Fall from Grace (30 page)

“Goddamn it. Goddamn it!” I screamed, banging my fists against the glass until my strength gave way and I collapsed in a heap at the base of the window. I slugged it a couple more times, but I knew I was defeated. There was no way I was going to get into these buildings, no way I was going to be warm tonight. There was nothing for me to do but to let the cold come in and take me.

I pulled myself into a ball, and once my body cooled down from all the banging activity, the cold struck. I put both hands into one sock to share the warmth, my skin colder than the hand of death, because the hand of death wasn’t really cold. Only the weather was cold, and the hand of death, once it came, was warm and inviting, like sleep. My eyes closed and I drifted. The warmth came from inside and, even though I knew it wasn’t right, I didn’t push it away. I fell into it, and it became warmer. I accepted it without reservation and without regret, except for a wish to have seen my kids one final time.

35

When I was a kid, I didn’t deal much with bullies like those two cops who dropped me off to die in the cold. Things were different for army brats. Moving to a new school was never a problem for me; you could expect a new school every two to three years. And while there was a bit of minor bullying, every kid was in the same boat. You could be the biggest kid, the fastest runner, the best hockey player, the smartest one, the best looking at the school, but there was no point lording that over people because that could change in the space of a week or two. Your dad gets posted and whatever standing you had in the old school is gone. Or a bunch of new kids get posted in and they are now bigger, faster, smarter, or prettier.

But one time, after we returned to Edmonton from Germany, Dad figured it was time for me to learn French. Instead of enrolling me in the DND elementary school a five-minute walk away, I was sent to a city public school that had a French-immersion program.

I figured it was going to be no big deal to take a bus to this new school where there was going to be a bunch of new kids. But most of these kids had known each other from birth and they had already drawn their lines of demarcation. Every clique was set, every kid had his role and would be stuck in the role, unless he had some major life-altering change, till he graduated from high school.

So when I tried jumping into a game of keepaway before the bell rang, the kids froze with shock when I grabbed the ball and started to run. In the army base, there would be a pause—“Who’s the new kid?”—but the game would go on. Here, the game stopped dead. Nobody moved, and when I turned and saw what had happened, I froze, too.

Thinking this was part of the game, I waited, and tried to figure out the aspect of play that came next, but nobody said anything, they just stared at me like I was some type of leper or alien. We stood there for at least thirty seconds until it registered that I wasn’t welcome.

Mostly out of spite, I held onto the ball for several more seconds, and then tossed the ball to the ground. It rolled to the feet of another boy, and when he picked it up, the game started again.

I went over to the fence where I had placed my lunch box and sat down next to a bunch of other kids who seemed to be coloring. I smiled at them but they shook their heads and walked away without a word. This was a very weird school, I thought.

It got worse in class. Since I was in grade three, I lined up under the teacher holding up three fingers when the bell rang. She shouted out something but I couldn’t really understand her, but it seemed like three. And I was right because when I sat down in the classroom, at a seat near the back, my name was called and I shouted, “Present.”

The class giggled at that and the teacher frowned, but only for a second. She then smiled a bright smile and pointed at me in a jocular yet admonishing tone. When she spoke, I understood nothing. It was just like the trips we took to Quebec; people spoke, even to me, but I couldn’t understand a word they said. Why don’t they speak English? was my typical thought during those trips. And it was the same with that teacher. Why doesn’t she speak English?

When I didn’t answer, her bright smile turned into a frown and the admonishing was no longer jocular. She kept asking me questions, which I knew by the inflection in her voice, but I had no idea what she was saying. Just to make her happy, I replied once, saying, “Yes,” but instead of nodding, she harrumphed and shook her head. The entire class laughed out loud. Finally the teacher spoke to me in English, accented like Dad’s. “Leo, if you are unable to participate in the class, then please sit quietly for the rest of the morning and don’t interrupt us.”

She turned away from me and started to teach whatever lesson was up for the day. I spent the morning drawing in my notebook, filling up the page with one complete line, a confused scribble that straggled across the page, while the various members of the class whispered, giggled, and pointed.

At lunch, I found a spot by myself and started to eat my baloney sandwich. While I ate, a kid I recognized from my class came up to me. He sat down. “Your name is Leo, right?”

“Yeah, so what?” I said, wary. I wasn’t sure if this guy was one of those who had laughed at me but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Well, my name is Michael,” he said, saying it the English way, not Michel, the French way, which sounded like a girl’s name. He offered me a cookie. A peace offering? A sign of friendship? I took the cookie, glad to have met a new friend and offered him my banana. He took it with a smile, peeled it, and started to eat.

We said nothing, just ate, me the cookie, him the banana. When he finished, he tossed the peel in the garbage can by the corner. “Pretty good shot,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s true, then, that you can’t speak French?”

There was nothing for me to say except, “Yeah.” Still, a nervous feeling came over me, like it was before I was going to throw up.

“So if I said…”—and then he said something in French—“you wouldn’t know what I’m saying?”

“Nope.”

“And if I called you…”—he said a few words—“you wouldn’t know what I was saying?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” Michael said. And as fast as he had sat down, he stood up and went over to a group of boys who were watching us. Michael was the biggest of them all and he whispered to them, pointed a few times, and they nodded.

After a minute or two, they came over, smiles on their faces. I thought, great, Mike’s going to introduce me to new friends and I’ll be part of the group.

Instead, they made a half circle around me, and after a second, they pointed and started shouting those words that Michael had said. And they laughed. And pointed. And shouted those words I couldn’t understand. And then some new words.

Then some new kids joined them. And then, despite the protestation of the teachers, the whole lunchroom joined in the shouting, pointing, and laughing at me. It was then that I knew that even though I couldn’t understand the words, I understood the hatred and anger. Never in my life had I ever been the butt of such bullying. No way would something like that happen at a school full of army brats. I felt my face get hot, tears streaming down my cheeks. My head was spinning in grief and anger. But instead of running away, I calmly closed my lunch box and moved to walk away. Michael stood in front of me, laughing and shouting.

I hit him.

In the face.

With my metal lunch box.

Nothing told me to do it, I didn’t even plan it, I just did it. The sound of metal cracking bone echoed through the room. Michael’s nose exploded in a gush of blood and he went down, out cold. There was a stunned second of silence in which I felt happy and light, and then people started screaming and teachers started running. Someone grabbed me and took me to an office, and even though they talked to me, yelled at me, in French and English, and even though Mom and Dad came by and yelled at me, Dad in French and English, and Mom in English, possibly even Cree, I said nothing. I didn’t think of Michael, I just looked at my lunch box and wondered how I could fix the dent.

A few days later, I stood in front of the class at the DND school, telling the students my name and that I had just moved from Germany. When I sat down, the boy next to me asked me what part of Germany I had just come from. When I told him, he asked me if the chocolate factory was still there and if you could still find salamanders in the ponds in the woods.

I said yeah.

36

In the distance, a blazing white light moved closer until it stopped right in front of me. A second later, a disembodied voice spoke to me in a language I should have understood, but could not. There was another sound, an insistent hum, a high-pitched wail. The voice spoke right in my ear. “Hey, you!” it shouted in an accent that was not quite French. My world started to shake, and the cold started to creep back in. “Wake up, wake up. I know you’re in there, wake up!”

I lifted the cumbersome weight that was my head, and turned it toward the voice. My eyes opened like the peeling of an orange and stared into the face of Jesus, or someone who looked like Jesus, the way Jesus really looked, with brown skin, short curly hair, a scruffy mustache and beard, and a prominent nose that was long yet flattened at the edges. White light behind him formed a halo around his head.

I blinked twice and reached out with my hand, the cold returning to my body like a vengeful army after the sack of its country’s capital. The shivers began in my internal organs and then spread throughout my body.

The face smiled in pure benevolence. “
Alhamdulillah!
You are still alive! Still alive. Can you walk?”

I nodded and tried to push myself up, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I stumbled. Hands reached out and pulled me to my feet. I groaned as sharp pains stabbed me in the thighs. My legs stiffened and held me up, but I wouldn’t have been able to stand without those helping hands. They pulled me, steering me toward the light and the humming noise. A cloud of smoke drifted to the sky behind the lights. I moved forward, grunting as jabs of pain struck with each step.

“Does it hurt?”

I nodded. “Very much.”

One hand left me and slapped me on the back. I almost fell but caught myself. “Excellent. Pain is good. Pain is good. If you feel pain, then you are still alive. Still alive.”

Yes. Still alive. I am still alive. Someone has come to save me, I thought. It took me a second to realize that the bright light came from the headlights of a car, and the insistent hum wasn’t the conversations of the Saved in heaven, but the alert given by a car when a door is open while the engine is running.

I stopped and turned toward my benefactor. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He pushed one hand into my back to move me forward and placed another on my head to push me down. “Get in the car first, and then thank me. It’s warm inside.”

The passenger door opened, and as I moved to crawl into it, I heard another voice, this one filled with distress. “What are you doing? You can’t do this! This is unheard of!” But no one responded to the voice, so I thought it was some kind of cold-induced hallucination, my hypothermic body playing tricks on my mind.

My new friend pushed me into the car. The softness of the seat was so exquisite, the friendly warmth blasting from the vents so breathtaking, I raised my arms in exultation and collapsed in a feeling I hadn’t known since the birth of my children. Life was the most incredible experience in the universe, because without it, there would be no light, no joy, no pain, nothing but darkness and cold. Not even a glimmer of hope or despair. Just endless nothing.

But there is life and I am alive to see that!

A few seconds later, my savior climbed into the car, shutting the door and silencing the hum. He reached forward, grabbed a plastic cup from the holder, and held it out to me with both hands, like a priest offering the sacrament to a parishioner. “Drink this,” he said.

I recalled a line from church, and while taking the cup from his hand, completed the ritual. “This is the cup of life.” I pulled the cup to my mouth, bathing in the misty heat that rose from it. The scent of coffee was a powerful aphrodisiac, and I pulled it into me like a monk giving up vows of celibacy. The heat burned my lungs, but I didn’t care. After an eternal olfactory orgasm, my lips reached out in a kissing pout to touch the silky softness of the liquid. There was a quick, sharp burn, and my lips snapped back, but only for an instant. They reached out again, tentative but insistent, and touched the surface. My lips parted, and my tongue reached out between them to caress the coffee. It was hot, but I pushed forward and plunged into the cup, taking a sip and feeling the warm, delicate liquid swirling in my mouth.

Eddies of heat and pain circulated through my mouth as the liquid touched my cold teeth and my cavities. After a second, I swallowed, welcoming the soothing warmth down my throat and into my yearning stomach. A surge of warmth radiated through my body, ending in a climactic shiver. I drank again from the plastic cup of life.

A harsh voice came from the backseat. I tried to look, but the tears in my eyes and the refraction of the light prevented me from seeing more than a silhouette. “This is outrageous. Don’t you realize that I have a flight to catch, and you stop to pick up some bum off the street? I’m going to file a complaint.”

My driver friend turned toward the backseat, his face burning with the fury of Christ attacking the merchants at the temple. “Get out of my taxi! Get out!”