Kicking the Sky (5 page)

Terri nibbled on some strands of her hair. I poked my chin into my T-shirt and lifted the ribbed collar into my mouth. I sucked on the cotton.

“Emanuel’s older brother said a man had approached the boys for some help. He allegedly offered the boys thirty-five dollars to move camera equipment. Emanuel’s older brother and a friend ran to the nearest pay phone to call home to ask their mother’s permission. Upon their return, Emanuel was
gone. He had vanished.” A picture of the large-eyed boy appeared on the screen. “Again, the search is over. The body of a twelve-year-old boy police have identified as Emanuel Jaques has been found on a Toronto rooftop.”

“Ouch!”

My sister pinched my thigh—the teeny kind of pinch that hurt. “Don’t ever go with anyone. Got it?” She got up to turn off the television, but stopped when she heard the cries of family from behind the interviewer’s questions. There were TV cameras in the Jaques’ living room, doilies on the tables and a big wooden cross in the corner of the room. Mrs. Jaques spoke in Portuguese between her sobs. She sat in an armchair with her eyes barely open, covering her mouth with a handkerchief. Her four other children stood frozen around their mother. Emanuel’s father was in the bedroom, too stricken with grief to come out and be interviewed.

The reporter asked Emanuel’s mother, “If you were speaking to the members of city council, what would she tell them to do about the Yonge Street strip?”

The oldest daughter bent down to translate into her mother’s ear.

“Give me my son back” was the reply.

I skidded on my bike into my uncle’s garage. I didn’t want to come off as some stupid kid, I wanted to handle the news like a man.

It was clear from the way they were carrying on that the men didn’t know yet, which meant my mother and aunts in the basement were just as ignorant. There was no TV or radio in the garage, and the women were too busy chopping up pig parts.
There wasn’t much left of the pig by now, just the hind legs dangling from the wooden rafters.
Presunto
or bacon, I thought. My uncle Clemente caught me around the waist and shoved the pig’s tail in my mouth. The men cheered him on as I squirmed in his hold. Part of the tail curled around my tongue and the rest lodged against the roof of my mouth. They all laughed as I gagged and tried to spit it out. I had to hook my finger to pull it out. I hunched over, and saliva filled my mouth to coat the taste. They patted me on the back while I looked to my father.

“You is a man now,” he whispered, his stubble scraping against my cheek.

I reached for my father’s warm wine and threw it hard against the back of my throat. This led to another wave of “Força!” and further bouts of approval with “Um homem. A man now.”

I licked my hand clean.

They truly had no idea Emanuel had been murdered, and I wouldn’t tell them.

I jumped on my bike and sped away, riding east along Queen Street, past the vacant storefronts, past all the drunks, past the broad thoroughfare known as Spadina Avenue, past City Hall that looked like a building out of
The Jetsons
. I kept going, racing with the fluffy clouds that ran along above the trees. The breeze dried my tears, rushed up my nose and filled my lungs.

I turned up Yonge Street and stopped in the shadow of the Eaton Centre, across the street from Charlie’s Angels. Above the door some products were being advertised in plastic letters:
Movies, Sex Toys, Magazines, Books
. The store’s window promised SEXY GIRLS. Some men were boarding up the door and windows with plywood, but they hadn’t covered everything:
the painted figure of a half-naked woman and the words
Your happiness may depend on it
were still exposed. It was a tall building, five storeys high, and it looked like all the others that lined Yonge Street. The building had been blocked off with yellow tape. I stood there straddling my bike, leaning over my handlebars. My head felt fuzzy, but I hoped I’d see Emanuel’s body. If I got close to him, I could pray in Portuguese, the way my grandmother taught me.
Prayers are heard faster if you pray in Portuguese
, she’d say. The news teams, reporters, and everyone else who gathered were all waiting for something to happen.

It was getting dark. I was pedalling up Palmerston Avenue so slowly I was barely moving, just fighting to keep my balance.
Where was everyone?
I passed one empty porch after another. I had never seen our street so dark. Curtains were drawn. Porch lights were switched off.

I turned across Robinson Street to go through the laneway. My uncle’s garage door was closed. I made my way up toward the patch of light that beamed into the laneway from Mr. Serjeant’s garage. I stopped. The man was painting the inside of the garage, whitewashing everything. His back was to me. I could see his blond curly hair poking out under his cycling cap. His tank top was drenched, glued to his skin.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” He continued to paint, to my relief. He stood on a stool. I saw his ankles and thought his feet must be tanned too. It was the last thing I thought of before I realized he could see my reflection in a window.

“I’m James,” he said. He twisted around to face me.

“I know,” I managed, before I felt my tongue getting fat. My chest ached. James was in the middle of saying something
when I turned away from him and pressed down hard on the pedals. I didn’t let up until I came out onto Palmerston Avenue, where I saw my mother leaning over our front gate. Across the road, the worm-picker bus revved its engine and slowly rolled away toward Queen Street.

“Where did you go? Get in that house now!” She smelled of blood sausages, onions, and paprika. She had been crying.

I walked my bike through our gate and dropped it on the front lawn. The back wheel spun in the air.

It wasn’t cold, but she drew her sweater tightly across her chest, tucked her hands under her armpits. I caught her looking out through the storm door before sliding the latch to Lock. Then she shut the front door and secured the deadbolt.

The sound of my mother’s slippers slapping against her heels chased me up to the bathroom. I stood beside the tub and wiggled my fingers in the water. It was cold now. My mother stood in the doorway. With my back to her, I quickly undressed, wrapped a towel around my waist. I just stood there.

“What are you waiting for?” she said. “Get in the water before it gets any colder.”

“I need privacy.”

“You got to be careful, Antonio. It’s not safe anymore,” she said before leaving.

I dunked myself quickly, scrubbed my skin raw with the washcloth until a layer of grey scum covered the entire surface of the cold bathwater.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been lying in my bed before John F. Kennedy’s voice made its way up to my room and I knew my father was home. The recording of JFK was displayed on
a bracket that once held a plate. My father played it over and over whenever he was sad or when he sensed things had changed, or were about to change. I heard my father’s boots, the rhythm of his step climbing the stairs.
Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country
. There was his smell: Old Spice, Craven “A,” the sweetness of homemade wine.

When he walked in I saw his forehead was covered in tiny beads of sweat.

He looked away for one moment and rocked forward as if he’d thought better of it and would leave. He cracked his knuckles.

He sat down and looked like he was about to say something. I could see the patches of silver stubble on his chin and upper lip. The veins in his neck pumped. He drew the heel of his palm across his forehead, then reached over and rubbed my earlobe with his thick fingers. His bottom lip trembled.

I didn’t want him to cry.

“You not hurt?” He took another deep breath. I thought he was going to say something else, but he just got up. “Close you light,” he said. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.

M
Y NIGHTMARES BEGAN
the night Emanuel’s body was found. I was being chased, running barefoot through the laneway. The laneway looked different, like what it would have looked like a hundred years back, with barns in place of garages. There were open fields instead of fences. Small stones and shards of glass cut into my dirty feet. As I ran, my hands chopped the wind in front of me. I could hear pursuers puffing and blowing behind me, mocking
you boy with the pretty hair. I got something I’d like to share. Little boy with the pretty hair
.

I was still perspiring when I made my way down to the kitchen. I opened the window and cooled my head in the morning breeze. It was as if the discovery of Emanuel’s body had cracked the heat wave.

I was shocked to see my mother sitting in the backyard, alone. She never missed work. A week after I was born, she was back on the job at the hospital. She told me she couldn’t afford to stay at home. I felt shitty whenever she told me that story.

“Not going to work today, Mãe?”

“No, I need to stay home today.” She took a sip from her teacup and placed it down. She spun the cup a little in its saucer.

“Mãe?”

She didn’t look my way.

“You know the swallow makes a sound,” she began, so quietly I could barely hear her. “Not really a sound, a kind of whisper.
Back home in São Miguel swallows were the first sign that the cold days were over.” She lifted the teacup to her lips.

“I thought it never got cold in São Miguel.”

“Damp like worms.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real swallow,” I said.

“I didn’t want to come here. Canada seemed so far away. I wanted to move to Lisbon.”

I’d never hear that before. “Why did you come, then?”

“Your father came to Canada a few years before me. He needed to get away, and he was happy here. He said Portugal was too sad.”

Manny and Ricky should have been somewhere in the laneway. I walked up and down the lane before deciding I’d just wait for them in the Patch. Every little sound made me nervous. I had been there fifteen minutes and I thought I’d give my friends ten more minutes to show up before making my way over to Edite’s. My mother only let me leave the house because I promised I’d head straight to Edite’s to take her some homemade jam.

A monarch butterfly landed on the ground, clapping its wings in the sun. I walked up to it. The trick was pinching its wings together, trying to not rub off any of the rusty powder so it could still fly. I reached down, my fingers ready to pinch. The air was jabbed by a muffler backing up. The butterfly took flight just as the jar under my arm smashed on the gravel.

The stairs leading up to Edite’s apartment were narrow and dark. All her windows were open, and fans scanned the kitchen like giant periscopes. She had been living there for more than a year now and the place smelled of stale cigarettes. I passed by
her bedroom: a mattress on the floor with a ruffled bedspread, a big Chinese fan on her wall in place of a headboard, and a silk scarf draped over her lamp. Clothes, blankets, beaded jewellery, and newspapers were scattered over the floor and bed. It wasn’t like any other Portuguese house I had ever been to. Edite said she liked to keep it that way; she could scoop all her belongings into a garbage bag at a moment’s notice and drive away in her convertible.

I walked down the hall and stopped to make the sign of the cross at Johnny’s picture. It was perched on top one of the towers of old newspapers she kept piled along the hall. Johnny had large dark eyes, and his face was framed with black curls, nothing like his mother’s. Edite sat at her kitchen table, reading the newspaper. Her cigarette smouldered in the ashtray.

SHOESHINE BOY, 12, FOUND SLAIN. Underneath the headline was a grimy photo of the Charlie’s Angels storefront.

“You’re here. What took you so long? Hold on, before you answer that let me call your mother.” Edite picked up the phone and dialed. “You want some coffee?” she whispered, just as my mother’s panicked voice came through. “Georgina, he’s here. He’s okay,” Edite said, looping then unlooping the phone cord around her pointing finger. “No, it’s okay. It’s my fault. I forgot to call you when he arrived.” I caught my mother’s voice directing threats at me in Portuguese. Edite returned the receiver to its base. “In hot climates they drink hot drinks, you know. Supposed to cool you off.” Before I could say no she was at the counter pouring me a cup from her percolator. I chipped away at the sugar until I got about four teaspoon-sized nuggets. I was used to having a milked-down version of coffee that my mother prepared for me, filled with
crushed digestive biscuits to sop up all the liquid. “We’re just a bit worried, Antonio.” Edite poured herself a refill. She reached up to the cabinet and brought down a small bottle of something golden. I thought it was honey or maple syrup until she stirred her coffee and I smelled the booze.

The first time I met Edite, at Kensington Market, my eyes landed on her before my mother had even introduced us. She stood beside a barrel filled with pickled herring and plastic bins packed with dried beans, grains, and powdery spices. She was thin and beautiful. Her head was slightly tilted, and a cigarette was wedged in the corner of her mouth. She caught me staring and her coral lips stretched wide. I turned away to look at the rows of stacked cages filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons.

My mother’s hand tightened around my wrist. She kissed the woman on both cheeks. “Antonio, meet your aunt Edite.”

Aunt Edite wore makeup and painted her nails. She kept herself thin by cutting meat from her diet, drinking Tab whenever she wanted, and smoking Camels. She had also joined the Vic Tanny’s fitness club on Richmond Street, something no Portuguese woman I knew ever did. There wasn’t a hint of Portuguese in the way she spoke. She had moved to the States when she was fourteen, got married at sixteen, and was widowed at twenty. An industrial accident, my father told me. My mother had agreed to meet her in Kensington Market, amidst all the fruit stands and fishmongers, but then she practically had to drag her home with us. It was clear from the conversation on the way home that my father had no idea my mother knew Edite was in Toronto. Edite settled into her own apartment on Markham Street, a few houses up from
where Ricky lived with his father. She said she needed to get away from America for a little while. She told my mother she had been offered a job here working for a newspaper, and she took it. She had worked at the
Boston Herald
before starting at the
Toronto Star
. Her hands were soft. Her fingers only knew typewriter keys, not harsh detergents and the chemicals used to disinfect toilets and strip floors.