Finding edward, p.5
Finding Edward, page 5
Cyril sat on the bed, now covered with a purple quilt. The rest of the room included a chair, a small table, a bookshelf with a Bible and some women’s magazines. A wardrobe and a dresser stained with water rings. His mother would never have tolerated that. Their house always had doilies for coasters, most of them crocheted. But it was his. It would take five minutes to pack his suitcase at the Juniors: take it out from behind the couch, close the toilet bag that had never been unpacked, remove his good jacket and pants from the hanger in the cupboard.
Uncle Junior was definitely pissed because he said, “You should give proper notice of your intentions.” Cyril said, “Sorry, sir” and looked over Junior’s shoulder to the photograph of a Junior wedding on the wall. All of the family gathered, dressed up and smiling. The sun shone prettily on them, the trees behind were green, the grass was green, and there were pink and red roses in the flower bed. Junior looked grand in the photograph. Smiling, warm as that summer day, all benevolent generosity.
“You have got to toughen up,” said Junior. “This country is hard. The people are hard — they are not on your side. Stay out of trouble. Work. And signal your intentions, you hear? Because when people give you respect, you give it back.” Then Junior looked as though even he had heard enough of his own voice, walked away to his study, and closed the door.
On the first night in his basement room, Cyril lay on his bed in the dense quiet with only intermittent sounds from the furnace. He woke in the night to the shaking house and the rumble of a train travelling just a few metres from the room where he was no longer sleeping. It seemed as though it would never end, and then suddenly it did. Cyril listened to the faraway trail of the whistle until it too was gone, and the distance between him and the train lulled him back to sleep.
At home in Jamaica, from his bed in their house — up on the hillside, above the road that ran through the valley — he would listen to the passage of big trucks making their way to dark early-morning deliveries. The valley slopes amplified their sound and broadcast it over long distances so the engine noise would fill the minutes and grow increasingly close till it passed, then run on for a long time before it was gone. Like the train, he realized with pleasure. He hadn’t paid much attention to trains till now. He’d seen them in pictures and movies and television all his life, played with toy trains as a kid, but never seen a real one, never looked for one all these past weeks. Perhaps because they ran behind the big fence, so there had been no place to stand and watch them. Though he’d had glimpses of trains that pulled a few tall green carriages, carrying people back and forth to their work downtown. But they hadn’t held any place in his imagination. Now he lived beside the track, and the size and the rumbling weight and the running length of them was awesome. He would look for a real train.
Shortly before morning, Cyril dreamed that a brown-and-yellow finch flew out from a hibiscus bush and into his hand. A baby bird. He opened his palm to help it fly, but it steadied there, tiny bones covered with the softest feathers. Clinging tight to his outstretched forefinger, claws pinpricks to his skin, staying even when he dared to stroke its back with his fingertip. His mother whispered, “Take courage, baby.”
FIVE
An old lady with a bright orange woollen hat perched on top of her head and what looked like brown floppy earflaps dangling below stood in the front lobby of the library. She was large and assertive. “This is my bench,” she said to a lady who wanted to sit down. “I need to have it for myself. You are not invited.” She was loud, and Cyril was embarrassed for her because people turned to look. But it didn’t last. She settled herself and her big, blue bag on the bench inside the door and began to empty the bag of its contents. When she found what she was looking for, a smaller, bright pink bag, she placed it in her lap. Cyril watched as she pulled out pale yellow thread and began to crochet — he could tell from the way her hands moved — which surprised and intrigued him because that was exactly what his mother had done under the single electric light at their house. Back home. When she was alive.
The lady was talking to herself. A muttered monologue, though she now and then looked up to the wall as though someone there were talking back. He saw all of this from where he stood in front of the librarian’s desk, waiting for her to finish speaking to a small, pale man who struggled to understand English. Eventually, as the man walked away, she said, “Can I help you?”
“Sorry. All the computer terminals are in use, so I can’t do a search. I am looking for good histories of Caribbean immigrants to Canada.”
She looked up from her computer screen. “You’re looking for Black history? History of Black immigrants? Because we have a whole section for that.”
Although she was no longer looking at him, Cyril smiled at the librarian. “Thank you.” Nelson said history was learning from those who had been before. If it could teach political leaders and royalty, it could teach Cyril. So long as he looked in the right places.
Cyril chose The Caribbean Diaspora, a book thick enough to start with. He walked through the lobby, past the big lady with her crocheting, and was about to open the front door when she looked up and said, straight at him, “What you doing here? Are you skipping school?”
Cyril was immediately indignant — he really didn’t look that young — though that was silly, he thought, because look at her. But she’d smiled, and her voice was cheerful and intelligent.
“What are you making?” he asked.
“Little things for the church to sell.”
“Like doilies?”
“What do you know about doilies?”
“My mom used to make them.”
“Are you a Trinny?”
“Jamaican.”
“So is your mother over there and you are here?” Cyril nodded again because that was the easiest way to answer.
“That’s the way it is,” she said. “Look at these,” and she pulled a handful of crotched pieces from the bag. “See what I do?”
“They’re very pretty.”
“My eyes aren’t as good as they were, but I’ve done this for so long I can feel my way through the patterns.”
“Awesome.”
“I haven’t seen you before.” She was demanding. Silence was not an option.
“I just moved here. Waiting to start university.”
“You’re doing research?”
“The history of Caribbean immigration here in this country.”
“I am half-Ojibwe, and I can tell you about racism if that’s what you need to know.”
“Ojibwe is Indian?” Cyril had never talked to an Indigenous person before.
She nodded. “My mother married out, so sadly I am without status.”
“What does ‘status’ mean?”
“Indian rights. Passed down from the male side.”
“Okay?” He studied her white face, looking for Ojibwe. Her button eyes and tight, thin lips were like so many other white faces, though her skin shaded grey around her cheeks and across her forehead. At the outside corner of her left eye was a large, crepey mole. She looked white.
“My father worked hard, and then he died. There’s lots more that I could say, but I won’t.”
She unscrewed the cap from the one-point-five-litre water bottle jammed between her hip and bag and held it up to drink.
The orange wool hat was now on top of her blue bag. On her head was a threadbare brown cloth cap with earflaps that were almost long enough to tie under her neck. It was, he thought, an aviator’s hat, the sort he’d seen in children’s cartoons — only those were fur-lined and leather. Her earflaps were cloth, old and worn. Her hair, under her flaps, was long and a surprisingly deep black, no grey, though her face looked at least as old as sixty.
“You must work very hard at the university,” she said, stuffing the bottle back down at her side. “What’s your name?”
“Cyril.”
“Cyril! I’ve heard of you. And you probably know that my name is Pat.” Neither of them moved to shake hands.
“Hi,” said Cyril.
“I’ve got something to show you, Cyril. It is a secret kept safe by Mr. Addo, but he shares it with me. A history of racism that you can see for yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Cyril as he zipped up his coat and pulled his gloves from his pocket. He was hungry, and she was obviously crazy because he had no idea who she or her Mr. Addo were. But Pat kept talking.
“Mr. Addo has several things on view that I, unfortunately, cannot touch. They are very fragile and extremely valuable.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They were appraised for at least a million dollars. But they’re secret, so no one will ever buy them. If you come with me, we can examine them ourselves because you’re a visiting fellow at the university and I have a PhD in physics.”
“Yes. Sure,” said Cyril. “But I have to go now, so we’ll do that next time.” Pat didn’t object. As he left, she went back to muttering, raised her face to the opposite wall, and, without a doubt, addressed her words to that. Cyril soon forgot about Pat’s ramblings, but he didn’t forget her — physicist was a cool aspiration. So much more ambitious than the crazy ladies whom his mother’s church people cared for.
A few days later, Cyril saw Pat on Weston Road, bag hanging from her arm, wrapped in her big coat but wearing a different wool hat, a blue and orange thing, aviator earflaps dangling below, water bottle peeking from her bag. She held out one hand for change while the other tossed crumbs to at least a dozen scavenging pigeons. When she saw him, she screamed, “Hello Cyril!” and waved, scattering the birds. He hurried closer because she was really yelling and swinging her mad windmill arm, and people were looking.
“Come in here,” she said, pointing to the door of the storefront church behind her. “This is what I told you about. This is where the treasures are kept that you very definitely need to see.” The pigeons that had flown off began to gather again. “It’s gone,” she said to the birds and shook out the paper bag that she had in her pocket, then dropped it to the ground, where it blew into the road. A couple of pigeons made a half-hearted hop behind it. “The Aviators don’t know when to stop eating,” she said. “Come,” she commanded.
Cyril followed her into the church without too much reluctance, as he really did want to know what it looked like inside. It was larger than he’d expected. The walls were black and gold. A plush red carpet ran the length of the floor. Pat walked, somewhat lopsided, water bottle hugged under her arm. She led him straight to the back, where she stopped in front of a small but impressive chrome-framed glass display case.
She was out of breath from the short walk but managed a dramatic whisper: “Look, Cyril. Now you see!” Inside it were a couple of children’s things. Old, because the little suitcase was made of cardboard, and the doll was dressed in an old-fashioned sailor’s uniform with the anchor design on its buttons. The sailor’s cap had fallen from its head and dangled by a single thread against its chin. The suitcase, baby-boy blue like the sailor’s suit, was scraped through to brown cardboard in a strip along its side. Leaning upright at the back of the case were two books, one of them black, about a foot square, the word PHOTOGRAPHS in gold on its cover. The other was larger, with a brown cover that might be leather and a title he couldn’t quite read. In front of the suitcase were a number of cream-coloured envelopes, handwritten in blue ink. One had an opened letter alongside. To the right was an incongruous but very pretty fan arrangement of crocheted and embroidered doilies. Cyril smiled with the pleasure of recognition.
Pat sidled toward him. “See here,” she said, pointing to the sailor doll, “how his hat has been knocked off. Someone goes in here at night and interferes. It’s happened to me too. But this is a boy without a mother!” She leaned in closer, peering at the open letter. “She gave him away, and where did he go? Back to Jamaica?” Her voice lowered to a growled mutter; she sounded like a different person. “Or is he dead? Perhaps you know him?”
As Cyril tried to read the letter through the glass, she quickly slid the door open and reached in to pick up the envelopes as well as the letter. That was something she probably shouldn’t do, thought Cyril. Pat rearranged the doilies, spreading them out in the space freed up by the letters. “You see how pretty these are? They’re as good as mine.”
“They are,” he said and reached in to stroke the sheen of red silk on the embroidered hibiscus.
“Read the letters. You know this lady?” she asked again, waving the handwritten page in front of him.
The paper was so thin it could be torn just by folding. It didn’t seem right to read a letter that had been placed safely behind glass. But he wanted to. What he felt from the letter, beyond its fragility, was an insistent pull to know.
“I lost my glasses yesterday,” said Pat. “Read it to me.”
“See this date?” Cyril said, though she obviously couldn’t. “It’s from nineteen-twenty-two. That’s a lot of years before my time.” As he stood, holding the letter in the dim light of the room that really did command respect, standing in front of the luxurious display case and breathing the building’s stuffy air with its familiar smell of furniture polish — he knew. Pat waited for him to read. But he already knew that there was a boy whose mother really did leave him, who had been left all alone.
* * *
October 1922
Dear Maggie,
I’m desperate now. I’ve tried all the people you said, and none of them will help. The baby is sickly and cries too much. The landlady wants me to leave, and I don’t know where to go. I have to do something. I can’t care for the baby anymore. His dark skin makes me long for his father, but he will never come, and even if he did, they would never leave us in peace. Oh, Maggie, what shall I do? I feel we would both be better off dead.
Davina
* * *
“Read the rest,” said Pat as she opened another envelope and began to pull out the letter.
“Patricia,” called out a loud bark of a voice that made both of them jump. A small, very dark man with silver hair and a formal black suit marched quickly toward them. Pat gave the envelopes to Cyril and smiled a greeting. “Ah! Mr. Addo,” she said. “You’ve arrived. I’d like you to meet my friend Cyril, who is a senior fellow at the university school of foreign affairs. He’s from Jamaica. Cyril, this is Mr. Addo, who is the guardian of this church.”
“You shouldn’t be in my case,” said Mr. Addo.
“I did wonder about that, sir,” said Cyril.
Mr. Addo’s eyes glared through his wire-rimmed glasses. “You can’t just take what you want,” he said to Pat.
“My friend Cyril is going to solve this mystery.”
Mr. Addo puffed out a short, loud sigh and crossed his arms. To keep his anger in, Cyril thought.
“We don’t get along,” said Pat to Cyril. She was dismissive then and would not look at Mr. Addo again. “We have never been friends. The Aviators and the Felines rely on me in this cold weather. They starve without my help. He wants me to let them die.”
“I spent ten minutes cleaning up the cat food cans and the rest of your mess yesterday,” said Mr. Addo. “You have got to give me a break. Go feed some other feral creatures at some other poor soul’s place.”
In an instant, Pat was angry and aggressive. She poured out vitriol about men and sexual abuse, incest and beatings, and the toxic state of the building in which they stood that made everyone sick. As she made for the door, she shouted, “You touch me again and I’ll call the police.” And she was gone.
Mr. Addo sighed and said, “I wish she would. Never come back. But Pat is an unlucky penny. And the Lord loves her too. How’d you hook up with her, anyway?”
“At the library.”
“You’re a reader? You interested in the history? Our history? Because I have to confess that the only folk who’ve looked into my display case without me telling them they should are you and Pat. And I can’t say I have any idea what she really sees when she looks.”
“Sorry.”
“You can read the rest. Go ahead. I collected these things and put them out for people to puzzle over. But they don’t. You are welcome to do so. They came in the suitcase,” he said.
Mr. Addo folded his arms again and stood solidly by while Cyril read through the two remaining letters.
* * *
January 1923
Maggie,
I’ve done what I had to do. He’s gone to someone who will look after him. He’ll have to work hard as he grows, but he’ll be safe. I’ve cried for six straight days. My milk stopped coming over a week ago, so I couldn’t even feed him anymore. I don’t know if it was the right thing. But it was all I could do. I can’t protect him with his dark skin, and he would ruin me.
Please forgive me, Maggie. God forgive me.
Davina
* * *
Cyril looked up quickly to Mr. Addo, who nodded and looked pointedly at the remaining envelope.
* * *
