Blue pants, white stripes, trace portable tattoos into the fertile land of a teacher’s psyche: a place where crushed heads and dismembered limbs soak in liquid red. The colours you wear bear a statement of the world your ancestors were unfortunate to inherit. A place where war has turned Natives against Europeans, Europeans against Natives, Native Europeans against European Natives, you against yourself. Blue sky rushes alongside white clouds. White petals caress blue waves. Blue marbles roll over white sand. The colours you wear bear a statement of America’s aching past, and the dislocation of your culture today . . .
TOK
Mister Canada
One morning, a year after my family’s arrival in Canada, I stood in our basement, looking at my reflection in the mirror. The powder blue shirt I was wearing was part of my work uniform and it made me look sallow, a pallidness intensified by the neon light above. The mirror was a collection of reflecting squares stuck together on the basement wall, in an area that had once been the bar. Some of the squares were missing and I saw myself in fragments. I could see my head, but not my neck, my left arm but not my right; my left leg was missing too.
In that disjointed mirror was a view of my basement bedroom as well. The plastic wood-veneer panelling, which was supposed to create a warm cosiness, did not absorb light, like real wood, but reflected the neon tube above. The carpet was a worn lime green. My bed was a box spring mattress that was here when we bought the house, a rickety desk from Towers was shoved up against a wall.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
A Cardboard Box
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.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
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 . . .