I was glad for the chance to use my legs. I had been trapped too long at Ahmed’s house, his taxi, the sweet shop, and the rooms where people asked questions. A football to chase would be magnificent. I wanted to run and jump and to explore every single thing.
But DJ and a boy named Jason shuffled their feet and moved as slowly as crippled men awaiting imminent death. It did not appear they had a destination.
“We should take that bike,” said DJ. A bicycle was wedged into a metal apparatus bolted to the sidewalk. It was a good one with metal fenders and a wire basket in front to carry things.
DJ shook a match and inhaled deeply, the smell reminding me of the old soldiers at the mill.
“Bum a smoke?” said Jason.
“Get off,” said DJ. “Get a job.” DJ hooked four fingers of his left hand in the front pocket of his jeans and reclined against a lamppost. He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and index finger and smoked in short sips.
“Com’ on, man,” whined Jason. “Toss me a dart. You got plenty.”
“Not for you, loser,” he said.
I liked the look of that golden brown bicycle. I had longed to try one, but Gashe would not pay the extravagant price to ride in a small loop on the street.
“Africa Boy, you like that bike? You know how to ride?” DJ asked.
“I am not ever on a bicycle,” I said.
“Not ever?” DJ’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. He passed the burning cigarette to Jason. “This is your lucky day, man!”
“Take this one.” Jason inhaled and huffed a cloud of smoke. “Consider it yours.”
“I have no money,” I said. The purple ten was safe in my backpack under the bed.
“You don’t need money. You’re in Canada now, dude. It’s free!”
“Take it,” said DJ. He pushed off the lamppost and snatched the cigarette. “We’ll teach you.”
“You can take a valuable bicycle?” I asked.
Jason put his hand on my shoulder. “Like, yeah! If it’s not locked up, anyone can take it. Go ahead.”
I lifted it from the rack. The wheels made a satisfying ticking when it moved. A ride in a Pathfinder, an airplane, a train, now a bicycle? I could hardly believe my good fortune.
“Well, get on, stupid. We’ll show you,” said Jason.
The front wheel wobbled when Jason let go of the handles.
I was glad DJ still gripped the back of the seat. He let go. I fell to the street with the bicycle stuck between my legs.
“Priceless!” they laughed. Jason helped me up. “You really don’t know how to ride.”
“We need to find a hill. That’s how I learned,” said DJ.
The hill was a mountain. “Now, just hang on,” advised DJ. He pushed me and released.
I shot down the hill like a bullet on an uncertain path. The front wheel shook. I tightened my grip and held it straight. Air rushed past my head and flapped my shirt.
I was riding a bicycle!
“Pedal! Keep pedaling!” the boys yelled.
Faster and faster. I was free! I was a bird with air beneath its wings. I was an airplane, lifting off.
Suddenly, I was in a line of traffic stopped up with cars and pickups.
How to stop? How to slow down?
A woman stood on the street, shaking her fist in the air.
“Stop! Thief!” she cried. I sped past her, rolling faster and faster. I turned to see this thief and what he took and collided with a receptacle meant for garbage.
It was not difficult to hear the hooting laughter from DJ and Jason.
* * *
◆
“Well,” said Melissa when we returned to the house. “You have a fine way of introducing yourself.”
I should introduce every time? I extended my hand to shake hers.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Tesfaye. Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “I am not okay. Stealing bikes is not acceptable.” Jason and DJ kept their heads down, but their smirks were apparent.
“It makes me sorrow to cause you pain,” I said.
“What the f …” She stopped. “You cannot take things that are not your own. Got it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Windows,” said Melissa. Jason and DJ groaned.
“Man, tha’s not fair,” said Jason. “You can’t make us do your dirty work.”
“We din’t do nuthin’,” said DJ. “Africa Boy. He took the bike.”
“All of them,” said Melissa. Her voice was low and loud. “Inside and out.”
Now I knew why the house sparkled with cleanliness. Millions of tiny spongy bubbles formed when Jason squeezed a stream of soap into the bucket and added water. I inhaled the scent of lemons as my arm moved the cloth in circular patterns across the glass.
It was the work Ishi and I so often shared. We had complained that our house had too many windows.
This time I did not complain. It felt good, finally, to be useful.
10
A few days later Rob and I stood in a jumbled line before a wide counter where four uniformed workers smiled like dolls behind computers. The room was furnished with plastic tables and chairs. It was noisy with alarms and smelled of old grease.
“What do you want?” asked Rob.
I did not know what I wanted. To stay in Canada? To go home? To have the simple problems of DJ and Jason?
“To eat,” said Rob. “What do you want to eat? Big Mac? Fries? Milkshake? Chicken burger?”
He was saying too many words I did not know. It was like going inside the clothing store at the too-bright indoor market where there were rows and rows of fancy stalls with name-brand clothing and happy shopkeepers.
“What do you want?” he had asked then, just like now. There was so much selection. How was I to choose? Buying clothing was Etheye’s job in the thirteenth month. New clothing appeared just before school resumed. Each of us wore what fit us best. The only exception was the monkey shirt. I would snatch that first, even though I knew Ishi preferred the green T-shirt with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
“Hel-lo,” said Rob. He tapped my shoulder. We had moved to the front of the line.
“Hi, may I take your order?” asked the girl.
“I’ll have a Big Mac, fries, a chocolate shake,” he said. The girl pressed buttons on her machine. “And a pie. Apple.”
Rob turned to me. “So, what will it be? What would you like?”
“I do not know these things. Do they have injera?”
“No.” Rob laughed.
“Make that two,” he said to the girl. “He’ll have the same as me.”
The girl loaded enough food on a plastic tray to feed my entire family. Rob carried it to a corner table and slid into a plastic seat. He divided the food evenly and poked wide straws through the X’s in the top of the containers.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Dig in!”
I bit into a hot finger with squared edges that poked from the open red package.
“Potato?” I asked. Rob nodded.
“Yeah. Fries.” He gripped the thick bread with meat, opened his mouth wide and bit into it. He sucked on the straw before he swallowed.
The potato tasted of too much salt and left a film of grease on my fingers.
“Like it?”
“It has an unusual taste,” I said.
Rob shook his cup side to side. “I can’t believe you’ve never had fast food before.” Around us children gobbled food the way I had at home, before my sisters came to push me away. But I did not see any mean sisters ready to hit.
On the other side of a large window, children climbed a colorful plastic apparatus. When the door opened, it was as loud as our garden when everyone played football.
I opened the small hinged box. Inside was round, soft b
read sprinkled with seeds. It was filled with two large pieces of pressed meat and an extra piece of bread. I separated the layers to examine them: Meat. A thin square of orange plastic. Strange-colored slices of cucumber. Chopped onions, lettuce. I dipped my finger into the red sauce and licked it. Sweet.
“All of this? For me?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Rob said. He stuffed several fries into his mouth. “Take a bite. You’re going to love it.”
“It is kidus?” I asked.
“It’s hamburger. From a cow,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. But what if a Muslim had slaughtered it? “How is it prepared? Who killed this cow?”
“How am I supposed to know? It’s fried, I think.”
“Ah,” I said. I nibbled another fry. The salt burned my tongue. Everything here had too much salt or too much sugar. I sucked on the straw until my cheeks collapsed and I nearly swallowed my tongue. Slowly, the liquid pumped. A jolt of cold blasted the roof of my mouth that caused pain in my forehead.
“Cold!” I said.
“It has ice cream in it. You do know what ice cream is, right?”
“Yes,” I said. Cream with ice. Everything in Canada was so strange.
“Are you going to eat that?” asked Rob. He meant the Big Mac. My stomach felt sick wondering if it had been handled by a Muslim. I lifted off the top piece of bread with the seeds and took a bite. It had the taste and consistency of paste.
“Not like that. Like this,” said Rob. He opened his mouth wide again and took a huge bite.
“I do not think I am so hungry,” I said. I tugged at the lettuce and bit off a small piece. The milkshake tasted of sugar rather than of chocolate, but I liked how the coldness melted in my mouth.
“You’re not, like, a vegetarian or something, are you?”
“I do not know what that means. I am Ethiopian.”
“No, like, someone who only eats vegetables and fruits and stuff.”
“I like these things very much. Etheye prepares the wat with many spices.”
“What?”
“Wat,” I said. “It is the name. How do you say it in English?”
“I don’t know. What do I look like, a dictionary?”
“I do not know.”
Rob shook his head. He squished the box from his Big Mac and moved the paper cup with the lid closer. He resembled a South American anteater when he sucked on the straw.
“If you are going to take that apart piece by piece, we’re going to be here all day.”
“My hunger is not as great as yours,” I said.
“You don’t have to eat it,” he said.
“Maybe later.” I closed the box, admiring how it fit together with such precision. “Or we can give it to a beggar?”
“We don’t have beggars here. At least, not ones that want cold hamburgers.” He piled the uneaten food on the tray and stood up. “Keep the pie. You’re going to love the pie.” He passed the elongated package of thin cardboard to me, then tipped the tray into a receptacle near the door that overflowed with packaging.
“What will happen to it?” I asked.
“The garbage?”
“Yes. If not for beggars, then for … animals?”
“No, it just goes to the dump,” he said. “But animals would be a good idea.”
I pictured the people who lived in the Korah outside of Addis, where Gashe threatened to send us if we did not obey, how the best shelters were built with scraps of scavenged wood with rusted tin roofs. How happy they would be to have this food, even if it was cold and had too much salt, even if it tasted like paste, and the meat had been slaughtered with the wrong prayers.
11
On the days I was not in an airless room attempting to correctly answer questions about who I was and how I came here, I wandered the streets with DJ and Jason. I listened to their talk of the need for money and their desire for beer and tried to get used to being punched in the shoulder for no reason.
In the background was the hollow thwapping of the cardboard cups that drummed against buildings when the wind swirled low. People driving cars had the giant cups, and most often, people walking on the street carried them, too.
“They’re for coffee. You don’t got coffee in Africa?”
“We have coffee. Etheye makes it.”
“Well, duh,” said Jason. “It’s the same thing.”
I did not think it was. How to describe the enticing aroma of roasting coffee and incense that meant food was coming? I could think of no way to explain in English. I caught a paper cup between my feet and dribbled it as we walked. When neither of them tried for a steal, I passed to DJ. He lifted his foot and squashed it flat.
The leaves on the trees that bordered the streets grew bigger every few days, and the color transformed from lime to the shade of the skin of a ripe avocado. Bright flowers popped from the ground, and men, women and children wore T-shirts and short pants.
DJ and Jason begged on the streets for coins to purchase cigarettes. I sat nearby and watched. Clutching their stomachs and telling people they were hungry was most effective. When they didn’t have enough money, we scavenged the streets for cigarette ends. I suggested they kneel, bow their heads to the cement and put a small cup nearby to collect coins. They laughed as hard as the day I learned to ride a bicycle. Jason fell to his side, then rolled off the bench by the blue-green river.
“You’re like the funniest dude ever, man,” he said. “But I still wish I had a smoke.”
“Maybe we could use him. He’s skinny,” said DJ.
“To smoke?”
“Yeah, man. We’re gonna smoke ya.” Jason pealed again with laughter. When he regained his breath, he said, “It’s because yer so scrawny and hungry looking. The old ladies would fall for it. Make us rich.”
D.J. worked a toothpick with his tongue. Vertical, horizontal, vertical while he appraised me.
“We’d hafta work on him. Teach him some things. He stands out too much,” he said. “Obviously not from here.”
I was eager to learn. I wanted worries as simple as collecting money to buy cigarettes and learning how to break rules and not be caught.
“You hafta blend,” DJ instructed. “Be cool, like us.”
I would be a strong student.
“You have to hunch more, like this,” said Jason. He rolled his shoulders forward to demonstrate. I copied his poor posture.
“Yeah, that’s better,” agreed DJ. “You can’t go ’round like you got a stick stuck up your ass.”
“And what’s with the shoes?” asked Jason. My high-top sneakers were tied precisely with a bow with equal-sized loops. Jason lifted his foot. His shoe hung loose, the laces sprawled and tucked beneath the thick tongue.
“Here, man,” he said. He bent before me and loosened my laces. It felt now as if the sneakers were three sizes too big. “Try that.”
I curled my shoulders and tried to press my belly button into my spine as I walked. The sneaker flew from my foot in a low arc.
DJ and Jason cackled. “Slower, Africa Boy. You goin’ too fast.”
Hunch. Slow.
“Hands in your pockets,” called DJ. I scuffed on the ribbon of pavement that ran through the grass, trying not to dislodge the shoes again.
It was a most unnatural way to travel. A person would get nowhere walking like this.
“Wait!” said DJ. He hobbled beside me. The crotch of his jeans drooped nearly to his knees. He took the hat worn by baseball players from his head and pushed it onto mine. The curved brim was so low that I could see only the cement path beneath my feet.
“Now,” he said. “You at least look like you belong, Africa Boy.” DJ punched me in the shoulder. I stayed head down, hands in pockets.
If I looked cool and did everything they said, would it stop me thinking of my family? Was Gashe
being beaten? Now, while I slouched on the street of a foreign country learning to be a beggar? How ashamed he would be.
“Hey! Man! Africa Boy.” Jason nudged my arm with his elbow.
“Next thing, we’re gonna teach you are some new words,” he said. “Improve your vo-cab.”
12
The days blended, one to the other, and still I had not discovered my purpose. DJ and Jason had purpose as my teachers. Melissa had purpose cooking and overseeing the house. Rob’s purpose was to take a boy named Kenny and me to many different places, and to teach us how to boil Italian noodles and to open tins of food.
But my purpose eluded me.
I was on my side, facing a white wall, alone in a bed with perfumed sheets that made me sneeze, a soft pillow beneath my head. Electric lights flashed on. The blind snapped up. Around me, I could hear movement, now-familiar English words, scuffling feet, a yawn, and a loud fart that dribbled like air releasing from a balloon.
“This is such fuckin’ shit hole,” Jason’s voice outside the room.
“Shut the fuck up. Who the fuck cares what you think?” said DJ.
The sharp smell of the insecticide DJ sprayed on his body each morning.
“Go fuck yourself,” said Jason. A skirmish in the room. A toilet flushed in the distance. Someone shoved so hard against a wall it vibrated.
“Break it up, boys! Break it up!” Melissa’s voice yelled down the hall. The revolting smell of sizzling pork. The clinking of dishes. The struggle between DJ and Jason continued. Flesh struck flesh.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Rob’s voice in the room. “Melissa said break it up.”
Dragging feet, mumbled phrases. The word “asshole” clear and low.
Around me, the house was filled with the noise and smells of life, but I remained as still as a corpse, allowing gravity to press me into the mattress like a heavy anvil, to crush me so thin I could vanish. As if I had never existed.
What was the use of being alive if you contributed nothing? Why had Etheye saved me?
If I could sleep, and never wake …
I dragged my knees toward my chest and tucked my hand beneath my shoulder. The warmth of touch, even if it was my own arm holding my own body, gave me comfort. I wrapped the other arm over my shoulder. Shallow breath. A thin line of pain around my skull.
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