Black Alley (11 page)

“Don't twist what I say, please,” his father said, lying back on the sofa, his hands behind his head. “What I kill myself trying to get you to understand is that you have to take responsibility for yourself. I won't always be here for you. But there's one thing that's sacred, and you know it: you have to finish high school.”

“Don't complain,” Mixon interrupts. “Your father's happy with high school. My parents want me to become an engineer, man. Can you imagine? Six more years of school! The only good thing about the Polytéchnique, if I can believe what my cousins say, is they have some kick-ass parties!”

“You've got two months left to finish high school,” CB's father said. “One piece of advice for you, between now and then:
stop scaring the teachers,” he added with a laugh. Then he turned serious again: “I mean it, after that, you can do what you want. Even move out if it makes you happy.”

“Your father's like Québécois parents,” Ketcia says. “Once their kids are eighteen, they give them a kick in the ass and say see you later!”

“No, no,” said his father. “I don't want to get rid of you. I want you to assume some responsibility and stop thinking you're entitled to everything! If you'd rather stay with me after high school, that's great. I don't see any problem there.”

“Nice speech!” CB shouted. “It's all well and good for you to talk about responsibility. You never took care of me.”

“Anyway,” Mixon states, “your father's a real ladies' man. Every time I see him get out of his car, he's with a different woman. And he doesn't pick up just anybody, either!”

“All you care about is women!” CB exclaimed. “You think I don't know where all your pay goes? So, when you talk about ‘responsibilities,' you just make me laugh. What you really mean is, ‘get the hell out so I can screw in peace!'”

“It's the same thing, every time,” Mixon continues, now displaying a mischievous smile. “Your father gets out of the car and comes around to open their door. Then, whether they're black, white, yellow, or whatever, they are
built
, my friends! Every single one of them, I swear to you!”

“Just a second!” CB's father said, still smiling. “We're talking about you, not me! My life is my concern. And, by the way, I never said I was perfect.”

“My father,” says Ketcia, “is the exact opposite: he's afraid of women. If a sexy woman even comes near him, he starts stuttering and shaking. Once, he was serving a friend of my mother's, a tall, beautiful woman, and he spilled the whole bottle of wine on her dress. The twit!”

“Anyway,” CB's father continued, “we're not going to get along any better by insulting each other. Listen, I've been
thinking about something for a while. I wanted to talk to you about it. You know, I've been driving the taxi now for three years. Let's just say I'm starting to get tired of it.”

“Since we came to Canada,” CB explains, “my father has tried all kinds of businesses. The problem is, none of them have worked.”

“What I mean is, if I'm going to live like a zombie,” his father continued, “I'd rather do it in Haiti.”

“In Haiti,” says CB, “there's always family to help him out. Even if he won't admit it, I think that's what he misses most: his family.”

“But it's a zoo down there!” Mixon says. “Everybody knows that. It's even fucking dangerous right now.”

“What would you say about coming to Haiti with me?” his father suggested. “A few months, to try things out and see if we want to stay.”

“What?” says Mixon. “You leaving us, CB?”

“Are you crazy!” replies CB. “He brings that one out two or three times a year, when he's depressed. I tell him if he pays the flight, I'd be happy to go on a little vacation. But I know perfectly well we'll never go.”

“Going would do you a lot of good,” his father said. “Maybe you think I don't know you get drunk every weekend? That you smoke and skip classes? This society is corrupting you and it hurts me to see you like this.”

“My father says that all the time,” Mixon remarks. “He says Haiti may be poor, but it's a healthier society.”

“And let me tell you,” CB's father went on, “all that you've got left of Haiti is your looks. You're becoming more and more Québecois. Like one of my friends would say, you're getting Westernized!”

“What are you talking about?” CB said. “All my friends are Haitian. I even formed a group to defend our rights, just like you taught me yourself. And you say I'm not Haitian anymore?”

“Look at what you're wearing,” his father retorted. “You dress like a rapper, you run to McDonald's whenever I give you money. You speak Creole less and less. And, and this is the big one, what do you know about Haiti? Not much. . . .”

“Maybe not, compared to you,” CB said. “But at school, I swear, I'm the most Haitian of all the Haitians. Ask any of my friends.”

“I can only imagine what your kids will be like,” his father laughed. “They'll hardly be able to find Haiti on a map!”

CB leans against the door of the pickup, still hurt by what his father said. They all seem to be lost in their thoughts as the streetlights come on. Mixon steps away from the group and, concentrating hard, stares at his shadow and starts to box.

“In any case,” he says, throwing jabs, “it doesn't matter who's more Haitian than who. All our parents think they're better than us 'cause they know Haiti better and they even talk Creole. But I'm here to tell you that's a load of B.S. . . . What matters right now is that the Latinos killed Vaudou and we're not going to take it.”

“Yeah,” says CB. “The next step will be extorsion. I guarantee that'll settle them down.”

“Excellent idea,” says Mixon enthusiastically, feverishly jumping an imaginary rope, imitating a professional boxer. “I'm telling you, if I had a Latino in front of me right here, right now, I'd squash him like a bug.”

“Right,” adds Ketcia, “brag about it a little more. And when we're face to face with the Latinos, who's the first one to shit his pants?”

Mixon comes to a standstill, out of breath, and all together the others shout, “Mixooooooon!”

 

A week before, Sister Cécile had received an honour that had left her pensive: at an elaborate ceremony at a five-star, downtown hotel, she'd been given a commemorative plaque emphasizing her
fifty years of service to the Catholic School Board of Montreal. There was a long reminder that, with her seventy-four summers, as the superintendent put it, she was the oldest teacher in the city, a fact that disconcerted her somewhat. So much in fact that, when she returned to the mother house that night she wasn't feeling happy as she had first thought, but rather defeated: had there been a rush to celebrate her, now that she was soon to leave this lowly world? During the following days, two other questions occurred to her, and these were even more stubborn. Was she still a woman of her time? Wasn't it time for her to hang up her skates, as one of her nephews teasingly said, and retire? God in heaven, what if everyone was right?

Since her earliest childhood, she'd known she'd be a teacher, admiring nothing more than the work of those who had taught her. Towards the end of her teenage years, this premonition was confirmed: children brought her the greatest gratification. When she joined the community of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, she was moved by two convictions: serving the Lord with all the impetuous devotion of her youth, and dedicating her life to children. And that was exactly what she had done. At the same time, she'd witnessed the transformation that Quebec, and Montreal in particular, had undergone, and this hadn't always occurred without her heart tightening just a little. Sometimes, kneeling in Église Saint Pascal, her thoughts would roam and, troubled, she would wonder what had happened. What had happened to the people, the landscapes, the scenes of her youth? Originally from Sainte-Agathe, she'd first come to Montreal as a teen, and had never again left. Often, jokingly, in front of the other nuns, she'd say it was the love of her life, and the others would giggle like young girls, covering their mouths with their hands.

Sometimes she got angry with the so-called progress that had so changed what she cherished: a peaceful, healthy life, where nature occupied a prime position. That's why she thought it was important to tell the children what Côte-des-Neiges had been
like at the time: on Sundays, young ladies showed off their lace dresses with a parasol on their shoulders, the men, in brown suits with white shirts and fedoras, smoothed their moustaches admiringly, coachmen paraded black carriages, farmers drove carts overflowing with fruits and vegetables. Didn't they know, she would say facing the children, raising a finger as if to announce they were about to be astonished, people came great distances, sometimes even from the other side of Mount Royal, to buy inexpensive vegetables? It didn't matter what countries the children were from, their reaction was always the same: they'd rush to the window and follow the flow of cars: horses on the Côte-des-Neiges? No, it was impossible! Really, Sister Cécile?

It pained her to think those days were gone forever. Sometimes, it's true, a reminder of the Quebec of her childhood would appear to her, as when that grandfather came to get his grand-daughter's report card and they'd chatted for more than an hour, laughing and joking, like old friends meeting again after a long separation. But that was an isolated incident, and that made those times even more solemn and sad. Other times, she thought it had to be her own fault and she'd tell herself she hadn't aged well. On still other occasions, she'd stiffen up and tell herself she shouldn't make excuses and close her eyes. Just as Sister Lacasse had commented one evening at dinner, culture, their culture, real culture, was dying. Sister Cécile didn't blame anyone for this, but had it really been the right decision to accept all these children who came from all over the world? Sometimes she wondered. She adored them, she dreamed about them, bored the other nuns telling so many stories of their successes and their blunders, but she always asked herself the same question.

Why did certain children integrate better than others? How was it that some of them, as early as grade five, rejected Québécois culture outright? Was it the parents' fault? Sometimes she wondered about the upbringing and discipline they received at home. Like that Cléo Bastide, his head always in the clouds, his
homework almost always incomplete, only interested in sports, what kind of parents did he have? She had no idea, since they hadn't come to the report card distribution. The parents of the worst students never showed their faces.

That morning, the bell rang when she was still in the schoolyard, chatting with a co-worker. She hurried into the classroom: if she wanted to teach the students punctuality, she'd better practise it herself. They were all seated at their desks, except Cléo, of course, who was on his tiptoes, watching the pedestrians out the window. As she removed her boots, she simply said, “Cléo? I thought I heard the bell ring. Didn't you?”

Without answering, the boy hurried to his desk. He was smiling as usual. At first, she'd thought he was mocking her, then she'd understood, it was a nervous smile. Maybe this was the right time to find out more about him. As she slipped on her shoes, she asked, “Tell me, Cléo. You told me you wanted to be a sprinter when you grow up, right?”

“Yes, Sister Cécile.”

“I was wondering: why do you want to be an athlete? Because you're already good at sports?”

“Yes, a little. But it's because I love to run, too . . . Oh, Sister Cécile, a friend of my mother's told me that if some day I can be one of the best runners in Canada, I could make a lot of money. Is that true?”

“I don't know, Cléo. What I can tell you, is that it's very difficult to become the best in Canada. But why do you want to make money?”

“That way, my mother wouldn't have any more problems.”

“You want to help your mother. That's good.”

“Then she could paint in peace and her paintings would be better.”

Ah-ha, the mother was an artist.

“Even if you want to be an athlete, you have to do well in French and in math.”

The boy seemed frustrated.

“I don't see how knowing my multiplication tables can help me run faster.”

“If you're a good student, you'll be able to use your head better to find out what weaknesses are keeping you from going faster.”

“My mother says just the opposite. If I want to play sports, she says, I don't have to go to school.”

“Well, then, you can tell your mother I don't share her opinion.”

Sister Cécile went to her desk. Obviously, there was nothing she could do with this poor boy. She took out a notebook from the top drawer and opened it to the page where the bookmark was. Sweeping her gaze across the class, “Your lesson was to learn the twelve times table. So, who's going to volunteer?”

She knew for a fact that no one would raise their hand and that she'd have to pick someone, but she always asked the question. A religious silence settled upon the class. Then, she made a point of choosing Claudia, an excellent student, to get things started, then Humbertino, a student who produced mediocre work. Both had learned their times table. After each student's turn, she asked the others to give a round of applause. Then her eyes fell upon Cléo, who avoided looking at her.

“Your turn, Cléo.”

When he got up, the others muttered and chuckled and, sweeping her gaze over the whole class, she demanded silence. With a slight nod, she motioned for Cléo to begin. The boy looked up at the ceiling.