Finding edward, p.7
Finding Edward, page 7
Cyril read the street signs, listened for his stop, and wondered whether what he felt, the battle of butterflies in his stomach, the pull of tension across his shoulders and squeezing into his forearms, was more anxiety than excitement. Or was it the other way around? He stepped off at last, swept along by a crowd of kids who pushed to the exit. Looking up, he saw an awesome tumult of colour and the moving, flashing images broadcast from the tiers of billboards surrounding Dundas Square. People packed the sidewalk. The expanse of concrete with the big stage at the back must mean free music. Something new every day, the signs informed him. But the school was what he needed. Ryerson. And though the streams of kids in all their fabulous variety were a surprise, the size of the building whose doors he stepped through with artfully feigned confidence, the escalators jammed full — all of it overwhelming — he did not show disquiet. Good lad. He heard Nelson’s voice. He walked, a little less purposefully than he’d intended, toward the admissions office.
The students were lined up on either side of him, long rows of chairs on both sides of the room. The man he needed to see was in an office just around the corner from the waiting room. The pink slip of paper Cyril had pulled from a device and now held in his sweaty palm was number ninety-two. He sat, opened a book, and tried to concentrate but read the same line seven times before finally giving up. The arms on the clock at the back of the room moved slowly.
Most of the other students were playing on their devices. One guy dipped his head to music that no one else could hear, every now and then letting out a squeak. Cyril’s hands rested on the arms of his chair. Next to him was a white girl. On his other side a brown South Asian girl whose hands, fingernails painted blue, were wrapped around her phone, texting like crazy. Her hands, he guessed, were thirty percent darker than his. And on his other side, the girl was maybe thirty percent lighter. He moved his gaze in a line from his hands to the texting fingers and across to the forearm of the white girl, bag on her lap, leaning back with her eyes closed. Back to his own hands, the brown in the middle. The room was full of brownish kids, a few very dark, mixed in with the whites. If you spun them all together, they’d blend to a colour much like his. He had never considered these distinctions before. They were not subtle variations. They were right there on people’s faces: their brown or dark or white faces. A boy with a shaved head had a red face like Cyril’s father in his English pub.
There was a story that Cyril wanted to hear directly from his dad — and it was strange to attach the word dad to his thoughts. What he wanted to know was: How do you father a child and then move five thousand miles away? If his dad were here, would his life be different? Would his dad take him to the places that he wanted to see — Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains? Would his dad hold him in a bear hug and tell him that everything’s going to be okay, that there’s a future for him in this university, in this city? Cyril kept his eyes on the blended brown of his hands, his legacy, his father’s genetic contribution.
Before he had a chance to ponder his situation more, the process kicked in. His number was called. He approached the clerk, who was the model of efficiency. He signed away his money and was given a card with his photograph and student number, his class schedule, and a school calendar. In the bookstore, he bought a student transit pass and put it at the front of his wallet. He wanted to tell someone, anyone, that he’d arrived. But the students all around him were so sophisticated. They were all with their friends.
But Grandpa Nelson would be smiling, fist-bump proud — calling for rounds of ginger beer and extra fries. Cyril straightened his shoulders and held his head upright. The other students were mostly younger than him. Some spoke unfamiliar languages. Despite that, he chose to be encouraged because he had, on this day, made the final selection of his classes.
Outside of Ryerson was another foreign place. Not like Weston, which he had assumed was properly Toronto, despite Evan having told him that it was certainly not. But he’d thought that the rest of Toronto just meant bigger stores with more things. Cleaner streets and brighter lights. Better cars, people moving faster.
It was so much more than that. He walked south toward the CN Tower, which he had seen a number of times before from a distant view. All around him were the financial towers, the corporate headquarters housing the economic engine that made Canada a first-world country. Looking up made him increasingly breathless as the soaring city leaned over him from so high above. It seemed the mix of air below contained something more than oxygen — something that could suffocate him — and it made him almost claustrophobic as he looked up at the towers against the sky. He had seen the pictures but could never have imagined that walking down the street would feel like this.
All of the glamorous TV images that played behind the broadcast news readers, in entertainment stories, and in the movies. Downtown was all of those — added quickly to his mind’s inventory — and something else that ran taut over the surface of the places and people and the things for sale. The city hummed with electricity. He did not think it was just the novelty of it — the first-time intensity of seeing how very different things were here. He was certain he would experience this sensation every time he walked this way. It was something else that connected them all, the people who moved around him, jogging along the sidewalks, walking, fit and trim, fur-framed painted faces, men and women, groomed and sleek with little dogs on leashes or luxurious carriages transporting children and babies. In Brown’s Town, babies travelled in the crooks of arms or, once they were big enough, on their own two feet.
Cyril could almost touch it, the energy that bound them, that they possessed so easily. It was a force that bypassed others, the few whose collectivity of non-belonging was so painfully obvious. This new awareness snagged at his spirit, skimmed a micro-thin sheen of hazard over all the shiny surfaces, made the energy an exclusionary force.
He’d chosen to explore Front Street, walking west. It was long, but not so long as Eglinton. He might go further, as far as the big park — the large square of green on the map. He wanted to see more of the lake and imagined crossing the city along the shoreline.
For a while, he walked behind a young Black man and his two brown daughters, slowing his pace to match theirs. Both of the girls had long ponytails that swung free from their winter caps as they skipped and bobbed. They were eating red lollipops. Their father steered the smaller one, hand to her shoulder, when people approached. He didn’t need to, she was aware and capable, but her father maintained the instinctual gesture to teach and protect. On his right, the older girl, whose range of movement was wider, crossed in front of them or fell a step or two behind before trotting on. The ties that bound them were as palpable as the connections among all the other sleek people moving quickly inside their invisible energy lines.
As Cyril began to cross Spadina Avenue, he was stopped by a Black girl who wouldn’t let him pass. She didn’t hesitate. Stood in front of him, all smiles, and said, “Hey, brother, I got something you need to know.” He shook his head at her. She unnerved him, with her bright blue jacket and tall, striped woollen hat that he guessed held dreads piled inside on top of her head. “Brother, I got something to share,” she said. “What are you doing for Black History Month?” He shook his head again, but she pushed her brochure at him, and he saw that he had to take it. He did and said, “I don’t have any change.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a lot of these to put out, you get yours for free.”
“What exactly is Black History Month?” He read the line of text at the top of the booklet.
“The celebration of who we are, my friend. But turns out the celebration has a message that’s talking dirty under its breath. ’Bout how we’re bad and need fixing. You know what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“You’re new here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was born here. I’ll tell you how it is. You ask the little kids — white and Black — what Black History Month is, and they’ll tell you it means that Black folk are bad and this month is about changing up the story for four weeks till the old tale comes round again and is told with disappointing regularity for the rest of the year. And then we’re back to normal, which is to say Black folk are pathologically disposed to failure.”
“I never heard of that.”
“Then you were never listening.”
She wasn’t fair, and she wasn’t listening. “But I don’t even know what it is. Where I’m from, all my history is Black history.”
“Which is?”
“Jamaica.”
“Your history is white colonization underpinned by slavery. Don’t kid yourself.”
“We’ve been independent since 1962, and if you haven’t lived there then you shouldn’t judge.”
“Independent from the IMF? The World Bank? The multinationals? The Chinese? Tell me who runs your country?”
“Black men and women.”
“Wrong. It’s money. Like everywhere else, but worse, my friend, because yours is a poor country, and the people stay poor. The wealthy plant their money to grow outside of the country, tell me that isn’t so?”
Cyril wanted to walk away from this girl who wouldn’t stop lecturing. Who hovered in front of him, immovable except when he moved, then mirror-stepped with him. He shook his head then and smiled. “Okay, you win. You’re right. About lots of it. But there are other things too. Like a real functioning democracy.”
“Hey. He’s listening!” She was smiling too. A beautiful, full-on grin that made him want to stay and watch it, watch her.
“I can be intense,” she said.
“You’re passionate.”
“I am.” She touched his arm. “Sorry.”
Cyril wanted to ask her name. To see what shape she had under her big coat. To know whether he was right about the dreads in her hat. But he was stopped by the shyness that always shut him down when he wanted to talk to a girl. He could listen and empathize, but he couldn’t flirt, didn’t know how to do that in downtown Toronto on a street busy with people who walked around them, heading for lunch, back to work, to meetings. He was hungry for contact, and she was right there. He thought her smile was for him, and he was sure he was right about that. But it was just a smile.
“It’s the end of my shift anyway.”
“Shift?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a class in twenty minutes. Can’t be late for organic chemistry.” She grinned.
“Chemistry. Wow.”
“Med school coming right up. Just gotta get the marks in.” Then she picked up her bag. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Jamaica. Are you living here or just visiting?”
“Moved here.”
“Good luck. Don’t let them kid you about how we all have the same opportunities ’cause we don’t.”
She must have seen the disappointment on his face. “If you want to meet people, come out to Moon Moves, over in Parkdale, near Gladstone. Saturday nights.”
She hoisted her bulging knapsack effortlessly onto her back and walked away. Seemed like her feet had springs as she moved fast through the crowd of people. He watched her tall hat bounce far down the street. Slowed by the drag of missed opportunity, his walk suddenly seemed too long, his destination too far. He was hungry. But there was nothing familiar in the restaurants around him, and he was certain he couldn’t afford them. He moved on, followed where she’d gone though he didn’t see her again.
He found a restaurant on the corner that was full of students. He could sit in there and look like he belonged. They wouldn’t have much money, either, so it was likely that his eight dollars could buy him something decent. The push of students, the heat in the restaurant, and the noise reverberating from the tiles, the walls, and the steel counters relaxed him. They were mostly Asian. They looked good. He was conscious of his oversize coat and pulled at the zipper because he was starting to sweat in the heat. When it was his turn, he ordered a small fries and a burger, found a place at the window, and ate fast, greedy for the grease and the salt, then slowed as his stomach acknowledged that more food was coming. He was anonymous in the din with the crush of young people eating the same food. No one knew that he was alone.
Outside, piled around the lamppost on the corner, were bags, a blanket, and a handwritten cardboard sign with only the word please visible. A dog bowl. No one around, but they were for sure coming back. There were some apples in a box that looked pretty good.
Two weeks before, Pat had waved him down on Weston Road to tell him that it was her birthday. Would he buy her brunch? He hadn’t had an immediate reason to say no. The diner was small and narrow with unevenly spaced red plastic bench seats. The owners knew Pat and nodded when she entered. They weren’t so friendly, but she wasn’t banned as he knew she’d been from other places. There were a few kids his age, but no one he recognized. Pat put her big bag and giant water bottle onto the bench first, then squeezed herself in, belly pressed against the little table. Cyril sat on the skinny side.
“I had an operation,” she announced, excited by her birthday and the anticipation of breakfast.
“When?”
“My ovaries were dreadfully diseased, so they took them out. That surgeon is exceptionally skilled, so it wasn’t too bad, and when I got home the Felines cared for me.” Her voice softened. He had never before heard her speak so earnestly. “Billy and Zigzag came over to my place. They helped me to stand up from my bed and held me by my elbows so that I wouldn’t fall. They made me walk around and around and around my room for three days.” Her tone became almost reverent. “Billy had to cancel his commercial work for the whole week. He’s very, very busy, you see him on the television all the time.” Pride made her eyes shine, and her cheeks were puffed from smiling. “I’m fine now,” she said, squirming with delight as two plates of the all-day breakfast of fried bacon and eggs arrived. Pat scooped the yolks out with her toast and made small grunts and moans of pleasure as she ate. She’d asked for extra bacon, which she wrapped in a napkin and put into her purse.
“Can I grab that stool?” This restaurant was nothing like that Weston diner. Cyril nodded as two kids sat down at the window beside him. They were downtown types with piercings, spiky hair, and peculiar clothes.
The sky had turned the same familiar grey that it had been, intermittently, for three days. In Mount Dennis, he’d watched seagulls drift down through a thin fog of sky that hid the sun. He hadn’t known that he would see those beautiful birds, and so far from a sea or ocean. There were no gulls here, among the steel and glass, skyscrapers and cranes, and another helicopter — he’d seen five already that day. The sun was a diffuse pale candy yellow behind a screen of cloud. That was a Canadian winter sun. And he was surprised at how pleased he was to know that. It was something he could have talked to Nelson about. A watercolour sun in its northern sky. The girl with the hat and the smiling eyes that made him want to see her again. Despite her accusation, he’d say to Nelson. Never mind her politics, he’d say. He finished his burger and fries and rubbed at his fingers with a napkin.
EIGHT
Cyril phoned Evan at the end of his first full day at school, though it would be several weeks before they met downtown. Evan was always busy. But his growing interest in writing a feature article on the first-year experience of foreign students in Canada changed his priorities. He’d been told by his prof that he could sell a piece like that, but he was going to have to write it on spec. He’d have to prove himself. Evan and Cyril established a short-term routine, meeting around the corner from the magazine where Evan was an intern. Cyril always made the call, and Evan generally found a time that suited Cyril’s schedule. Not evenings, though. Evan reserved any spare evening time for his girlfriend, Ms. Penelope P.
Cyril’s visits with Evan were rare enough to bring excitement. They validated him. When he found himself tucked into a corner of a hallway — hiding like a sad sack, Nelson would say, eating the lunch he’d brought from home, looking at all the kids who had friends and lists of things to do — he’d try on Evan’s confidence like a costume. He hoped someone would look at him and not through him.
Once, as a kid, when things were really bad, he’d spent a week of lunch breaks hidden in the school janitor’s cupboard. Sometimes this new thing, this university with so many possibilities but all out of reach, made him feel lonelier than that time at school in Sturge Town. Because he wasn’t a kid anymore. All he really had was Edward, his rationale for being alone, for hanging out in libraries, for eating lunch with his head down and a book on his lap.
A lot changed when Randall found him; a page turned, and he discovered his story might actually have a happy ending. Randall was a designated university mentor and had picked him out from the school’s meet-up wall. He’d seen right away that Cyril was new to Toronto, and he recognized the Bob Marley reference on the front of Cyril’s bag. He stood over Cyril, all of his six-plus feet, and said, “I am your student guide.” Pointing at the bag, he added, “Sent by Bob and all people like him. Tell me how you’re doing?”
“Okay. Yeah, fine.”
“Right, I can see that. Come with me. You had lunch yet?”
For the first time, Cyril wasn’t alone in the cafeteria. Randall knew so many people, from United Black Students and School of Performance members to students in his Poli Sci and Sociology classes; he knew the editors of The Eyeopener. And then there were the people he played music with, went to concerts with. He was Bredren and Bro, Dude and Randall-Radical. Everybody’s friend.
* * *
Cyril packaged up his Toronto experiences in pretty language with colour commentary, ready to entertain Evan, who generally sat at a window table of a Queen Street West coffee shop with an open laptop and a pile of books. The coffee shop was alien culture to Cyril. It was filled with people of different ages, though most were young — under thirty — and nearly all were white. With glossy haircuts, fashionable clothes and eyeglasses, casually sipping expensive drinks and operating expensive phones. Evan was often the only Black person, and he didn’t look so dark as he sat with his cappuccino, talking, quiet and friendly, into the telephone microphone hung under his chin. He looked like an actor in a film, not a student. Glasses with designer frames, short dark curls, striped scarf. His smile had star quality, such that Cyril often glanced around to see if people took a second look to see if he was a celebrity.
