Sometimes, especially after a harsh, long Canadian winter, it seems as though spring will never come, that it has frozen to death somewhere deep in the ground, buried inside an eternal shroud of glittering ice. It’s a mid April morning, and my three children, Bahram, Baba and Behzad, wave to me from the dirty windows of the yellow school bus. I wave back. My husband, Farzad, steps out of the house, wearing a navy suit and a striped blue tie. He gives me a little kiss and says “I love you,” but by the absent look in his eyes, I can tell that his mind is already at the office, and he is gone before I have a chance to say “I love you too.” I check my flower beds. The dark-green leaves of my tulips have broken the surface of the soil, but the landscape is still grey and the wind whips against me. It starts to rain, and although I hate being cold and wet, I stay outside, breathing in the scent of the waking earth.
excerpt
Plotting Home
Despina woke up and poured herself a cup of coffee so weak it looked like tea. Incapable of doing anything leisurely, she guzzled it back and looked over her shoulder. She wasn’t supposed to drink coffee because the caffeine was bad for her osteoporosis, leaching minerals from her already brittle bones, but during the week when her daughter wasn’t visiting there was no one to report to on dietary matters. She skimmed through the Toronto Star looking for dead Greek people in the death notices—it was a good day today, but bad for the Italians she noticed—a Mancuso, Iannuzelli, Arturio and an Ianno gone. And that was only in the first three columns. There never used to be any Greek names in the deaths section—they were all young and fresh off the boat—only dead Mcs and Macs and Smiths and Joneses. She flipped through for the Sears ads and set the paper aside. It was her son’s subscription.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
First Dance
When I found out that Julia Orpana was organizing our school dance, I knew I had to be there. I asked my friend John Kelly if he’d go with me. I was standing in the noisy kitchen of his place on Spadina Avenue near Bloor Street, waiting for him to walk me the rest of the way to school. A large iron stewing pot filled with coffee sat in the middle of the table. His parents and six brothers and sisters huddled around the pot, each breaking off hunks of crusty bread and dunking them in the coffee. The coffee was beige with milk, and Mrs. Kelly had used honey to sweeten it. John’s youngest brother, Attila, was on his knees in his chair, the coffee dribbling down his chin as he slurped it from the bread.
John’s family spoke only Hungarian to one another, as did mine. In fact, they weren’t Kelly at all but Kulcsar. An officer at Pier 21 in Halifax had decided that Kulcsar wouldn’t fly in Canada, so he renamed the family Kelly. We were Beck, and our officer was all right with that, so we got to keep our name.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
When We First Arrived in Toronto
parts of Italy were intact, like ways of looking at the snow. it was in the eyes, the Tuscan light, the way it made the snow explode, and wood, and iron railings and soot; it was in the eyes, and through the spirit, and spirit loved the world and was not alien to it and so the festive was a box of chocolates or any homely thing in the world, for nothing could resist the song of a boy’s heart . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Nylon-Encased Flesh
I wake up, body splayed across the mattress in a starburst. Sunlight. Then rain. Then resurrected sunlight. The men on a neighbouring roof are hammering sadistically out of time. Bang. Pause. Bang bang. Pause. Pause. Bang bang pause. I decide I can’t stand my apartment walls and bound out. Walk through the heavy, congested streets, now weightless.
Countless people in Toronto are thinking about the one that got away. How many times have they fantasized about you? All the times you starred in a daydream. In someone else’s romantic comedy. I wonder whose movie I’m in.
A morning of furious feet. Victorian houses, oak balconies, stray tabbies, turquoise lawn ornaments, patio chaises. The shadows of leaves spin across the cement. Kensington Market bustles and hums with soft peaches, skinned trouts and pink crinolines with black lace. The dogs on Augusta Avenue yip like the out-of-work actors I hang out with. Several European seniors out for a stroll, a Japanese Laundromat that also sells rice paper, two blond kids playing with Hula-Hoops on Markham street, ten friendly cats looking for a few good scratches.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“The Trinity-Bellwoods drumming circle drips a collective energy. The dreadlocked kids paint their skin with sandalwood, gold dust and red hibiscus . . . then sweat out the colours into porous swirls as they dance . . . ” —Trinity Bellwoods
“Embedded in Connections: I-Spy. new years eve. corner of queen and bathurst. you boy. me girl. loved each other’s makeup. you went fetish. i went savage. still wanna kiss? . . . ” —Queen & Bathurts
“Beverley Street balconies are decayed hickory wood and twisted iron. The ambitious ivory festoons the dilapidated Victorian houses. Affluent front-porch-hounds sop up the hide-and-seek sun . . . ” —Beverley Street
“From their view, Arshia cannot see the homeless, the CN Tower, the convenience stores, the Spadina streetcars that fill the centre of the avenue like bone marrow. Only an affluent maple-lined street, with four-door Infinitis on carefully paved driveways . . . ” —Spadina Ave.
“She wants to skip over to Hazelton Lanes and watch the ladies with big lips try to eat soup. When they catch their own reflections in their spoons, they always ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh.’ . . . ” —Hazelton Lane
“Kensington Market bustles and hums with soft peaches, skinned trouts and pink crinolines with black lace. The dogs on Augusta Avenue yip like the out-of-work actors I hang out with . . . ” —Augusta Avenue
“Several European seniors out for a stroll, a Japanese Laundromat that also sells rice paper, two blond kids playing with Hula-Hoops on Markham street, ten friendly cats looking for a few good scratches . . . ” —Markham Street
“Yonge Street is nothing but an outdoor mall, loved by millions not for the architecture or the sunlight or the beauty in humans, but for the ability to acquire things that do not change your life . . . ” —Yonge Street
“Outside, rain taps Morse code on Christopher’s stained glass windows. From their view, Arshia cannot see the homeless, the CN Tower, the convenience stores, the
Spadina streetcars that fill the centre of the avenue like bone marrow . . . ” —CN Tower
“Through Chinatown, after picking up a university-stamped envelope from the post office. Asia slices through the city. An assembly line of golden Buddhas, Ming vases and brass gongs stretch up Spadina Avenue . . . ” —China Town
Vanishing Father
When Bing Hum got home late that evening from Harris, Smythe & Hum LLP, he found his fifteen-year-old daughter watching a movie-of-the-week that starred Lucy Liu in yet another of her “Asian slut” roles. Frozen in the doorway of Jade’s bedroom, he stared at the flat-screen TV screen where Lucy Liu, worse than nude in a half-bra, garter belt and stockings, lap-danced for a hairy-chested maintenance worker, her pinecone breasts thrust forward, her long waist undulating like the belly of a serpent.
Bing stood there, a bag of takeout Thai from Golden Mango dangling from his fingertips. For an instant, he wanted to barge in and shut off the TV.
“Jade.” He spoke to the back of her head. The volume from the TV was deafening and she was sprawled on the floor, her chin resting on her palms. A laptop, textbooks and a highliter littered the rug. His custody agreement gave him Jade one week out of every two, but whenever he saw her now, she seemed a little taller than before. In her volleyball sweats, her legs looked almost as long as her bed.