bone, feel his thighs, his chest, under his arms, between his legs, and feel his penis and his testicles; and then the ten pieces of bone spun him round, so that he now faced the policeman. BJ stood silent and calm as the policeman did the same thing to Marco. He thought the policeman was treating Marco more severely.

  “Where you get this goddamn car?”

  Before BJ could answer, the policeman was talking again.

  “Where you get this goddamn car?”

  BJ was about to say something, when the policeman cut him off.

  “You steal this car! You steal this car?”

  Marco opened his mouth to speak, and thought better of it.

  “Who owns this fucking car? Who owns this fucking car?”

  BJ was about to put his hand into the breast pocket of his suede windbreaker, to pull out his driver’s licence, when the policeman came at him. His hand was on his gun. His gun was in his hand. The policeman seemed to see red. The policeman seemed to feel his life was being threatened. The policeman was behaving as if BJ had taken out, or was about to take out, a dangerous weapon. The policeman turned red. He came at BJ with great force, as if he was tackling a running fullback, and when he hit him, he had him flat against the side of the cruiser. Dust rose from the side of the cruiser. The cruiser leaned for a short time off its tires. Marco was about to intervene, when BJ raised his hand to stop him.

  “Come on, nigger! Come on, nigger!”

  And he slammed BJ into the side of the cruiser, a second time.

  He put his hand behind his back, and when he brought it from behind his back, he was holding handcuffs. He snapped them on BJ’s wrists. He poked the T-shaped stick into Marco’s side, and ordered him into the cruiser. And he pushed BJ towards the cruiser, and threw him into the back seat, beside Marco.

  “You could put away those! You could put away those!” BJ’s licence and ownership papers were still in his hand.

  The policeman went to the white BMW, stroked the tires with his T-shaped stick, and was about to smash the front side window, but something made him change his mind. He turned the engine off, put the key into his pocket, and came back to the cruiser.

  He drove off. Voices of other policemen and of a dispatcher babbled on the radio. He seemed impervious to the racket of the voices. He drove south on Spadina and turned right at Bloor; and left on Brunswick, and into a few short one-way streets, and then he was back on Spadina going south of College; and then he turned east onto Dundas. BJ recognized the Art Gallery of Ontario; he recognized 52 Division police station. And his heart sank. He had heard about 52 Division. Wasn’t it a police officer from 52 who had shot a Jamaican, many years ago? The policeman moved onto University Avenue, turning left, and took them northwards on University. Apart from the crackling of voices from the other, invisible policemen and dispatchers, the cruiser was quiet.

  It was six o’clock and the winter light was fading fast and made the afternoon seem like night. And if night should catch them in this cruiser, alone with this policeman, oh my God! The policeman had not spoken in all this time. He had smoked two cigarettes. They came to Queen’s Park. BJ could see the Royal Ontario Museum. He visited the ROM twice a month on Saturdays, to study African cultures and art. And Marco went along with him on many occasions. They had been doing this for three years now. The policeman took the roundabout and they were beside Trinity College, and then back on Spadina. Marco had a cousin who was attending Trinity College; and he took BJ there, one Friday night at dinner, and they ate fish that had no pepper sauce. BJ loved the huge oil paintings and the black gowns the students wore. In all this time, BJ had said nothing. And Marco said nothing. Marco had been slapping his trouser legs. BJ sat with his eyes closed, his teeth pressed down tight, and if you were sitting in Marco’s place, you would have seen the slight movement in BJ’s jaws.

  “Get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!”

  It took them a while to realize who had spoken to them. It took them a while to recognize where they were. The policeman came around and unlocked the cuffs from BJ’s wrists.

  “Get-outta-here! Get-outta-here!”

  He had let them off beside the white BMW.

  His mother remembered it was a big day on Saturday, a wedding she had to go to, and she rushed from work to get to the hairdresser before he closed. There were many women there; some of them had been there since early afternoon. It seemed that every woman in the place had an important church service on Sunday. Or an important dance date. Or a wedding to go to. She was tired, too tired from a long day, and she dozed off as she sat in the chair. She could barely hear pieces of conversation around her.

  “I know a Jamaican man that the cops kill.”

  “But that was five years ago, child!”

  “And in Montreal too. Not here. As a matter o’ fact, this particular Jamaican had a daughter who went to school with me, in—”

  “I mean a particular Jamaican man. The Jamaican who get killed and beaten-up by the police. Those ladies you was having the discussion with, do they know the Jamaican man in question?”

  When she opened her eyes, she realized that the hairdresser, Mr. Azan of Azan’s, who was rubbing the grease into her hair, had been talking too. He turned now towards the ladies who were still with their heads over the square sinks, and to the others under dryers. But he did not say anything to them.

  “How long is this going to take? I have to get home and see that boy.”

  “How the boy?”

  “Bright as anything. Doing well in school. Someday he going-crown my head with pride and glory. Praise God. But apart from that, sir, he’s a boy. And that means he has his ways. How long?”

  “Well, let’s see. It’s going on seven now. Comb. Folding. Gimme a few minutes. You’ll be done in no time! No problem. Not to worry. Yeah, man. So, the boy’s doing well? You’ll be out in no time.”

  And when she left Azan’s, a new woman, years taken from her appearance, years taken from her gait, years taken from her attitude to herself; and with her hair a bright mauve, and shining, and smelling of the lotions and the smell of the hairdressing salon, it was eight o’clock the night. But she was beautiful and looking young and feeling sprightly and full of life. And that was what she wanted for the wedding tomorrow, on Saturday afternoon.

  The yellow police cruiser was stopped a few yards ahead of her. It was a dark night. She had looked up into the heavens for a few moments, a few yards farther back, and smiled as she wondered and remembered that in this city, you don’t see stars as you see stars back home, when you can become dizzy counting more than three hundred in one raised head with spinning eyes. But when she saw the police cruiser, she became tense and the feeling of paranoia, which came to her every time she saw a police cruiser, came to her now. The black-clad police officers always brought a tense, angry tightness into her chest. And the tightness moved swiftly into her guts. And without knowing, she always felt that it was a black man, or a black woman, but more frequently a black man, who had been stopped by the policeman. In all the time she had been living in this city, she had never seen a white man stopped by a policeman. But then, of course, there had to be some white men stopped by the police. All couldn’t be so much more better than black people, she said. And she always felt the black man was innocent. She assumed that. He had to be innocent, she figured, because he was black. And she always thought that the policeman had stopped him for no reason at all; that he was not breaking the law; but that the police were merely testing him, to make him break the law, anticipating that he would break the law, to show the black man who had power and pull and a bigger penis.
And the way she always saw the policeman hold his truncheon, as if it was, in fact, a long penis, in an everlasting erection, as if he was telling the black man, “Mine is bigger, harder, and longer than yours!” This is the way she felt whenever she saw a police cruiser stop a black man driving a car.

  The night was darker now. She was walking on Davenport Road, going towards Bay Street, and the cruiser was still too far from her for her to see clearly. But she was sure that the man inside the cruiser was black. She hurried her steps. And when she drew almost abreast of the cruiser, it was still too dark for her to see the man’s face. The roof light inside the cruiser was not on. But she would bet her bottom dollar that it was a black man, a black youth, a black child.

  Her stomach became tight. There were two policemen. She remembered the argument in the hairdressing salon. Two? Or three? There were two. And they were standing beside a car. It was a lovely car. She had seen cars like this one all over the ravine where she worked in a mansion. It was a beautiful car. Many times, standing at the cold, large picture window, looking out into the blank, white afternoons, with the rhythm and blues music from WBLK, the Buffalo radio station, behind her, she had admired these beautiful cars coming and going along the street in front of the large house. This was a beautiful car like those. It was gleaming. It was white. And it blended well with the snow that was not falling. And she wondered why the licence plate did not contain numbers like other licence plates. All it said was BLUE. What a strange licence to have! BLUE. And she was feeling so good just a few moments ago. She understood blues. But what was this blue? He must be in a blue mood. What a strange licence to have! BLUE. But she laughed to herself: she herself liked the blues. Rhythm and blues. She stood taller to investigate. She was sure there was someone in the back of the cruiser. She had just passed the show window of Mercedes-Benz, where the bright colour of mauve in her hair was reflected back to her and showed her bathed and professionally coiffeured and tinted. It had startled her. The bright colour did. For the instant of the reflection, she could not move. She stood there. She looked at herself in the reflection. She leaned her head slightly to the right, and then to the left, stood erect before the show window, and could see not only her reflection but also a salesman in the window looking at her, with his right thumb raised in approval. He had smiled and she had smiled. And then she had moved on, after having stolen a last glance at herself. This was before she had seen the police cruiser. And when she saw it, all that gaiety in the reflection in the show window evaporated.

  She was beside the cruiser now.

  The two policemen were walking away from the cruiser, going to the white BMW; and she caught up with them. She stopped three feet from the policemen.

  “Keep moving, ma’am.”

  She wondered who was in the dark back seat of the cruiser. And she thought of the Jamaican man, the poor man and his two fatherless girl-children. The papers said that when the policemen burst into the house that Sunday afternoon, just before the peas and rice were dished and served, and the shot was fired, his head burst open just like when you drop a ripe watermelon from a certain height onto the sidewalk. They said his head burst open, clean-clean-clean.

  “Why you-all always bothering black people? Why you-all don’t go and try to catch real criminals walking-’bout Toronto molesting children? And women.”

  “None o’ your business, ma’am.”

  “Who say it isn’t none of my business? I pays taxes. I obey the law. I have a right to ask you this question, young man.”

  “Move on, lady! Or I arrest you for obstruction.”

  “Obstruction? Who I obstructing?”

  “What did you say?”

  She stood her ground. But she was not so stupid as to repeat what she had said.

  “Lord, look at this,” she said under her breath. She felt she dared not pray, appeal, nor talk to her God aloud, for the policemen to hear. And the policeman who had spoken to her was about to forget about her, when she started up again. “I hope you’re not taking advantage of that poor boy you got in the back seat of that cruiser, and I hope you read him his rights, and I hope he has a good lawyer to defend him. Oh God, for if it was a child o’ mine I would surely lodge a complaint against the two o’ you with the Human Rights Commission and complain and tell this policeman to please kiss my—”

  “Lady!”

  The policeman knew there was something said, although he did not quite know what was said. And he became uncomfortable, and nervous, and felt threatened, as if somebody, this woman standing in front of him, with nothing in her hands, save her handbag and a plastic bag full of leftover roast beef, was going to take his life from him. And he rested his hand on the side of his waist where he had his gun.

  She took a last glance at the beautiful car, and shook her head with some disappointment that she could not see through the heavy tint of the glass to make out the person inside, and satisfy her mind that it had to be a young black man. But she was not going to give up so easily.

  She leaned over the hood of the car, being careful not to smear its sheen, almost feeling the cold of the glass, and she peered through the obstructing glass. Inside, on the passenger’s side, was a young man. She could see that much easily enough. But she wanted to be sure, to be certain that this tinted glass was not playing tricks as to the young man’s colour. Perhaps he was black, and this tint was changing his colour. She could touch the glass now, and feel the coldness of it, and at the same time, the comforting heat from the engine, even though it was turned off. She stared, and saw him. It was a young man. A young white man. And the man inside the car, feeling his own shame for his predicament, held his head aside, as if he thought his profile would hide the identity of his face from this malicious woman whom he had seen only five minutes before. He did not know her, could not remember ever seeing a woman with her hair dyed mauve, and sticking up in the air, as this woman’s hair was doing in the tricky changing light caused by the passing cars. He held his face in a profile against her staring eyes. And felt the curiosity in her eyes, and thought he could feel the love and the sadness in her manner. If he were not handcuffed behind his back, he would push the door open, and invite her in. But what would he say to her? Perhaps, he would call out for help. She moved away, walking backwards for the first few steps, and the smallness of his space, and the fit of the manacles, made the car seat large, and it became larger and embraced him in the growing space of his temporary imprisonment. She was walking backwards to get a last glimpse of the licence plate, BLUE, which still made her smile at its eccentricity. And when she walked past the police cruiser, her body flinched, and she flounced at the policeman, and the tightness that she sometimes deliberately put her body into, to prevent the cold from climbing all over her bones, came to her, as she moved beside the cruiser. She could smell no similar smell of polish as she had done standing beside the beautiful car. She could sense no powerful fragrance of leather in the interior, as she had surmised with the white car named BLUE. And she could feel no warmth from the engine of the police cruiser, as she relished in that short moment when her curiosity challenged her wisdom. The police cruiser was cruel, and ugly, and tense, and made her feel guilty. And in this shame, in this surrender of self-control, she walked away, not being able to tell, should she be asked, what was the colour of the cruiser. But she made a note of the writing on its side. 52 DIVISION. She would never forget that number. And she amused herself, heading to the next bus stop—and if no bus came to rescue her from the gnawing cold, the subway station at Bay—with the idea that if she were a gambling woman, she would play combinations of fifty-two in tomorrow’s Lotto 6/49.

  Time, and not the consequences or the cause of his presence here, this evening, where he was, was heavy upon BJ’s nerves. He paced up and down, with various thoughts entering his head, and his panic and isolation made the space much, much larger, so that he was buried in its vastness, and the time and the consequences, what they could be, and the cause became real and he cou
ld see his life, his entire life, in three short hours that had passed. All these things passed through his mind, and for each of them, he had no solution. He paced up and down, not having enough length in the square space to make his pacing more dramatic, and less of pathos. And when he again realized the restriction of the square space, his mind bounded backwards to a time, which he had almost wiped from his memory, when he had spent four hours in this same police station, in another cell, alone and not knowing really why he had been locked up, not having had a charge laid against him, not having had a policeman enter the warm cell and interrogate him about the alleged theft of a kid’s bicycle that afternoon in August, when he and three other kids were horsing around and pretending to be bagmen—they did not play with girls—near the corner grocery store, trying to beg enough quarters to buy ice cream, when his mother was at work down in the ravine, when this other kid came wobbly on his bicycle, his first, a present his mother had given him for Christmas past; and one of the other three kids took the bike playfully from the little kid and the little kid started to cry and ran home with tears in his eyes and told his mother; and his father returned with sunburned arms bristling with black hairs and chest like a barrel covered with the skin of an animal, with the black hairs punching from under a nylon undershirt and with his underpants showing just above the waist of his green trousers, when the kid pointed at “the coloured fella, Dad. The coloured fella is who took my bike”; and all hell broke loose with mamma mias spewn all over the road in white vomit, and as if it was still Christmas and hail was falling, and the cops came screaming down the avenue going against the one-way pointing of the white arrow, two carloads of them, to solve this ghetto delinquency, that began as a small neighbourhood kid’s prank—“I didn’ mean nothing”—and slam! “into the cruiser, nigger; into the goddamn cruiser, you goddamn nigger”; mamma mia, Hail Marys, and BJ not understanding the various languages and accents being vomited against him, no explanation in the eyes of the man who owned the peddling grocery store, no explanation from his three friends who did not know Italian or Greek and were no longer within earshot and speaking distance to translate this crime, no understanding from the father with his chest buried in black hairs, ripping the air with gestures which BJ thought at first were karate chops, but later knew their meaning even though he knew no Italian and no Greek, and no understanding from the four cops who descended armed and sunburned like the father, to solve this serious crime: “Git, goddammit, git! Into the goddamn cruiser! No, not in the goddamn front seat, in the fucking back, where youse belong”; and they took him down, and did not book him, and put him in a nice large warm cell, large through his age, bigger, “goddammit nigger, warmer than the piss-small room you and your goddamn mother lives in! You fucking West Indians!”—and they left him there to stew and to mend his thieving ways, and then, hours later when the time for his supper of plain rice and boiled kingfish and boiled green bananas had come and gone, the truth was known and the kind sergeant came with a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee: “Have a cup, come now, have a cup”; and then said, “A little mistake, if you can understand what I mean, you being such a little fella to know these serious, big things; a little goddamn mistake and you happened to be the goddamn unlucky one. So beat it, kid, and don’t let me lay my goddamn eyes on you again! Git!”