What We All Long For Page 5

  Last night Tuyen had called Jackie and Oku to ask them if they’d talked to Carla. She’d said that she had a bad feeling and that Carla wasn’t answering her phone or the door.

  “So what’s new?” Jackie answered. “You know how she is. Bipolar. But I’ll try her, okay?”

  Jackie was breezy about everything. It was her way of keeping things together. The breeziness was the surface; underneath Jackie was frantically setting all the disturbances in order. Tuyen knew she would just happen to drop by the next morning.

  “Oh, Tuyen, what’s the big deal?” Oku asked, when she finally got through his father’s annoyance for calling so late.

  “Well, I know she went to see Jamal, and you know how depressed she gets with that.”

  “Yeah, right.” Carla had lain paralysed on her futon for a week the last time Jamal was in trouble.

  “Give it till tomorrow. I’ll come by before class.” Oku rang off quickly, his father in the background grumbling about people calling at all hours.

  Now they were all three in Tuyen’s dilapidated apartment. They forgave the mess because she made great coffee. They had all become used to the mess anyway. It was useful—after visits to Tuyen, they usually went home and launched into vigorous cleaning. Oku and Jackie both headed for the shabby armchair in the corner. Jackie won out with her diva stare at Oku.

  Jackie had dyed her hair red and now had a second-hand clothes store, calling herself “Diva,” greeting customers effusively, and flattering them into scandalous excess buying. “Girl, you look good!” she would ooze, leading someone to buy the most improbable outfit. She had stayed home alone nights since she was nine years old, refusing to be babysat any more at Liz Dorry’s house while Jackie’s mother and father went partying. She had watched late-night television, FashionTelevision, MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic, “Entertainment Tonight,” “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “Trading Places,” “Martha Stewart,” “Emeril Live,” and hip-hop videos on Black Entertainment Television. Her argot was one her mother and father could not decipher for all their own hipness. She spoke valley girl, baller, hip-hopper, Brit mod, and French from watching RDI. She had sat there night after night, absorbing the television’s language and culture and getting familiar with its speakers and citizens, changing her face into the drawn profile of a supermodel, her smile large and petulant, her ever-present long polished fingernails, her attitude snap, worldly, and dismissive as Naomi Campbell’s. She had a German boyfriend, Reiner-Maria, who dyed his hair a dripping black and wore ominous leather and played second guitar in a band. They sounded like Ministry, Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy. Jackie had found Reiner cruising the industrial scene that moved around the city from one ubiquitous dungeon-like club to another when she was in her black dress, black eyeshadow, multiple-pierced earlobe period. None of Jackie’s friends ever remembered Reiner’s name. They just called him the German boyfriend.

  “What’s the dillio?”

  “Well, Jamal got caught for carjacking. You know that, Oku.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “You hang around with him sometimes, don’t you? Up there in the jungle?”

  “I see him, but I don’t know what he’s into.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jackie wasn’t impressed.

  “Now, you know I’m a grown man, I’m not into that shit. Those are young guys fucking around. I check for him ’cause he’s Carla’s brother, but you know, them young brothers are hard core, man.”

  “So you know about it, right?”

  “Hell, they see me coming. I’m too cerebral for them. I just get some ganja up there, check some guys I know, older guys, man.”

  “But couldn’t you have talked to him?”

  “I did. But it’s a man thing, know what I’m saying?”

  “Man thing? What the fuck!”

  “Yes, a man thing, Jackie.”

  “Well, it’s a man thing to be in jail?”

  “Rite of passage in this culture, girl. Rite of passage for a young black man.”

  “Well, your ass is not in jail, Oku.”

  “No, but you know what I mean, don’t you? I can get jacked up any night by the cops just for walking in the wrong place. You know that, Jackie. Don’t front like you don’t. You talking in another language now? You forgotten how life is?”

  Oku needled Jackie, every chance he got, about the German guy. He was jealous. He’d had a crush on Jackie since grade ten, but she paid him no mind except to send him on errands for pop and cigarettes. She was the reason Oku first hung out with Carla and Tuyen, thinking they were Jackie’s best friends so they would lead him to Jackie somehow. They’d become close anyway, despite his lack of success so far. Oku was a poet. He lived in his parents’ basement, listening for his father to leave so he could raid the refrigerator upstairs. His mother didn’t mind, but his father had told him he would never deny him a roof, but he had to work to eat. Bring home good grades from the university—that was his primary job. His father also meant work renovating houses like he did. Summers were hellish for Oku. Fitz, his father, always had a friend who could give Oku a job hauling gyproc or insulation. Oku couldn’t bear coming home dusted in plaster and covered in paint and wounded by falling hammers. He listened instead to Miles, he investigated the futurist squeaks and honks of the Chicago Art Ensemble, he travelled the labyrinthine maze of Afro-jazz base and drum, jungle. He worked it all back to Monk’s “Epistrophe.” He thought his father an unfortunately small man, small in the mind, and one day he would maybe just tell him so. And he loved Jackie, though he knew he hadn’t a hope.

  None of them took each other home in those teenage years. The only place they went to once or twice was Jackie’s because Jackie’s mother and father were cool. Or so they all thought, except Jackie. In fact, they took nothing home, no joy and no trouble. Most days they smoked outside school together, planning and dreaming their own dreams of what they would be if only they could get out of school and leave home. No more stories of what might have been, no more diatribes on what would never happen back home, down east, down the islands, over the South China Sea, not another sentence that began in the past that had never been their past.

  They’d never been able to join in what their parents called “regular Canadian life.” The crucial piece, of course, was that they weren’t the required race. Not that that guaranteed safe passage, and not that one couldn’t twist oneself up into the requisite shape; act the brownnoser, act the fool; go on as if you didn’t feel or sense the rejections, as if you couldn’t feel the animus. They simply failed to see this as a possible way of being in the world.

  They’d decided instinctively that this idea was scary. “They’re freaks,” Tuyen would scream, describing her father’s outstretched hand telling her, “You get along, yes! Join up and get along!” Tuyen’s imitations of Tuan would send them all into fits of laughter, though afterward Tuyen would feel slightly disloyal.

  “Anyway”—Tuyen wanted to get back to Carla—“fine, fine, Jamal’s in jail. What about Carla? What do we do?”

  “What can we do, Tuyen? She’s saddled with the little motherfucker.”

  “He’s not a ‘motherfucker,’ Jackie, he’s just a young black man-child who’s fucked just like the rest of us. He’s trying to find his way. But they won’t fucking let him.”

  “Well, I’m just a young black woman trying to find my way, and I ain’t in jail, all right? Who the hell is ‘they’? Don’t bring me that endangered-species shit ’cause I’m the most endangered species, all right?”

  “Black men have no power, Jackie.”

  “Fuck! And I must be the queen of England. Oku, don’t front that lame shit, man.”

  “Yeah, black women don’t have to deal with this crap, you know. You’re strong …”

  “Oh fuck! Oh Christ! Spare my ass that bullshit, please! You mean like your mother? Like mine? You see any strong anything there?”

  “Anyways”—Tuyen tried again to keep the morning
on track—“guys! Carla, remember?”

  “Well, you won’t have that problem, will you? With Nazi boy.”

  “Oh, you did not go there, you did not fucking go there!”

  “Fucking heterosexual dystopia.”

  The snarling stopped abruptly. Tuyen had finally gotten their attention.

  “Heterosexual dystopia,” she repeated. “God save me from heterosexuality. All that bullshit about men and women, all that raw hatred, all that mayhem, even jail, for what? And you two, why don’t you just fuck and get it over with?”

  They were both stunned, but as usual Jackie had the comeback.

  “Don’t get your shorts in a twist, honey, just because the love of your life, who doesn’t notice you, by the way, is in shit.”

  Oku was quiet. Then, “Be serious, Tuyen. I’m talking about serious shit out there.”

  “So am I, Oku. Why do you guys have such a stake in keeping the bullshit going? Why don’t you strike?”

  “ ‘Strike?’ ”

  “Yeah, a ‘fucking,’ like Jackie would say here, a ‘fucking’ labour action. On … on … masculinity. If you don’t like it, if it’s so tortuous, why don’t you strike? Like quit.”

  Jackie couldn’t hold it, she sputtered, spraying her coffee, and breaking into her broad, rippling laugh.

  “Girl, you’re so funny, you’re killing me,” Oku said dryly. He looked at Jackie with a mix of jealousy, annoyance, and desire. “Funny as hell, you are.”

  “I’m serious,” Tuyen laughed. And when the laughter subsided she asked, “Can you all stay till she comes back?”

  “I gotta make money, girl. I’ll check you later.” Jackie was on her way to her afternoon shift at the store. “Look”—she stopped at the door—“that kid will always be in trouble. He’ll never get it straight, and Carla has to figure that out and get on with her own shit. And you, you stop waiting for her to notice you. Talk about dystopia!” She raised an eyebrow at Tuyen, then smiled mischievously and left.

  Oku leapt across the room, following Jackie out the door. “Yeah, Tuyen, I gotta go to class.” Tuyen heard him plaintively calling after Jackie, “Hey, Jacks, wait up, I didn’t mean …”

  Jackie’s last words struck Tuyen uncomfortably. Yes, she had been waiting for Carla to come around. She had humoured Carla’s depressions, her faraway attention. All in hopes.

  Carla had made it clear to Tuyen that she was straight, but Tuyen could not quite believe her. If she made herself useful enough, if she listened and coaxed enough, maybe Carla would come around. Straight women were never as straight as they put out, Tuyen figured. She had, after all, slept with numerous straight women. They merely had to be convinced. And there had been a few times, after one of their parties, when she had found herself in Carla’s bed, cuddling on the pretext that they were both high and drunk. Which was pretext enough for Carla to pretend that nothing had happened and to pull herself away from Tuyen’s sleeping body quickly in the morning. Tuyen was cautious with her, knowing that if she pushed too much, Carla would run scared. She was always afraid Carla would move, would cut her out completely. She knew Carla was capable of this. She had cut off her father and stepmother. She had preoccupied herself solely with her brother, leaving no room for other intimate relationships. They’d been friends, but there had always been a space of leave-taking when Carla would abandon their friendship to some region in her brain, which Tuyen found impossible and at the same time alluring.

  Carla had abandoned Tuyen to her explorations of sex, telling her, “I’m not interested. I’m just not. It’s not my thing, all right,” when Tuyen tried to entice her to go to the clubs on Church. Innocently, Tuyen would say to her, “Fine, I’m talking about going dancing. Straight people dance, right? It’s just dancing.” Tuyen also left books like Rubyfruit Jungle carelessly around Carla’s apartment, hoping they would spark some latent interest in Carla, but so far her entreaties had been rebuffed and she’d had to settle for near-unconscious probings and feels when Carla could claim drunkenness or drug-induced forgetfulness.

  Tuyen would try on these occasions to stay as alert as possible, as unimpaired as possible, so she could make note of and memorize the details of Carla’s body, the responses to her touch, the meter of Carla’s breathing, and the precise sounds of her murmurs. Carla always said her hands were lovely and begged her to massage away the knots in her back from riding all day long. Tuyen always regretted falling asleep, but couldn’t help it, stroking Carla’s back, her ears, having Carla respond to her with sleepy moaning. The next morning Carla would wake up earlier than she and wipe out their sexual intimacy with forgetfulness and distance. Tuyen was never sure how to press Carla; she didn’t want to spoil the little understanding they had, nor quite frankly did she want to take on alone the obviously troubled terrain of Carla’s life. She had her own “shit,” as Jackie would have put it.

  So yes, Jackie had a point, Tuyen thought. Carla had been more than plain to her after the last drunk. When in the morning Tuyen had playfully kissed her, held her as Carla tried to get up, Carla had pulled herself away abruptly, saying, “Shit, Tuyen, I told you I’m not into that.”

  And Tuyen, stung, had said to her, “Well, you coulda fooled me.” She inferred more than actually had happened. She picked herself up from Carla’s futon and left, slamming the door in a tantrum. Then, thinking that she was being childish, she returned to Carla’s, finding her in the bathroom. “You think because it’s not sex, it isn’t desire,” Tuyen told her. Carla paused in brushing her teeth, stared at Tuyen, and then continued vigourously. “It is, you know.”

  “Look, I have no desire, okay? You have to have desire, don’t you?”

  “How can you have no desire?”

  “I just don’t. For anyone.”

  “Or you’re afraid of it.”

  “Okay, Tuyen, think what you want.” Carla rinsed her mouth out.

  “I mean, having no desire might mean something deeper, you know. Like, who doesn’t have desire? And if you have none, how do you know? How can you be sure? Like everybody has desire … so …”

  “I know what I like and what I don’t like …”

  “Yeah, but you just said you have no desire, right?”

  “Well … that’s how it is, all right? It’s not my thing.”

  Tuyen sensed that Carla felt trapped, so she let up. Trying to make the moment light, she said, “Okay, you breeder, I’ll leave and let you get going to work.”

  Carla acknowledged that she was being let off the hook and pelted water from the running tap at Tuyen’s face. Tuyen grabbed her, kissed her on the ear, letting her tongue linger there softly, and left for her place. That was the week before Jamal’s lawyer called. Since then she had not had a chance to broach the conversation again, and now Carla had gone into a depressed cocoon. The doors to their apartments, which were adjacent, were usually left open, but in the last few days Carla had kept hers closed and had talked little to Tuyen about what was happening. Just when she thought she had a slight advantage, a glimmer, Jamal had grabbed all the attention from Tuyen by getting himself arrested.

  FIVE

  A yellow mote of sand dreams in the polyp’s eye;

  the coral needs this pain.

  The poet Kamau Brathwaite wrote this. It could be this city’s mantra. It could escape and mingle with the amplifying city, especially on Mondays.

  A yellow mote of sand dreams in the polyp’s eye;

  the coral needs this pain.

  Though it becomes more and more worrisome as it’s repeated against the busyness, the sweat and nerves of Monday morning, when rheumy-eyed students blunder up St. George toward the university and workers stand outside the hospitals in cliques of two or three, smoking cigarettes, blowing gusts into the wide air of the avenue, breathing in the exhaust of six lanes of traffic before running back inside to children, cancer patients, and the fickleness of nature and fortune—broken bones, broken teeth, broken muscle, saturated livers, ill-fed brains, f
atty hearts, and hungry blood. Meanwhile the crowds of people at the centre of the city itself feel like another kind of storm. There are men eagerly trying to catch the attention of other men. The air now filled with their voices saying “yeah, really” and “right, right” like the chorus of an “excellent, sir” song. The “pick me, sir” lyric, of young execs who’d spent the weekend snorting coke in the bathrooms of Richmond Street generation-next clubs to get ready for the hard week of cutthroat office ahead of them. There are people who don’t look at anyone and hurry to deadly lunches or top-priority errands that simply have to be run today or else the world will stop. The world here is full of self-consciousness and seething animosity. Young people come to the downtown to be in the world, or to run away from abusive homes in small towns like Sarnia and Fenelon Falls and Minden, or from suburbs like Vaughan and Malvern. They hang out in doorways, looking dreamy with drugs or alert with wanting. There are old regulars too, who stay here because it is the centre of life and because they cannot find their way back to anywhere.

  At Yonge and Bloor, the very heart, the corner is stacked six or seven lemming deep as usual, waiting for the traffic lights. Spike Lee’s 25th Hour is playing at the Uptown. A man wearing a shalwa kamese and a Muslim skullcap is carrying a briefcase in one hand, in the other, he fingers light brown wooden prayer beads in their circle—in his entreaties. To what? His face is beautiful, thoughtful, as if it were the most ordinary thing to do, to pray to Allah in one hand, to attend to the gods of money in the other. He’s going west, a sweet peace is on his face. A huge distracting billboard above the southeast corner flickers an ad for a car—a woman smiles from it, and reaches her hands out to her billboard driver.

  Tuyen’s family is rich, newly rich. They have a giant house in Richmond Hill, where rich immigrants live in giant houses. Richmond Hill is a sprawling suburb outside of the city. It is one of those suburbs where immigrants go to get away from other immigrants, but of course they end up living with all the other immigrants running away from themselves—or at least running away from the self they think is helpless, weak, unsuitable, and always in some kind of trouble. They hate that self that keeps drawing attention, the one that can’t fit in because of colour or language, or both, and they think that moving to a suburb will somehow eradicate that person once and for all. And after all the humiliations of being that self—after they’ve worked hard enough at two or three jobs and saved enough by overcrowding their families in small dour rooms and cobbled together enough credit—immigrants flee to rangy lookalike desolate suburbs like Richmond Hill where the houses give them a sense of space and distance from that troubled image of themselves.