Kicking the Sky (20 page)

We got on the eastbound streetcar at the corner of Bathurst and Queen. James guided me to the back. He plopped himself on the long back seat, stretched out his legs as if the whole streetcar was his.

I looked out the window, up to the needle tip of the CN Tower. It was just over a year ago that a helicopter had hovered above the tower, dangling its final piece, and the city froze. Manny, Ricky, and I had stood in the middle of our street. People got out of their cars like zombies and gathered together to look up. The tallest free-standing structure in the world. We could do anything now.

The streetcar rattled along the tracks: Resendes Fish Market, Shoppers Drug Mart, Army Surplus, and Duke’s. Woolworth’s had signs announcing it was shutting down. In between we passed rows of stores that had already closed. For Sale signs were plastered everywhere. We passed Spadina Avenue and trundled toward University Avenue, past City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, now empty, the rally long forgotten, nothing changed. The skating rink would open soon. A few kids were walking along the subway grates, their jackets puffed up with air as they threw their hats up into the sky. I counted how long the hats hovered in the air before veering off and crashing into the sidewalk. “I’m sorry I passed out the other night,” I said as we approached our stop. “I saw you and I don’t know … things kinda closed in on me.”

“It’s okay.”

We got off at Yonge.

“I was surprised to see you there.”

“Forget it,” he said, flipping his hood over his head.

“Why’d you come?”

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said, walking away to the intersection. We walked up Yonge Street, across from the Eaton Centre and all its glass. “Imperial Six okay?” James said.

“What are we watching?”

He didn’t answer.

As we crossed Shuter Street I looked over my shoulder to glance at Massey Hall. The Good Brothers had played there last week. Terri only blared disco through the house, practising the latest steps printed on the inside cover of K-tel’s
Disco Dynamite
album. I liked Queen, whose concert at Maple Leaf Gardens the night before had sold out. James didn’t know they were my favourite band. I didn’t tell him because if he knew he’d find a way to get tickets, and then I’d feel like I owed him. Besides, I’d feel doubly bad when I turned him down. The concert was at night and my mom would never have let me go.

“The Terrace roller skating rink is down there.” I pointed east. I could see the north wing of St. Michael’s Hospital. It had been a long time since I had visited my parents at work, my father proudly ushering me past the huge statue of St. Michael before taking me to every department, parading me in front of all the nuns who ran the place. He had been the housekeeping supervisor. Things hadn’t worked out. That was three years ago, before he bought the truck.

We finally arrived at the outdoor square, underneath the Imperial’s marquee panels.

“There’s
Star Wars
. It’s still playing,” I said. “Or what about
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
?” I stared at the poster of the big spaceship with all its lights coming over the horizon.

Soon we were sitting in the theatre, a large bag of popcorn between us. When I reached for my drink under my seat, my cheek rubbed against James’s arm. The hairs on my head tingled and I twitched, the static in my legs and down to my toes felt like swarming bees. The last time we were alone was in my
basement. I tried to watch the movie. Our hands touched as we dug for popcorn. I felt a pinch in my groin. The second time it happened the pinch turned into a knot. By the third and fourth time I found myself thinking about when to dig in so that our hands
would
touch. I tried hard to focus on the screen—on the actor in the movie looking out into the suburban neighbourhood he lived in, and everyone going on with their everyday lives, as they always had. Then James leaned in against me, his shoulder lowered to touch mine. I closed my eyes and then something exploded in my head, the image of blood being spilled a few buildings away. Emanuel’s blood.

The bag of popcorn tumbled into the aisle and I ran through the corridor, down all the stairs, heard James coming after me. I made my way outside and ran until I found myself in front of 245 Yonge—the windows of Charlie’s Angels now completely boarded up. I looked up to the rooftop. Then I bent over and puked into the gutter. James was there. He rubbed my back with his hand, small circles. Some cars honked their horns. I wished he would stop.

I wiped the spit from my cheek, tried to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell the sourness of my puke. “Leave me alone! I’m fine.”

James put his fists in his coat pockets.

“Hey, kid, that guy bothering you?” one man yelled from his car.

“Just leave, James.”

He punched a telephone pole. The honks kept coming.

“Leave!”

He began to walk up Yonge Street. He turned back a couple of times but that was it. I was afraid to be alone so I
followed behind him and saw him kick a mailbox over. I imagined catching up to him to tell him I was sorry for ruining the movie, sorry for behaving like a little kid.

I was just a few paces behind when James crossed at College Street and began to walk west. It was five o’clock and starting to get dark. I was cold and wanted to go home. A van drove up beside James, slowed down. James stopped, leaned in to the open window to give the driver directions. I came up behind him and saw the driver, a man in a suit, the knot of his tie bigger than my fist. “A hundred for the both of you,” I caught the man saying.

“Fuck off, buddy.” James kicked the van’s side as it sped off.

A shiver ran through me; my teeth chattered. “I want to go home.”

“So go home. I didn’t bring you here—you followed, remember.”

“A little young, no?” a voice ricocheted off the building next to us.

I followed James’s look to a boy who sat on a huge city planter. We crossed the road. The boy’s jeans were so tight you could clearly trace his dick in his bulge. He threw back his parka hood and his hair was dyed a yellow blond. He was a teenager, his face covered in acne. A long feathered roach clip dangled from his ear, rested on the shoulder of his jacket. He was so skinny.

“You got it wrong,” James said, nodding at me to follow him.

“Not like you to turn down an offer.” The guy spoke as if he was chewing gum.

“I’m not workin’,” James said.

The guy expelled a burst of air in a short, sharp hiss. “You’re getting too old for this. They want fresh meat.”

“Come on,” James urged, grabbing me by the hood and spinning me around.

The guy called out, “Leaving them all for me?” as we began to walk south to Dundas Street.

I sat in the streetcar seat in front of James, who said nothing. I opened the window and stuck my face outside, like a dog, breathing in the air and cooling my head. We were heading west, toward Spadina, and James didn’t have any nails left to chew.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” James finally said. I pressed my forehead to the window the way my mother did when she sat on the worm-picker. “I was seven when my mother left.” His elbows stretched across the seat over my shoulder. He leaned in. I shifted away. “She said she was going to find my father, bring him back home. I was so excited. Just thinking about it, those words,
my father
. I waited. Never had a family like yours. My grandfather was the only other person to take care of me. He hadn’t wanted my mother to go. He had said that’s how he lost
his
wife, to the flash of the big city.” I leaned my head against the streetcar window. “I kept thinking of how my mother’d come home with her arms full of toys and my father, who I had never met, would walk in behind her. It’s what kept me going, you know? I practised my reading so I would impress my father when he came home. I was ten, I think, when I realized they would never come.” I heard him swallow his spit. I couldn’t bear to look at him and I was sure he wouldn’t continue if I did.

“My grandfather was a crazy bastard sober, turned devil with a bit of drink. He bought this dog, didn’t allow me to give it a name. ‘Go feed, Dog!’ he’d yell, which meant throwing
scraps at the thing because it was chained to the tree all day long.” James stopped. The streetcar swept along Dundas Street, past Chinatown. There wouldn’t be much time for James to finish his story.

“One day—I was fifteen—I came home and before I could even make my way through the front door, he tackled me, wrapped a chain around my ankles. It happened so fast. He dragged me through the snow and tied the chain to that same tree out back.” We had stopped at Kensington Market and the Project, the buildings all uniform like piled bricks. “
What the fuck is he doing?
It kept going on in my head like a skipped record.
What the fuck is he doing?
Then I saw him come from the front of the house. That beast of a dog was pulling him forward. ‘Make a man of you yet, boy, not a fuckin’ crybaby.’ ”

I saw James’s reflection in the window. He was someplace else.

“He let go of Dog. I covered my face, but he went at my head, tore at my thigh. I kicked. Then I punched. ‘You got to fight dirty if you ever gonna make something of yourself, boy.’ I reached for its collar, held its head in the snow.
Get it off!
That’s when it got loose, lunged at me and dug into my face. ‘Fight back! Because if you don’t, the world’s gonna swallow you up and spit you out.’ The dog was yanked back, clear off its paws. ‘Get him, you little fucker!’ ” James said, softly.

“BANG!” James jumped off his seat as he said it. I jumped with him. Even the streetcar driver looked back at us. “My grandfather shot into the air. Slung the rifle over his shoulder and went back into the house with his dog. Bastard.”

I traced the pink scar along his jaw with my eyes. “I tied a rag around my head. It kept the blood in check and held the skin in place.”

“How did you get away?”

“That same night I set a trap, one of those nasty things that look like the jaws of a shark, with all those teeth. I hooked some meat on it and dragged it close enough to the barking dog. He went for the meat and the trap snapped shut.” James clapped the air for added effect. “Clear took its fuckin’ head off.”

“And your grandfather?” I asked, lowering my voice. The streetcar was in front of Sanderson Library. I reached up and rang the bell.

“He was there. He could hardly stand. He crouched in the snow and patted the dog’s head. Its body was five feet away. He stood up, old bastard. Started clapping—loud and slow. Then he laughed. Said, ‘I’m the only family you got, boy.’ And that’s when I ran as fast as I could, straight at the miserable geezer. I rammed into him so hard he fell backwards, right into the tree and the rusted nail that waited for him.”

James looked at me. I nodded as though I understood his pain, even though I didn’t. All I felt was an emptiness in my stomach.

“When I left that night, the snow had almost completely covered him. Frosty the fuckin’ Snowman. But the old bastard sat crouched against the tree, giggling. He was fuckin’ demented.”

James raised his knees and hugged them, drew his sleeve across his nose, then into his mouth. “Never told anyone before.” He hugged his legs tighter and looked out the streetcar window. “It’s our stop,” he said.

2
:11 P.M.
 … I had been getting to the garage later and later. I was doing it on purpose. My father knew it and was losing patience. Earlier that morning, I lay curled up in bed, unable to move, flashes of the moustached man in the van offering us money; the pimply boy waiting in his tight jeans; the cars turning the corners, slowly, before taking another turn at the next block.
Faggot
, Manny’s voice said in my head. Padre Costa had been over to our house two nights in a row. He threatened to shut things down. I closed my eyes and willed him to make it happen, to make my father hand over the
lapa
. If I squeezed my eyes tighter, harder, Adam appeared, a great big grin travelling across his face as he rolled his bundle buggy along the alley.
You can do this. Just one more time. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just one more time
. I stood naked in front of the full-length mirror that hung behind my bedroom door. My body was covered with red dots the size of fleas. They were itching and I scratched my stomach and my arms until they had become hot. It started happening after I passed out in the garage. I thought of telling my mother because it would be a good reason to get me out of performing. I knew it would work, but then I’d hate to think of how my father would blame my mother—how he might think I was a sissy for going to her and complaining about a silly heat rash. The thought of having my costume touch my skin made it worse.

Underwear, then pants. I bristled when I picked up the starched white shirt from behind the chair. My skin felt hot. My throat burned. “Antonio!” my mother called. I could hear the concern stuck to her voice. I wanted her to come up, sit on my bed, and tell me to think of the nicest place in the world, and to imagine myself there. Like she used to. I put my arms in the shirtsleeves and then flung the cape around my shoulders.

“Antonio!”

Coming
, I mouthed.

The crowds weren’t thinning out. I was sure three hours had passed when a woman wheeled the boy up to me. “My son. Nelson,” she said. The boy was around my age. He had an egg-shaped head and a tuft of tangled black hair. His mouth was open and all I saw were teeth. His limbs were thin and stringy and his body was bent the weird way you could bend a pipe cleaner. It looked like he was straining his neck, his head lolled to the side, almost off the leather backing of the chair. His mother held a rag to his drooling mouth.

“I had four girls before I get pregnant with Nelson. The day they take me to the hospital my husband tell me to make sure is a boy or else no come home.” I could tell she was embarrassed about speaking English. I heard grumbling calls to speed things up. “I bring our son home. My husband is happy. A son! But I know everything is not right, not like my other kids. My husband no want to hear anything from me. He say I was a louca—crazy woman. My son is weak. He no take care of himself. I see he is not like other boys. Not strong. My husband see this too. My husband say is better for us to finish him.” She heaved. Nelson tilted his head up to the
rafters as if gulping for air. Again she wiped the drool from his chin. The crowd lowered their eyes and turned silent. It dawned on me what
finish him
meant. I tried hard to freeze my face, hide my fear. I turned to my father, the tears welling in my eyes. There was nothing I could say or do. It was all a lie.