A Bird's Eye (4 page)

The icebox was stacked with bottles of beer, the kitchen table cleared, and an extra chair brought in from the neighbour's. Exhausted from standing all day in the cold, my mother refused to serve her husband's “friends” and had already retreated upstairs. But I was happy to run to the corner for peanuts or a Jersey bar, pick up the bottles, and empty the ashes out of the Blue Ribbon Coffee tin. At the end of the night I would get nickel or dime tips and the biggest winner would give me a quarter. Even then I was making a study of human behaviour, although I didn't know it. I merely thought that I liked to see the way the players — Bluestein or Levin or Pearlmutter — gave themselves away with little twitches of their eyebrows or sideways looks or movements of their mouths.

The slap of cards, the mumbled raises and calls from mouths dangling cigarettes or, in Pearlmutter's case, clenching a cigar. When there was nothing to do, I would stand behind my father, leaning on the gas range. He was the smartest player but too cautious about risking his money.

“The boy will learn something from you yet,” said Bluestein, nodding.

“The way his mother talks to me, no wonder I get no respect.”

“You respect your father, don't you?” asked Pearlmutter. But I didn't answer, just watched my father rake in the pot.

But after an hour or so, his luck started to run against him. Cards nobody could win with. He tried to slow his losses until the better hands started coming. Once or twice he bluffed, but Pearlmutter was too dumb to fold. And then I saw it.

My father dealt the second card. He did it by drawing the top card slightly back, letting his other hand catch the edge of the card underneath. He saved the top card for himself, which he must have caught a glimpse of. Turned over his hand. Three kings.

Nobody else had noticed. Nobody else had been looking hard enough. I felt myself almost giddy with the excitement of his getting away with it. For the rest of the night I watched my father's every move. He didn't cheat often, maybe every three or four hands. He won pots just big enough to keep him a little ahead, a few dollars. There was an elegance to it, the small moves of the hand, shifting away the attention. It was the most impressive thing I'd ever seen my father do.

At eleven o'clock, the men got up, complaining about their luck, the weather, the news from Europe, the continuing lack of business. When the last of them had closed the door, my father came up to me and slapped me hard.

“What are you doing, staring at me like that all night?”

I didn't answer. I didn't even mind so much the hot sting of my cheek. Not staring — that was a lesson too.

Most children have a need for friendship that drives them to all sorts of hypocrisy, pretending to like what they don't, laughing at what isn't funny, ingratiating themselves with those whose good opinion may influence others. But even then I felt none of that, no need to be embraced as one of the pack. Instead, I kept to myself. Sometimes I went to the library, the big branch with the high arched windows at Gladstone Avenue, where I would sit at a table and read from a book that I pulled off the shelf. I didn't like made-up stories much; I preferred books on electronics or weather, or else books of history about places I hadn't even heard of. I didn't have a library card or know how to get one, and somehow I didn't think the haughty-looking librarians would give me one anyway, so I never took a book out and so never did finish one.

But what I liked to do best was to walk the city streets, sometimes far from my own neighbourhood. One Sunday afternoon I trudged along the bottom of the Rosedale ravine, and came up between two great houses. I passed between them and onto a circular drive where a chauffeur was giving a long black Packard a shampoo. The chauffeur stared at me and it was as if I suddenly saw my own patched trousers that were too big for me, my scuffed shoes and dirty cap. I would have kept walking, but he stopped his sponging and said, “What are you doing here, Himey? Scram.” So I stopped. And stared at him. And picked up a stone off the drive. And ran full tilt, dragging that stone along the other side of the Packard's shining paint before taking off down the road with the chauffeur screaming bloody murder.

I walked at night too, slipping out the front door after my parents were asleep or even going out the window, which was dangerous in the winter because of the ice. It sometimes seemed to me as if there were two cities, the one in daylight where people toiled at their jobs and went to the shops and watched their children in the parks, and the one after dark when a whole other species took over. Night people. Washing down the streets. Leaning their heads on tavern bars. Taking swings at each other. It was at night when you could see what the Depression meant, people who were hiding all day coming out and shuffling along, hoping for a handout, a free meal. Others would hop off the trains before they pulled into the station and look for one of the camps just outside the city. Once, I walked through the grassy oval of Queen's Park, just behind the red stone building where the politicians made their speeches, and saw a dozen men sleeping on the wooden floor of the concert bandstand with newspapers spread over them. I walked back home and found the two glass bottles of milk left by the dairyman, still cold and beaded. I took the foil top off one and drank it entirely, until there wasn't a drop left.

And then came the night when I wasn't careful. I had spent a part of the night walking along the high arch of Davenport Avenue, which marked the edge of an ancient glacier, as a teacher had once told us in about the only bit of information I'd ever learned in school about where I lived. I was on my way home and was cutting through a back alley with tottering wooden garages and scruffy back gardens on either side, when I got jumped.

I didn't see them until they were already pulling me to the ground, kicking my feet out from under me. Three of them, a year or two older than me, and none I recognized. Fists pounding me in the side, ringing my ear, cracking my mouth. I flailed out hard and caught one of them in the chin with the heel of my shoe, but then a blow to my stomach sucked the wind out of me and I couldn't even gasp, couldn't see for the tears and pain.

And then I was alone, lying on the dirty ground. My limbs didn't want to move. I tasted the salty blood in my mouth. My eyes closed.

I realized that the back of my head was lying in a shallow puddle. But I was still getting my breath back and stayed where I was.

“Are you dead or what?”

A girl's voice. I opened my eyes. And saw a Negro girl looking down at me.

“What?”

“I said, are you dead? I can call the undertaker if you are. They got fancy black feathers for the horses to wear.”

“I don't think I can get up.”

“Grab my hand.”

It hurt in about twelve places as she hauled me up. I bent over, but I didn't retch. “So what did you do?” she said. “Steal something?”

“I didn't do anything.”

“You're too scrawny. You ought to carry a blade.”

“I don't know who you are. You don't go to my school. And you talk different.”

“Because I come from Louisiana. My daddy come up for a railroad job. Only you don't say railroad here. You say
railway
, stupidest thing I ever heard. You have awful weather, too. Got any money? We could buy some smokes.”

“There aren't any stores open in the middle of the night. And I don't have any money.”

“Then what did I bother saving you for?”

“You didn't save me. They ran off.”

“'Cause I peppered their ugly butts with rocks.”

I was breathing better now and I stood up straighter and looked at her. She was taller than me, gangly, like she hadn't finished growing into herself. Round-faced and toothy. Not real­ly pretty.

A wave of nausea came over me. “I think I might throw up after all.”

“Well, don't splash on my good shoes. My daddy just brought them for me. They're from Philadelphia.”

This was my introduction to Corinne Foster. She was the first coloured person I had ever met, and I could not stop stealing glances at her whenever we passed under a street lamp. We walked down Albany Avenue to Bloor Street and sat on the steps of Trinity United Church and watched a Weston Bakery van go slowly by. She had been in Toronto for six months, brought by her father after her mother's death in a store robbery so that she could stay with her aunt and uncle while her father was on the trains. Her father worked for Mr. Pullman. People said that Mr. Pullman didn't hire Negroes who were too light-skinned, he preferred them dark. Her father was dark, but her mother had been very light and probably had some white in her from before the Civil War. All of this she volunteered freely. She expected that when winter came she was going to freeze to death. They went every Sunday to a Negro church and she had her hair done by a lady in a Negro barbershop, but it was nothing like her old home, she said, where it was a whole coloured community, practically a coloured town.

I didn't know what civil war she was talking about, nor did I understand half of what came rushing out of Corinne Foster's mouth. She was a talker, but she seemed satisfied by my listening and not saying much in reply. It is possible that I fell in love with her that night.

My father had not spoken to his brother for years, or to his sister either. But I knew that my uncle Hayim had kept his promise to Hannah. He had bought for them a small, handsome house on Winchester Street, close to the mansions on Sherbourne. It was like my uncle to choose a street where Jews were not particularly welcome, and to enjoy the discomfited looks of his neighbours when he doffed his hat to greet them in a loud and excessively friendly voice. He was always dressed in the latest style, for he had an English tailor on Bay Street, which marked him as newly rich in a manner that he did not quite recognize.

The Kleeman factory was at the west end of Adelaide Street. All the metalwork was done there, the casting and stamping, while the celluloid tubes were bought from another factory to be turned on lathes into barrels. Then came the assembly and finishing. While other makers produced pens in all sorts of colours and even patterns, Kleeman pens were only black, which Hayim believed would emphasize their practicality and economy. His office was on the ground floor, and in the first years Hannah had been the bookkeeper, having gone to secretarial school. But as the company prospered, he had insisted that she give up working.

She hated where they lived. She missed her old friends from the factory, whom Hayim forbade her to see. She often walked the few blocks to Allan Gardens, for she loved the warm, scented air and rare flowers in the Palm House, but she did not feel comfortable among the women and nannies and prettily dressed children. Nor could the beautiful if unfashionably long dresses that Hayim insisted she wear disguise her limp.

Not that Hannah wasn't grateful. Gratitude was her stock-in-trade; it was all she had to offer — to people who were kind to her, who overlooked her deformity, who protected her. Most of all, to Hayim. She feared him a little, she did not enjoy his company, but nevertheless she doted on him. And after all, he had no wife yet to look after him. Did he eat sufficiently? Was he working too hard? Could he not put aside the anger he felt about one thing or another?

She liked me to visit. A year ago I had knocked on the door and a maid had answered. But hearing a boy's voice, Hannah had come to the door. She felt a terrible guilt about Jacob and so was happy to welcome me into her home. I came every couple of weeks, not for her sake but for my own. She always plied me with food and gave me a present — a new book, the few dollars in her purse, a pair of leather gloves.

Today she wore a new crepe gown. I tried to guess what it cost. We sat having tea and delicious small cakes that she had sent the maid out for when I arrived. At the window of the front parlour, she looked out to see that dusk was slipping into night. Even to a boy it was obvious how lonely she was and that she was glad for my company, asking me about school and friends and my mother and father, causing me to make up more lies than I could keep track of. She mostly talked about my uncle, who told her about the problems in manufacturing and supply, the difficulty of securing government orders without belonging to the right clubs, the impossibility of joining those clubs. Even so, the business was successful.
The Pen That Works
— that was what the newspaper advertisements said.

Aunt Hannah, as she asked me to call her, crossed the room to the phonograph and looked through the new stack that Hayim had brought home for her. She liked to play her new records for me; they were the one luxury that pleased her. She chose Fritz Kreisler playing Brahms's violin concerto, and as it came on she stood with her eyes closed and I watched how it transformed her, the way music could do that for some people. And right then the front door opened with a bang and she quickly lifted the needle.

Voices, laughter. “Hannah? Hannah, I want you to meet someone.”

My aunt was never comfortable with strangers, but she especially hated when her brother brought home guests — business associates or, worse, men he met at one of the restaurants he frequented. I sat rigidly in my chair, for my uncle was not nearly so fond of my visits. Hayim came in with a tall man with orange hair parted in the middle and a slack, rubbery face.

“Hannah, why are you hiding in the corner? Ah, I see our nephew is also here. This is my good friend Tobias Whitaker. Tobias's family owns Whitaker's Stationery, one of the biggest suppliers to businesses in the city. Toby, my sister. And our nephew Benjamin.”

She looked pained as the man approached. “A great pleasure, Miss Kleeman,” he said, taking her hand.

“We're absolutely starving,” said Hayim. “Have Bess get us some supper. We'll just have a little drink in the meantime.”

“Of course,” she said. I could see she did not want to walk in front of this man, but she lowered her head and passed by him, excessively conscious of her uneven gait. As she left the room, she heard the men laugh.

My uncle didn't have much choice but to offer me something to eat as well, which I would have accepted even if I'd been full, which I wasn't. In the dining room, he described Mr. Whitaker's lineage, how he was a third-­generation graduate of St. Michael's College. Mr. Whitaker had recently returned from Europe. The Depression had shaken most of the Americans out of Paris, he said, and all anyone did was talk about the possibility of war. Hayim exclaimed about the Whitaker family home on Beverley Street. “A Victorian mansion, but completely modernized. You ought to see it, Hannah. This is a log cabin in comparison.”

“But this is very sweet,” Mr. Whitaker said. “And to tell you the truth, our neighbourhood isn't what it once was. A nearby home has just been purchased and there is a rumour that it is going to be divided into apartments. I can't think of anything more grotesque.”

Hayim said, “Do you know how many pens we shipped last month? Eighteen thousand.”

Aunt Hannah looked at me and said, “We have Benjamin's father to thank for that.”

Hayim didn't look happy, but he said, “Yes, our brother. I am the first to admit Jacob's genius. I wanted him to come in with me, but he refused. It was his loss, I'm afraid. But let's not ruin the evening's fun. What do you say, Hannah? We could push aside the furniture and you and Toby could dance. He knows all the latest dances. What is that new one, the Lambeth Walk?”

“You know that I don't dance,” Hannah said.

“But it would be my pleasure,” Mr. Whitaker said, and smiled. My aunt looked at me as if to ask me not to desert her. But I knew that I would leave as soon as we got up from the table.