Diaspora Dialogues

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Book 6

Hunger

by

It was a glimpse. A shadow across a busy midday street disappearing through a doorway into darkness. But twenty yards further up, in front of the No Frills he’d been heading to, Gladwyn is sure. The cards of memory are shuffled and dealt like flashes of light, and he’s certain.

So now he’s here, inside this church he’s passed frequently and never wondered about. It’s Catholic, he knew that. Sometimes he still remembers the young white chaplain, Canadian, who came to the prison at least once a week, more often if a hanging was close. But Gladwyn has never been to one of their services. For Granny, Catholics were the Antichrist. He wonders what she’d say about Muslims like his boss, Amal.

It’s a sizeable church and there are maybe a hundred people planted haphazardly like shrubs in the tidy rows of benches. A few are talking, their voices echoing in a soft wash from the vaulted ceiling. There’s piano music, the notes like raindrops on the dark air.

Gladwyn stands at the back of the church just inside the door, jostled by people coming in but refusing to move his feet. Searching. Finally.

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

Handicap

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Mira stared and stared at her iPhone, her sweaty thumb digging into the touchscreen just below the stored text message. A victim of an “e-breakup,” she could no longer regard the phenomenon as an urban legend. Such things really do happen to adults over thirty in monogamous relationships.

The smell of dank bodies eventually broke her trance. A wave of commuters trudged past, panting in the stifling haze of Toronto’s most relentless heat wave in decades. There was only one escalator leading up from the bowels of Kennedy Station, and today it was under repair. Mira looked up at the endless climb, feeling nauseous. And there were two more vertical faces she needed to scale before reaching the Rapid Transit platform on the top floor.

Mira buried the cell in her laptop case, but the words still invaded her thoughts. She took the first step up (“not”) and another (“a”) and another (“match”). She stopped to breathe, trying to exhale the hurt out of her system. The case in her hand weighed nothing. The chip on her shoulder was crushing her like an anvil.

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

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“There was only one escalator leading up from the bowels of Kennedy Station, and today it was under repair . . . ” —Kennedy Subway Station

2 Dream in Colour

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Eye use 2 dream in colour
Prisms of inner eagle visions

Pastel spring High Park bloom colour
Rich velveteen Rouge Valley autumn colour
Feathers of winged ones

Bond between father sky and mother earth

Eye use 2 dream in colour
Prisms of inner eagle visions

All my dreams are beginning to fade
My days are cooler
At night Jack Frost visits me
Knock Knock Knocking on my window pane
Driving me insane with his insidious laugh
Cuz he knows our people never come back . . . 
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

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.
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