Skin Folk (24 page)

I bet my parents could tell me where in the Caribbean he was from. Give them any inkling that someone’s from “back home,”
and they’d be on him like a dirty shirt, badgering him with questions:
Which island you from? How long you been here in Canada? You have family here? When last you go back home?

Old Man Morris signed for his order and left. One of the volunteers would deliver it later that evening. I watched him walk
away. He looked to be in his sixties, but he was probably younger; hard life wears a person down. Tallish, with a brown, wrinkled
face and tightly curled salt-and-pepper hair, he had a strong, upright walk for someone in his circumstances. Even in summer,
I had never seen him without that old tweed jacket, its pockets stuffed to bursting with God knew what type of scavenge; half-smoked
cigarette butts that people had dropped on the street, I supposed, and pop cans he would return for the deposit money. At
least he seemed clean.

I went down to shipping to check on a big donation of food we’d received from a nearby supermarket. Someone was sure to have
made a mistake sorting the cans. Someone always did.

My parents had been beside themselves when they found out I’d switched bodies. I guess it wasn’t very diplomatic of me, showing
up without warning on their suburban doorstep, this white woman with her flippy blond hair, claiming to be their daughter.
I’d made sure my new body would have the same vocal range as the old one, so when Mom and Dad heard my voice coming out of
a stranger’s body, they flipped. Didn’t even want to let me in the door, at first. Made me pass my new I.D. and the doctor’s
certificate through the letter slot.

“Mom, give me a break,” I yelled. “I told you last year that I was thinking about doing this!”

“But Cyn-Cyn, that ain’t even look like you!” My mother’s voice was close to a shriek. Her next words were for my dad:

“What the child want to go and do this kind of stupidness for? Nothing ain’t wrong with the way she look!”

A giggled response from my father, “True, she behind had a way to remain in a room long after she leave, but she get that
from you, sweetheart, and you know how much I love that behind!”

He’d aimed that dig for my ears, I just knew it. I’d had enough. “So, are the two of you going to let me in, or what?” I hated
it when they carried on the way they were doing. All that drama. And I really wished they’d drop the Banana Boat accents.
They’d come to Canada five years before I was even
born,
for Christ’s sake, and I was now twenty-eight.

They did finally open the door, and after that they just had to get used to the new me.

I wondered if I should start saving for another switch. It’s really a rich people’s thing. I couldn’t afford to keep doing
it every few years, like some kind of vid queen. Shit.

“What’s griping you?” Eleanor asked after I’d chewed out one of the volunteers for some little mistake. “You’ve been cranky
for days now.”

Damn. “Sorry. I know I’ve been bitchy. I’ve been really down, you know? No real reason. I just don’t feel like myself.”

“Yeah. Well.” Eleanor was used to my moodiness. “I guess it is Thanksgiving weekend. People always get a little edgy around
the holidays. Maybe you need a change. Tell you what; why don’t you deliver Old Man Morris’s ration, make sure he’s okay for
the weekend?”

“Morris? You want me to go to where he
lives?
” I couldn’t imagine anything less appealing. “Where is that, anyway? In a park or something?”

Eleanor frowned at that. “So, even if he does, so what? You need to get over yourself, girl.”

I didn’t say anything, just thought my peevishness at her. She strode over to the terminal at her desk, punched in Mr. Morris’s
name, handed me the printout. “Just go over to this address, and take him his ration. Chat with him a little bit. This might
be a lonely weekend for him. And keep the car till Tuesday. We won’t be needing it.”

Mr. Morris lived on the creepy side of Sherbourne. I had to slow the car down to dodge the first wave of drunken suits lurching
out of the strip club, on their boozy way home after the usual Friday afternoon three-hour liquid lunch. I stared at the storey-high
poster that covered one outside wall of the strip club. I hoped to God they’d used a fisheye lens to make that babe’s boobs
look like that. Those couldn’t be natural.

Shit. Shouldn’t have slowed down. One of the prostitutes on the corner began to twitch her way over to the car, bending low
so she could see inside, giving me a flash of her tits into the bargain: “Hey, darlin’, you wanna go out? I can swing lezzie.”
I floored it out of there.

Searching for the street helped to keep my mind off some of the more theatrical sights of Cabbagetown West on a Friday evening.
I didn’t know that the police
could
conduct a full strip search over the hood of a car, right out in the open.

The next street was Old Man Morris’s. Tenement row houses slumped along one side of the short street, marked by sagging roofs
and knocked-out steps. There were rotting piles of garbage in front of many of the houses. I thought I could hear the flies
buzzing from where I was. The smell was like clotted carrion. A few people hung out on dilapidated porches, just staring.
Two guys hunched into denim jackets stopped talking as I drove by. A dirty, greasy-haired kid was riding a bicycle up and
down the sidewalk, dodging the garbage. The bike was too small for him and it had no seat. He stood on the pedals and pumped
them furiously.

Mr. Morris lived in an ancient apartment building on the other side of the street. I had to double-park in front. I hauled
the dolly out of the trunk and loaded Mr. Morris’s boxes onto it. I activated the car’s screamer alarm and headed into the
building, praying that no weirdness would go down on the street before I could make it inside.

Thank God, he answered the buzzer right away. “Mr. Morris? It’s Cynthia; from the food bank?”

The party going on in the lobby was only a few gropes away from becoming an orgy. The threesome writhing and sighing on the
couch ignored me. Two men, one woman. I stepped over a pungent yellow liquid that was beetling its way down one leg of the
bench, creeping through the cracks in the tile floor. I hoped it was just booze. I took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

The dingy, musty corridor walls were dark grey, peeling in places to reveal a bilious pink underneath. It was probably a blessing
that there was so much dirt ground into the balding carpet. What I could glimpse of the original design made me queasy. Someone
was frying Spam for dinner (“canned horse’s cock,” my dad called it). I found Mr. Morris’s door and knocked. Inside, I could
hear the sound of locks turning, and the curt “quack” of an alarm being deactivated. Mr. Morris opened the door to let me
in.

“Come in quick, child,” he said, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “I can’t let the pot boil over. Don’t Jake does deliver
my goods?” He bustled back into a room I guessed was the kitchen. I wheeled the dolly inside. “Eleanor sent Jake home early
today, Mr. Morris. Holiday treat.”

He chuckled. “That young lady is so thoughtful, oui? It ain’t have plenty people like she anymore.”

“Hmm.”

I took a quick glance around the little apartment. It was dark in there. The only light was from the kitchen, and from four
candles stuck in pop bottles on the living room windowsill. The living room held one small, rump-sprung couch, two aluminum
chairs, and a tiny card table. The gaudy flower-print cloth that barely covered the table was faded from years of being ironed.
I was surprised; the place was spotless, if a little shabby. I perched on the edge of the love seat.

His head poked round the corner. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right. Siddown on the settee and rest yourself.”

Settee. Oui.
In his own home, he spoke in a more natural accent. “You from Trinidad, Mr. Morris?”

His face crinkled into an astonished grin. “Yes, douxdoux. How you know that?”

“That’s where my parents are from. They talk just like you.”

“You is from Trinidad?” he asked delightedly. “Is true Trini people come in all colours, but with that accent, I really take
you for a Canadian, born and bred.”

I hated explaining this, but I guess I’d asked for it, letting him know something about my life. “I was born here, but my
parents are black. And so was I, but I’ve had a body switch.”

A bemused expression came over his face. He stepped into the living room to take a closer look at me. “For true? I hear about
people doin’ this thing, but I don’t think I ever meet anybody who make the switch. You mean to tell me, you change from a
black woman body into this one? Lord, the things you young people does do for fashion, eh?”

I stood up and plastered a smile on my face. “Well, you’ve got your weekend ration, Mr. Morris; just wanted to be sure you
wouldn’t go hungry on Thanksgiving, okay?”

He looked pensively at the freeze-dried turkey dinner and the cans of creamed corn (I’d made sure to put them in his ration
this time). “Thanks, doux-doux. True I ain’t go be hungry, but…”

“But what, Mr. Morris?”

“Well, I don’t like to eat alone. My wife pass away ten years now, but you know, I does still miss she sometimes. You goin’
by you mummy and daddy for Thanksgiving?”

The question caught me off guard. “Yes, I’m going to see them on Sunday.”

“But you not doing anything tonight?”

“Uh, well, a movie, maybe, something like that.”

He gave me a sweet, wheedling smile. “You want to have a early Thanksgiving with a ol’ man from back home?”

“
I’m not from ‘back home,
’” I almost said. The hope on his face was more than I could stand. “Well, I…”

“I making a nice, nice dinner,” he pleaded.

Eleanor would stay and keep the old man company for a few minutes, if it were her. I sat back down.

Mr. Morris’s grin was incandescent. “You going to stay? All right, doux-doux. Dinner almost finish, you hear? Just pile up
the ration out of the way for me.” He bustled back into the kitchen. I could hear humming, pots and pans clattering, water
running.

I packed the food up against one wall, a running argument playing in my head the whole time. Why was I doing this? I’d driven
our pathetic excuse for a company car through the most dangerous part of town, just begging for a baseball bat through the
window, and all to have dinner with an old bum. What would he serve anyway? Peanut butter and crackers? I knew the shit that
man ate—I’d given it to him myself, every Friday at the food bank! And what if he pulled some kind of sleazy, toothless come-on?
The police would say I asked for it!

A wonderful smell began to waft from the kitchen. Some kind of roasting meat, with spices. Whatever Mr. Morris was cooking,
he couldn’t have done it on food bank rations.

“You need a hand, Mr. Morris?”

“Not in here, darling. I nearly ready. Just sit yourself down at the table, and I go bring dinner out. I was going to freeze
all the extra, but now I have a guest to share it with.”

When he brought out the main course, arms straining under the weight of the platter, my mouth fell open. And it was just the
beginning. He loaded the table with plate after plate of food: roasted chicken with a giblet stuffing, rich, creamy gravy,
tossed salad with exotic greens; huge mounds of mashed potatoes, some kind of fruit preserve. He refused to answer my questions.
“I go tell you all about it after, doux-doux. Now is time to eat.”

It certainly was. I was so busy trying to figure out if he could have turned food bank rations into this feast, that I forgot
all about calories and daily allowable grams of fat; I just ate. After the meal, though, my curiosity kicked in again.

“So, Mr. Morris, tell me the truth; you snowing the food bank? Making some money on the side?” I grinned at him. He wouldn’t
be the first one to run a scam like that, working for cash so that he could still claim welfare.

“No, doux-doux.” He gave me a mischievous smile. “I see how it look that way to you, but this meal cost me next to nothing.
You just have to know where to, um,
procure
your food, that is all. You see this fancy salad?” He pointed to a few frilly purple leaves that were all that remained of
the salad. “You know what that is?”