Montreal Serai

            In the middle of the 9 a.m. newscast I have to leave for work, which is a shame. They’ve just started a story on a heroic rescue in New York. Something about a subway train.

            At a quarter  after eleven, Sandra di Angelico walks into the store. Her hands are shaking; her breathing is fast and shallow. Nerves.

            “What on earth–let’s get you seated, Sandra. Take a load off.”

            I grab a chair from a fitting room, carry it into our back office and return to the front counter where Sandra stands. We’re well staffed this afternoon at Marjorie’s Lingerie, so I don’t have to worry about coverage on the sales floor. I place my hand lightly on Sandra’s shoulder and we walk into the office, where I help her into the spare chair from the fitting room. Then I sit in the desk chair and swivel it over to her so that we sit side by side. I take her hand. Her  nails dig into my flesh but that’s okay, I don’t mind a little discomfort when I am helping a person through something.

            Her eyes are open as wide as they will go, they dart around like she’s trapped, looking for escape. She is so worked up now I can see she has moved on to a whole new level. She’s afraid of her fear, afraid of herself.

            When my best friend Doreen got like this, she only had one thought. I learned how to help.

            “It’s okay, Sandra,”  I say, “you are not going to die. You’re safe.”

            In a few seconds the breathing changes. She inhales deeply, coughs, coughs again.  She sucks in so hard it startles her and then she starts making choking sounds.  I can see in her face that the fear is rising again.

            “You’ll be fine.  Don’t worry. You’ll get your breath back,” I say.

            Asthma, allergies,  lung diseases–all kinds of medical conditions can make a person’s breathing  go haywire. But I saw Doreen through many  panic attacks  years ago and I can see the signs now in Sandra. I’m unafraid of her crazy breathing. My job is to help her be unafraid too.

            Once the breaths start to come more easily I go to the mini fridge we keep in the office, get out a bottle of water and bring it to her. She twists off the cap and takes a sip. The shaking has stopped. I wait. She will figure out how to get to the next stage of relief. Talk would be fine. So would silence.

            “Thanks, Irene,” she says.  Her voice is level. “Have you got a bit of time to talk?”

            “I do.”

            “Okay,” she says, “but how do I explain it to you? It’s mixed up in my head, the stuff from today and the stuff from years ago that has crept up on me today. I have no idea where to start.”

            “What’s in your head at this moment?” I ask.

            “Corn,” she says.

            “All right,” I say. “Start with corn. and let’s see where that takes us.”

            ”For me, corn means freedom,” she says. “Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?”

            “No,” I say. “Go on.”

            “Last night,” she says, “Eric and I  had Taber corn with supper–Alberta’s best, maybe the world’s best–and after we ate I sank my teeth into the bare cob and broke it into chunks and sucked the juice out. It’s a noisy process, I know that. Just  can’t resist that Taber corn juice.”

            I don’t know how corn cob sucking leads to panic, but it’s Sandra’s story to tell in her own way.

            “Eric likes to see me enjoy my bizarre little corn ritual. He says it speaks of my joyful nature. But thirty-plus years ago, when I was in my twenties–long before Eric entered my life–I lived with a guy named Chris and he was not so charmed by my corn routine. By the way, I don’t suck cob in public–you do understand that.”

            “Never crossed my mind you would,” I say. “We’ve all got queer habits that we don’t reveal away from home. Personally, I have a thing about keeping my navel spotless, completely clear of lint. But it’s not something I take care of  when I’m out on the sales floor dealing with customers.”

            “Right. Well, one night, Chris and I had corn for dinner–it was just the two of us, in the privacy of home–and we had never had corn on the cob together before–and once we’d finished the–you know–conventional part of the eating, I sank my teeth into the bare cob and bit off a chunk. Then, of course, I sucked. Well, Chris blew a gasket, and before I knew what was happening, he was beating the life out of me.”

            “Because of your corn ritual?”

            “Yeah, supposedly that was a good enough reason. Then lots of things started to set him off–me sucking on chicken bones; me overcooking pasta; me not shifting from second gear to third fast enough.”

            “All those were crimes punishable by beating?”

            “That and more. He was always finding new reasons to get furious and physical. And he kept finding new techniques.

            “Like what?”

            “Humiliation. Like one Saturday afternoon, we were walking down the street together. I was depressed and not talking. He kicked my ankle.

            ‘Piece of shit,’ he said. ‘You’re a piece of shit.’ And by then, I believed him.

            “How many times did he blacken my eye, break my glasses, berate me for not being a perfect housekeeper? Finally I had an affair.”

            “Who could blame you?” I say.

            “At first it was a relief to have someone treat me with kindness. But my boyfriend-on-the-side was married too, with three little kids, and I felt as guilty as sin toward his wife. So I broke it off.”

            “Must have been tough,” I say.

            “It was. And then I confessed to Chris, although I was afraid he’d beat me to death. But here’s the confusing bit. He forgives me, buys me flowers, takes me to dinner. As soon as we get home he changes. Just like that. Suddenly he’s in a silent rage. His face is contorted as if he’s possessed. He punches me full force. Left side of the face. Eye, lower jaw, mouth. I scream, threaten to call the police.

            ‘About what?’ he says. ‘I’m  not doing  anything to you.’

            ‘Go to your own room now,’ he says, and I say, ‘I have no room, only the one we share.’

            ‘You heard me. Go to your room.’

            “I start heading up the stairs, thinking maybe I can reach the phone in the bedroom somehow, but he comes after me, pulls me around to face him. He pins me onto the staircase. Grabs hold of my hair and starts beating my head up and down onto a stair. I’m thinking, This is it, I’m about to die.”

            “But you didn’t die,” I say. “You got through it, and you’re with me now. Safe.”

            “I break free of him somehow, run down the stairs and out the door. I’m wearing heels but terror carries me down the street.  I reach my friend Myra’s house and call the police. They’re good to me and they act fast.”

            “What happened before you came into our store today, Sandra?” I ask gently. “What’s brought you back to that awful night?”

            “He liked to hit me on the left side of the face. I’ve had surgery for a detached retina on the left eye, that eye has also bled inside, I’ve got a jaw disorder on the left side, I’ve lost three teeth on the upper left palate.”

            But how does that connect to today? I’m thinking. Patience.

            “Today at the supermarket I had a cashier. I read her name tag. Shirley. She scanned my groceries quickly, packed them efficiently and told me the total, one hundred eighty-two forty-six. Once we were done she thanked me pleasantly. She was a good cashier.”

            Still it is a struggle to figure out how this event could have led to Sandra’s panic attack. Best to let her go on without interruption now. She’ll let me know in her own time and way.

            “After I left,” she says, “I called the store on my cell phone and asked for the manager. Luckily, they put me through to him right away. I asked if the company had an employee assistance program and he said yes. I told him that I had had fine service from Shirley but was worried about her. The right side of her face was one big purple bruise and I had seen black and blue welts on her neck and upper chest. He said he had just gotten on shift and had not seen Shirley yet, but he would find out right away if she was receiving employee assistance and if not, he would see to it that she did. I said maybe she needed some healing time right now and he said, ‘That could well be’ and he told me this was his highest priority today–to make sure Shirley got support.

            “My abuser liked the left side of the face; Shirley’s likes the right. So what has changed since thirty-five years ago when I was assaulted?”

            “Well,” I say, “nowadays at least some companies have got those employee assistance programs.”

            “It’s a step, I guess,” she says.

            She is breathing normally now, although she doesn’t seem to realize it. You don’t notice your breathing unless something goes wrong with it. Then you can’t think of anything else.

            We walk back onto the sales floor. Sandra has not come in just to get help catching her breath; she really does need some lingerie–control top tights for the winter. In the past she has told me that she is prone to yeast infections so she cuts out the cotton gusset of the tights with a pair of scissors. That way she can breathe down below.

            Later I meet my young friend Julie for coffee at the Bean Wave. She’s wise for twenty-one–for any age, really.

            “What would you do if a man started beating you up?” I ask.

            “Kick him in the balls, gouge his eyes, call 911 on my cell phone and run like hell.”

            “Sounds as if you’ve planned your strategy carefully,” I say.

            “Every woman has to,” she says.

            “But why?” I ask.

            “Because,” Julie says, “those guys are still in business.”

            Tonight, I’m supposed to be winding down; that’s what I’ve  promised myself. My neck hurts from tension. I make a cup of chamomile tea and sit down with my Chatelaine magazine. I  read words but their meaning doesn’t register.  I turn on the TV to  watch the news. They lead with that New York incident. Finally I learn the full story. A 20-year old man has a seizure and falls on to a subway track in New York.  A 50-year old man Wesley Autrey,  makes a split-second decision, jumps in, sees the train emerging through the tunnel, hurls the young man into a narrow drainage trough in between the rails. Then he throws his own body over the young guy’s.  By now the driver can see what’s happening and reacts,  but the emergency brake can’t stop the train fast enough and it passes over them, with two inches leeway between them and the underbelly of the train. They both make it.

            What drove  Mr. Autrey to do what he did for that young guy?  What drove  Chris to do what he did to Sandra?  I don’t get it. They’re members of the same species.  My species.

 

The glare from the neon lights bores through my eyelids making them flutter. I fight  back and force them shut. They flutter again and one sleep-crusted edge disengages from its counterpart with a subliminal pop. Re-entering my dream is futile so I give up. The sharpness of daytime had somehow cut through  countless walls and malls and halls into this windowless hellhole severing my ties with that alternate reality where I am always the main dude. I shift my aching hipbone from the hard and wet surface that holds it in place and turn to face the wall. The surround stench takes hold of me like an octopus, forcing my eyes  open. The bikini-clad girl on the billboard is about to plunge into a translucent turquoise sea. The sea stinks of pee. My pee. I want to crap as well but it is too early for that. I no longer need a double latte to activate my entrails. I have jettisoned all that ballast from my old life. A cup of American-owned Canadian-branded Tim Horton’s  generally does the trick.  But I have no need of that today. Is it Saturday today? Or is it Sunday? Who cares! But I do. On weekdays the toilets  open earlier and close later, on weekends the place has the air of an abandoned jail. Or a Tarkovsky movie, complete with rusting pipes, water leaks and the odd humanoid walking about as a counterpoint to inorganic decay. My gut cramps. It must be the half-eaten Subway I rescued from the recycle bin. Slathered with mayo. I never liked the stuff anyway. Mother used to say that mustard is better on account of its sting – if it burns your nostrils it will also zap the critter in your gut. Especially if it is dee-jon, made in France. The girl on the billboard is shaking her body like the chicks in the bars on St. Laurent. That always hits a chord. The first train of the day has arrived in the station. I don’t know why they bother with early trains  considering that the usual passengers are the newspaper boy from Sri Lanka, the cleaning lady from the Azores and the pure-laine metro staff. They are generally grumpy and have nothing much to say and nobody to say it to. But somebody has to be first. I prefer the last lot of passengers. They are more convivial and sometimes obnoxious which provides entertainment if you’re in the mood. Besides obnoxious is good. It makes mall security forget about the likes of us. People with nowhere to go. No, I won’t say they’re heartless. They turn a blind eye to our presence, especially in winter, even though it’s against the rules. Unless the other guys, the ones who look like war-game clones, are around. These guys mean business. They walk around with their chests puffed out as much as their bullet-proof vests let them, looking for people to harass. And sometimes real cops come around and try to take us to shelters just to please politicians and habitual letters-to-the-newspaper writers but we know and they know what it’s like over there, no smoking, no drinking, no nothing except be a good boy and follow their senseless rules. The bikini-clad girl is now walking through a clump of rotting sea weed. Stinking sea weed I should say. The pee in my pants has cooled down making me shiver but somehow my groin starts feeling warm again. Holy shit! It’s not on account of Miss Bikini on the wall! I’m glad my pants are former Outfitters, just the right khaki colour. But the Salvation Army people forgot to give me the Boss perfume that goes with the outfit although I do have the unshaven look. Hope nobody notices. If I can’t persuade the bible-toting lady to give me some fresh pants from her church stash, I will just have to take matters into my own hands for the common good. Or maybe I won’t have to filch and split. For all I know,  they might have a street sale today. Quaint name, street sale, when this place is a massive underground penitentiary, but then they can’t call it penitentiary sale, can they? Ha! If worse comes to worse, I can always rinse my pants in the men’s room when nobody is looking. They’re already wet, anyway. I turn again and make myself  comfortable. My eyelids weigh a ton. The bikini-clad girl bends over me. I think she is going to kiss me. The last time she paid attention to me was when she actually went down on me sending me to paradise until that stupid Westmount cow interrupted my dream and started yelling at me. She had the nerve to tell me to remove my hands from my pockets and to zip up my fly properly. She also told me that I’m shameless and that decent people don’t go around behaving as if they were at home alone. But I am at home. This is my home, the only one I can remember. Very conveniently located. Near public transportation and a panoramic view of the sea. Ah, Miss Bikini is not going to kiss me after all, but she is holding my wrist daintily as if she were afraid of breaking it. She mumbles something to the guy with her. He hands her a syringe. She unrolls my sleeve, swabs me with something cool  and plunges the needle into my forearm. I start drifting off but I can still feel the guy’s  strong hands under my armpits. She grabs my legs. They plop me onto something soft and cart me away. The train rumbles by. Cay-shun, cay-shun, cay-shun, it says. Intoxi-cayshun. A loudspeaker fills up the space above. I can’t make out the words but I know what they mean. The public transit system wants the janitorial staff to come to my corner of paradise and clean up the mess I left behind.

 

With nails that curved over toes. Her limbs, limp, her eyes vacant. She took her acoustic guitar to music lessons. She attended art courses at the Douglas Hospital for the mentally disabled. She had lived in shelters and foster homes. She visited emergency rooms at different hospitals.

Cognitive disorder associated to epilepsy, chronic. Contribution of sarcoidosis to mental state is unknown. Mental retardation and psychotic episodes greatly impair insight and judgment. She has basic ALD. Adult learning disability and anxiety disorders. Although she was on welfare, she received a settlement from the sale of her former family house. Less than a year later, she was penniless.

The kitten ran and hid under the bed when it saw me. The Persian cat with a broad round head, long silky hair, and a thick tail. Within a few weeks, it looked as sickly as my daughter did. Bony and undernourished, its hair unkempt and tangled.

The last Thursday of April, Susan, her nurse, called me from St. Mary’s Center Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic: “Can you stay with your daughter until I come to pick her up in the morning? I have a tryout appointment at a foster home in LaSalle. I don’t want Marisa to check herself into emergency. We will not be able to find her.”

“I’ll stay with her,” I promised.

Lemon-yellow apartment block. Alley view of walled gardens. Fragrant with new blooms of red tulip, daffodil, purple crocus. Hum of traffic on Decarie Boulevard. Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

I arrived unannounced. Knocked on Marisa’s door. “I can take care of myself. Go home!” Her eyes blazed with anger.

Behind closed doors, acrid, pungent smell of cat litter. Here in these three overheated rooms of my daughter. Hardwood floors. Canvases. An easel. Metal rack of CD’s, black guitar, rickety table. Stale pizza crusts littered the refrigerator. “Did you eat yet?” I opened a can of chicken soup. Popped a toast.

White T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. After supper, she lay down on her crumpled bed. Unhung paintings leaned against a walnut dresser. A landscape of turquoise, pink, and orange. Vibrantly embroidered floral motifs. Her rent check returned with insufficient funds.

I watched her stroke the cat’s knotted hair. Moon-pale, my first-born daughter. At times, I wished I could hug her as she hugged her kitten. I looked at Marisa and the cat. They didn’t accept pets at the foster home. New and unfamiliar world.

She lost all things that she dealt with daily. Everything in her house and kitchen garden. Red ochre stucco with long windows and narrow green shutters. Five years ago, she had a home. Interim divorce court. Her husband obtained custody of their two daughters ages five, and three. Five-month-old son.

The woman in those pictures is skinny, tense looking, and young. Her brown hair is short. That final summer, before her bout with chronic depression. Before Youth Protection Court declared her an unfit mother. Before I supervised her children’s visits.

Today, I bedded down on the living room floor, fully dressed. All night, Marisa tried to leave the apartment. In the dark, I yelled: “Don’t even try it!” Dozing, I awoke to see the door ajar. Down one flight of stairs. Cold cement steps under my stockinged feet. I caught up with her in the lobby. Hugged her close. Felt her gaunt, rigid body: “Come back upstairs.”

“I’ll hit you! I’ll hit you!” Her face, ashen, her eyes wild with rage. “Don’t do it. Don’t hit your mother!” I clamped her face with one hand. My fingers pressing her cheekbones. I held her there. “Don’t even think about it!” The sky, a curtain of indigo. Candles to light a room. Four in the morning. I hadn’t slept. Neither had she.

[Short listed by the CBC-Quebec Writers Federation Literary Competition and first published in In Other Words. New English Writing from Quebec, Edited by Claude Lalumière, Véhicule Press, 2008]

 

 A huge black crow was doing a balancing act on the metal railing enclosing the terrace. It held a shiny object in its beak. Usha chose that moment to make an appearance with a basket of laundry on her hip, obstructing Mummy’s view. Her silver anklet hit the edge of a patio chair and startled the crow. The bird opened its beak, cawed, and flew away. The spoon clattered to the floor. Usha bent down to pick it.

            –Memsahib, memsahib, here it is, Baba’s silver spoon! I told you I hadn’t stolen it.

            Mangala released the cuff imprisoning her mother’s flaccid arm and let out a subliminal hiss. It was no use. With such a ruckus the sphygmometer would give a false reading again.

            Quoth the raven, nevermore!

             Mangala turned to stare at her mother. The old woman’s pupils were dilated and her lips quivered. Could it be possible? Had her mother tried to say something after so many months of silence? Spittle drooled from her mother’s lips. Mangala patted her hand, hoisted herself from the chair, and made her way to the kitchen to deal with the matter of the purloined spoon. She then busied herself with lunch.

            A shrill sound startled her. Muttering something, she pinched her left thumb and sucked the small drop of blood that oozed from it before it could hit the chopped onions. Usha’s bare feet glided to the front door.

            –Memsahib kaha hai?

            Mangala wished her husband would stop referring to her as memsahib to the help. The real memsahib was her mother, who after a lifetime in India would not let anyone forget that she was European. Not that it mattered now.

            –I’m here darling! Lunch is ready.

            They sat down to eat. The fan blades moved lazily over the dining table cooling the lamb korma but not driving the flies away from the food. Lt. Col. K.K. Mehta

swatted a fly and scraped it over the edge of the table till it fell on the floor. He then tore off a piece of chapatti and scooped a juicy piece of lamb and stuffed it in his mouth. Some brown sauce got embedded in his moustache.

            –General Kapur wants to send me back to the border.

            Mangala’s lemonade glass hit the table with a thud.

            –What about Mummy? I can’t look after her alone. And Anjani is expecting and Kabir will finally return to Delhi.

            –It will only be for a few months, darling, till the war is over. Besides, you are a doctor and you have the servants to help you.

            –Yes, but what about my practice? I will lose my patients to the other doctors at the clinic.

            –Manni, please be reasonable. There is nothing much I can do for Mummy. Besides, my country, our country, needs me and I’m in line for a promotion.

            Mangala pushed her plate away and called Usha to clear the table.

            Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

            –Did you hear that, Kaykay?

            –Get a grip on yourself, Mangala. You have to accept that your mother had a major stroke and will never speak again. Ever!

            –But the literature is full of examples of partial, even full recovery after a few months.

            –K.K. Mehta got up and stormed out. The brass mobile hanging near the entrance tinkled.

            The buzzer rang again. It was Sumitra.

            The large swarthy woman walked straight into the memsahib’s room and looked at her charge. The afternoon sun highlighted her greying hair, making it look golden again. She lifted the thin cotton bedspread and removed the old woman’s clothing. Pouring some coconut oil on her back she rubbed her body vigorously. First she turned her on one side and then her stomach and then the other side. She wiped off the excess oil with a clean towel and combed her hair. She then propped her up with some pillows and sat herself on the floor. Reaching for one of her limp hands she started crooning a lullaby that her own mother used to sing to her as a child back in Kochi. A few tears trickled down from the memsahib’s green eyes and landed on their locked hands.

            Mon père, j’ai pas besoin de me confesser. Le péché n’est plus ce qu’il était.

            Mangala pulled the door curtain open, poked her face in, and carefully closed it again.

            By tea time the room was bathed in fierce orange and red. Several langurs jumped up and down the peepul tree in front of the terrace. The silhouette of one of these large black-faced monkeys partially blocked the sun. Mangala walked into her mother’s room and set the ice-cream dish on the table. She sat by her mother’s bedside and spooned some softened ice cream into her mouth. A thin trickle of chocolate dripped from one side of her lips. Suddenly, the old woman shuddered.

            Why don’t you two just kill me off! I can’t take it any more. God, I don’t want to die!

            After taking her mother’s pulse, Mangala crushed a pill into her melted ice cream and spoon-fed her again.

            –Take some rest, mother.

The chattering birds in the peepul tree woke up the household. Usha came in with her morning tea and some biscuits. She set the tea tray down and fetched the bedpan, but it was too late. A dark stain had already spread around the woman’s shrivelled form. So she turned the memsahib to one side, rolled the soiled bed sheet under her, then turned her to the other side and replaced it with a clean one.

            Mangala walked in while this operation was underway.

            –I’ll take over, Usha, thanks.

            That’s a good girl, Manni. Do potty and drink your Horlicks!

            The doorbell rang again.

            –Memsahib, it is the young Baba. He’s home.

            Mangala rushed to greet her son.

            –Kabir, give your mother a hug. We weren’t expecting you until next month.

            –Mother, I just came to visit Naniji before I get sent back to sea again. They are not posting me to Delhi after all.

            Who is that dark man with you? I know him. It is my husband.

            –Hare Ram. Kaykay, Mummy is talking! Kabir is here. Come quickly!

            The whole household ran to Mummy’s room.

            –Naniji, it is me, Kabir, your grandson. Don’t you remember me?

            She paid no attention to them. Something outside the window caught her eye. The morning glories draped the terrace railing. Several sparrows, a cardinal, and a crow fought over a few chapatti crumbs. A translucent gecko zigzagged its way up the terrace wall making a dragonfly whiz off. Last night’s langur, its tail curled around the railing, stared at the old woman. She stared back. Their eyes locked.

            –What are you looking at, Naniji?

            The old woman turned to face her grandson. Her lips curled up ever so slightly.

            He has come to take me home. Your grandfather…