THE SOFA, CHAIRS, coffee table, and the console TV in my uncle’s basement had once been the fancy furniture on the main floor, but his living room had been converted to a bedroom when my grandmother and Aunt Luisa arrived from Portugal. A large floral bedspread hung from a line and was held up by wooden clothes pegs with rusted hinges. It divided the basement kitchen from the family room. When we had large family gatherings the bedspread came down and was used as the tablecloth.
I lay still and watched my chest rise and fall, felt my heart beat inside it. I could taste traces of puke in my mouth. My mother stroked my forehead with the back of her hand.
“Did he hit his head?” Aunt Edite asked from behind the curtain.
“No, the neighbour catch him before he fall down.” I could hear my father’s voice, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from.
“Who?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know that boy,” my father said.
“You don’t ask the man his name? Did you thank him?”
As my father was walking out the door, Edite called out, “His name is James.”
“You saw him?” my mother said.
“I saw him leaving. He moved into Paul Serjeant’s garage only last week.” Edite said garage in her New England accent, dragging out the r until it just floated in her mouth. How did she know James? I rode past Mr. Serjeant’s garage all the time and had never seen him there. “He’s looking for work. I don’t know much more than that,” said Edite.
My mother blew her cool breath on my forehead. I was getting too old for her to do this. Behind the curtain, I could hear my aunts whispering in English for Edite’s benefit, their knives banging on wooden boards as they chopped onions and garlic and parsley.
“It’s been a few days now. Still not a word. The boy is only twelve.”
“They took his name away, you know. They gave him a new name, shoeshine boy. That’s not a Portuguese name.”
“That poor boy’s mother must be crying like a Magdalena, cursing the day she came here.”
“She knows. She must know,” Edite said. “A mother does.” The room went silent.
My mother didn’t know half the things that went on in our world. She didn’t know about what Ricky did at the pool hall or that Manny stole bikes. Or that I sometimes stood watch when Manny and Ricky robbed the houses of families on holiday in Portugal. They only took small stuff, but it was still stealing. She didn’t know that Mr. Serjeant had shared a few beers with us in his garage a couple of weeks back. He called it his bon voyage party. That same night he made Ricky stand by the television and hold on to the two-foot-long rabbit ears so we could get a better picture. Ricky stood there for nearly two hours and never complained. A few days later, Mr. Serjeant left to live in the Algarve for a year with his Portuguese wife, Senhora Ana. She was homesick and he was going to try his hand at running a pub along the beach. He hadn’t said he was going to rent out his garage.
“The ladies at the church are saying this,” Aunt Zelia, who was married to my uncle David, said. “Emanuel was trying to save money to buy a ticket for his mother to go visit family back home.”
“That’s gossip. People say what they want to hear,” Aunt Luisa said. “How about the story where he wanted money to feed a new puppy? There are other stories too, you know, about what boys shining shoes do for … extra money.”
“Antonio,” my mother said, “go home and lie down in the basement where it’s cool. I’ll bring over a bowl of sopa de estrelinha soon.”
She blew hard into a tissue before she returned to the smoky kitchen.
I made my way to my uncle’s front door and onto my bike, which someone had pulled onto the veranda. I took hungry gulps of air to clear my nose of the smell of pig.
Across the street, I could see Manny’s sponge-like hair above the railing as he carried lawn chairs from his porch into the house.
“Hey!” I shouted.
He ran up to meet me at the gate.
“Let’s go!” I said.
“Can’t.”
His mother stood at the front door. “Manelinho, bring the last chair inside!” She sounded anxious.
“Why are you clearing off the porch?”
“They found Emanuel. On the roof of Charlie’s Angels sex parlour. He was under some boards, drowned.” Then he whispered, “He’s dead.”
“Manelinho!” his mother wailed.
Manny jumped up all five steps of his veranda. He grabbed a lawn chair and pulled it inside, the screen door slamming behind him.
I walked my bike home quickly. My throat had tightened, and the tightness drilled painfully right down into my chest. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. My fingers found the front-door handle. Making my way down the stairs into the basement, I breathed in the familiar smell of old paper and worms. The floor was painted concrete—battleship grey—and some of the walls were covered halfway up with wood panelling. At the far end of the open space was a bathroom with a large shower, which my father used when he got home from a dirty day of digging, and where Terri and I showered after we came home from the beach and needed to rinse off the sand. It was next to the laundry area and across from the stove—every self-respecting Portuguese family had a second kitchen in the basement they used daily. The kitchen upstairs was just for show and it was rarely used. There was an old back seat of a Chevy my father had brought home one day with a console television, which stood next to the doorway to our adega, where fat-bellied oak barrels rested on large wooden blocks. An old hospital sheet, St. Michael’s Hospital branded on its side, hid the wine. I was relieved to see that everything looked the same.
I sat down and flicked on the TV. The backs of my legs stuck to the vinyl car seat. My tube socks had been held up all day long by elastic bands taken from a Baggie that my mother kept in a drawer. Now I rolled down the socks and scratched the itchy red rings that had been carved around my calves.
We didn’t have cable, so we could only watch one station on the main dial and, depending on the weather, tuned the channel with the second dial. And remember, breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine. Anita Bryant, the former Miss America, strolled through an orange grove in her shiny white dress, her hair perfect. She looked so different from the woman who had been in the newspapers for leading the Save Our Children campaign.
“She should have stuck to selling oranges,” Terri said. I could feel her presence behind the seat, the smell of soap moving with her. I hadn’t heard her come downstairs.
“He’s dead,” I said.
My sister plopped down next to me. She sat closer to me than she normally would. Tucking her legs under her bum, she leaned against me, her arm pressing against my side. I didn’t shift over. We listened carefully to the TV reporter.
“This is the street corner where Emanuel Jaques was last seen. Four days ago he was shining shoes, like so many other boys here, and then disappeared into what many consider the cesspool of the city, Yonge Street.” The reporter spoke slowly, and his voice was level. “Reports suggest that he and his brother and friend were approached by a man …”
Terri nibbled on some strands of her hair. I poked my chin into my T-shirt and lifted the ribbed collar into my mouth. I sucked on the cotton.
“Emanuel’s older brother said a man had approached the boys for some help. He allegedly offered the boys thirty-five dollars to move camera equipment. Emanuel’s older brother and a friend ran to the nearest pay phone to call home to ask their mother’s permission. Upon their return, Emanuel was gone. He had vanished.” A picture of the large-eyed boy appeared on the screen. “Again, the search is over. The body of a twelve-year-old boy police have identified as Emanuel Jaques has been found on a Toronto rooftop.”
“Ouch!”
My sister pinched my thigh—the teeny kind of pinch that hurt. “Don’t ever go with anyone. Got it?” She got up to turn off the television, but stopped when she heard the cries of family from behind the interviewer’s questions. There were TV cameras in the Jaques’ living room, doilies on the tables and a big wooden cross in the corner of the room. Mrs. Jaques spoke in Portuguese between her sobs. She sat in an armchair with her eyes barely open, covering her mouth with a handkerchief. Her four other children stood frozen around their mother. Emanuel’s father was in the bedroom, too stricken with grief to come out and be interviewed.
The reporter asked Emanuel’s mother, “If you were speaking to the members of city council, what would she tell them to do about the Yonge Street strip?”
The oldest daughter bent down to translate into her mother’s ear.
“Give me my son back” was the reply.
I skidded on my bike into my uncle’s garage. I didn’t want to come off as some stupid kid, I wanted to handle the news like a man.
It was clear from the way they were carrying on that the men didn’t know yet, which meant my mother and aunts in the basement were just as ignorant. There was no TV or radio in the garage, and the women were too busy chopping up pig parts. There wasn’t much left of the pig by now, just the hind legs dangling from the wooden rafters. Presunto or bacon, I thought. My uncle Clemente caught me around the waist and shoved the pig’s tail in my mouth. The men cheered him on as I squirmed in his hold. Part of the tail curled around my tongue and the rest lodged against the roof of my mouth. They all laughed as I gagged and tried to spit it out. I had to hook my finger to pull it out. I hunched over, and saliva filled my mouth to coat the taste. They patted me on the back while I looked to my father.
“You is a man now,” he whispered, his stubble scraping against my cheek.
I reached for my father’s warm wine and threw it hard against the back of my throat. This led to another wave of “Força!” and further bouts of approval with “Um homem. A man now.”
I licked my hand clean.
They truly had no idea Emanuel had been murdered, and I wouldn’t tell them.
I jumped on my bike and sped away, riding east along Queen Street, past the vacant storefronts, past all the drunks, past the broad thoroughfare known as Spadina Avenue, past City Hall that looked like a building out of The Jetsons. I kept going, racing with the fluffy clouds that ran along above the trees. The breeze dried my tears, rushed up my nose and filled my lungs.
I turned up Yonge Street and stopped in the shadow of the Eaton Centre, across the street from Charlie’s Angels. Above the door some products were being advertised in plastic letters: Movies, Sex Toys, Magazines, Books. The store’s window promised SEXY GIRLS. Some men were boarding up the door and windows with plywood, but they hadn’t covered everything: the painted figure of a half-naked woman and the words Your happiness may depend on it were still exposed. It was a tall building, five storeys high, and it looked like all the others that lined Yonge Street. The building had been blocked off with yellow tape. I stood there straddling my bike, leaning over my handlebars. My head felt fuzzy, but I hoped I’d see Emanuel’s body. If I got close to him, I could pray in Portuguese, the way my grandmother taught me. Prayers are heard faster if you pray in Portuguese, she’d say. The news teams, reporters, and everyone else who gathered were all waiting for something to happen.
It was getting dark. I was pedalling up Palmerston Avenue so slowly I was barely moving, just fighting to keep my balance. Where was everyone? I passed one empty porch after another. I had never seen our street so dark. Curtains were drawn. Porch lights were switched off.
I turned across Robinson Street to go through the laneway. My uncle’s garage door was closed. I made my way up toward the patch of light that beamed into the laneway from Mr. Serjeant’s garage. I stopped. The man was painting the inside of the garage, whitewashing everything. His back was to me. I could see his blond curly hair poking out under his cycling cap. His tank top was drenched, glued to his skin.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” He continued to paint, to my relief. He stood on a stool. I saw his ankles and thought his feet must be tanned too. It was the last thing I thought of before I realized he could see my reflection in a window.
“I’m James,” he said. He twisted around to face me.
“I know,” I managed, before I felt my tongue getting fat. My chest ached. James was in the middle of saying something when I turned away from him and pressed down hard on the pedals. I didn’t let up until I came out onto Palmerston Avenue, where I saw my mother leaning over our front gate. Across the road, the worm-picker bus revved its engine and slowly rolled away toward Queen Street.
“Where did you go? Get in that house now!” She smelled of blood sausages, onions, and paprika. She had been crying.
I walked my bike through our gate and dropped it on the front lawn. The back wheel spun in the air.
It wasn’t cold, but she drew her sweater tightly across her chest, tucked her hands under her armpits. I caught her looking out through the storm door before sliding the latch to Lock. Then she shut the front door and secured the deadbolt.
The sound of my mother’s slippers slapping against her heels chased me up to the bathroom. I stood beside the tub and wiggled my fingers in the water. It was cold now. My mother stood in the doorway. With my back to her, I quickly undressed, wrapped a towel around my waist. I just stood there.
“What are you waiting for?” she said. “Get in the water before it gets any colder.”
“I need privacy.”
“You got to be careful, Antonio. It’s not safe anymore,” she said before leaving.
I dunked myself quickly, scrubbed my skin raw with the washcloth until a layer of grey scum covered the entire surface of the cold bathwater.
I wasn’t sure how long I had been lying in my bed before John F. Kennedy’s voice made its way up to my room and I knew my father was home. The recording of JFK was displayed on a bracket that once held a plate. My father played it over and over whenever he was sad or when he sensed things had changed, or were about to change. I heard my father’s boots, the rhythm of his step climbing the stairs. Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. There was his smell: Old Spice, Craven “A,” the sweetness of homemade wine.
When he walked in I saw his forehead was covered in tiny beads of sweat.
He looked away for one moment and rocked forward as if he’d thought better of it and would leave. He cracked his knuckles.
He sat down and looked like he was about to say something. I could see the patches of silver stubble on his chin and upper lip. The veins in his neck pumped. He drew the heel of his palm across his forehead, then reached over and rubbed my earlobe with his thick fingers. His bottom lip trembled.
I didn’t want him to cry.
“You not hurt?” He took another deep breath. I thought he was going to say something else, but he just got up. “Close you light,” he said. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.