A blown kiss floats above the ocean, lingers dreamt, a thumbprint stamped from nectarines with fuzz of peach and stubble of face, lobe of ear, grazed, bitten gently. The nectar drips down soft neck of smoke, sweat, sweet smell of Indian summer, legs and twigs entwined, not tangled. Burning blue and brown eyes look away, the music stops but doesn’t. And he and he fuck And he and he make love And he and he coffee through the rain walk that pours wine on his t-shirt of flowers . . .
TOK
Plan to Make Do
—“Ow . . . yo, that hurt.”
A young woman jams her elbow into my chest shoving me out of her space. Her distracted exit from a department store propels her small pod of friends askew. My chest hurts, not in a call-the-ambulance kind of way but in a startled unexpected physical-contact-with-a-stranger kind of way. People simply don’t get that close, that fast, unless they’re force-fed onto public transport during rush hour and get stuck with a driver whose foot is as heavy on the gas as it is on the brake.
My squeak of protest enlists her friends, who now want to pick a fight—with me.
I get shoved. I know better than to shove back.
“Yuh must be making joke.
“Yuh want tuh fight me, after yuh almost knock mih ass down?
“But cross my stars. Chile, don’t let me go an’ find yuh mudder,” my finger wagging in the air like dragonfly wings.
But that would be small island talk. And I would have to look like a mother to make any such threat. A fifteen-year-old lost his life last week over a bus ticket. Instead I yell, “Why is it everyone is so ready to fight? ”
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“She knows she belongs. I can’t help but smile at my city with its small pockets of community about—Kensington Market, Little India, weekday afternoons in Chinatown . . . ” —Chinatown
“Today, a man bound tight in his navy blue suit, oblong tie and perfectly creased trousers—stands in the middle recess of the 501 Queen East . . . ” —Queen Street
“He exits at Victoria Street gripping his briefcase tightly in one hand and his take-away coffee in the other. His voice is tense as he negotiates with someone on the other end of his wireless headset in a lingo I don’t get . . . ” —Victoria Street
“My clothes are damp and I feel miserable. I rearm myself. And with my ball cap pulled low, brim arching my eyes, I stride through the newly renovated one-stop-shop of Gerrard Square. There is an uneasy swell of anticipation in the pit of my stomach . . . ” —Gerrard Square
Packaging Parathas
Every morning, before school, Riyaz spent at least an hour packaging parathas. She had learned the process quickly, not long after moving to Toronto to live with her mother’s eldest sister. Wipe the kitchen table. Lay out newspaper pages. Take care to keep aside those with coupons for Masi or crosswords for herself. The papers were from tenants in the building who handed them over to her every evening when their energy to read had been exhausted by their daily activities and television seemed a less ambitious pursuit.
The pages she collected were mostly from the Toronto Sun or the Star, and occasionally a Metro that had made it out of the confines of the TTC. Once a week her collection would be a bit heavier as everyone finished with the local community papers written in the Hindi and Urdu squiggles that she found incomprehensible. On the rare occasions when Aneel Uncle answered his door, he would give her his Globe and Mail, but mostly his wife would tell her that he left the paper at the office.
“No Globe and Mail today, Riyaz! Mr. Gilani has left his Globe and Mail at the office. He’s a lawyer, you know, an important man! He reads the Globe and Mail everyday . . . no Sun-fun, Star-shmar for him . . . ”
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“When Riyaz got home, she told Masi what she had overheard, hoping to reassure her. ‘Masi, maybe you don’t have to worry—Malik Uncle says the new shop won’t be a problem. That when the Thorncliffe Plaza shop opened everyone still had their orders.’ . . . ” —Thorncliffe Plaza
The Man Who Built Walls and Tore Them Down
It was the first time I’d sat down with Frank since moving out five years earlier. More might have passed were it not for Yuri killing himself. I recall thinking spring was the season I would’ve chosen, too. It was the first time in a long while that I’d relinquished my resistance to thinking of Frank as my father, instead of simply a man whose existence was parallel to mine, and only incidentally connected through people I loved.
We had faced each other in the crematorium of course, two months before. We’d watched Yuri’s mother gather up five pieces of her only son’s bones with disposable wooden chopsticks—not wanting his bones to feel the coldness of metal—with such dexterity it seemed she’d done it before. She hadn’t, but she would do it a few more times, outliving her widowed sister and even Frank. She performed in calm, in silence, except near the end when she whispered Yuri’s name as if to coax him from his hiding place. I’d always found it ironic, my father giving my older half-brother a name that sounded both Jewish and Japanese when Yuri was the full-blooded one.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“I would’ve fled, run outside to the deck that ringed around us and finally looked onto the waters into which Yuri had silently plunged off the ferry to Ward’s Island . . . ” —Ward’s Island
“He had left the family home on Fallingbrook and my mother and moved into the penthouse suite of one of his buildings on Queen’s Quay . . . ” —Queen’s Quay
“‘Saw you once,’ Frank was now saying, pointing down to the street, his finger circling around an area. ‘Cleaning the windshield of a car ahead of me. Foot of Spadina. You didn’t see me.’ . . . ” —Front & Spadina
“I met Frank in his office with its floor-to-ceiling windows and the CN Tower—the jewel in his crown and his sceptre—right there behind him amid a blanched royal blue sky . . . ” —CN Tower
Total Immersion
The guy in the tight, black Speedo (shine over the crotch) is ready to dive; another Russian Jew, new to the community pool, unsure of how to say “Make way!,” makes his announcement nonetheless cannonball style: “I am here in your country. Like it or not.” In the deep end, suddenly I’m under a flying immigrant bent on total immersion . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Amal Sings at the Christmas Pageant
Amal stands in front of the gymnasium, she doesn’t fidget, she stands straight. Jeremy hisses, Why does your cousin always have to sing? and I shrug my shoulders. The gymnasium is almost quiet, it’s Christmas and students whisper like crinkling wrapping paper. Girls blow greasy bangs off their foreheads when they see her on stage. Her. Again. When Amal opens her mouth a crystal liquid pours out . . .