Diaspora Dialogues

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Excerpts

When Belle Walked along Spadina

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Whenever Belle walked along Spadina, the shopkeepers would leap from the comfort of their worn stools to offer her the juiciest orange or the most luscious square of strawberry cheesecake. Schwartz, who owned the lady’s apparel store, would attempt to lure her into his premises by showing off his most glamorous red frock. With her tight black curls and her smooth olive skin, crimson suited Belle.

“Bellele,” he’d shout, yanking the stub of the cigar from his stained lips. “Give a fella a chance to make a shayne maidele happy.”

Usually Belle played along with Schwartz’s game. “Sure, Mr. Schwartz, if you don’t mind the neighbours telling your missus all about us.”

Belle never actually minded when the shopkeeper would hold the sample up to her chin and press the bodice against her chest. Schwartz was harmless, unlike foreman Mandelbaum, the giant with forearms the size of the sailor Popeye’s in the funnies. At the garment factory, Belle sewed buttons onto the jackets of the servicemen who were cleaning up the mess the Nazis had made of Europe.

On the shop floor, the foreman’s word was law, and Mandelbaum had convinced himself that he was entitled to cop a feel at least twice a day.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“As Belle rushed from the coat factory and onto Spadina Avenue that spring night in Toronto in 1946, she didn’t even smile as old man Schwartz raised high a stylish crimson dress for her approval . . . ” —Spadina Avenue

Vivek

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Mr. V.K. Goswami was quite alone since his orange calico died the previous year. His studio apartment, though small and cluttered, felt vacant without her. He did sometimes think of taking a streetcar to the Toronto Humane Society, but on reflection decided another cat could never replace this particular calico. Smelling like buttered toast, a huge cuddly thing she was but with an extraordinary talent. Should she mewl and curl up beside any of the neighbours, most of whom were ailing, the next day they were certain to be dead. The first time this happened, it was to the yoga instructor across the hall; he was not the youngest of the tenants, but he was certainly the fittest. Coincidence, thought Mr. Goswami, mustn’t succumb to superstition. Then it happened to the old schoolmistress one floor below, then the veteran soldier, and so on. Mr. Goswami felt himself invincible: after all, the cat curled up beside him daily and here he was, still breathing.

None of the other tenants ever knew Mr. Goswami by name; to them he was only the cat’s caregiver. Since the death of the cat, none of them ever bothered making small talk with him.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“He did sometimes think of taking a streetcar to the Toronto Humane Society, but on reflection decided another cat could never replace this particular calico . . . ” —Toronto Humane Society

“He walked slowly through Allen Gardens, which filled a city block square. The evening was purple and a lace of white clouds fringed the horizon in all directions . . . ” —Allen Gardens

A Shout from God

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Lily doesn’t consider herself religious, but when her mother’s illness overwhelms her, she goes to Holy Martyrs. They have the best music of all the churches in Toronto’s west end. None of that modern stuff; it’s traditional all the way. Tonight the organist plays Bach’s Fugue in G Minor, the torrent of notes cascading out of the loft like a shout from God.

Lily doesn’t believe in much that the church stands for anymore, but the liturgical music is so powerful that she vanishes inside it.

Her only other escape is physical. As her mother’s body breaks down, Lily builds hers up: weights, crunches, running. Yesterday one of the trainers at the gym took her aside: Lily, you’re overdoing it. Maybe you should see your doctor?

Lily goes to church instead.

It’s a Saturday mass on an evening too cold to snow. As the choir warms up, Lily tries to let the music overwhelm her, but tonight, even Bach isn’t working.

Earlier that day at the nursing home, Lily had spread out some family snapshots, portraits of clients, even a photograph from the Oka standoff that won her mother a photojournalism prize.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

II. Blackbirds at the Money Mart

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What sight could prepare us for
our children failing?
New mothers
flutter past meat markets on Bloor,
their mascara thick as lace, looking past
pensioners puffing by the sports café,
Eritrean men and their talk of progress.
Once they were girls who waited
behind counters, stacking custard tarts
& bacalhau fritters in Portuguese bakeries,
hanging up aprons to smoke on the stoops
of the Women’s Centre and Payday Loans . . . 

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

On a Night Like This

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November rain, the beginning of winter and the last leaves trampled into a dense, wet mat of browns. The sky had been a thick sheet of grey for three days so rain was almost a relief, although it now felt as though it would last for weeks. It was Cyril’s night off. He felt tight as a drum. Uncontainable. He needed to run, or to walk for miles, but the rain didn’t stop. Cyril was painfully homesick and missed his mother with a longing that made him hollow. She was un-reclaimable, passed on forever, and Cyril had never been able to satisfy himself as to the where. But if he could be home right now, in the Jamaican sunshine on his way to Brown’s Town walking by fields of yam and cabbage, or under a moon with the tree frogs singing, then heaven might seem a possibility.

So along with his sunken spirit came anger. Because Cyril was pissed at everything that had got him to this cold wet town where he knew barely anyone even though he worked at two jobs and still got his assignments in on time.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

Bella turned left through the rain-blur of green traffic light onto Dundas. I wonder where she’s got the cookies stowed, thought Bella. —Dundas

“Where are you from? ” asked the first cop. “Near Bathurst and Queen.” “I mean your accent, buddy. Where do you come from? ” —Bathurst and Queen

Gaugin’s Chair

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After I spent the summer working at a bookstore on Queen Street, my return to York University, for my third year, filled me with dismay. The university’s hideous grey buildings were scattered about a windswept landscape and reminded me of large boulders that a glacier had abandoned as it drew back. York had been erected in the 1960s and ’70s and held relics of the era’s worst architectural excesses—massive, starkly functional, a paucity of windows, a predominance of concrete facades. York had been established during a period of great student unrest and so the campus was designed to keep us on the move with very few places to congregate—lots of corridors and hallways, few common rooms and courtyards. The centre of the university, if indeed there was a centre to this haphazard scattering of edifices, was the Ross Building, a lumbering mass built in the style of Brutalism, its inner and outer walls exposed cement. With its tiny slits of windows, it resembled the secret service department in some fascist country, where unspeakable things were done to people. It was impossibly depressing that this campus would be my milieu for the next nine months.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 5. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“With the intention of broadening young minds, York University required that arts and humanities students take one science course. I decided to face the inevitable and registered for Man and Nature . . . ” —York University

“When I went to Kensington Market, I would often try on an outfit—a tuxedo shirt, some smart jackets with tassels and epaulets (I had particularly fallen for a red marching band jacket, with gold trim), an interesting bowler hat or a fedora with a feather . . . ” —Kensington Ave.

“I had not been alone with my mother since that incident. The next afternoon, being Friday and our regular shopping time, we set out for Bridlewood Mall. As we walked along, I could feel the tension between us . . . ” —Bridlewood Mall

“What was commonly referred to by South Asians as Gerrard Street was actually a few blocks devoted to Indian stores. Since it was Saturday and the weather still warm, the pavement was crowded with families who had come to shop or have a meal . . . ” —Gerrard St.

“On Sunday evening, I got home from the Toronto Reference Library to find that James had called to say we were to meet the next afternoon for coffee at the Ainger. I should have been angry with him for this long silence but, instead, I felt only relief an . . . ” —Toronto Reference Library

“The wedding hall was a grey, squat, windowless building in Markham, the suburb north of where we lived. It was surrounded by a parking lot and, beyond that there was a wasteland covered in goldenrod and grass, which had taken on that scraggly, charred . . . ” —Markham

“‘Various ones on Isabella Street, perhaps? ’ She nodded and smiled at my shocked expression, as she blew out smoke. ‘My best friend in Guelph is gay. I can spot one. Besides, you’re too nice to be straight. And too good looking.’ . . . ” —Isabella St.

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