Harrowing (5 page)

I had to find her. There had to be a way.

One Saturday we decided to take Romeo downtown to ride on the Queen Street streetcars. I saw them virtually every day when I had work, but Romeo rarely got the chance to go down there. And he loved the streetcars. He loved to hear the hum (or rather, the unpleasant squeal) of the wheels as they ground against the rails. I rather thought they sounded more like a pig being decapitated, especially when the vehicle made a sharp turn. But be that as it may, Romeo loved it.

He was crazy about the dinging bell. He got a kick out of watching cars and pedestrians scramble out of the way of the heavy tram with its fixed tracks and ungainly momentum that gave it priority on the roadways. It was a gorgeous spring morning and an unseasonably delicious breeze announced the imminent arrival of better times to our arctic world.

“Don’t you hate living in a land where it snows seven months of the year?” Calvin asked as we bumped about on the crowded subway headed for the centre. “Makes me kinda glad my parents didn’t decide to move to Russia.”

Calvin was from Jamaica. Even though he had left as a young boy, he still remembered sugar canes waving in the heat and balmy waves washing up on paradisiacal beaches.

“Well, Calv, it’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?” I shrugged. “Where else would I live? I was born here.”

We met up with my best friend, Lindsay, outside the Eaton Centre on the corner of Yonge and Queen. It had been weeks since we’d seen each other, and we couldn’t wait to get caught up. Lindsay greeted me with a hug. I thought she looked eclectic with a lime-green trench coat that swept down below her knees and a hairband covered with plastic daisies decorating her wispy, Meg Ryan curls. The one thing I could definitely mention about her was her unpredictability in style.

“So where’d you get that coat?” I cried as we melted together.

Her eyes gleamed as she glanced down at her new acquisition. She flounced the skirt playfully.

“Can you believe it only cost me a dollar at my neighbourhood flea market?” she exclaimed gleefully. “You should come one day. It’s nothing like that staid old Forest Hill affair
you’ve
got up. The East End is so trendy and chic.”

We studied each other over, then burst out laughing at the same time.

“I’ve missed you,” said Lindsay. “We’ve got to get together more often.”

We started strolling down the sidewalk.

“How’s Miss Pussy?” I said.

Lindsay grimaced.

“Weeell. Don’t get mad, Annie, but... I had to change her name.”

I gaped at her.

“What did you say?”

Lindsay held her ground.

“I said I changed her name.” She waved her hands in the air. “Miss Pussy just didn’t rock my style. Sheesh, couldn’t you think of something more original?”

I counted to three. There was no way I would have made it to ten.

“Okay. So what do you call her now?”

Lindsay giggled.

“Chocolate Cake.”

I nearly had a heart attack.

“What?” I shrieked. “She’s
white,
for fuck’s sake. Well, black and white. She’s certainly not brown.”

Lindsay grinned sheepishly.

“Well, I couldn’t help calling her
gato
all the time,” she explained in a squeaky voice.

“What’s that?”

“
Gato.
You know I’m learning French, Spanish and Arabic at the local community centre. And
gato
was the word of the week when you gave her to me.”

“And what’s
gato?
”

“A cat,” Lindsay clarified helpfully.

I rolled my eyes.

“So. Why didn’t you just stick to
gato?
How did it go from
gato
to Chocolate Cake?”

Lindsay shrugged.

“The next week the word of the week in French class was
gâteau.
So I couldn’t help getting them mixed up.”

It beat me what relationship there could possibly be between
gato, gâteau
and Chocolate Cake.

“Well, you know
gâteau
is a cake,” Lindsay cut in even more defensively than before.

“Yeah, okay, Linds. But, chocolate?”

Lindsay giggled.

“My favourite kind of cake.”

I thought about it for a minute.

“Okay. So what was the word of the week in Arabic class that week? Why didn’t you call my lovely cat that instead?”

“The word of the week that week was
arba.
And I wasn’t going to walk around calling my new cat ‘four’.” She chuckled.

I examined my fingernails. The garish, tinny black polish I had treated them to this week grated on my nerves.

“Well, she’s got four paws. You could’ve called her Four Paws or something. Better than Chocolate Cake. Now you’ll probably want to
eat
her every time you see her.”

Lindsay shook her head emphatically.

“I do
not
want to eat my cat. She’s black-and-white. Not chocolate brown.”

Romeo tugged at my arm as he gaped at a streetcar passing us for about the umpteenth time.

“Mimi. Mimi. Do you know how many streetcars we’ve missed?” he cried in alarm.

“Don’t worry, hon. They go by the whole day long.” I stroked his hair.

Romeo squinted at the sky.

“Well the day’s passing by real fast, Mimi. If we don’t get on one real soon they’re going to be all closed up.”

I pulled my mobile out of my purse and glanced at the hour.

“It’s not even noon yet,” I said.

Lindsay made a face.

“Well, Chocolate Cake’s not any worse than your son calling you Mimi all the time,” she goaded at me. “How did that get started anyways?”

At our side, Calvin burst out laughing.

“Mimi? Yeah, I wondered about that too.”

I hugged Romeo’s wiggling form.

“He used to call me Mami all the time when he was a baby. Not Mama or Momma. It had to be Mami. So I used to tease him and say Mimi Mami Momi Moo, or something silly like that. And for some reason, it was the Mimi that stuck.”

Calvin stopped at a streetcar sign and planted his feet on the sidewalk there.

“This looks like as good a place as any to get on,” he said.

“Yeah! Yeah! And we’ll ride all the way to the end, then get back on and ride all the way to the other end.” Romeo started jumping up and down.

“Let’s make it fast,” Lindsay said. “I’m starved.”

I ground my foot against the floor.

“Well, hang on, Linds. You won’t get to see any food for over an hour.”

“Hey, girls. There’s an Indian down at the East End...” Calvin began while Lindsay started rocking her head about from side to side.

“Not in
my
neighbourhood,” she said. “I want something downtown and cosmopolitan. Something that’s not so in my face every day. That Indian place is just around the corner from mine. How about—”

At that instant I saw him.

I started shaking hard. I nearly lost it. My whole being was just screaming at me to run from there as fast as my legs would take me.

“What’s wrong, Annie?”

Lindsay’s voice seemed to drift over me from a thousand miles away. Calvin studied me and followed my gaze towards the towering man dressed in khaki greens, carrying a styrofoam cup of coffee and idling along down Queen Street as happy as you pleased, as if he owned the world. He even dared to whistle.

“The son-of-a-bitch. And he’s
whistling!
I bet nothing ever rocks his pleasant little fucking world. What I wouldn’t do...”

I didn’t realize that I’d clenched my hands into fists by my side. Romeo only ogled at me. Calvin took off in a rush.

“What are you doing, Calv?” I cried out, remembering what he’d said he would do if he ever met Bruno.

Bruno, all unawares, disappeared calmly into the Queen Street subway station. Calvin tackled him as he walked through the door, spilling coffee and the contents of Bruno’s man-purse all over Bruno’s camo outfit. With an obviously fake smile, Calvin bent down and helped Bruno retrieve his personal effects from the floor. He returned humming with a smug grin.

“So. His name’s Bruno Jarvas, is it? And he works at the Herbert and Mons Clothing Company on Bay Street. Some sorta Vice President? How many heads did he wrangle off to get that position?”

I gaped at him. He passed his arm soothingly around my shoulders.

“Cool off, babes. That’s all I wanted from him. Just wanted to get his name.”

He smiled at me. Piously. He waved a gold-embossed business card before my eyes, then snatched it away before I could read it.

“What are you going to do now that you know his name?” I asked warily. It was clear to Calvin that I didn’t trust him one whit.

“Nothing. Okay, maybe I’ll send him a greeting card.” He smiled again. “But that’s it, hon. I swear. That’s all I would do.”

He kissed me on the top of my head. I stood there fuming, helpless. Lindsay glanced from one to the other of us as if watching a dazzling tennis match.

“I dunno what’s going on, you pair of idiots, but you could enlighten me,” she said.

I toed the ground again.

“Nothing, Linds. Just a mean boss I had once at one of my temp jobs,” I said, at the same time that Calvin burst out, “That’s the frigging bastard that fucking raped Annasuya.”

Of course, Calvin was the one that Lindsay paid attention to. She grasped me by the cheeks and stared into my eyes.

“Is that true, Ann?”

I didn’t say anything. Lindsay shook my face between her palms like a scruffy puppy dog.

“Is that true?” she screamed.

I pulled at her arms.

“Calm down, Linds.” It was the only thing it occurred to me to say. “Calvin’s exaggerating.”

Romeo tugged in alarm on Lindsay’s arm.

“Lindsay. You’re hurting my mimi,” he said. “Aren’t you friends?”

Lindsay tried to smile at Romeo. It looked like a scowl.

“We’re just fooling around, Shakes.” Trite though it might seem, she always called him Shakespeare Child, or sometimes Shakes. “Don’t you fool around with your friends at school?”

Romeo nodded. But he still looked dubious.

Lindsay seized me by the arm and shook it firmly.

“Don’t worry, Shakes. I’m just holding your mother,” she said when she caught Romeo eyeing her with mistrust.

Romeo scowled and moved away, but he didn’t take his eyes from her. Lindsay loosened her grip on me.

“Okay, Annasuya. Out with it. Calvin can’t be exaggerating. How can you exaggerate about someone raping you? Either he did or he didn’t. So what happened?”

I lashed at her angrily.

“Are you my fucking shrink or something, Lindsay? Just leave me the fuck alone.”

I started towards the Queen Street subway entrance.

“Where are you going?” Lindsay called. “Are you planning on going after him too?”

I shook my head.

“I’m going home,” I said.

Romeo ran after me.

“I’m coming with you, Mimi.”

I patted him on the cheeks, on those chubby, rosy, perfect apples that only pre-adolescents have.

“No, honey pops. You go with Calvin and Linds and ride on the streetcar. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Romeo scuffed his running shoe against the earth.

“Yeah, Mimi, but not without
you.
”

I stroked his hair and kissed him.

“Go on. Calv and Linds will take good care of you. Mimi just wants to be alone for a while.”

Romeo stared at me, only half believing, then ran off to Calvin and Lindsay.

I stewed on our worn and comfortable burgundy futon. It came with the apartment, which was furnished. It was old and creaky and had probably supported the weight of dozens of tenants before us. But I still loved it. It had a lived-in, homey feel.

I tried to watch TV. Mud-covered strangers traipsing through jungles in one of those ubiquitous survivor realities just didn’t appeal to me. I tried to read a magazine. All those drop-dead gorgeous faces without a single blemish belonged to powerful icons that men would never dare to even touch, much less lay a fist on in order to violate or hurt them.

“How to Wrap Your Boss Around Your Little Finger”,
proclaimed the title of one of the articles in
Cosmopolitan.

“I hate you,” I said.

I opened the window and tossed the magazine out. Someone exclaimed in surprise below me.