Kicking the Sky (6 page)

A few nights later, I had overheard my father fighting with my mother. Edite was
louca
and
uma tola
, he said, which I knew meant she was nuts. A single woman living on her own would get people gossiping. He had an obligation to protect our family’s reputation.

Sitting at the table, our coffees in hand, Edite began to read Tuesday’s paper out loud: “ ‘Behind the sleazy facade of this body-rub parlour at 245 Yonge Street police found the body of twelve-year-old shoeshine boy Emanuel Jaques. They smashed glass panes in the front door at 6:30 a.m. to search, and found a body on the roof at the back. The boy had been missing four days. Four men are being held for questioning.’ ”

Edite lowered the paper and slid it over to me on the kitchen table. Emanuel’s sister, through her sobs, told the reporter that he “very much liked to make money but he wasn’t greedy. He didn’t rush out and spend it; he knew it had to go into the bank.”

The sound of a baby crying pealed across the asphalt. I wondered why Emanuel’s cry hadn’t sped between the dirty buildings with their neon signs.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, Antonio. But things are about to get a lot worse.”

“But they caught the men, didn’t they? It’s over.”

“It’s just beginning. Now it turns into a blame game. The Portuguese blame the politicians and the police for not protecting the boy. They’ll take matters into their own hands and they’ll target the homosexuals simply because they hate and fear them. The police will crack down on all the illegal stuff they’ve been turning a blind eye to downtown, especially among the homosexuals, because they think it will deflect blame and responsibility from them. And the politicians just see votes—they’ll make promises they don’t even believe, only to keep their butts in office.”

We build their houses. We clean their houses. We mind their children. For what? For this? For them to do this to one of our children? This is not why we came
. I had heard these words coming out of Edite’s radio.

“You know what it is to be afraid, right?”

I nodded.

“Your mother didn’t go to work today because she’s frightened.” Edite stared at me through the cigarette smoke.

“She freaked me out this morning. The way she was just sitting in the backyard not doing anything. I thought she was going to cry.”

“She’s frightened for you. She’s thinking it could have been you instead of Emanuel.”

“That could never happen to me.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t tell her that I was safe because me, Ricky, and Manny were blood brothers and would protect each other.

“Your mom and dad have to work. There’s no one at home to look after you guys. I know you’re a good kid, and you’re lucky to have your friends, but things are going to change.”

“How?”

“I can’t say for sure. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime I’ll show you where I keep an extra key so that you can always come here.”

I was thrilled Edite trusted me, but I could tell she was holding back. It was the way her words came out of her mouth—between little burps of breath.

“Aunt Edite, are you afraid?”

“Not really.”

“How come?”

She smacked her lips. “Oh, I’m not Portuguese with all that sadness, the saudade they’re drowning in. No, I stopped being Portuguese long ago.”

“You can’t just stop being Portuguese,” I said. “Can you?”

Edite brushed past me and tousled my hair. “I know I don’t let anyone tell me how to act or feel.”

From her back landing, Edite was one of the few people who had a clear view of our laneway. She knew more about what went on there than any of the other adults in our lives. She never said anything about what she must have seen, though once she told me how much she enjoyed watching us race across the rooftops.

“What do you know about that new guy living in Mr. Serjeant’s garage?” I said.

“His name is James. Spoke to him a bit. He reminds me of my Johnny.” She put her cigarette down in the ashtray and raked her fingers through her hair. “He’s just looking for a fresh start.”

“From what?”

Edite ignored my question. “Your cousin Johnny was always getting himself into trouble. But deep down he was a good kid,
you know. We should never have gone to war. We were fighting and we didn’t even know who the enemy was.” That was the thing about Edite; she spoke to me with words she would have used with adults. And when she asked me something, like
How’s it going?
she actually waited around long enough to hear the answer.

“Do you think you’ll ever find Johnny?” I asked.

She picked up her pack of Camels. I lifted the smouldering one in the ashtray and offered it to her, my fingers sticking to the lipstick ring around the filter.

Edite pinched the cigarette with her nails and took a long drag from it. She closed her eyes. “I have to keep hoping.” The cigarette trembled between her fingers, and her foot tapped faster.

“N
OT LIKE THAT
, Terezinha, the forks go on the right side of the plate,” my mother said. Terri rolled her eyes. “My feet are killing me,” my mother continued. “I waited in line for over an hour at the rectory. There were hardly any medallions left.”

“Medallions for what?” Terri asked.

“Which saint did you get?” I asked.

“The ones Padre Costa blessed were a dollar more. By the time I got up, St. Benedict was sold and so was St. Jude.”

“What does St. Benedict represent?” Terri asked, placing the last fork on the right side of the plate.

I told her, “He’s the most powerful saint against evil spirits or magic spells.”

“But what do you want them for?” Terri tried again.

“So who did you choose?” I asked, enjoying my sister’s frustration.

“I was lucky enough to get a whole bunch of St. Anthony medallions.” My mother set the last soup bowl on a plate and reached for my cheek, but I moved away.

“Why him? Isn’t he kind of useless?” Terri smiled.

“Filha, he’s the saint of lost things.”

“But we haven’t lost anything, Mãe,” I said.

My mother stayed up that night sewing the medallions onto my undershirts and inside the pockets of my pants. The
next morning, Terri charged into my room, flicking her bra strap at me. “Mom’s losing it! She sewed those damn things on everything I own.”

“Maybe she thought it would keep the creeps from going at your boobs.”

Terri jumped over my bed and lunged at me. I deked her out and ran down to the basement.

My mother wouldn’t let me go out with my friends. She said my friends weren’t allowed out either. I knew Ricky’s dad didn’t really have rules for him, so he didn’t count, but my mother was wrong. Manny’s parents hadn’t cranked up the rules in their house. Manny and Ricky had been hanging around without me. But I saw the worry on her face and stopped pushing. She had to go back to work, so she left long lists of chores for us to do, things to keep us at home and out of trouble—polishing the brass doorknobs, dusting the gumwood baseboards on the main floor, and vacuuming the living-room broadloom so that the stripes the vacuum cleaner left wouldn’t get messed up. I noticed that one of the jobs on my sister’s list was to take over to Senhora Gloria some mail that had been accidentally delivered to our mailbox.

“I’ll drop off the letter if you Windex the windows,” I said.

“Here’s what you can do,” Terri said. “Drop off the letter
and
lug the hampers down to the basement.”

“What’ll you do off my list?”

“Nothing.” She looked smug, like she knew perfectly well the reason I had offered the trade.

I had planned on ringing the doorbell and delivering the letter to Agnes by hand but at the last minute lost my nerve. As I lifted Senhora Gloria’s mail slot, the door swung open. Senhora Gloria looked like a nun in her brown habit—the costume she wore whenever she went out to collect money for the church. After examining the letter, she reached into her small patent leather purse, never taking her eyes off me. “Come with me. I have something for you,” she said as she walked into the darkened hallway.

I thought of politely turning round and running off the porch. Instead, I followed her into the hall and then down the narrow stairs into the basement. Running my hand along the railing, I thought about Agnes’s hands and fingers touching each spot a few times throughout the day.

Agnes was lying on the couch in the basement, belly down. She wore striped socks, each toe a different colour. She clicked her feet in the air, watching
Gilligan’s Island
and ignoring me.

“Agnes, go get some money from my room.” Senhora Gloria cupped my chin and rubbed her thumb across my cheek.

Agnes sat up but took her time getting off the couch.

“Go! What are you waiting for?”

“That’s okay, Senhora Gloria.” I forced a smile, tried not to notice Agnes’s embarrassment.

Alone in the basement with Senhora Gloria, I could hear the steady hum of the large box freezer. I looked at the starched white band that cut across her forehead. “It’s so tight. Doesn’t it hurt, Senhora Gloria?” I said, pointing to the band. It sounded like something a little kid would ask, and I couldn’t believe the question had come out of my mouth. A couple of the older nuns at St. Mary’s elementary school still wore habits,
but I could never ask them—they were mean and didn’t hesitate to use the strap. Senhora Gloria smoothed her hands over her breasts and patted down the front of her long dress.

“Not so much. But this one—” She looked over her shoulder, then lifted her skirt to reveal the brown woollen socks held up by metal clasps. Lumps of bluish fat covered her thighs, and veins that looked like purple spiders stretched across her bumpy white skin. With eyes widened she lifted the silver clasp of her garter to reveal the dimple that had cut into her inner thigh, above the knee. “This one hurts! Just like Jesus on the cross.” She smiled before whispering, “You can touch it. Go ahead. It’s like Jesus’s cut.” She caressed my hand, bunched my fingers for me so that only my index finger pointed, and drew it over her knee toward her thigh. The ball of my fingertip felt the warmth from the small dent in her skin. The heat travelled up my finger, to my wrist and arm. She made a sound like she was sinking into a hot bath, and threw her head back, her face lit up by the fluorescent bulbs, and I could see shiny bits of metal in her teeth.

I almost knocked Agnes over as I ran up the basement steps, and I didn’t stop until I heard slapping flesh. I paused to listen, to see if Agnes would cry, but I heard nothing. I bit my lower lip so hard that I knew I had made teeth marks. The storm door slammed behind me.

Although the rest of my mother’s to-do list was waiting for me, I couldn’t go home. Not yet. I roamed the laneway until I found myself at Mr. Serjeant’s garage. Ricky was sitting on a bench with a rag pressed to his right cheek and eye.

“Ricky,” I said.

His eyes opened. He lowered the rag.

“Whoa, what happened to you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “James has gone to get ice.” The ice factory was just a couple of blocks away, and we sometimes hung around to grab the frozen chunks left behind after the trucks pulled out.

The pieces of Ricky’s shattered clacker—Ricky could get the two glass balls to clack together so fast they looked like hummingbird wings—remained on the bench beside him, his middle finger still curled like a comma in its plastic tab.

“Keep pressing,” I said as I lifted the rag back to his face. Mr. Serjeant’s garage faced the laneway, like all our garages did, but his had a second-floor loft at the top of a ladder. The boards creaked above me.

“You should see the tits on this one!” Manny cried. “Her nipples are the size of Frisbees.”

“Are you crazy?” I yelled back.

“Yeah, crazy in love. You gotta see this.”

“What the hell are you doing up there? Get down!”

Manny’s face popped into view from the opening up to the loft. “What’s your problem? James saw the clacker smash in Ricky’s face. He told us to make ourselves comfortable. He’s nice, he wants to help.”

I looked up and down the alley, checking for the stranger Manny and Ricky now called a friend, and instead saw Agnes coming our way. I cupped my hand in front of my mouth, blew and smelled. The mouthwash I had swooshed before delivering the mail was still working. The wheels of her bundle buggy squeaked. It was filled to the brim with what looked like laundry. She stopped, but she did not look at me. The left side of
her face was red and swollen. I should have stayed at Senhora Gloria’s. I should have known she would blame Agnes for stopping whatever it was she stopped. I should have protected Agnes, but instead I ran like a frightened little boy.

“Is your washing machine broken?” I asked.

Agnes swept past me as if I was invisible. She bent over Ricky so that her lips were right beside his cheek. I imagined her breath tickling his skin. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “Keep pressing.”

I stood a few feet away from Agnes. “He’ll be fine,” she said, to no one, then resumed her trek up the laneway, her thick braid tapered at the end, swinging from side to side.