Red Jacket (13 page)

Gramps would be pleased to know about Colin. Not that she set out to do any act of charity, for she count herself more than comforted by the child. She will write Gramps about it in her Christmas letter, also Lindsay, who finally send a koala bear postcard saying he is settled in.

So while Steph looking forward to her release from restraints and busy with plans to drive home to Warsaw, Grace visiting Colin every day, squeezing time from her studies, reading to him, taking him little gifts. He is not better. There are more tubes stuck in him now, and once, for a few days, she never see him at all for he was in the ICU, and since she not family, they wouldn't let her in. Now she is praying hard, so frantic that she is making a novena, with Steph's guidance. So much for Edris's fundamentalist aunt! She don't know why she feel this burden to make him well, or at any rate do what she can to help him.

“We'd love you to spend Christmas with us,” Steph is asking Grace to Warsaw for her second Christmas in the cold. “Don't know why you insist on being here alone when the world is sitting round the fire, partying with family and friends.”

“Steph, I tell you already, till last year at your house, having never been a girl guide, a cowboy, or a cannibal, I never yet spend time sitting round a fire.”

“Very funny! Okay. I can't see why you'd rather stay alone here than be somewhere with people, having some fun.”

“It's generous of you to ask me, but I can't. I have plenty studying to do.”

“Blah, blah, blah. I know perfectly well why you're not coming. You're staying to visit Colin.”

“I'm not staying to visit him. Not saying I won't, but I have plenty to keep me busy here.”

“You is a big woman, my dear.” Steph is learning Chrissie Creole. “Suit yourself. But if you decide you rather sit by the fireplace and watch drifting snow, just jump on the bus to Peterborough, and call me when you reach.”

Two days before Christmas, a jolly Grace in a Santa cap arrive to visit Colin with a bundle of storybooks from the library and a bunch of red balloons with reindeer on them. She find a empty bed. The buxom old nurse tell her Colin died early that morning. She don't reply to the nurse's news, just stand for a minute, then say, “Thanks for letting me know. Bye now. Happy Christmas!”

She take the elevator down, release the balloons as she step into the cold, pass by the library, slip the books into the return slot, walk over to the dorm, throw some stuff in a bag, and head for the subway.

She have to steady her voice to talk to Steph, when she call her from the bus station in Toronto. What with Colin's dying, never mind the novena, the visits, the muttered prayers, it is clear that the Almighty Father is again toying with her. No way is she busing it to Peterborough only to find that plans in the Scott household have changed and they are gone to Tenerife to spend the holiday season in the sun!

“Hi Steph? It's me, Grace. If it's okay, I'm coming down today — in fact, now, on the twelve-thirty bus. Can you please pick me up?”

Snow-white sheets obliterating every contour leave her wrapped up in her thoughts. What was it with her and this child? In truth he and she resemble, and in truth she long to have kin that favour her, so maybe it was that? Is not because she want a child, but maybe she was thinking it was time to have a man in her life, and as every woman know, the two things is one.

But none of that is important. Colin was here, didn't have enough to eat, and died. She not sure what else she could have done, but it hadn't been enough.

Grace Joins a Battle

Grace never figure out what make her write to the white people's newspaper! Maybe it was Gramps advice to say her say. Maybe she never close the door on Colin tight enough. Maybe she was just blind vex. No matter what, it come like a bad joke that she get herself tied up in affairs right up Lindsay's street when he was way to the devil on the other side of the world. Lucky she have Steph, or not a doubt that Ma and Pa would be flying to Toronto to rescue her from the psych ward.

2 January 1978

The Editor,

The Globe and Mail

Dear Sir,

I write concerning an event that took place two days before Christmas: a ten-year-old boy died of kwashiorkor in Toronto General Hospital. Kwashiokor
is a starvation disease. I am appalled that in a country so wealthy, a city so fine, a state-run health system that is celebrated as one of the best in the world, anyone, let alone a child, should die for lack of food. Or did he die because he was black? It would be interesting to see the statistics on malnutrition in this city and province, broken down by race.

Yours sincerely,

Grace Carpenter

Next day the newspaper publish a response from a man name Mr. A. King — ha-ha! “Is this the voice of an ungrateful immigrant bleating about healthcare in a country with the best system for delivering it in the world?” Whereupon he proceed to complain about “delinquent immigrant parents” and say is on account of them that the child die.

4 January 1978

The Editor,

The Globe and Mail

Dear Sir,

Your reader, Mr. A. King, is mistaken in thinking I am an immigrant. I am a student at the University of Toronto, and I have every intention of returning to my country once I have completed my studies.

I was raised to live up to my responsibilities in any community of which I find myself a part, however briefly. At this moment, Toronto is that community. What I find enlightening, and frightening, is that there is not a word addressing the issue I raised — one of social welfare — in Mr. King's response. The community of which I speak is after all, his. I will leave it in due course, while he perforce will stay.

I would have expected him to be more concerned.

Yours sincerely,

Grace Carpenter

Mr. King come back with the advice that she “shouldn't worry her head about the health and welfare of this community,” since it was “fine before she came and would remain so after she had gone.” He also remind her that Canada was in the First and not the Third World. At that point, she elect to let the matter drop, for the back-and-forth not achieving anything.

Wishful thinking! Polite disagreement blossom into a big kas-kas. The fuss in the
Globe and Mail
hop nimbly over to a magazine called
City Weekly,
and another called
Current,
where a writer name Mary Hellman take it up in her column. People now writing letters and columnists taking sides, but by this time, Grace staying out of it. The flare-up in
Current
was early in February, and she despair when the sparks from that fire ignite the student papers in March.

At that point, the Foreign Students Association get in on the act. Unhappy with the lightly veiled racism underlying some of the commentary, they arrange a discussion on April 7. Grace never want to have anything to do with it, for she have plenty work, but they press her, and she finally agree to participate. Flyers trumpet that the forum will encourage a “frank and free exchange.”

So at seven o'clock in the lounge at Hardy House, Grace, Malcolm Hinds, presenter of “This City Now,” a program on the campus radio station, CIUT, and Mary Hellman from
Current
are scheduled to be on a panel. After that, there will be comments and questions from the floor. Grace share her misgivings with the chairman, a Nigerian medical student named Kwame Edo. She tell him she not up-to-date on the relevant figures concerning incidence of death among youth in the city, whether by sickness or otherwise, and other statistics and information relevant to the discussion. Also, she suspect that her mouth going lock up with fright, plus she not able to compromise her scholarship. He assure her it will go well.

Grace present herself in the student lounge at 6:45 p.m. to find that Steph is already there, gently flirting with Kwame and a next man, still in his winter coat, who must be Malcolm Hinds. She see one, two other people in the room, but the attendance is sparse. Kwame wave her over, looking at his watch as she walking across.

“We've made a big blunder, and also hit some bad luck,” Kwame get right to it. “We've just been discussing what to do about it.”

“What kind of blunder?” Grace ask.

“As you see, there aren't many of us gathered here.”

“I can see that. Yes.”

“Also, we've had a phone call from the columnist at the
Current,”
Kwame is irritated,
“
to say she'll be late. We're wondering if we should reschedule.”

“Okay. That's the ‘also.' What about the big blunder?”

“Tonight's the very first Toronto Blue Jays game. Ever.” He shrug. “We forgot. I don't think anyone else is going to show up. Plenty people are either at the game or watching it on TV. Several of the Trotskyites were here earlier, but when a fellow came in to report that police were working over some students in front of Robarts, and they heard that there was violence, they scooted off.”

“There's something else.” Malcolm Hinds, flecks of snow still decorating hair and coat, sniffle into a handkerchief. “Some senior ladies who run the William Wordsworth Society have been promoting a free event, with Donald Sutherland reading Wordsworth's poetry, for today. It's on at Hart House, donuts and coffee afterwards.”

“Donald Sutherland? How could they manage that?” Kwame ask.

“U of T graduate. It's his birthday. He's two hundred and eight,” contributed by Steph, helpful, smiling at Kwame.

“Sutherland?” Kwame, incredulous.

Steph gurgle, “No, silly. Wordsworth!”

Hinds, restless, ready to leave, snort into the hanky again. “I'm going there after this. There's a rumour one of the ladies had an affair with Sutherland. She was here as a mature student. I'm interviewing her.”

He shake Kwame's hand, nod goodbye to the others.

“I'll be in touch about a reschedule. Thanks, man.”

“No trouble. You have my number.”

The Toronto Blue Jays won, the city was euphoric, the old ladies produced a fine actor named Donald Sutherland, but not the movie star. Grace wrote Lindsay about the whole affair. He never answered. The event was never rescheduled.

In the end, good come from bad, as Pa maintain. When she add Colin's death to a discussion about hungry-belly children pre-empted by a ball game and multiply the sum by the controversy her letters cause, the result equal a revision of what she intend to study. It was like, by means of the letters, she reach out to touch a set of circumstances larger than herself, a web of contemptible attitudes and behaviours that recall Manny, Aloysius, and the kowtowing dance in Toronto General on the day she find out migraines been tormenting her since she was a child. She going ally herself with her Christophian countrymen at the hospital, join the struggle, and “do her do” as best she can.

At the end of August, Lindsay come back, looking tall and suave. She could see he was dressing instead of just putting clothes on, and he have the tiniest bit of a Australian accent. He greet her as if he write her a letter every day, proclaim how rigorous the program was, how he scurry around with assignments all year long, how every letter from her make him glad.

He say he staying in Toronto till fall and he hope to see lots of her. He is very charming, and so Grace forgive him. Once he come, Steph tease her, say she look gorgeous and glowing. True, whether sake of Lindsay, summer, or both, she feel good: no migraines, no sick stomach, no splotchy vision. But she always feel better once it get warm, even when the temperature rise a little in winter. Anytime that happen, she is bouncy, cruising smooth. Studying is easy — she understand with no effort. Lindsay persuade her to go with him to watch the Caribana festival parade. She enjoy the music, but not the dancing and the daring costumes. Lindsay tease her and tell her she is a prude.

Many a time afterwards, as she contemplate the mad course she plot that summer, she wonder if the up-and-down cycle of good-then-bad feeling is because she is really crazy. After all, madness run in the blood, and she, poor she, don't know whose blood is in her! The crazy course she set concern a lovey-dovey affair.

Lovey-dovey is all around, hand holding, bum squeezing, deep-throat kissing in the library stacks, on the street corner, at every kind of event. Pa had a way to hum a calypso tune, “Love, Love Alone,” about how the ex-King of England love Miss Simpson so much he give up his throne for her.

She don't know about that kind of love, don't have no example of it in her life. Pa love Ma for sure, but nothing like that. And Pansy was just force ripe and ready for big-woman business. Grace know about sex, of course, like every country pikni
.
Sudden as a midday rainstorm, she is back on the mattress in Wentley, listening to the susuing nightly news, as delivered by Pansy, Stewie, and Edgar, after Ma fall asleep, all ears upright, alarmed by the multitudinous dangers awaiting those who risk the highways and byways of illicit sexual activity.

Ma tell her before she leave that never mind she is a big brains, she is a woman too, so she better be thoughtful about any attachment she form and she better make sure not to rush into anything. “Don't make any sweet-mouth man coax you to open your legs before you good and ready!” Lindsay arrive back in Toronto when she make up her mind she is ready — for what, she never really know. She know the mechanics, of course, and courtesy of Beastly Buxton, a swell-up penis come near enough to her parts. But as she make her plan that July, the memory of what she flee from at Miss Carmen's should have prompt her to consider “good” as well as “ready.”

True, she like Lindsay; he like her; they are easy with each other. He is sort of shy; she like that about him. And true, he probably need encouraging, but she confident she can do that. And she is not any immature adolescent, seducing him like Pansy seduce Mortimer. She is a big woman, old enough to do what everybody else is doing, Lindsay no doubt included. But also true that Lindsay never send her any romantic signals, and equally true she never really have any romantic feelings about him.

It turn out worse than her wildest imagining. She never throw herself at him for it never get that far. All the same, she end up feeling trashy. And poor Lindsay! Embarrassed to confess he never like her “in that way.” She couldn't stop bawling, she feel so shame. She vex with Steph for going home for the weekend. She vex with Lindsay for coming to Toronto. She vex with everything and everybody. She so mash up that next day, Sunday, she find her way to Beloved, first time in months. She jump and clap in the service like a jack-in-the-box, glad when they fuss round her, vowing regular attendance after that.

One week later she get a letter from Lindsay to say that in truth he love a Carpenter, but not she — her brother, Edgar, the sad poet. It never take her long to get into the ring with her favorite boxing partner.
Buff!
Why, if he is God Almighty, he never whisper caution into her ear?
Buff!
Why he so bad mind when she never do him anything?
Buff!
How come he hate her so, hate her since she was little?
Buff!
Why he don't want her to fit anywhere? Not into the Carpenter family, not properly. Certainly not into the snooty high school in Queenstown. Not in this cold, foreign place where they count her as a alien.
Buff! Buff! Buff!
Not even in a normal man-woman relationship!
Buff!
She throw blows so fast, the Deity don't get a chance to land a return punch.

Then she remember Edgar and Lindsay. Lindsay insist they are a couple, from as long ago as when he was in St. Chris. Couple or not, her brother is in big trouble. Sodomy is illegal in St. Chris. Homosexuals have to hide, all except the rich and powerful. But she can't think of anything to do to help. Edgar have to tell the others, if he choose. Then, if he smart, he will escape, maybe here to Toronto, where they mostly live and let live in those matters.

She take more tablets than she should, go to bed, and stay there for three days, pillow on her head, drinking warm Coke, eating plain crackers, cursing a God who keep picking on her and who now take set on her poor brother. A pebbly voice remind her she is going to a fine university, free of charge; she have forebears and siblings that love her; a down-to-earth roommate she get along with; a church community that always glad to see her; and the very best marks.

So what?