The Amazing Absorbing Boy (5 page)

In the beginning this was interesting because it was all new and I compared the view with that from our house in Mayaro, where each day I would see the spindly coconut trees and the narrow asphalt road and the low concrete houses across the road and the bushy backyards livened with hibiscus and crocus and fruit trees with swinging cornbird nests. After four days, this comparing business became boring and to shut out the dullness, I tried to imagine Spider-Man and Batman swinging from the crane that stood on top of a several-storey building a little distance away. I pictured the Joker or maybe some half-mad Canadian murderer talking to his orange cat inside one of the red boxy buildings and laughing at nothing in particular.

I wanted to get out and roam the city but I remembered all my father’s warning so each day I stared at the young boys playing basketball nearby, and fat women holding their grocery bags in one hand and their cigarettes in the other, and every now and then, an old-timer riding one of these scooter-machines. When I got tired of the view from the balcony, I turned on the television. One of the channels talked about the weather, which was far more interesting than the Trinidad weatherman, who said the same thing day after day: sunshine with a possibility of rain.

Then one night the phone rang. I ignored it but it rang again and again. Finally, I picked it up but before I could get
a chance to say that my father was not at home, the voice on the other end said, “I will pull out your tongue.” I almost dropped the phone but I was too shocked. “I will kill you over and over. Then I will kill you again.”

I managed to say, “The owner of the place is not at home.”

“Who is this then?” I heard some heavy breathing as if this murderer was puffing a cigarette.

“I am staying here for a while.”

“Then you give him this message. Tell him that I will kill him every single day of the week until I get back my teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“Exactly.” He made a gnashing sound.

That was the end of my boredom. And of following my father’s rules about keeping inside. If the murderer knew the phone number then he might also know our address. The apartment was no longer safe.

As I walked through all the lanes and the paths between the houses and the curbs, where there were bicycles hooked onto metal ramps, and posters stuck on lamp poles advertising community meetings, and huge metal boxes overflowing with garbage, I tried to push away this new worry by watching the heap of children all over Regent Park. They seemed to be from every country on the earth and they sometimes shouted in their strange languages as they ran about. This was comforting in a way, because it reminded me of all the different types of people squashed together in the bus from Mayaro to Rio Claro. I always stopped at the edge of Regent Park though, opposite Shuter Street, where the buildings
reminded me of the cramped office blocks in San Fernando. Apart from this teeth-murderer, Canada didn’t seem to be all that different from Trinidad.

Every time I returned to our building, I would peep from the elevator at the door to our apartment before I headed for it. I pictured the murderer as a big fat man with a thick neck and curling whiskers. His head was shaved and there were rolls of muscles at the back of his neck. He might have a bag with knives and tongs and ice picks. Thankfully, I never spotted him at the door but two days after his threats, he called again. I don’t have any Spider sense or anything but when the phone rang, I instantly knew it was him. I was scared but curious.

I picked up the phone. He said, “I am coming over.”

I bolted out of the apartment and that morning for the first time, I went outside Regent Park.

I expected the people would stare and know that I was new to this country but no one even glanced at me. I never suspected there were so many black people in Canada, some Mayaro-black but others light brown like my father and wearing long robes. They sometimes stood in little groups and spoke to each other in loud hacking accents. Each day I went a little further, to Sackville Street (which seemed such a sad name) eventually to Parliament Street where I took a bus that went to a place called Castle Frank. There I followed a group of boys down some steps. The boys, who were about my age, went through some shiny arms between two metal boxes but when I tried to follow, the arms wouldn’t let me through.
A man inside some sort of glass cage tapped a sign just above a square mug filled with coins. The sign said two-fifty. I pushed three one-dollar coins into the box and waited for my change. The man looked at me above his glasses and then at two spongy women at my back. All three seemed vexed. I hurried away towards another row of steps.

When I was a little boy I had seen this television show where a girl was sent into a room with magic doors, leading to her dead mother in a smoky garden, to her future husband with long wavy hair, and other people she would meet. The minute I walked down those steps I felt like I had entered a place with a different breed of people. A sort of Bizarro world with all the rules reversed. I always imagined these train places as filled with curly-hair women in old-fashioned clothes clutching at a
grop
of children and staring anxiously at the approaching smoke, but here nearly everybody standing before the track looked lost and lonely and worried. I wondered if they, too, were puzzled about why they were here in Canada. The first train pulled off too fast for me to jump aboard but I glimpsed a row of eyes that were either too tired to look away or didn’t care what they bounced up. About five minutes later, I rushed inside another train before the conductor could close the door and I almost sat on a woman who looked up at me like a big, lazy fish. She didn’t blink her eyes, as far as I could see, for the entire trip. Sitting next to her was another woman whose entire face was covered in a veil. Her hands were white, though, and for some reason she reminded me of these old television science fiction movies like
Dune
.
I rode on the train for close to an hour, surprised there were no conductors asking to see my tickets. I was wondering how far the train would go when we arrived back at Castle Frank.

This Canada was turning out to be an interesting place. Dangerous, yes, but filled with little surprises. When I got back I wished that my father would be home even though I knew he would quarrel about my trip. But neither he nor the murderer was around. Late that night I believed someone was knocking on the door but it may have been a dream. The next morning I headed for the subway train place, and the minute I landed there I was able to put aside all my worries. I felt this was the place to which trapped people came to spend their time. I boarded the train and sat next to a small man with a big funnel nose and two button eyes and hardly any chin. When he gave a little start and looked at me angrily, I realized I had mumbled aloud what was running through my mind. Mole people! I had come across them before in comic books and old movies, plotting and building bombs in underground places, but it was exciting to meet them face to face here.

Don’t ask why I began to wonder where these mole people were going because this is the only answer I can come up with: it was another game to get my mind away from the murderer and the situation in my father’s apartment. Anyways, for a few evenings I followed them to long, flat buildings with signs advertising manufacturing and packaging goods. Just like the real mole people slaving away below the ground, making ray guns and laser beams for their masters! It was easy to spot them too: they were all dressed
in oversized coats, had dirty knapsacks, usually seemed tired and sleepy and kept to themselves, and always headed for what I guessed were factories. I was sure they only came out at nights, too. I think it was a little under a month in Canada that a crazy thought hit me, just like that, without any warning: Was it possible that my father was a mole man too? I remembered his stupid “oompa loompa factory” talk and pictured the train suddenly stopping before a factory and all the molemen filing out in neat lines and singing as they made their way to a big underground factory.

I began to go out earlier, in the mornings during rush time, where, in places like Broadview and Chester and Pape I made another interesting discovery: the mole people were just one of many different breeds. There were also pretty high-boot women who walked straight and stiff like men, and scarf and turtleneck young men who walked in the opposite manner, and Chinese boys who were always glancing through their modern glasses at their reflections in glass windows, and old spotted men who looked so angrily at everyone else I expected a snort to fling out from their fat, red noses at any minute. A couple times I pictured my mother sitting next to me and watching everyone and saying, “You see, Sam. I told you …” as if she knew our lives would turn in this direction.

During my walks back to the apartment, I wondered what my friends in Mayaro might think of this place, which—in spite of my first impressions—was so different from what we had seen on television; and how I might describe it if I decided
I had enough and took the next flight back to Trinidad. I felt they would not be surprised that I had tried to soften my problems with these stupid games because we regularly did the same thing at Mayaro School. Thinking of my old friends consoled me a bit but it also reminded me that I was trapped in a place with a father who barely spoke to me and a murderer who might pop up at any minute. One night I wrote a letter to Uncle Boysie. I thanked him for the money and said that it was very handy. I told him the Canadian business was not working out and I believed it was time to return. I lied and mentioned that I missed working in his old store stuffed with mechanical and gardening and plumbing tools.

The next day, with the letter in my pocket, I was in an especially worried mood. I knew what Uncle Boysie would say. That I should stick with the plan and not allow these difficulties to
downcourage
me. He might make some reference to my father’s slackness. And he would also say that my mother, if she was alive, would have been so happy that I was in a place with plenty opportunities. I think it was this worry that caused me to get off at Coxwell station where I followed one of these molemen who was pushing out his lip as if he was stretching it to touch the tip of his hat. Tracking a single moleman in the broad daylight made me realize that the movies had given me a wrong idea of trailing for it was far more difficult than I expected. First of all, I had to keep a good distance between us because I didn’t want him to swing back and catch me. He also stopped a few times to light his cigarettes and to just stare quietly at the clothes set up inside shop windows so I had to
stop too. I followed him to a coffee place, and from a little convenience store across the road, I saw him taking a paper cup to a small table near the wall. I don’t know how long he remained there reading his newspaper but eventually the store lady asked me impatiently if I was going to buy anything. Just then the moleman left and I stuck with him as he made his way to a church.

He went inside and after a moment, I did too. It was packed with mole people and they were selecting cans of beans and soup and fruit juice from long tables. Nobody seemed to be paying and I joined a line and grabbed a bag of doughnuts. I felt a little ashamed when I noticed that I was younger than everyone there so I left with nothing else. It was only when I was on the subway that I realized this might be the food bank I had called and asked about provisions and dry goods and whisky. I tried to hide the doughnuts inside my coat, next to the letter to Uncle Boysie, and when I reached our apartment complex, I hurried up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. As I reached to our floor, my doughnuts almost dropped out from my coat because I came face to face with a big shaved-head monster that looked exactly like Bane from the
Batman
comics. I walked straight past our apartment and only when I reached the end of the hallway, I turned around. The Bane man had taken the elevator.

Inside, I double bolted the door and peeped over the balcony rail, but I could not see him. Was it possible that he was living in this apartment complex? I checked the front door again and went into the kitchen. There was a plate on
the cupboard and next to it, a crumpled lottery ticket. After ten minutes or so I knocked on my father’s bedroom door but there was no reply. Maybe he had spotted Bane and had blazed away. I wondered if this hoodlum was carrying around a bag of sharpened teeth jangling like river conches.

The next morning I was especially cautious as I made my way from Regent Park to the subway. I got off again at Coxwell and scanned around for groups of molemen before I went to the food bank. I felt I needed something solid to pelt at Bane in case he showed up so I took two cans of chickpeas. While I was walking home I remembered Uncle Boysie telling me, “The fella above does always balance out everything but is we who have to tip the scales.” I had felt it was his usual rumshop nonsense but here I was, with a murderer on my back at the same time I had more or less solved my food problem. I got home just before midday and immediately the phone rang. I figured that he knew I was here and would come over if I ignored his call so I picked up the phone. It was my father. “Anybody called?” he asked.

“Somebody wanted back his teeth.”

“I thought I told you not to pick up the blasted phone.” He hung up.

Five minutes later the phone rang again and I rushed to it. “I have urgent need for my teeth.”

“My father is not at home,” I blurted out.

“You is son?”

He had trapped me. “Yes, but we don’t talk to each other much.”

“
Now
you talk. To give message. I am in a mood for many killings. You understand?”

I tried to reason with him. “What is the point in killing him more than once?”

“Because I am grandson of Cossacks. It is my hobby.”

“I don’t know when he will return.”

“Then it fall on you. You must come with brand new set of teeth.”

“Where I will get teeth from?”

“It is for you to decide. Teeth or money. You make choice.”