The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  * * *

  —

  Tamara.

  Her forehead was cool and damp. Water trickled down the nape of her neck. She reached for her hair. Her hair clip was missing and her braids were loose. She opened her eyes. And wondered why there was a damp cloth in her hand. Heaven was a waiting room with a cheap sofa, wooden chairs, and bare walls. Hassan was kneeling beside her. She smiled. She didn’t remember calling a cab. He smiled back and she saw the worry ebb from his face. A woman said, “I’m calling 911.”

  “No!” She bolted upright too quickly and the room heaved. Hassan’s hand caught the small of her back to steady her.

  A woman with an ample bosom and wide hips stood at the end of the couch peering down. She was a vision of lilac. Purse and cell phone in hand, this was a woman who took charge of things.

  “I’m fine, really. There’s no need to call.” She couldn’t have her name flashed across her colleagues’ monitors. “Please,” she begged Hassan.

  “She’s okay,” he assured the woman. “Too hot, that’s all. Perhaps she needs water, yes?” He fanned Tamara with the church bulletin, studying her face to see if he was telling the truth.

  “Yes.” That was all she needed. “A glass of water, please.”

  The woman slipped her phone into her purse and trundled to the nearby water cooler. Hassan guided Tamara to lie back down, and as he did so, he discreetly inched her skirt hem below her knee. His fingertips barely brushed her skin.

  She smiled weakly. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  The woman handed Hassan the paper cup. “No shame in giving yourself over to the Spirit.” The woman’s eyes were murky with cataracts. She squinted at Tamara. “Do I know you?”

  “No.” No one here would know her now.

  The woman squinted harder. The door opened and the room filled with the shuffle of high heels on wood floors, gulping sobs, and the fading strains of the organ. An apologetic white-haired woman peeked in. “He’s going now.”

  The lilac woman considered her obligation to the living or the dead.

  “I’m okay, really. You should go.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Hassan promised.

  The lilac woman with milk eyes studied her, then relinquished her watch. “You stay as long as you need, child. There’ll be somebody around to lock up.”

  The door shut behind her. The room was vast in its quiet.

  “You need more water.” Hassan guided her upright again. His hand was warm through the thin dress fabric. He brought the cup to her lips and she took it with both hands and guzzled it down. The water was cold and chlorinated. She emptied the cup.

  Still on bended knee, Hassan kept his arm extended in front of her as one might for an unsteady toddler. His suit coat was puckered tight around his shoulders and his knee smeared with dust. She noticed his waistband was constricting his belly and the weave of his jacket pocket held a permanent imprint of a wallet, or maybe a passport. Loose threads betrayed hand stitches along the lapels. She wondered if he had borrowed the suit for the occasion.

  “Please, get up.” She motioned for him to sit beside her and he did. Her shoes weren’t on her feet. Her black flats were set neatly by the couch, revealing their shiny, sweat-stained linings. They had been her special-event shoes since university. Her bare toes left round prints on the cool floor. “How did I get here?”

  Hassan wanted to tell her how he caught her as she fell, a crumple more than a fall; and how light she was in his arms; how the path cleared as he rushed her into the hall before most had noticed; and that for a small man, he had strength that belied his size; and that he had held others before her, dead weight, in his arms. But he wasn’t certain the question was intended for him.

  She brushed a dusty footprint from her skirt. “I’ll pay to have your suit cleaned.”

  “No need.” He tucked his shirt into his waistband. His underarms were wet and his shirt was sticking. He should have bought a new suit. A grey suit like the others were wearing.

  Tamara listened to the hum of the hollow space. She could smell the clean soap smell of the man sitting beside her. She wondered if this was what unafraid felt like. Or maybe her dehydrated mind hadn’t yet caught up. She looked to the ceiling to see if part of her was up there.

  “I was with him when he died,” she said. “That’s my job—911. Listening and waiting for others to arrive.” She didn’t want sympathy. It was just a fact. She was trying to explain. “I think he could hear me. I think he knew I was with him.”

  Hassan lightly laid his hand on hers. His gnarled fingers were rough with scars. One thumbnail was thick and misshapen. The heat radiating from his palm made her want to cry. His eyes were downcast. He was listening. He was waiting for her to speak, which frightened her even more. She extricated her hand under the ruse of straightening her dress.

  “I need to use the washroom.” She stood. And so did he.

  “Thank you for everything, Hassan.” Everything seemed a paltry word. She suppressed the urge to shake his hand or give him a hug, fearing she wouldn’t let go. “I’m sorry I brought you here.”

  “This is where I was supposed to be,” he said.

  She didn’t know what to do with his words and so she put on her shoes.

  “I have to go.”

  She walked past the washroom, through the church of empty chairs, forgotten bulletins, and caged hallelujahs, and out the door.

  * * *

  —

  Sun blazed her scalp and panic gnawed her stomach. She hadn’t walked these backstreets since she was a child. Five things she could see: a crumbling foundation, cracked sidewalk, full dumpster, vacant lot, choked weeds, asphalt mirage, chalked hopscotch, pink and yellow…she had lost count. She wasn’t far from Edie’s salon. She breathed in and out slowly. Sweat beaded her forehead and stung her eyes. Two things she could smell: rotting garbage and mowed grass. Three things she could hear: traffic on the road above, her own frantic breath, the shuffle of her practical flats. Something she could feel: her shoes, their leather stiff with age. With each step, they pinched her toes, and a blister was welting on the back of her left heel, sawing at her Achilles tendon, and the pavement’s heat was seeping through their paper-thin soles. Pain, she could feel pain.

  She wiped her brow. It was too hot. She was following her feet, trusting they would get her home. She stopped under the shade of the only tree by the school and focused on quelling her trembling arms. She counted the stairs leading up to the door, the narrow gashes of windows positioned too high for escape, and the red bricks until her heart settled back into her chest and she could see the squat building as a whole—her elementary school. A place she had loved and that had made her feel safe.

  Despite the protests, it was being shut down. The city would forget the gleaming hardwood gym floor and painted murals of giraffes and palm trees adorning the halls. They wouldn’t remember that there had been laughter, singing, and music. Or that there had been first kisses, best friends, and first-place ribbons. Or that children drew angels and baby Jesuses with black and brown crayons, or that she had sat in the third seat of the third row in Mrs. Gregor’s class and earned the most gold stars alongside others who became lawyers, doctors, athletes, musicians, and artists. People wouldn’t remember that.

  They’d remember the stories of concealed weapons, drugs, bomb threats, and the body of a woman found in the window well. And the codes of conduct sent home with six-year-olds stipulating the penalties for profanity, violence, theft, vandalism, racism, harassment, sexual misconduct, and weapons possession. She looked up at the sneakers strung in the power lines and imagined yellow dots, thick as ivy, climbing the lamp pole, choking the sidewalk, and infesting the schoolyard.

  She deciphered the graffiti on the steel armoured doors cladding the gymnasium. Only five numbers were written in legible script. It was a date. She opened herself to see the whole. She saw the negative space forming the letters of his name. RIP. Alongside, spray-painted by another han
d, bled the words SOME FUCKER WILL DIE.

  Devon was twelve. He rode a bicycle. He had grass-stained knees. Some fucker should die, she thought.

  Horrified she could have such thoughts, she hurried past the building, her left shoe slapping against her heel. She ran from the polite, dun-yellow script tagged on the brick corner: Nothing is okay. She ran from this outside world that held so much hurt.

  She cut through a front yard no larger than a cemetery plot overflowing with delphinium, phlox, and black-eyed Susans. Dusty heads hung heavily against a greying picket fence. A plastic Santa was perched on the veranda roof. Her feet led her to the only footpath that wended through the brick row houses fortifying the outer walls, demarcating them and us.

  Inside the Square, air conditioners buzzed. A white cat, framed by hot pink curtains, watched from a window. The meagre backyards fenced in by timber rails were crowded with plastic toys bleached dull from sun and generations of use. Somewhere children were laughing. She smelled fabric softener and fresh-cut grass. Summer clothing bannered compact clotheslines. Beside every back door was a chair. She looked along the rooftops. The hard lines and blue sky were sharp and nauseating against the public housing’s red brick.

  She hobbled past the missions, food bank, parents’ resource centre, and community policing station and into the bower of Middle Lane. Backyard fences penned the narrow path. Two young men had been shot on this path, two more red dots. More had died in the park beyond. Her feet slowed at the third door on the left. The door was painted red now and the windows upgraded to vinyl. She remembered the house being taller and her upstairs bedroom window larger. Across the street, the neighbours’ houses seemed closer and the patch of sky above smaller. But mostly, she noticed the absence of Granny Nan’s chair at the back door.

  Her childhood had passed through that door. Bandages and reprimands. Popsicles and peanut butter sandwiches. Macaroni and cheese casseroles in times of need and sorrow. Thrift-store finds and anonymous Christmas hampers. Back-door chats. No secrets, no lies. The women holding all the stories. And the door propped open on Sundays for Granny Nan, pounding on the piano, bringing Jesus to the neighbours. As a child, she couldn’t remember there being any coloured dots. It was home, and when she thought of home, the colour was confetti pink and yellow and robin’s egg blue.

  Sometimes purple crept in. But Granny Nan didn’t tolerate purple for long. There are lions and there are deer, she would say. The lions want the deer, but they must both run. Why do they run? she’d ask her granddaughter. To live, Tamara would reply. To live happy, Granny Nan would declare with conviction. Tamara was never sure that was right. But it was how Granny Nan chose to live.

  Old friends would drop by for tea, and when the light was right—dark and holy—Granny Nan would speak of her first home, her true home. From under the kitchen table, Tamara would listen to her voice, soft as a hymn, describe the house her father had built overlooking the harbour, and the train tracks below, and the view from her bedroom window of her beloved church. She spoke of the peal of the church bell, sunrise services, spirituals sung, and baptisms in the sea.

  Her voice would lift as she recalled days spent picking wild blueberries and swimming in the Basin. Do you remember, she would say, the older boys playing hockey on Tibby’s Pond and baseball in Kildare’s Field? Such handsome boys. And the little ones pretending they were cowboys with tin cans tied to their heels for stirrups. And the men, her father and brothers included, scavenging the city dump for lumber, windows, and furniture to sell back to the city or use to reinforce their own walls. So many treasures found. And the music—oh, the music! From the choir to Portia White and Duke Ellington paying visits. And the ladies, their hair done up fine. And the pretty dresses. So many happy memories.

  The women’s voices murmuring, conjuring names of long-lost aunties, uncles, and cousins, would lull her to sleep between their nylon-stocking toes and crisply pleated skirts. She’d wake to rolling laughter and feet stamping. The women would laugh and laugh until they cried, and soon after that the chairs would be pushed back and the kettle put back on to boil.

  Only once did she hear Granny Nan talk about the night the bulldozers came in the middle of night. And how she woke to the church gone, reduced to rubble and boards. She thought she was dreaming, or the world had ended, or she had acquired a rare affliction that made her see only the ugly of the world. When she told that story there was a long time between the tears and the kettle boiling and purple choked the room. Granny Nan never spoke about the typhoid, raw sewage, contaminated wells, incinerator, slaughterhouse, rats, moonshine, or why black people lived there and white people didn’t. She chose to remember the good and leave it to God to remember the bad.

  Tamara breathed shallowly. The piano was no longer blocking the hallway. Her single bed with its orange yarn coverlet had long ago moulded. The green electric clock that ticked too loudly and the nubby gold chesterfield that pockmarked her bare legs were decaying in the dump. Granny Nan wasn’t sitting at the gold-flecked table waiting for her to come home. She felt the choke of gone.

  She was thirsty. She was tired. She was hot. Her feet throbbed. The voices of the choir crashed against her temples. I’ll fly away. Fists drummed against her chest. She closed her eyes and concentrated on one note—A—until she silenced all the others. She didn’t look back.

  She huffed up the hill in a broken walk-run, following the only street leading out. Her too-tight shoes slipped and slid. A white van roared down the hill and veered to a stop in front of her on the wrong side of the street. Her skin pricked danger, but it wasn’t a police van.

  The driver stepped out and smiled. A soft, kind smile. He was older, his black hair greyed. He was wearing a suit that was loose on his large frame, and his tie was limp around his neck. He opened the back of the van and extracted two large arrangements of white roses. He set them on the curb.

  “Can you manage these?” Not waiting for an answer, he reached into the van and dragged out a cooler. “They can go by the stairs.”

  Tamara looked at the house. Two folding banquet tables were draped in white tablecloths, with barbecues positioned at each end. The door swung open and a woman who could have been her Granny Nan filled the frame.

  “You got the ice, Harold?”

  “Yeah, I got the ice.” Harold was pulling a second cooler from the van.

  “And the propane?”

  “If you told me to get it, I got it, Dottie.”

  “Umbrellas?”

  “And chairs. You want to unload it, old woman?”

  “I want you to get that van gone in the next ten minutes.” Dottie looked up and saw Tamara. “Whose girl are you?”

  “Nobody’s.”

  “Everybody belongs to somebody.”

  “I’ve been away a long time.”

  Dottie squinted for a better look. “You’re the little one who lived down the street with Elsie. Tamara, right?”

  She considered running, but the way the woman said her name sounded like Granny Nan. “Yes,” she breathed.

  “Well come on, then. I was about to start the sandwiches.”

  Tamara picked up the flowers, In Loving Memory, and carried them to the stairs. It was the least she could do before clarifying that there had been a mistake. Dottie held open the front door. A door she had seen before in a photograph of a boy’s smiling face.

  “By the step’s good. What are you standing there for? The sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves and the day’s not waiting on you.”

  Tamara caught the screen door before it slammed. She followed Dottie into the house. The chairs in the living room had been pushed back to ring a plush pink rocker. Metal folding chairs filled the gaps. Two electric fans oscillated on stands. Both were pointed at the pink chair. She thought this was an especially kind touch.

  Propped against a wall was a poster board of photographs. Pictures of him. Pictures of the woman she had seen in the church, her bare arms free of tattoos. In every
photo, mother and son were smiling. There wasn’t a piano in the house.

  Dottie reached down and picked up a pair of white sneakers forgotten in the entryway, boy’s sneakers, and tucked them into the closet. Her bra strap slipped down her ample arm. Her elbows were ashen. She sighed when she stood up.

  “People will be arriving soon.” She slid the closet door shut. Her handprint lingered on the mirror. “You can help.”

  She followed Dottie down the narrow hall to the kitchen. Pots crowded the stovetop, and the counters were lined with rice casseroles, macaroni, and salads. Tamara could smell cornbread baking in the oven. The propped-open window and back door did nothing to relieve the heat.

  “You use the table. Start buttering the bread for the little ones. Cut them in fours. Peanut butter’s here and there’s homemade jam in the fridge.” Dottie peered into the oven window. “Oh Lord, these are done.”

  She grabbed the oven mitts and slid the pans of golden bread onto the stovetop. “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Carefully, Tamara spread the soft butter to the edges of the store-bought white bread. The table was cheap, the chairs were mismatched, the appliances avocado green, and the grey countertop was marred with ancient cuts and scorch marks. But the walls had been painted butter yellow and colourful bottles adorned the windowsill. She unscrewed the peanut butter top. The food smelled like Granny Nan’s.

  “What took you away?” Dottie asked, covering the chicken with tin foil.

  “Work.” But that felt like a lie. Dottie looked at her as though waiting for the truth. There was nobody left, she wanted to say.

  “Hmm,” Dottie said, and turned back to the job at hand.

  Tamara slipped her feet from her shoes and touched her toes to the cool, soothing floor.

  “When you’re done, you can start carrying things out to the tables. Won’t be long now.” Dottie retrieved a jar of homemade jam from the fridge and plonked it beside the peanut butter. “And don’t skimp on the jam. Everybody’s going to need some extra good today.”