Keep holding me like this and help me untie my birth language my first language steeped in bruises, knotted up in a child’s still body petrified with fear words thrown at me alcoholic bodies raging into me embedded like ceramic shards all around my little heart me, so small and already convinced my home felt like captivity . . .
Book 4
Cough and Brume
My son is late. A few nurses have passed by my room since he called this morning, and a little while ago a shady white apron holding a folder and a pen stood still as I opened my eyes: another one of those modern healers, levitating at the edge of my sheet, checking off boxes on a piece of paper, assessing charts and tonsils before sending me back home.
The man in the next bed is fond of football games and bells. He is dying and he has to remind everyone of it until the end—until his palms give up, his eyeballs roll into his head and disappear, and his church calls for prayers. A million and one cigarettes are hosted in his chest, and his coughs release smog and eject curses. If it weren’t for the divide between our beds, his spit and a brume of toxic fumes would have reached over and killed me by now.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Commissioners Avenue, Analysis Is the Poorer Half of Unknowing
And he, Larry, could see for a moment Molly’s Diner where he’d eaten the last time they’d turned him out of 54 Division with his jacket and wallet on its rigged up chain and no laces in his runners so he’d had to curl his toes into bird’s claws to keep his shoes from dropping off his feet as he walked while holding the left side of his body gingerly, a little impacted at the waist, so breathing had been a little easier if he kept to shallow breaths and looked up out of one eye to see which way was Molly’s. He’d ordered a western and removed the peppers with the tines of a fork as the sandwich cooled. A coffee and refill watching the big-faced clock nearing 11 am but not looking to either side as he’d felt others shifting their plates of pie further down the Formica runway. The sun had come in through Molly’s big plate window and warmed him where he sat but eating was hard as it laboured his breathing and he was sure, by the western’s mottled second triangle, that his ribs had been bruised maybe cracked but whatever.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“Now they’d passed 54 and Molly’s and Cherry Street and he knew the docks were off to his left but there were two in back with him and they’d pulled his hat down over his eyes and his jacket up over his head like in a hockey fight . . . ” —Cherry Street
“Larry heard the tires on gravel now and was picturing in his mind’s eye the taller poplars on the Leslie Spit and the low stands of reddish dogwood and some other brambly plant he didn’t know the name of . . . ” —Leslie St. Spit
“King subsumed by Queen, a single monarch’s processional under metal banners slows crossing the bridge—the pigeons, like Riopelle, are putting the paint on thick and human volunteers walk mastiffs, pit bulls, diabetic shepherds past high end furniture . . . ” —King & Queen
Ming Mei’s Year
At the beginning of spring, our family visits the cemetery.
“Qing Ming is the time when Chinese families pay their respects to the ancestors in the spirit world,” Mama explains.
When we arrive at the graveyard, my cousin Calvin and I dash ahead of the grown-ups. We trample across the cushiony grass field toward our grandfather’s grave. Lao Lao, my grandmother, calls out in Mandarin, “Ming Mei, put on your sweater.” She holds out my sweater. It flaps like a flag on a pole.
The wind is strong; it whistles loudly, as though it has something to say.
The daffodils that we planted around grandfather’s tombstone last year are now in full bloom.
“Yellow was Lao Ye’s favourite colour,” Uncle tells me and Calvin. “He said it reminded him of sunshine and happiness.”
Mama sweeps dirt away from the tombstone. Lao Lao clears away some leaves and twigs. Uncle lays out food. Calvin reaches for a shrimp dumpling, but Uncle shoos his hand away. The dian xin is for Lao Ye in the spirit world.
We lay out a roast chicken and cha shao. Pieces of poppy-red barbeque pork glisten in the sunlight.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“Ms. Russo drives the bus down Spadina Avenue, past the tall buildings, over the bridge and onto the highway . . . ” —Spadina Ave.