Diaspora Dialogues

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excerpt

On a Night Like This

by

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

by

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.

The House on St. Clarens

by

Daddy tears at the Styrofoam cup, making snowflakes. I stare out the window at the real snow, longing for the bite against my cheeks.

“How have you been sleeping? ” he asks.

“Every night, out like a light,” Granny says.

“That’s not what the nurse told me. She says you’ve been waking up, screaming out. Like you did when I was a child. Do you remember, Mom? ” He wanders over to the dresser and begins examining her bottles, messing them up, clinking glass.

When I see Daddy get like this, I feel protective of him, as though I’m seeing him through the eyes of a social worker. A neglected child screaming out for attention. Now that I teach grade one, it’s particularly weird. I wish I could help him, but I know from experience it’s best to leave him alone.

“I’ve always slept well,” Granny says.

“That’s not what I remember.” Daddy laughs. His salt-and-pepper hair looks bristly as a scouring pad. “What did you dream about after Kaz was gone? Did you imagine that he was still alive, chasing you around the house? ”

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

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“We drive past the yellow signs of Caribbean restaurants, a Goodwill and a wig shop. The dark blockaded front of the House of Lancaster Gentlemen’s Club looks like a mausoleum. “Lansdowne. The old neighbourhood. Want to get out, walk around? ” . . . ” —Lansdowne

“‘Where’s St. Clarens? ’ I asked. ‘It’s a slummy neighbourhood, full of strip clubs, near Lansdowne,’ Daddy said. ‘A lot of Japanese Canadians lived there after being released from the internment camps.’ . . . ” —St. Clarens

That Question: Notes Toward a Poetics of Truth

by

The door slams—she
The door slams—she cannot
The door slams—she cannot remember
The door slams and she stumbles down the steps
in a t-shirt, nothing else.
Blood footprints follow her.

The door slams and she manages to get out
but where are her shoes?
her underwear?

She wouldn’t fuck him
Stop it
Her clothes are in the house
Stop it
Her washing machine photographs cutlery
are in the house also
Everything she owns
lives in the house . . . 

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

For Jackson and the Chase

by

“The trick,” she told me, “is to always keep moving. And if you do look back, for whatever reason, be ready for the commotion.” When no one else was watching we covered our ears with our hands, elbows angled outward as if to ward off double-fisted blows, keeping our eyes wide open. This is how Jackson taught me the necessary escape from the past by facing it down.

In the kitchen steaming with heat, working as dishwashers and short-order cooks, we leaned into memories. Both of us another Angelus Novus, in obligatory hairnets and knee-length aprons stained to a fade, tucked over tank tops and old jeans, bare feet in our fluorescent sneakers from BiWay or Thrifty’s, squealing across the linoleum floor, then a year later, tougher, lace-up combat boots, worn even in summertime.

“Like a fucking sauna.” The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. “Even with that back door propped open.”

I watched the manager look me up and down as he hired me.

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

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“I didn’t know the difference. High school was it for me, but now Jackson had me dreaming wild about going to chef school at George Brown College . . . ” —George Brown College Chef School

“‘Like a fucking sauna.’ The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. ‘Even with that back door propped open.’ . . . ” —Yonge Street

Personal Treasures

by

I have to move. I have to move both myself and my treasure chest out of Parkdale.

I knew my time here was limited: I knew it the first time I saw a café where a cup of coffee cost over two dollars; I knew it when the condominiums started going up. My last apartment was going to be renovated when they turned the dive bar below it into a swanky lounge. It must rent now for twice as much as I paid, as it’s right on Queen. So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class. But I don’t have years to wait.

The construction to eliminate the Dufferin Jog has restarted. It was dormant for so long that I had been simply going about my business. Now that the machines are in motion, my business is to rescue my belongings from the path of excavation and move to a different part of town.

I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything.

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

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class . . . ” —Jameson Avenue

“I will barely exist in one of those highrise low-rent buildings. I must have a sentimental attachment to the West End. But the West is not my kind of neighbourhood anymore. I’ve been here so long that I’m no longer blending in with the scenery . . . ” —Parkdale

“My last apartment was going to be renovated when they turned the dive bar below it into a swanky lounge. It must rent now for twice as much as I paid, as it’s right on Queen . . . ” —Queen Street West

“I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything. I expect there would be no people on the street at night that far north. So I explored the parts of downtown that are still considered bad neighbourhoods . . . ” —Jane and Finch

“Just south of there, Sherbourne and Queen is still pretty rough but it’s hemmed in on all sides by antique shops and brunch places and homes that people actually own. It won’t last long . . . ” —Sherbourne and Queen

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