The Amazing Absorbing Boy (30 page)

Then he moved to bottoms. He said very seriously, “You know the bottom is the best part of a woman. It give you a good idea of what kinda shape she in. It have nothing better in the world than a nice rosy little bottom. It does get me stiff just talking about it. Imagine that, at my age.” He began to talk about one of his girlfriends and in his tipsy way, asked if I had ever screwed a Canadian. We were on the streetcar at the time and he was talking loudly. Two old women glanced at us nastily and Uncle Boysie whispered (thankfully), “Look at them two old bat. They get old and they close up shop now. But they still hot like hell, just give them a chance.” He winked at the old women and they looked away quickly.

Maybe his mood latched on to me because when he asked again if I had a girlfriend I told him I did and—trying to make her exotic—mentioned all her tattoos. All of a sudden his old “uncle voice” returned. “Eh? Tattoos? She will eat you raw.” I remained quiet after that. He stuck with the uncle voice as we were making our way to our building, almost as if we had not spent the last two hours gazing at naked women bending backward, forward, and sideways. In the elevator he said, “You father just disappear this morning. Maybe we should have carried him with us tonight. Woulda be good therapy.”

“What therapy?” I asked as I opened the door.

“Something for he nervousness.” He gazed around. “Like he gone again. You accustom to this aloneness, boy?”

“Is not all that bad.”

“But you alone here in the nights. Nobody to call if any trouble strike. Surrounded by strangers. You know any of these people next door?”

“Everybody here does keep to themselves.”

“Yes, I notice that.” He placed his hat on the television and sat on the couch. “But you and all practically grow up by youself. No father, no brother, no sister, and hardly any friends too. Was a good preparation for this Cyanadian life. You open the envelope I give to you?”

“I thought it was for my birthday.”

“It have a thousand in it. The government tightening up on foreign exchange now so whatever I give you will have to be in instalments.”

“You don’t have to give me anything, Uncle Boysie.”

“And what I will do with all me money? Give it to who?” He loosened his trouser button. “You know something, Sammy? You is the first person in the family who so ambitious. I can’t figger out where you get it from. I can’t figger it out. Eh?” I wasn’t sure if he was asking me a question but I remembered that less than two years earlier Miss Charles, our English teacher at Mayaro Composite, had hinted that most orphans were doomed to become pickpockets and petty thieves. Pantamoolie, my friend, had cast them as willing victims, as he claimed to know of a bunch that had sold kidneys and hearts and stones to rich Germans. But I had thought of other orphans, Batman and Spider-Man, and most of the X-Men and the Legion who had refused to give in; each eventually locating their special power and patiently understanding
how to properly use it. Sometimes I placed Loykie in this category, even though he had a mother.

Uncle Boysie was saying, “You mother woulda be happy, boy. Happy like pappy that you working and studying with some plan in mind. You know …” He paused.

“Know what?” I had to ask him.

“You know, Sylvie … you mother always wanted you to come up here but deep down in she heart, she was worried like hell that you would end up like you father. When she first get sick she give me a letter for you father. She make me promise over and over that I would tell him to send for you and God will punish me if I lie, so I have to tell you that I hold back on that letter for months. Had it right below me cash register all the time. I believe Sylvie write it when she realize that …” His voice went a little downhill. “In that sick state, still pretending that he was regularly sending down money. Is only one thing that make me contact you father. One.”

Because he got quiet I prodded him, “What, Uncle Boysie?”

“When you father pick up he ass and leave, the plan was that he would send for the two of allyou. One year run into two, and two into three, and still you mother keep telling everybody that it was just a matter of time. I think she stop believing after a while and it was just shame that full she mouth with that talk. Sometimes when I take a little too much grog … late-late in the night I does feel that she didn’t dead from any damn cancer. She just get tired of waiting.” He crossed his
legs and pulled up his socks. “After a while Sylvie wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. She just fall in the habit.”

For a full five minutes I went over the question that had been bothering me for as long as I could remember. I felt embarrassed to ask but decided I might never get the opportunity again. “In the beginning, did my parent ever …” But I couldn’t continue.

Maybe Uncle Boysie knew what was going through my mind because he answered right off the bat, as if he had come to Canada especially to reveal this to me. “You father was always walking around with his head in the cloud as if he was better than everybody else. He used to wear these raincoats in the hot sun. Once he borrow or buy a old Vauxhall and even after it was haul away by the wrecker he continue wearing fancy driving gloves. He always wanted to be different. One time he decide to open up a dentist business and for a month in Mayaro it had teeth flying out from people mouth or splitting in two or clamping shut on a piece of meat. Nearly kill half the village.” He smiled a bit but immediately got serious once more. “That was when he meet you mother. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. I do some investigations.”

I had to prod him as he seemed lost in his recollection. “What you found out?”

“Well, boy, I discover that you father was born in Sangre Grande and he had no idea who his own father was. But you know how
mauvais langue
Trinidad is, so it had a ton of rumours. According to these rumour, his father was anybody
from the Portogee shopkeeper to a drunkard fella who was always falling down on the road. Anyways, I find out that you father get kick around from captain to cook when he was growing up. From pillar to post.”

“And what about Auntie Umbrella?”

“She get adopt by some Cyanadian missionary. Adopt or servant, I really can’t say. But I think she had a different father. Some black stumpy fella, most likely.”

“How come nobody ever tell me any of this before?”

“Eh? You know how worried I use to be that you mother might one day reveal this to you. But she and all probably didn’t believe anything bad about him. At least not in the beginning.” And right there in the living room Uncle Boysie told me how my father would come to his shop where my mother was working at the time, and chat her up with all his big ideas. “One day I get out me
gilpin
and threaten to
planass
him on the spot if he didn’t stop his foolishness. The next morning you mother disappear. You sure you want to hear all this, boy?”

“Yes, yes.”

“All right then. You is a big man now. You peeing froth. You going to strip place and thing. So as I was saying, I look up and down the island for two weeks before I discover she was in Sangre Grande with you father. I send down a police pardner to rough him up a little bit and bring back you mother home. I thought that was the end of it but you mother begin to sulk like anything. As if I was public enemy number one. She was about eighteen or nineteen then. I had no choice, Sammy.”

Uncle Boysie told me how he bought the property on Church Street, renovated the old house on the premise and set up my parents there. He patiently described the process—replacing wood with concrete, building a soakaway at the back, augmenting the foundation, changing the roof, repainting—which was not interesting at all so I interrupted to ask what had caused my father to leave.

“What happen was that he start feeling tie-down. He start complaining about ball and chain.” I remembered an earlier statement of my uncle in which he had likened a dreamer with no dreams to a madman. But I also wondered if it was because my father had been kicked around from captain to cook himself. “Everything I expected to happen, happen. The one thing I didn’t predict was that after he leave, you mother would blame herself for everything. That was why she never complain. And why she use to act as if one day he would come back to her. She had no choice. Sometimes it make us happier to believe something we know is a damn lie because we does come out better in that picture. Like you and you Timex watch. I know you always believe you father send it down for you but I buy it from a fella in Port of Spain. Everybody use to call him Iron Mike because his entire hand was covered in metal watchbands. Anyways, that is old-time news. You must be throw away that watch years now.” He shook his head and in a suddenly jovial voice added, “You see what one night in the Pink Pussyah does do? Make me tongue get loose and
ownway
. Is a dangerous place. Maybe we should visit some other pussyah place
instead.” He got up wearily, removed his coat and draped it against the sofa, and unrolled the foam.

“I think you should use the bedroom tonight,” I told him. He seemed about to protest so I said, “I have to get up early tomorrow and I don’t want to disturb you.”

Even though he asked, “You sure, boy?” I could see he was relieved.

As he was walking to the bedroom I asked him, “The envelope you gave my father … was it the deed for the house in Mayaro?”

“Yeah. My part of the bargain.” He pulled in the door.

In the night I wondered if my father had been crying the previous day when he learned my mother had been waiting and waiting and waiting. I wanted to believe that. Just like I wanted to believe the Timex watch had been his gift.

T
he next morning I heard Uncle Boysie quarrelling in the bathroom. “How long I blasted have to wait for the warm water to appear?”

“Just leave it on for a while.”

Five minutes or so later I got worried. I knocked then opened the door. Uncle Boysie was in the bathtub, the water lapping his neck and bales of steam swirling around his head. He looked like a fat ogre resting in a grotto. An hour later he was outfitted in his fur coat, his hair slicked back like a gangster, and smelling of coconut oil. He started whistling a calypso in the elevator and I was struck once more by the shift in his mood. In the lobby I noticed the Creole woman gazing from her mailbox to him and she seemed a little confused when he told her, “Is a fine day outside, madam lady senorita. Weather for leather.” It was cold and grey and clammy looking with the sort of dampness that seeped past coats and trousers.

“So where you want to go today, Uncle Boysie?”

“Maybe we could check out a wrestling match with André the Giant.

“I think he died.”

“Scheme, boy, scheme. He will come back in a couple months as André the Midget.” I decided to not argue. At the corner of Dundas he noticed a little white dog with a sweater and asked, “So what them puppy does wear in summer? Bikini and sliders?” In the streetcar I inquired about his proposed itinerary once more and he asked, “How far this bus does go?”

“To the subway going south to Union. From there you could take a train.”

“To Montreal?”

I decided to not mention Via Rail. “To Oshawa in the east.”

“But ain’t Ottawa close to Montreal?”

“That is a different place.”

In Union Station he kept bouncing into busy travellers and I was afraid he might begin to quarrel but he was in a good mood. Reading the Go Transit sign, he said, “Goat-and-sit,” as if he expected the station to be lined with animals waiting for the next train. We bought two coffees and the woman, plumpish with a pleasant face, told him, “Have a nice day, hon.”

At the counter he startled the young black clerk by saying, “Two tickets, hon.” Once we had settled on the upper berth I explained that “hon” was not typically a man-to-man thing. But he was busy gazing at the bulldozers and excavators. “Like they pulling down the city or what?” he asked. And a
couple minutes later, “Look at all them ‘bandon train park up in that old garage. I wonder if they will sell them?” He speculated on how he might use them in Trinidad: a couple carriages on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway stocked with
doubles
and delicacies, and a few close to the Mayaro market loaded up with soursop and sapodilla and coconuts. I had this vision of green and white carriages lining all the roads in Trinidad with vendors peeping from the windows. Auntie Umbrella had showed me a side to Canada that I had pushed aside because of my worries at the time, but Uncle Boysie was focusing only on the odd aspects. “That lake frozen no ass, boy. It look like a piece of the sky just drop off and land they.” And later. “But ay ay, how all them house so similar? You could easily go to the wrong house by mistake. Different pussyah.” He glanced at a huge sign. “Wait a minute, Gooberdhan from Rio Claro have business here too?”

“Is Gooberham.”

“And what I say?” When we approached Pickering I was tempted to visit Javier and Carmen but remembered Uncle Boysie saying that my tattoo girl would eat me raw. Soon we approached Ajax and I felt a bit of regret about leaving Carmen’s city. “How you so quiet, boy? Pussyah get you tongue or what?” I forced a little smile for his sake. The train stopped in Oshawa where we bought two westbound tickets. In Burlington we took another train and in an hour and a half we were once more in Oshawa. I worried about the number of times we were going to repeat our trip but soon Uncle Boysie began to snore quite loudly. I wondered how many of the
nearby travellers were also contemplating if this modern train had suddenly reverted to an old chugging engine.