for eight months, i shifted swayed in weekly motion left union station expectant & wondrous entered kingston still stretching away the slumber of deep morning— the train knocking its rhythmic time upon my restful cheek (i am happiest when moving) . . .
Excerpts
Remembering Max
He was washing the windows when I came in: a brown stick with big eyes and a ’fro on a ladder, wiping the glass with one hand and continually hiking his pants up with the other. I stood on the sidewalk beneath him for a moment, both of us under the Café Americano awning, which promised “Tropical Food.” I looked up at him and he looked at me, dripping sponge in hand. “Hi,” I said. He worried his lower lip with his upper teeth a bit, and blinked. “Doing the windows,” I said. He blinked again. We stared at each other a moment longer and then I said, “Well, carry on,” and went in.
Eva and Tony, co-owners and newly wed, were at the bar, deliberating over a catalogue. They looked up and sang out hello when I came in.
“Hey,” I said, instead of hi, because that was my style. “You hired somebody to do the windows? ”
“He just showed up,” Eva said. “His name’s Max.”
“Asked if there was anything he could do.”
“Oh.”
“We thought the windows could use a wash.” Tony looked to Eva and she nodded to support his assessment.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
The Fast Lane
Toronto, 1994
Sharda takes her time entering the water. She sets her modestly exposed brown bottom on the cold white tiles lining the edge of the indoor pool. Blinding shafts of light bear down through tall windows. The air is damp, heavy with the familiar odour of chlorine. Her legs sway gently in eddies of blue-green water and she listens to the steady splashing of the other swimmers. It embarrasses her, this persistent habit of trying to steal into the water, as if she can somehow evade the sudden chill that will shake her body before her flesh finally adapts. This timidity is more suited to the girl she was, a scrawny seven-year old running across the concrete deck of an outdoor pool at the tennis club in M’bale, Uganda. During hot afternoons in the equatorial sun, the water beckoned, cool as a promise. But she was hanging back, shivering dramatically until her father, exasperated, picked her up and, to her shrieking delight, threw her in.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“This pool, crowded tonight because of the weather, is in the Trinity Recreation Centre, a low, brick building surrounded by trees in a downtown park . . . ” —Trinity Bellwoods Park
Lard and Oysters
They see Emma, their mother, every weekend. They play tennis for an hour at the Mayfair Club on Chesswood Street—an hour that is increasingly an indirect and merciless measure of their age—and then they see Emma. They don’t remember when they began to call her Emma, but it was a very long time ago, long before they came to Canada, probably during their early high school days. She had been quite a strapping woman then, tireless, shrewd, keeping the family afloat. It was expected of her and she did it quietly, without complaining. Their father was always at work—six, sometimes seven days a week. He would come home late in the evening, eat, and then snooze in an armchair with a book fallen open on his knees. Prodded by Emma, he would ramble off to bed and would be snoring a few minutes after switching the night lamp on, the same book fallen off, his glasses still on. He had his moments of exuberance—he liked dinner parties with friends, good food, a few drinks—but work and worries had sapped him dry. He worried about work. He worried about being a Jew and about being demoted.
Lollipop
Miss Katie and the vacuum cleaner are engaged in their usual struggle. They are evenly matched in size for Katie is small for her age and the vacuum cleaner is a huge old monster, heavy and own-way. Besides, Katie is only just getting used to electricity and is scared every time she has to plug anything in. When she turns the beast on, it roars and buckles out of control. Sometimes it reduces Katie to tears. But she doesn’t give up, ever. She spends a lot of time washing up and cleaning and scouring and tidying. Every day. She wants her mother to know she has a useful daughter, one who knows how to do things and not one come to suck her blood, as she says every time she is vexed.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Fake Za’atar
In a city where the Za’atar is fake, We are a genuine family But not complete. We are assembled from fractures of families who think That farther is better Conducting a Passover Seder without saying God And believing That next year We will be in Toronto, which has been Re-constructed. Knowing that even if it were completely rebuilt, It will still be a night’s sleep and a little bit of a day away from Israel . . .