Baby Khaki's Wings

by Anar Ali

  My mother released the oven door and then placed the dish on the stovetop; the eggs, sunny-side-up, looked liked islands on top of the ground meat. She threw the tea towels onto the kitchen counter and then walked past my dadima. My dadima’s long thin ponytail, which was spiraled into a twist and coloured with henna, swung from side to side as she followed.

  “Can we go skiing soon?” I asked eagerly.

  “Of course! We just have to wait for it to snow.” My father removed a green push-pin from Ponoka and replaced it with a red one. Ponoka had been a bust. The business had looked good on paper, but when we had driven there the previous weekend in our newly purchased car, a used Chevy Impala, my father decided against it. A dry cleaner in a town of three thousand people, most of whom were farmers and probably owned only one suit, if that, seemed an unviable business. “Too bad we can’t find a town filled with Ismailis,” he joked. “Then surely a dry cleaner would be a booming business.”

  “But when, Daddy? When will it snow?”

  “Soon, mitu, soon.”

  The next day, it snowed, confirming my father’s status as my hero. He could do anything, even orchestrate the weather. Snow for me had existed only in fairy tales and to see it was magical. We were so excited that my father and I walked around our neighbourhood for hours, letting the snow collect on our hair, our lashes. Each day after, when I came home from school, we measured the accumulation of snow on our balcony. At first we used our fingers like dipping sticks (one digit, two digits), and later a ruler. I recorded our findings on a ruled piece of paper torn out of my math book and tacked next to my father’s map of Alberta. We recorded the date, the amount of snow that day, and the cumulative amount. Soon, my father assured me, there would be enough snow for us to venture out to the mountains.

  —

  AFTER EXTENSIVE ANALYSIS and weighing of all his options, my father narrowed his search. He decided he would try to buy a Bottle Recycling Depot. True, it wasn’t a glamorous business, he said, but the Alberta government issued limited permits, so if you were successful in obtaining one, it would mean a licence for printing money. A few weeks after the first snowfall, my father successfully obtained a licence for a bottle depot in Canmore, right in the Rocky Mountains. All he had to do now was have our money transferred from London. My father removed all the push-pins from his map and placed a gold-coloured thumbtack in Canmore. To celebrate, my mother made beef biryani and set the table with paper napkins, shaped into roses; my father brought home a tub of Neapolitan ice cream and a glossy brochure from the Canmore Ski Club. We all sat around the kitchen table eating straight from the container.

  “We’ll begin on a bunny hill,” my father said as he reached to scrape out another spoonful of ice cream.

  “With rabbits?”

  “No, no,” he laughed. He explained the different types of runs and then assured me that it wouldn’t take us long to graduate from bunny hills to black diamond runs.

  That evening, my father called his family in Nairobi and told them the good news. “We knew we could count on you,” Kamru Uncle said. “You really do have the Midas touch.”

  “Better start packing,” my father said, laughing.

  “Shukar Mowla, thank God. We’re finally set.” My dadima wiped a smudge of ice cream off her lips using the back of her hand and then stood up. Her favourite TV show, The Price Is Right, was starting soon.

  “Yes, start packing,” my mother whispered, winking at my father, as my dadima walked to the living room.

  When my father made arrangements to have our money transferred to Canada, the bank in London told him that they did not have any record of a Mr. Samuel Mathews. “What? Impossible!” my father said. “But I am him.” He insisted that they double-check their records. This was obviously an accounting error. The bank asked for a paper trail so that they could launch an investigation. But my father did not have any records of the transactions. Jimmy Uncle did. It had been too risky to have the deposit slips mailed from London to Nairobi. After all, it was illegal to send money out of the country. Instead, the slips were mailed to a post office box in London.

  “Call that rascal right now,” my dadima said. “God only knows what he’s done with our money.”

  “Take it easy, Ma. It’s the middle of the night there. Let’s wait some.” My father sat down at the kitchen table, placing his arm on a stack of newspapers.

  “Just call him now. It’s important; he’ll understand,” my dadima insisted. She then turned to my mother. “Eh, Shamim. Am I not right? Your brother would not mind for something this important, no?”

  “No, Ma. It’s best to wait until he’s fresh,” my father responded.

  “Haya. Your choice. What do I know? I am just an old woman.”

  My mother placed a cup of tea in front of my dadima and a glass of milk in front of me. “How could this be, Shiraz? It makes no sense.”

  My father tapped a pencil to the table and shook his head.

  “That is why I am saying call now,” my dadima said, shuffling in her seat.

  “Oh God, are you deaf or what? Didn’t you hear your son? He said we’ll wait until a decent hour.” My mother stood against the kitchen counter, rubbing her arms over her red wool sweater.

  “Am I saying something so vile? No. All I am saying is that we should get to the bottom of this right away. What is the point in waiting? Let’s just find out the truth right now.”

  “What do you mean, truth?” my mother asked.

  “Your brother will have all the answers, I am sure.” My dadima ripped open a packet of Sweet’N Low and poured it into her teacup.

  “Don’t talk in riddles. Say what you want to say.”

  “Dear God, am I not allowed to ask even the simplest of questions in this house?”

  My father slapped his hand to the table. “Okay enough! I don’t want any fighting in this house. This is all some sort of mistake. An accounting error. We’ll find out what happened to our money and that will be the end of it.”

  —

  THAT EVENING we gathered around the phone as if it were a talisman. My father moved the phone from the living room to the kitchen table, the cord like a snake behind him. It took several tries before my father got through, and even then, the line was fuzzy.

  “WHAT? YES, YES, CANADA IS VERY COLD.”

  …

  “YES, EVERYONE IS FINE.”

  …

  “LISTEN JIMMY, I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME HERE.” My father went on to explain the situation.

  Jimmy Uncle was flabbergasted. He had never encountered any problems whatsoever with the bank himself. He then told him not to worry—he would get to the bottom of things. Guaranteed.

  “WE NEED THE MONEY RIGHT AWAY, JIMMY. TO CLOSE THE DEAL. THERE’S NO TIME TO WASTE.”

  Jimmy Uncle said that he would look into things immediately and report back as soon as he had any information at all.

  Before my father hung up, my mother motioned for him to give her the phone.

  “Be quick,” my father said. “This is costing me a fortune.”

  My mother took the receiver from my father. She hurried her words, repeating several times. “PLEASE, JIMMY, JUST FIND OUR MONEY.”

  After my mother hung up, my father made my dadima promise not to tell the family back home. There was no need to worry them unnecessarily. We would find the money.

  In the middle of the night, I woke up for a glass of water. A soft light illuminated the kitchen. The stove’s hood light was on. I could hear the muffled sound of voices. I turned the corner to see my parents sitting at the kitchen table, their chairs facing each other, their knees pressed together. My father’s face was in his hands, my mother’s hands wrapped around his wrists. I quickly returned to my room and tried to fall asleep, my stomach in a knot of worry.

  —

  JIMMY UNCLE CALLED often, but each time, he did not have any news. These things take time, he said.

  The Department of the Environment said that they coul
d not wait any longer; they had many other interested applicants. My father’s deal was cancelled.

  A week later, it was decided that my mother should take a job. She searched for a job as a bookkeeper or as a secretary, something akin to her training, but at interviews she was told that she needed Canadian experience. She eventually found a job at a door and window factory, working the night shift, 6 P.M. to 4 A.M.

  The city was now completely frozen and covered in snow. My mother wrapped her plants in layers of burlap; they looked like ghosts, sitting at the edge of the balcony. My dadima complained incessantly about the cold; she sat at the kitchen table bundled in several shawls and a toque. My mother refused to incur higher heating costs. “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few hours,” she said to my dadima, echoing a saying in the city. And sure enough, days later a Chinook blew in, raising temperatures to above normal and filling the streets, and our balcony, with pools of melted snow. Overnight, my snow chart went from seven centimetres to zero.

  On the first day that my mother went to work, it was evident that our life had changed. We ate as soon as I got home from school, and rushed through our dinner. My mother needed to leave the house by five o’clock. The factory was an hour away, on the outskirts of Calgary.

  Soon, my mother started cooking simpler meals, some of which she had learned about from her co-workers, meals like shepherd’s pie and meat loaf. On the days that she was exceptionally tired, she would serve frozen dinners. She had seen commercials on TV for products like Swanson TV Dinners, which promised a convenient and nutritious way for working women to feed their families. She asked my father to add TV dinners and other frozen items to the grocery list. To my dadima’s dismay, my father had volunteered to do the grocery shopping. He and I would often spend hours at Safeway as he slowly pushed a shopping cart up and down the aisles, trying to find all the products on my mother’s list.

  Once, after my mother sped off to get dressed for work, my dadima hovered around my father as he and I cleared the table. It was strange for me to see my father doing housework. In Nairobi, we had servants, and here, my mother did all the cleaning. She had never asked me to do any chores, so helping out was new for me also.

  “It’s not proper, Shiraz,” my dadima said, reaching for the plate in my father’s hands. “Let me and the girl do it.”

  “Na-na, Ma. It’s okay,” my father said, raising the plate above her reach. “We can do it. You go watch TV.”

  My dadima refused to leave. She sat at the kitchen table. She spoke some English, but she only read Gujerati. She sat with one hand on her lap, the other flipping through my schoolbooks, licking her finger each time she turned the page of Science Made Easy.

  My father brushed a heap of chewed chicken bones into the garbage and then filled the sink with hot water. I stood next to him on a step stool, ready to dry.

  “I’m almost ready,” my mother bellowed from the bathroom.

  “The car will be warm in ten minutes.” My father dropped the sponge into the sink, quickly wiped his hands on a dishtowel and rushed out.

  I stood behind the balcony’s glass doors and watched for my father. Soon, I saw him step out of his massive burgundy Impala. He banged a fist to the side-view mirror to push it back in place. Then he stood back and held the door open for my mother. I could see their breath billow and rise above them as they spoke.

  “Of course let him get the car for her,” my dadima mumbled from behind me in the kitchen. “But let me try asking. It will be my murrow only, the end of me. Ya Mowla, what, what have I done to deserve such a life, such ungrateful children? Please, I beg of you.”

  I turned to see her raise her eyes and palms to the ceiling, her tasbih dangling from the fingers of one hand. “Take me. Take me now. What are you waiting for?” she moaned.

  Outside, my father bent down, stretching one arm over the hood. He leaned in and kissed my mother. He then closed the door and waited while she drove away, the car disappearing around the corner to McLeod Trail.

  My father returned a few minutes later. We continued washing dishes.

  My dadima wrapped her tasbih around her wrist. “What is the use of having a wife if you have to do all the dirty work, hanh? That is the problem, you see,” she said, waving a finger to the air. Her tasbih jangled against her gold bangles. “That woman has turned you into her wife. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Be careful,” my father said as he handed me a bowl that felt too big in my hands.

  My dadima coughed. She flipped open Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. “Why not go to London yourself? Find out what is happening, no?”

  My father unplugged the sink drain. He shook his head. “Too expensive. Even the charters.” My father lifted me off the stool. “Okay, time to say our du’a.” We walked to the living room, hand in hand, and waited for my grandmother to follow.

  I said both du’as, and my father both tasbihs. I suggested that we also sing a ginan. I wanted to do something to cheer my father up.

  “Not tonight, mitu, I have too much work. You watch some TV and then it’s time for bed, okay?” He ruffled my hair and went back to the kitchen.

  My dadima followed him.

  I sat on the couch, doodling on my Etch-a-Sketch and then shaking it clean. I was fascinated by how quickly my drawings could disappear. On TV, the anchorman was talking about the Thriller in Manila, a boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. It was the first event ever to be broadcast by satellite. Behind the anchor was an image of a satellite receiver; it looked like a giant ear with a probe pointed toward the sky. Ali had won after a long, gruelling battle. One sportswriter criticized Ali for publicly belittling Frazier before the fight. They cut to a clip of Ali depicting Frazier as a gorilla. He then went on to call him an Uncle Tom, too dumb and ugly to be champion. He reminded me of some of my classmates at recess. After a few more reports, the weatherman appeared. I watched as a laced pattern of snowflakes decorated the map of Alberta.

  “Snow! Daddy! It’s going to snow again.”

  My father leaned back in his chair, holding himself steady with fingers curled under the table. He squinted at the TV. “Very good,” he said.

  “Can we go skiing this weekend? Please, Daddy?”

  “We’ll see, bheta. Right now, I have too much work.”

  After putting me to bed, my father took a shower. He used to shower in the morning, but now, since my mother had started working, he also showered at night. It was, he said, a good way to generate heat. Once, when I woke to go to the bathroom, he was still in the shower. As I waited outside in the hall, I thought I heard him call me.

  “What, Daddy?”

  He didn’t respond.

  I put my ear to the door. “What, Daddy?”

  Still he didn’t respond. That’s when I realized he wasn’t calling me. He was talking to himself. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming pity for him. It both shocked and terrified me. I imagined my father shrinking inside the steaming shower. I wanted to pull open the door and let in some fresh air. Instead, I went back to my room. Under the nightlight, I examined the framed picture of my parents at Mount Kilimanjaro. In the picture, my parents are holding hands and my father is pointing to Kibo, the tallest cone, where, he once told me, there is a dormant volcano that still emits steam and sulfur. “But you never know,” my father had said, “when it might erupt again.” I hung my tasbih around the picture frame like a garland and then lay down and tried to sleep.

  —

  “LOOK, DADDY!” I said, rushing in from the balcony, my finger at the eleven-centimetre mark on our snow-ruler. “We can go skiing this weekend for sure. Right?”

  “Don’t bother your father. He’s trying to eat,” my mother said. She stood at the stove, one arm on her hip as she fried puris, small bubbles forming at the top of each doughy circle. “Besides, it’s too much money.”

  “Who said anything about money?” my father asked, shaking his head. “We’ll go, mitu. Most definitely. Maybe
not this weekend. But soon. It’s not a matter of money, but time.” He leaned forward and cupped my chin in his palm. “You understand, no?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Call your dadima,” my mother instructed, throwing a dishtowel over her shoulder. “Dinner’s ready.”

  My dadima was in the living room watching Stampede Wrestling. I went to call her and then returned to clear my books off the kitchen table.

  My dadima shuffled in, her tasbih dangling from her fingers. She sat down next to my father, who was busy opening the mail.

  “Farah, go turn off the TV. So much waste,” my mother said, releasing the oven door; it slammed shut, shaking the pots on the stovetop.

  I returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table. My mother slid a Swanson Salisbury steak TV dinner, steam rising from the rice pudding, in front of my father, then my dadima, then me, and finally herself.

  My dadima reached for a bottle of red chili powder and vigorously shook it over each tinfoil compartment, even the rice pudding. She sighed heavily.

  My mother pounded a fistful of forks and knives onto the table. “No one said you have to eat it.”

  “Then what am I supposed to eat, hanh? Nothing?” She turned to my father. “You see that, Shiraz.” My dadima wagged a finger in the air. “Your wife is trying to kill me only. Wants me to starve to death.”

  “Oh-ho,” my father interrupted, a forkful of peas near his mouth. “Can’t we just eat in peace?”

  My mother pulled back her chair and sat down.

  We ate silently. The clinking of our forks and knives echoed through the apartment. My dadima was unaccustomed to cutlery; she picked up the steak with her hands, planted her elbows on the table, and nibbled at it. Soon, she slapped it down.

  “Let me get you something else,” my father offered. “Kentucky khupey? You like their chicken.”

  “No, bheta, I’m fine,” she said, and pulled a finger through the rice pudding, creating a tunnel.

  “It won’t take me long.”

  “Why are you spoiling her?” my mother asked as she carved a piece of steak. “If she doesn’t want to eat it, let her be. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”