Catboy (4 page)

Back home my grandparents had helped out. I knew all we had to do was ask and they'd help us now too, but Mom didn't want that. I understood.

I was looking forward to seeing them again. We planned to go back for a week at Christmas, but that seemed like a million years away.

I plopped the bowl and the bag of potatoes on the coffee table. I could watch tv while I worked.

I clicked on the Cartoon Network.
Spiderman
was on. I loved Spiderman. He was one of my favorite super-heroes. When I was a kid, I dreamed I would develop superpowers. So far, the only skill I'd managed to fully develop was the ability to peel potatoes at superhuman speed—faster than a speeding bullet! If ever there was an evil villain depriving people of potatoes, me and my peeler would be ready. I could already see the police commissioner shining a spotlight in the sky—a light shaped like a gigantic spud—to call me.

I held the peeler above my head as if it was a weapon.

The city would cheer for me. I'd be Mr. Potato Peeler! Wait, that sounds too much like Mr. Potato Head. How about Spudman? Yes, Spudman, able to overcome mounds of potatoes and—hold on, I wasn't Spudman. I was
Catboy
! Defender of cats, saving them from harm, assisted by my trusty sidekick, Simon the Korean Kid, master of tae kwon do. I'd be armed with both my potato peeler and rocks, ready to hurl them at my opponents with laser precision.

Of course, those would be our secret identities. During the day, we would be mild-mannered grade-six students. At night—well, early evening or after school—we would assume our secret identities. Actually, it might be better if I kept Simon's secret identity a secret from
him
.

The lobby buzzer squealed, and I jumped. It was probably my sidekick, the Korean Kid, wanting me to either play basketball or fight evil.

I raced over to the intercom and pushed the button. “Hello?”

“Thirty minutes is past. Are you coming down?” Simon asked.

“I'm coming.”

“Bring your basketball,” he said.

“For sure.”

I guess that meant we were playing basketball. If it was something heroic, he would have asked me to bring the potato peeler. Speaking of which, I had almost forgotten the potatoes. I ran back to the living room, grabbed the bowl, brought it back to the kitchen and filled the bowl with water. I cleaned up the peelings and was ready to go.

Six

“Okay, everybody, let's put away our math,” Mr. Spence said. “I want you to get out your reading book. It's time for silent reading.”

Everybody instantly did what he said. He hardly ever needed to repeat himself. At first I thought it was because everybody was scared of him. I know
I
was scared of him at first. He was
huge
, and when he gave us the I-mean-business look, I don't think anybody, kid or adult, ever messed with him.

Simon had told me Mr. Spence used to be a professional football player. I could see that, because he
looked
like he used to play football. But I quickly discovered that kids listened to him just because. He
could
have been scary, but he wasn't. He was really nice. Kids did what he asked because he asked them to. Maybe it was the way he treated us. He was an adult and we were just kids, but he treated us with respect.

“Okay, before we begin,” he said, “I want everybody to repeat after me.”

I knew what was coming next. Everybody knew. He always did the same thing before silent reading.

“The more you read,” he called out.

“The more you read!” we all said back.

“The more you know,” he said.

“The more you know,” we repeated.

“The more you know,” he said. His voice got louder with each phrase.

“The more you know!” we yelled back.

“The further you go!”

“The further you go!” we yelled out.

“So read, read, read!”

“So read, read, read!” we screamed.

“That's what I love!” he said. “Now get reading!”

I'd never known a teacher who was so excited about reading or who got students so excited about it. It was as if we were preparing for the reading Olympics. Mr. Spence had a running total of the books we'd read. The list ran around the walls of our classroom.

He wanted
us
to love reading because he loved reading too. While we read, he read as well. He would sit up front, his feet up on his desk, and read. Sometimes it was a newspaper, or
Sports Illustrated
, which he said was about the best thing in the world. He also read novels— some were adult books but others were kids' novels. Sometimes he read books that students recommended to him. He also read poetry and short stories and technical sorts of journals, comic books and graphic novels. He said reading was reading; all we had to do was find something we liked.

I knew he was a teacher and trying to be a good role model for us. But I could also tell Mr. Spence simply loved to read. Then again, who didn't?

My eyes strayed up to the big posters on the bulletin board behind his desk that displayed the words for
Hello
in fifteen different languages, the same fifteen languages spoken by the kids in our class. Some were easy for me to make out, but others were written with letters or symbols that were like little pictures or strange marks. I knew one was Korean and another Chinese— no, not Chinese—Mandarin or Cantonese. There was also Cambodian, Arabic and Russian.

I tried to imagine how hard it would have been for those kids to come to this country and not speak or read English. It would have been so hard. Amazingly, they all seemed to pick it up fast. There was a kid in our class who had been in the country for less than a year, and he read almost as well as I did.

I took French, so I understood a little bit about learning a different language. But there were words that were the same in French as in English. Not just the letters of the alphabet, but words that we had borrowed from each other like
croissant
,
auto
,
café
and
pizza
. No,
pizza
was Italian.

Looking up at the words on the posters—those squiggles and symbols and little drawings—I had no idea whatsoever what some meant. It really would have been hard for kids who came from places that didn't share the same alphabet as we used.

“Taylor,” Mr. Spence said.

I'd been so lost in thought, I hadn't noticed him coming over to my desk.

“Yes, sir.”

“It's time for silent reading, not silent staring into space.”

“I
was
reading,” I said. “I was reading the posters on the wall. I was trying to figure out which languages are which.”

He looked up at the posters. “That's right. We didn't say what languages they are. It should be written below. We need to fix that.” He walked to the front of the class. “I'm sorry to interrupt, but Taylor has pointed out something we need to correct.” He gestured to the posters. “We have proudly displayed the languages of our class, but we have failed to proudly write which languages they are. Let's take them down, one by one, and correct that.”

The first poster he pulled down was a word I was pretty sure I knew. It was in Spanish. We had kids from two different countries in South America, Bolivia and Chile. I remembered that almost all of South America spoke Spanish, not Bolivian or Chilean. Brazil was one of the exceptions, where they spoke Portuguese.

“That one is mine and Agnes's,” Salvador said. “That is Spanish.”

I put up my hand.

“Yes, Taylor.”

“Could people also say the word again so we can hear it?”

“Again, a good suggestion. You are full of good ideas today,” Mr. Spence said.

Hearing him say that made me feel happy and kind of proud.

“Go ahead, Salvador and Agnes,” Mr. Spence said.

“
Hola
,” the two of them said together.

“Very good. Can you both say it once more, and then I'd like everybody to repeat it back to them,” Mr. Spence said.

When we all repeated the word back to them together, they smiled. It was as if we'd given them something, a gift, and maybe we had
.

“I'm going to write
Spanish
underneath,” Mr. Spence said, “but I'm also going to write your two countries as well.”

We went poster by poster, language by language, with kids saying their native
hello
and the rest of us repeating it. Some were harder for me to say than others. The words or letters just wouldn't form easily in my mouth. If that's how it was for me, was it the same for someone learning to speak English?

Each time the class answered back, it seemed to make the person happy. Even kids who were shy smiled.

“And whose is this one?” Mr. Spence asked.

“That's ours,” both Jaime and Dylan said.

I looked over at Simon, and he mouthed
Mandarin
to me.

“And that is Mandarin,” Mr. Spence said. “It is one of the two major languages spoken in China. The other is, of course…who has an answer?”

Hands shot up around the room, including that of Doris, who spoke Cantonese. This was fun, and it had been my idea!

Seven

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Simon didn't walk home with me. He went to a special math class. How strange, to be as fantastic as he was at math and still go to special lessons. Then again, maybe that's why he
was
so good. In some ways he was no different than the kids who were rep basketball players and went to basketball camp every summer, or people who had a great jump shot but spent hours on the court taking shots.

I went to cross the road, hesitated, and looked around a parked truck as a car sped by only inches from my face. I staggered back. I was more aware of the traffic now, but it still unnerved me.

Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars, bumper to bumper. I didn't know how they would ever get out. There was a gap in the traffic, and I shot past several passing cars. If you waited until there were no vehicles to cross the street, you'd be waiting all day. Simon used to kid me about that—
Don't they have cars
where you come from?
he'd ask—so I'd made a point of walking more “city.” Back home the drivers looked out for people crossing the road, especially around schools. They'd slow down and sometimes even stop and wave you across. Here in the city, it was as if the drivers got bonus points for close calls with pedestrians.

Where I grew up, there were cars and pickup trucks, but not much else. Here there were so many cars and trucks, big and little, as well as lots of bikes, mopeds and motorcycles. A bus line connected to the subway that ran alongside the main roads. The only public transit system in our old town was a local taxi— Bert's Taxi.

I knew Toronto wasn't that far from our old town, but it was so different, it was as if I was in a different country. In my old town there were houses, of course, but nothing like here. There were a lot more of them here, but there were so many different styles. There were singles, attached and row houses, and they were all painted different colors and in different states of repair. Some were neat and tidy with perfect lawns and flowers. Others looked like they were abandoned. In between the houses were stores, offices, apartments and factories, all stuffed together like a crazy patchwork quilt. And in the city there were people, lots and lots of people everywhere. Our old downtown had been a few stores, the Legion, the arena and the beer store.

I'd been thinking about heading through the hole in the junkyard fence, but I was worried about running into those bullies. Even Catboy didn't want to face those evildoers without the assistance of the Korean Kid. But I did want to see the cats.

I changed direction and headed toward the main gate. I could find Mr. Singh and take him up on his offer to go in through the front.

I approached the fence surrounding the junkyard. A canvas covering over the fence blocked what was on the other side, but I could see the cars—a mess of wrecks and parts strewn about—through some large rips and tears.

There was a little guardhouse beside the fence, and towering over it was a gigantic billboard. It showed a big, shiny-new building and the words
COMING
SOON—CONDOS—LIVE THE CALIFORNIAN WAY!

I'd seen enough tv shows set in California to know that there was nothing about that building that looked Californian. But, hold on a second, did that mean the junkyard was becoming condos?

“Hello, my friend!”

I looked over. It was Mr. Singh. I waved, and he walked out of the guardhouse toward me.

“Are they building condos here?”

“Yes, coming soon,” he said. “That is what the sign said when it was put up
three
years ago. It is now an old sign, and there are no condos planned, so maybe we should not always believe what is written.”

“Oh, that's good.”

“I am sure it will happen one day though,” he said. “Nothing stays the same.”

I knew that.

“This neighborhood was for working people, regular people, but now the land is too valuable to stay a junkyard forever. I sit here and watch things. I guess that is what a security guard is supposed to do. But I also think about what I see. I have seen the stores on the street changing,” he said. “The dollar stores and instant loan places and Laundromats are being replaced.”

“They are? There's still a dollar store.”

“There used to be three. Two are gone. One became a yoga studio, and the other is a place serving four-dollar cups of coffee. Can you imagine
any
cup of coffee in the world worth
four
dollars?” He laughed. “What are they doing, serving it in a cup made of gold?”

I shook my head in agreement. I liked listening to him talk. It wasn't only the things he said, but the way he said them. There was a sort of rhythm to his words that was musical.