Everything Was Good-Bye (9 page)

“Vaheguruji Ka Khalsa, Vaheguruji Ki Fateh.”

The turbaned giani took his place at the podium and tapped the micro-phone. “Testing.” He smoothed his horsetail of a beard and cleared his throat before unleashing a prayer—a blessing for Tej’s engagement to Mandip and a wish for happiness, for sons. I nudged Tej. It was enough to make her blush.

The giani continued, monotone and serious, his prayer mutating into a sermon on the danger of Western morals encroaching on Indian culture. He held his kirpan in his hand as if he were about to draw the sword on us, as if he were going to engage in battle. “Our children are lost. Vaheguru. They have no time for family. Vaheguru. They drink and smoke. Vaheguru.

They disobey their parents. Vaheguru. We must save them. Gurbani says: “Why O son, do you quarrel with your father? It is a sin to quarrel with him who begot you and brought you up.” The aunties nodded in a silent but evangelical way. “Vaheguruji.”

Tej and I muffled our laughter behind our chunnies. Masi had told us that she’d heard this giani had been caught in the act with his brother’s wife; I couldn’t help but wonder if he fucked with his turban on or off. When I asked Tej what she thought, she smacked me for being so crude.

I fidgeted, uncrossed my legs and crossed them again. Half of my ass was asleep and I was attempting to wake it up slowly. When my mother saw me rubbing my buttocks she slapped my hand, and I dropped my head in false obedience, I didn’t want to upset her any more than I already had this morning when we’d argued about Liam. One of the aunties on our street had called to tell her that she’d seen us together. When my mother asked me about it, I turned my stereo up, pretending I couldn’t hear her. The more she asked me, the louder the music got. “Michael Jackson is ruin-ing you!” she yelled, pulling the needle offDepeche Mode’s new album. The record screeched to a halt. “It’s not Michael Jackson!” I pulled it off the turntable, examining the scratch that would render it useless. “Fuck!” I threw the record on the floor. “I don’t even like Michael Jackson! Harj liked Michael Jackson. I fucking hate that shit. I hate this shit!” I ran out of the house, slamming the door so hard that the windows shook.

When I saw Liam he could tell I was upset so we skipped first period and took the SkyTrain into the city. At the first tunnel he told me to scream. I nudged him away, telling him he was crazy.

“Come on, it’s as close to a primal scream as you can get. People say it feels like being born. On a count of three. One… Two… Three!” We stared into each other and screamed with our eyes open, laughing, oblivious to those around us. We got offthe train still smiling hard, ribbing each other with private jokes that reduced the world to the two of us. I stared into his eyes. His pupils, dilating in the light, held me.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” I said, searching for myself in his eyes.

As I scratched his name into the gurdwara carpet, I wondered how he saw me.

“Satnam Vaheguruji,” the giani concluded. The aunties began singing their tuneless warbling like a chorus of injured cats. “Vaheguru. Vaheguru.” I ran my fingers across carpet, adding my name to Liam’s, trying out hearts and arrows. My mother glanced my way. I straightened up, pressing my shoulder blades together, and looked up at the glass dome in the ceiling that was covered in bird shit, then down at our names, and with the haste of the unenlightened I brushed his name away.

After the prayers, we waited in line at the langar hall with our empty steel trays. The bibis jostled to get to the front, cutting offthe young women and children who had no choice but to yield their hunger to them. By the time I bit into my food, the subzi was cold, the daal was swampy and the rotis were dry and brittle. I pushed my food around while my mother scraped her tin compartments clean.

“Spicy,” my mother said, motioning to the kitchen helpers to bring her another glass of water, spit and daal collecting in the corners of her mouth. “Are you finished?” she asked, wiping the spittle with her hand. She reached into her cardigan sleeve and pulled out a crumpled tissue, wiped the daal from her fingers, and then tucked the dirty tissue back into her sleeve. I nodded and she scolded me for wasting so much food. She took the tray from me and poured the remains into her tray, shovelling spoon-fuls of food into her mouth. An auntie stopped at our table to congratulate my mother on Tej’s engagement. Tej looked up smiling.

My mother pushed the food in her mouth to one side and got up to thank her. They hugged in a one-armed embrace, my mother’s smile lop-sided.

The auntie smiled at me. “The youngest one?” My mother nodded. “You are so grown up now.” She spoke with the blunt consonants and round vowels characteristic of esl. “I think you and Pinky are the same age.” She pointed across the room to where her daughter was standing against a cement pillar talking to her cousins, snapping bubble gum between words. Harj had always said they chewed like cows. “The two of you should get together some time, heh? Just like old times.” I nodded, even though I had
no intention of hanging out with her daughter. When we were little, Pinky used to bite my Barbie’s feet until they looked like fins, and then she’d pull their heads off. Once when she’d come over, I waited until she left the room and pulled offher Ken doll’s clothes. When she came in and saw me running my hands over his bumped crotch, she told my mom and I got in trouble.

Pinky saw us talking and waved me over. She thought she was cool now that she’d had a nose job. “So what’s with you and Liam?” she asked. The other girls tucked their heads into their skinny shoulders and giggled.

“Nothing”

“I’ve seen you guys at school. You’re with him all the time.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are, and everyone knows it.” She blew a bubble, popped it, and tore at the piece with her tongue. “So do you like totally like him or something?” She pulled the gum again, this time with her fingers.

“No. I barely know him. He’s not even my type.” I clamped my hands across my chest, though I knew my face had flushed with the lie.

The other girls laughed louder this time. One even snorted and said, “What a freak,” like I wasn’t even there.

“Go fuck yourselves.” I turned around and walked away, my face ripe-ning with shame, their laughter turning my stomach.

1.6

C
louds rushed across the sky, ragged strips of blue appeared and disappeared, and when it burned through, the dime-sized sun stung my eyes. Head down, I walked to school.

“Meena!” Liam pulled his car up beside me, motioning for me to get in. I tossed my bag behind him and slid into the passenger seat.

“Where have you been? You missed the history final. You can’t keep doing this or you won’t graduate. What the fuck is going on with you?” I clipped my questions when I saw a hint of his sleeping bag lying crumpled under the seat.

Liam saw me eye it and with the heel of his foot tucked it farther out of sight. “I-I-I’m not going back.”

I had never actually heard him stutter before. He looked away. His confident facade disappeared into a spittle of syllables.

“Y-you want to come w-with?” Though he wouldn’t look at me, I saw his face was red, the flush spreading across his cheeks and creeping down his neck.

I let my silence answer him. I didn’t ask him what had happened, and he didn’t volunteer the information. It seemed that the longer I knew him, the less I knew of him, yet the closer I felt to him. I wondered if that was what it meant to know someone by heart.

Liam reached into the glove compartment for the mixed tape I’d made him. His hands were red with cold. I took the tape from him and fed it into the deck, forwarding it to “Never Let Me Down Again,” his favourite Depeche Mode song.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, off ering him an apple from my bag.

He shook his head. “I ate. I’m okay.”

I took offmy jacket and flung it into the back. The floor mats were covered in empty soda cans, Tim Hortons to-go cups and McDonalds cheeseburger wrappers. I added them up, trying to calculate how much time he had passed in his car. The week before, when his dad had kicked him out, he’d pawned his cameras for money and lived in his car for days before I’d found out. He would park in the school lot after dark, and wake up early so that no one would realize that he had been there all night. But one morning, for whatever reason, he didn’t wake up early, and instead was jarred from sleep by the taunts of the cool kids thumping their fists on the roof, their pink faces pressed against the window as they pointed and laughed at him, calling him “white trash.” By the time I arrived at school, one of them had tipped over a garbage can and was kicking the contents at him. When I saw what was happening I rushed over and jumped into the driver’s side and, without looking at Liam, demanded the keys. As I started the car, I caught his frigid stare in the rear-view mirror. Still in his sleeping bag, he slumped into the corner, leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. I drove for an hour without a clear destination, and when Liam woke again I took him to my house so he could get cleaned up. Any awkwardness I felt about him being there was cancelled out by his own. He walked through the house, looking at our cheaply framed photos and budget artwork with tentative interest. He reached for the ballerina music box that sat among the dusty knick-knacks above the stairwell, and examined it from every angle. He wound it, and held it to his ear as it twisted out the broken melody of “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” He smiled, and though I didn’t know why, so did I. He placed the twirling ballerina back where he’d found her and as he started down the hallway, peeking in rooms asking me which one was mine, I rushed after him, rearranging everything he touched, erasing any trace of him in the present, hoping
that no one would ever know that he’d been here. He stood in front of my mother’s open bedroom door, pulling the contents in with one long look before walking in. He picked up a photo of my parents, glancing at the picture and then me. I had inherited my mother’s sad eyes and my father’s gentle mouth. The combination made me look wounded, withdrawn.

“You must miss him.”

“I don“t remember I was too young.”

He put the picture frame down. “I miss things I don’t remember.”

I straightened the picture frame before joining him in my room. He asked me when my mother would be home. I told him, “Late.” He dropped his backpack onto the bed, and began to undress, asking if he could throw his clothes in the washing machine. My answer, a feeble yes. I looked up and around, trying not to notice his naked torso. But unlike that one day at the beach, I was unable to stop myself from stealing glances. He was more athletic than I remembered. My eyes traced the thread of hair from his chest to his belt. I swallowed hard, feeling the flush on my cheeks spread deep inside me.

While he was in the bathroom, I caught snatches of him through the open door and steam-covered glass; he looked like a shadow made real. I closed my eyes, and imagined water running offhis body like fingers trail-ing skin. Sound became touch. I undressed, slid the shower door open and stepped inside, leaving only a steady stream of water between us. We kissed with our eyes open.

After, while we waited for his clothes to dry, he sat on the living-room sofa in nothing but my pink robe, eating the peanut butter and jelly sand-wiches I’d made for him, watching
The Young and the Restless
, both of us pretending that this was normal.

Liam parked the car at Prospect Point. We watched boats travel through the morning light, crossing the Burrard Inlet towards the north-shore mountains, while tourists bought postcards and took pictures. “Smile and click,” Liam said in no general direction, his hands in front of his face,
squared offlike a camera. Next to us was a Japanese couple, struggling to take a self-portrait.

“Newlyweds,” I told Liam.

“How can you tell?”

“Newlyweds,” I told Liam.

“Just look.” The man had his arm slung over the woman’s shoulder, loose but possessive. Her hand slipped into his back pocket, fingers digging into flesh, the same way she probably did when they made love. I imagined alabaster limbs wrapped and lengthened, folded and contorted, the push of each other, her red lipstick smeared. The man took his wife’s picture. He said something in Japanese that made me blush. When they kissed each other, I felt it.

Liam offered to take their picture. After, when I asked him why he’d bothered, he said, “Because one day they’ll need something to remember they were happy.”

I didn’t know what to say and wandered away towards the jewellery carts that lined the parking lot. A man with dreadlocks tried to sell me a hemp bracelet, a fat woman in a tie-dye T-shirt was hawking jade and moonstones to unsuspecting tourists, and behind them a Chinese man was drawing charcoal portraits.

He saw me looking. “I draw your picture? Twenty dollars.”

I turned out my empty pockets. “Sorry.”

“Ten dollars? Special price,” he said to Liam. “I make your girlfriend’s picture.”

Liam looked at the man, his pictures. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said and walked offtowards the seawall. I didn’t hurry to catch up.

We spent the next hour in silence, walking around the park’s marine path, stopping only to look at Siwash Rock.

“Do you know the story behind it?” I asked, looking down as water rushed around the sea stack.

Liam shook his head.

“The Squamish legend says that the rock was once a brave warrior who was turned to stone as a reward for unselfish acts and his devotion to his family.”

Liam snickered. “How is that a reward?”

“It was a gift of immortality.”

Liam didn’t say anything and continued walking down the path. After a few other feeble attempts to engage him, I stopped trying.

It was late that afternoon by the time he began speaking in complete sentences again. I was sitting on the seawall steps, eating my bagged lunch, while he stood on the beach below watching seagulls swoop in and peck at the remains of a crow tangled in tidal debris.

“I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stay. I can’t take it anymore.” He turned towards me. I tossed the crusts of my sandwich in the air, hoping the gulls would prefer it to the crow.