A massacre had occurred in the next house. The windows were splashed with blood, the word HELP written on the glass. A body hung from a tree. My heart quickened. I ran to the car.
“We must go back inside. Lock the door,” I said.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “We’ll find some way better houses.”
“We must do something.”
“Yup. But we can’t do anything standing around here. Get in!”
Why did he not appear afraid?
Everywhere I looked were corpses and skeletons hanging from trees and houses. Front gardens were turned into burial grounds. It was as if the clock had turned back to the time not long before my birth, when Mengistu first took power in Ethiopia. Our teacher had told us how the bodies of men had swung each morning from lamp posts, the birds pecking out their eyes.
“Spencer, where will we go?”
“I’m not telling, but you’re going to love it,” he said.
He stopped in front of a brightly lit house. Three other friends crawled into the backseat. All of them had pillowcases, and one of them had the type of paint that girls spread over their faces. One boy wore a black sweatshirt with a skeleton printed in white.
Spencer drove quickly on the familiar streets. He did not stop at the sign that said Stop.
“We’ll escape? All of us together?”
“Escape? Are you kidding me? This is like the best night of the year.”
“The deaths,” I said.
“You don’t think it’s real, do you?” Spencer asked. “The blood and the bodies?”
The boys in the backseat cackled. I remained still, silent and watchful.
Mike rolled down the window and flung a beer can. It hit a postal box.
“Woohoo!” he yelled. “Did you see that? Fuckin’ A, man!”
Spencer, Mike and the others howled like wolves. I twisted the pillowcase into a tight rope that curled into a knot.
“Tesfaye, you okay?” Spencer glanced at me. “It’s all pretend. Totally fake. Like a game. You know how to play pretend, right?”
I was an expert at pretending.
“It’s like when you play with my little brother and you act like a lion or a bear or something and chase him like you’re going to eat him. It’s just a game.”
Mike growled in the back street and batted the spikes of my hair.
“Why would you do this?” I asked.
“Because it’s fun! It’s Halloween, man.”
“Why the bodies in the trees? And the graves?”
“To make it spooky. Everyone loves to be scared, right?”
I thought of mean-faced soldiers with AK-47s, military trucks stuffed with ordinary people, and the fear of not arriving home by curfew. I thought of my weeks in hiding, the pounding of a fist. “Open! Open de deur!”
I did not like to be scared.
Spencer parked in front of the food store. He went in but left the engine running. The other boys dipped their fingers in the colored paint and smeared it on their faces.
It was just pretend. A silly game. I dipped the three middle fingers of my right hand in the yellow paint to make curved lines across my cheeks and to my chin.
Spencer returned with a stack of narrow cardboard cartons. He gave one to each of us. Inside were twelve perfect eggs, all clean, and all of the same size.
“All of this, for me?”
“Yup,” he said. Spencer reversed from the parking lot and drove to a street where monsters and witches and Ninja Turtles and beggars ran from house to house.
“Those are children? In the disguises? Pretending to be something else?”
Mike snickered. “What a fuckin’ doofus,” he said as he climbed from the car.
“None of this is real. The blood is fake. Ketchup or something. On Halloween, you can do anything you want.”
I placed my eggs carefully on the seat. The other boys carried their cartons under their arms.
“Bring your eggs,” said Spencer. “So, what you do is go up to a house and press the doorbell. Someone will answer and you’ll say, ‘Trick or Treat.’ Then you hold out your bag like this. The person will put candy or chips or maybe pop in the bag.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Yeah. Then you go to the next house and do the same thing.”
“How many times must I do this?”
“As many as you want.”
“Do I use the eggs to pay?” The boys exchanged glances.
“Kind of. You see, when you say, ‘Trick or Treat,’ if they don’t give you anything, or they say you’re too old or something, then you give them an egg.”
“Like this!” said Mike. He threw an egg at a street sign. It smacked, then dribbled like mucus from the nose of a bull.
“You would waste a valuable egg?”
“Oh, yeah. I’d easily waste a dozen valuable eggs,” he said.
“But those eggs would feed many people. My whole family!”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed? You’re not in Africa anymore,” said Mike. “Let’s hit the first house.”
It was like a miracle. House after house gave us sweets. I wanted to eat the chocolate, but I didn’t want to waste any time. I ran from house to house, careful to avoid the pretend bodies that swung from trees.
“This isn’t any fun,” said Mike.
“Free chocolate!” I said. I imagined all of my brothers and sisters with me. So many sweets we could get. And no cost!
“Who are you supposed to be?” a man asked.
“I am Tesfaye,” I said. “Trick or Treat.” I held open the sack for the pillow.
“You look like a punk. Besides, you’re far too old for this …”
He slammed the door. I heard the lock turn.
“He give you anything?” asked Spencer.
“No.”
The boys pelted the man’s house with a hail of expensive eggs.
“Woohoo!” they yelled. “Woohoo!”
“That’s enough candy.” Spencer shoved the carton of eggs at me. “We have work to do.”
We pelted the school, the police station, road signs, the windshields of cars and park benches.
It was extremely satisfying to feel the egg fly from my hand, watch it splatter and dribble away to nothing.
15
It was a strange manner in which the nights stretched longer than the days and the sun was not overhead at midday. Rain came in crystals that Spencer’s small brother taught me to catch on my tongue. On other days, the wind whipped my face as if with shards of glass, the air so brittle that surely my face would split if I did not press it together when I ran to and from school. Sweaters, coat, scarf, gloves, mittens, hat, wool socks, heavy boots — none of it could prevent the ice that replaced the marrow of my bones.
The only warm place was curled on my side beneath a feather quilt, listening to the hum of hot air that blew the curtains printed with horses and cowboys with ropes.
Winter was a terrible thing, but it was not the only problem.
Living with Janis and Tomas and Spencer was fine. School was fine.
How could I not be happy? I was in a safe place. I had enough to eat. I had challenging work at school. I was helping other students at the outreach school. My English was improving.
But I did not deserve this life. I had not earned it. I hated every good thing that happened to me.
I acted the way happy people did. I smiled and nodded and laughed and said all the proper things. But inside, I was an old man, longing for the past. It was as if by pleasing everyone else, I had lost who I was. I was an actor. Or worse, I was a cartoon, a line drawing without substance.
Ababa’s saying was true: Living is worthless for one without a home.
I was no one here. An orphan without prospects. A person who could
see the warmth of the sun but not feel it. I did not belong and I never would.
The only thing I wanted was to sleep, and to let the creeping fingers of death take me.
The bossy principal of the school defied my wishes. Mrs. MacPhail came to the house of Tomas. She threw open the door to my room and stomped in.
“Get up!” she ordered. I burrowed my head beneath the pillow and drew the cover over top. She tore off the blanket and exposed my naked body. I leapt into the clothing folded on the floor, glad that she had turned her back.
“Brush your teeth! Wash your face! We are going to school,” she said. Her glare was as severe as Gashe’s. She pointed to the door, then her car.
“Get in!” Waves of hot anger rolled off her.
She came to the house every morning to force me to the plan I had helped her make. She waited outside and blared the horn if I took too long.
I hated how this woman saw my inner core, the falseness of my smile, my act of belonging, my agreeing to anything and everything. No matter how smooth the façade or how layered, she saw what lay beneath.
I refused to look directly in her eyes the way Rob had taught me was proper in Canada. I kept my eyes busy with other things. I did not want her to examine my worthless soul.
Weeks passed in this manner. I became punctual. I did the work that was expected. I avoided conflict with Mrs. Mac the way I had learned to avoid conflict with Gashe.
But still, she found me. I was in plain sight at a table not far from her desk.
She walked toward me.
“Listen, Tesfaye.” I kept my eyes on the bits of purple glitter stuck to the table. They winked in the sunlight that came through the window when the clouds shifted.
“My daughter needs some help,” she said. I felt her stare and glanced up. “She’s bright. Super bright. But she doesn’t exactly thrive when it comes to mathematics and physics.”
Why was she confiding this? Why to me? Teachers did not speak in this way to students.
“I thought that maybe you could help her,” she said.
“Me?”
“Yes. You have a gentle manner and you are exceptional in the sciences. I think she would listen to you.”
My eyes dropped to the Shakespeare book face down on the table. I thought of the times I tried to teach Ishi. I was a terrible instructor who preferred to play football in the garden or pelt salamanders with pebbles or create wars between ants. Ishi’s grades had not improved.
“I am a poor teacher,” I said.
“Just a few hours a week after school. I will pay you.”
I wanted to tell her No.
“Hey!” she yelled across the room. Two boys argued. One, on tiptoes, held a cigarette package above his head. The other leapt on a chair to snatch it. He toppled to the floor when the tall one slid the package inside his coat. “You want to graduate? Get to work or get out!”
She returned her attention to me.
“Your daughter, she wants this?”
“She will,” said Mrs. Mac. My eyes darted to hers.
“Agreed, then? You know where I live?”
I nodded.
“You can start tomorrow.”
16
How could a hot white sun offer no heat? How was it that the same sun that caused coffee beans to grow did not melt the thick layer of snow that covered the naked branches of trees?
The eye of the sun flashed on the ice as I walked to Mrs. Mac’s house, a blinding combination of white reflected on white. Even the green trees with prickly needles were cast in crystal. The snow squelched like breaking Styrofoam with every step. The ice was as slippery as the mud in the garden during the winter rains, the mud that made Etheye so cross because it took longer to wash our clothes.
Etheye would like the powdery snow, how it rarely stuck to clothing, and when it did, how it would simply melt into water, rather than dry to a crust.
My brothers and sisters would be amazed at how snow could be shaped into balls. We could have the biggest snowball fight ever, as big as that football match we had with Isaias’ ball. And the snow. It could be caught in a cup and dribbled with Fanta or Coca for a satisfying drink.
Breath fogged from my mouth. Ishi would never believe any of this, how dripping water froze into spears that clung to the edges of buildings, how the wind felt like needles, how the cold at first took away the feeling in your fingers and toes, and then caused them to burn. He would not believe what I was seeing now, a rainbow around the sun, with two bright spots, like brothers to the east and west. The stark beauty stole my breath.
“Three suns. How could this be?” I asked Devina. We sat together at a large table in the house of her father and Mrs. Mac. Schoolbooks and binders and graph paper were spread over the table.
“Sundogs,” she said. “I suppose,” she snapped off the end of a carrot with her teeth, “you’ve never seen them before.”
“What causes them?”
“How am I supposed to know?” She broke the carrot in two, passed the half to me that had not been bitten. “Something to do with ice crystals.” We both looked out the window, admiring the prisms that shot from the infant suns. “It means a change in the weather. Same as a Chinook arch.”
“Oh,” I said, even though her explanation did not explain anything. “To make it warmer?”
“You got it,” she said. “You catch on quick.”
“What happens when the cold goes away?”
“It gets warmer, you dope.”
“Ah, so you can grow coffee?”
“Man, what planet are you from? Coffee does not grow in Canada. It doesn’t even grow in North America. South America? Yes. North America? No.”
“Ah,” I said. Then I remembered the heavy bags at Kofi’s mill stamped with the name and flag of Canada. “Grain. You do not grow coffee here, but you grow grain.”
“You’re a genius.”
I smiled, even though I understood the sarcasm. “Wheat?”
“And oats and barley and canola and peas, and all sorts of other boring things.”
“Teff?”
“What?”
“Teff. Do you grow it here?”
“Teff? I’ve never heard of that. You must have it wrong.”
“Teff. For injera.” I cupped my hand like a bowl and made a stirring, mashing motion with my other hand.
“Would you speak English? How am I supposed to communicate with you when you speak African?”
“Amharic,” I said.
“What-ev-er,” she said. She rolled her eyes in her head as if she was dying.
Devina peeled a banana. She gave me half. Ishi also would not believe the food, how much there was everywhere, all the time, and how you could eat whenever you wanted.
“Are you mental?” she asked. Her voice and the way she slanted her head told me she was teasing. “Is that why they had you in that group home? Because you are not so smart in the head?”
I ate my banana slowly and watched her. She tapped the side of her head with one finger.
“Huh?” she asked. She made me think of how Ishi always says the things that are on his mind. I wished Devina liked to play football. I would like to beat her at something, maybe accidentally trip her while she was running.
Her drooling and stinking black dog loped into the kitchen. It laid its giant head on her foot. She stroked its ear with her other foot. I shifted my chair farther into the corner.
“I don’t know why you don’t like dogs,” she said.
I did not respond. I saw no reason to explain how a dog appearing so calm could turn as quickly as the wind to tear off your hand and drag it away.
“You are just like one, you know. A dog.”
“Do not say that!” I said, then added the word Canadians used often without sarcasm. “Please.”
�
��Why? What’s wrong with being a dog?”
“It is an insult. A dog cannot be trusted.”
“Well, anyway, you are just like a dog,” she continued. “Or a pig. A pig will do the same thing.” She used her ruler to make a straight line and measured it, then looked up at me. “You follow people around with those big sad eyes. You do anything anyone says. It’s like you’re trained not to think.”
I heard the whine of Gashe’s switch and felt it burn across my back. Obey! he commanded with each stroke. Obey! You must obey. You do as I say!
“And,” she said. “You like to run.” She looked up from her schematic drawing of levers and pulleys. “Dogs like to run.”
I wanted to say I did not like to run, but that would be untrue. Running, feeling the rhythm of my heart, was freedom.
“You should take Charlie. Go for a run.” She fondled the dog’s ears and stroked the top of his head.
“I must go now to study,” I said. I left her there with her open book on the kitchen table, the untrustworthy animal at her feet. Should I have told her the drawing she made was wrong? That the configuration would never lift a load?
No, there were some things she needed to learn for herself.
* * *
◆
I held the metal door at the house of Tomas as I closed it, so it would not rattle and bang shut. I felt the need to wash from being so close to the breath of the filthy dog. A ridiculous clown looked at me in the rectangular mirror above the bathroom sink.
What had happened to me? I lived in a free country where tribe and religion did not matter. Here, even women carried the same rights and the same choices as men.
I had been given everything. Enough food, a free education and a place to live. I wore perfectly fitted clothes with the best logos, with hair in colorful spikes.
Is this who I was? A mannequin? A puppet?
When I tried to learn inline skating, I told Yosef that I did not want a wife, that I wanted to study. And yet I spent my time being a child and looking good to attract girls. Everything about me was as false as Gashe strutting in his finest clothes and best car, concerned only for his image.
We are the same, you and I. Cut from the same cloth.
Cold White Sun Page 21
