Kicking The Sky Part 4

I saw James up close now: his eyes were an unnatural blue, his nose was crooked like a hockey player's, and his teeth were slightly crowded. He had a cleft in his stubbly chin, and his Adam's apple stuck out like a Ping-Pong ball. A smooth pink scar ran along his jawline. It made him look dangerous.

Ricky offered his rag to Terri, and she wrapped it around her hand like a prizefighter.

"You okay?" James asked.

"I'm fine."

"Must hurt."

"It'll hurt later, but that's okay." She looked up the laneway to where Amilcar had disappeared. "It was worth it."

James smiled, scanned my sister's face and body. It wasn't like he was being a pig or anything, more like he was photocopying her into his brain.

"I don't need a knight to ride up on a horse and save me," she said. "Especially one that carries a bag of ice, not a sword."

James looked around. "I don't see a horse." When he failed to get a laugh he added, "You got a bit of a bite."

Terri bent down and picked up a few chunks of ice from the burst bag that lay on the ground. She buried one piece into her bandaged hand and put the smaller piece into her mouth, crunched it between her teeth. Her eyes never left his. "Come home!" she said to me. "Mom will be back soon."

Later that evening, my mother took another shift at the hospital, and my father went to clean the bank downtown. Edite came over with some Avon catalogues. According to my sister, they were going to do girl things. I snuck into the hallway and held my breath outside the living-room door.

"Looks like you lost a big chunk of your nail."

"It'll grow back."

"No boy is worth it, Terri."

"What do you think of James?"

"He's a bit too old for you."

"He's got gorgeous eyes."

"I'll give you that."

They both giggled.

"Antonio. You can come in, you know," Edite said. I could hear Terri slapping the roof of her mouth with her tongue. "I can see your reflection on the TV screen."

I stepped inside.

"How long have you been standing there?" Terri asked.

"I just got here," I said.

Edite laughed. "Do you want to join us?"

Terri's eyebrows told me what my answer should be.

"I was just wondering if I could ... if I could maybe ... go play with my friends in the laneway. The street lights aren't on yet ..."

"You'll stay close? You'll stay together? And you promise to come home the minute the street lights come on?"

I nodded three times to make sure I covered all her terms.

"Okay."

The second I walked from my garage into the laneway I saw James's garage door open. It's what I'd hoped I'd find. My next hope was to see Manny and Ricky in there with him. I heard their voices as I got closer and quickened my pace.

Set atop a wooden crate, Ricky sat in a chair. His head was the only thing that poked through the cut-out in a garbage bag. A shiner was beginning to take shape around his eye. He smiled when he saw me. Above his head, the hungry moths that had been drawn into James's garage spiralled around the bare light bulb like kamikazes. Manny was lying on the s.h.a.g rug, a pile of Playboy and Hustler magazines next to him. I closed the garage door, in case anyone pa.s.sed by and decided to snitch to our parents, and sat cross-legged on the rug. Manny threw a couple of magazines into my lap.

"Where's James?" I asked. And as if on cue, he appeared from behind Ricky. He had been crouched behind him, mixing some soap and water in a bowl.

"Let's get this started," he said, winking at me. Then he turned to Ricky. "If you're going to hang around here, you need to be presentable. And I'm sorry but that sad-a.s.s haircut you got yourself isn't good enough."

We all laughed, even Ricky.

James tilted the bowl over Ricky's head. The sudsy water ran right off his bangs and across his nose. Ricky squeezed his eyes shut and blew some air out of his mouth like a wet fart.

James began to work Ricky's hair with his fingers, while humming "The Barber of Seville" from Bugs Bunny. We all joined in, our voices growing louder in unison.

James rinsed Ricky's hair, then dried it with a towel, finishing off by wiping inside Ricky's ears with his towel-covered finger. Then he circled Ricky, a.s.sessing. As James pa.s.sed by me, I was aware of myself smelling him.

"How long's it been, Ricky?" Manny said. James combed Ricky's hair and flicked the comb against the wall.

"Too long," James joked. He flipped the bowl and placed it over Ricky's head. He pressed the bowl against his forehead and cut straight across, evened out all the jagged points. Hair fell onto Ricky's nose and cheeks. He sneezed. "Ta-da!" Then James made his way around the rest of Ricky's head, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to the edge of the bowl. Finally, he lifted away the bowl, cracked the damp towel in the air, and took a long bow.

"Okay, look," Manny said. "If you take this one's t.i.tties and Miss January's face, throw in the centrefold's a.s.s and the beaver on this one, you've got the perfect woman."

James laughed, lowering Ricky back to the floor. "It's not that easy, Dr. Frankenstein."

"A guy can dream," Manny said.

Ricky slipped the garbage bag over his head, grabbed the towel off the floor, and rubbed his damp hair. "How do I look?" He tilted his face upward to show us both profiles.

"Like Moe from the Three Stooges," Manny said.

"Change the 'i' in Ricky to an 'o' and you look like Rocky," I said. "All we need is a dead animal strung up in the garage for you to practise your left hook." Ricky puffed up like a boxer.

"Okay, now that the crate and chair are here, who's going to help me get this thing up?" James said, nudging with his foot the box that held the dis...o...b..ll.

Ricky's hand shot up as if he were desperate to answer a question in cla.s.s, and I went to the box and picked up the ball. With almost no effort, James lifted Ricky onto the chair, then held the chair still as I handed Ricky the ball.

"See that eyehook there, Ricky, screwed into the rafter? Just attach it to that," James told him. Ricky stretched up, then let go, and the ball wobbled a bit. James looped the cord through the s.p.a.ce between the rafters, before letting the last length drop along the wall. "You guys ready? Countdown! Five, four, three, two, one." He plugged it into the outlet and the ball began to spin.

"Pretty cool," I said.

"Couldn't have done it without you," James said. "Now, I got a surprise. Close your eyes." Ricky covered his eyes with his hands. Manny didn't close his, he just buried his face into a centrefold as if there was some scratch-and-sniff part to it. I half closed mine, but I could still see through my eyelashes. The moths in the garage were confused, chasing the specks of mirrored light that swept around the room.

"Open up!" he shouted. He carried a slab of supermarket cake, a few lit candles arranged on top.

"Whose birthday is it?" Ricky said.

"No one's. I just thought it could be like a garage-warming cake."

"How much are you paying for this place?" Manny said.

"Forty bucks a month," James said, setting the cake in the middle of the rug. "A neighbour up the street, Red, is handling everything for Mr. Serjeant."

"How'd you know we'd be here?" I asked.

"I just had a feeling," James said, pulling on the lobe of his left ear and smiling.

"You have forks and plates?" Manny asked.

"Who needs them. It's best to eat cake with your hands."

Manny took the first chunk, digging his hand into the corner of the cake. Then we all tore into it, grabbing at big pieces without caring what fell on the floor or how much icing smeared across our mouths.

"Why don't you guys finish that off and work on your moves a bit. The chicks dig cool dancers. I gotta take a leak." James cranked up the dial on the radio, then lit a cigarette and headed out to the backyard. Peter Frampton's guitar blared.

Manny was licking his fingers and shouting the lyrics that didn't exist, just as Frampton's guitar soared in a wild riff and the theme from S.W.A.T. began. Ricky twisted his body to the sound. Neither of them could stop laughing. "Do the hustle with us, Antonio," Ricky said, just as the laser beats of a Disco Dynamite hit came on. They knew the first steps, and before long we were dancing in unison, laughing, jabbing at what was left of the cake and getting dizzy in the circling lights.

James returned from the backyard, smiling. "I'm glad you boys came by tonight," he shouted over the music. As he said it, the street lights came on. I swallowed the bit of cake in my mouth and hurried home.

- 7*

"YOU'LL BE TWELVE in a few weeks and you still don't know how to tie a proper knot," my mother said. We were about to leave the house when she knelt in front of me in the hallway and tied my shoelaces so tightly I couldn't feel my toes. "That's better."

Terri walked about twenty feet ahead of us, irritated that she had to be there at all. But my mother had insisted that today was a day for family. No one was exempt except for my father, who had left earlier to get an espresso and to avoid the crowds. We hadn't walked more than halfway up our street when my mother stopped to stare at a man pounding a For Sale sign into the Machados' front lawn. Senhora Machado was watching from her porch.

"Bom dia, Georgina," Senhora Machado said.

"Angelina, I had no idea you were moving. Why didn't you say anything?"

Senhora Machado began to sweep. She would not look at my mother. "We have small children. Rogerio says it'll be safer away from the city. We're going to the suburbs, Brampton. We've saved up some money and-" The sun beat down on my head. I tried to run my fingers through my hair but my mother gently slapped my hand, afraid I would mess up the way she had set it in the goop. "We have to think of what's best for us," Senhora Machado said.

My mother shifted the lace veil from the back of her head to cover her face. "Vamos, filho."

My parents didn't talk to Terri and me about what had happened to Emanuel, but they didn't try to hide it from us either. It had been four days since Emanuel's body had been found and just over a week since he had gone missing. The day after his body was found, my mother started bringing the newspaper home with her from one of the waiting rooms at St. Mike's. She began to stack them at the foot of her night table, always folded to a story about the murder.

The newspaper reported that Emanuel was killed only twelve hours after he was kidnapped. The police said there was evidence to suggest the killers had choked him, injected him with drugs, and when that hadn't killed him they'd held his head under water in a sink. The police had found Emanuel in a green garbage bag hidden under a pile of junk on the rooftop. He had been wrapped like a mummy in electrical tape. A man called Saul Betesh-the same one who had lured Emanuel with the promise of a hamburger and a quick buck-came clean. He had turned himself in and told the police everything. That's how the other men were caught in a town called Sioux Lookout. They were hauled off a Vancouver-bound train. Parts of the story still didn't make sense to me, like why they had chosen Emanuel, and what they wanted from a twelve-year-old kid.

Once on Dundas Street, we made our way toward St. Agnes Church for the funeral. The funeral procession was snaking its way through our neighbourhood. Not Emanuel's neighbourhood-the Regent Park housing project-but our neighbourhood, the respectable Portuguese one in the city's west end where the Jaques family should have lived but couldn't afford to. Some people were mad that Padre Costa, the priest of St. Mary's Parish on Portugal Square, hadn't allowed the funeral Ma.s.s to be held in his church. He blamed the media attention the boy's death had received, said he didn't want a magnifying gla.s.s held over the Portuguese community. We all knew that he made decisions based only on his own greed, and if there wasn't anything in it for him, Padre Costa rarely saw the need to help. My father and uncles said Padre Costa could keep his Lincoln Continental and his false conviction, but he would pay for giving in to believing the rumours that Emanuel had known what he was doing when he agreed to go to Saul Betesh's apartment. Padre Costa went as far as to tell some members of the congregation that he had no doubt sin was lurking in the minds of countless boys in the neighbourhood. He wasn't going to support hustlers in his church. I worried he meant Ricky, but there was no way he'd know. I was sure Ricky wouldn't have blabbed stuff to Padre Costa during confession.

It looked like people had been gathering outside St. Agnes's since early that morning, hoping to get a good view for the seven-thirty Ma.s.s. I looked for Manny and his parents in the crowd. Chances were Ricky wouldn't show up. He'd be home waiting for his dad to come back from the night shift.

I saw Peter's red scarf. He kept his eyes on the sidewalk and walked against all the black figures heading toward the church. I resisted the urge to call out to him. It wouldn't be right here.

Word had spread that the mayor and a group of other important politicians were inside the church, in reserved seats. Television and radio crews were trying to work their way into the crowd, sticking microphones in people's faces, but the result was always the same: a polite nod, a raised hand, and a silent shuffle.

Men, women, and even some children were covered from head to toe in black. We walked steadily as one as if we were all on a conveyor belt stretching along Dundas Street.

The crowd stopped in front of the church and stood, waiting.

I was boxed in, squished against a man whose suit smelled of old books and Aqua Velva. He wasn't very tall. I could feel my mother's grip loosening. The crowd was pressing in and I could see the white of the inside of her arm between two people as she held on. It would have been easy to let go of her hand.

The organ music began and the shrill voice of the church's singer crackled over the speaker system they had placed outside the church. The lights and bunting, the same kind that bordered Senhor Agostinho's used-car lot on Bathurst Street, sagged against the front of the church; the Festa do Senhor da Pedra had been rescheduled out of respect for the Jaques family. My father chuckled when he heard my mother explain this to us. "It's because the priests don't want to lose money!" he said. "Always priests and money!"

I got stuck between two adults who now separated me from my mother. I had to push hard for them to move. My mother looked down at me and tried to smile. Terri kept shifting from one foot to the other-balancing herself on her platform shoes, and then crossing her legs, her face scrunched up in pain as if holding in her pee. The fingertips of one hand were covered in bandages; I still didn't know how she'd explained that to my mother. She whispered in my mother's ear. My mother sighed, then nodded. Terri pushed her way back through the horde. One man refused to give way. She nudged her shoulder into his chest. I heard the faint trace of "Perv!" and saw Senhor Batista's grin. He breathed in his cigarette and blew a steady stream through the black hole in his throat.

Senhora Gloria stood beside him. In her brown flowing robe she looked like St. Teresa, or Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. She was the holiest person I knew, but that hadn't stopped her from guiding my finger onto her flesh and holding it there.

I caught a glimpse of Agnes standing behind her mother before the crowd closed in again and blocked my view. Last year she'd been as flat as an ironing board. Then one day it seemed they just appeared, glorious b.r.e.a.s.t.s about the size of pomegranates, and it was wonderful. I loved pomegranates.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed-I counted 163 honks into handkerchiefs-before Edite appeared, squeezing herself between Senhora Gloria and Senhor Batista. She dragged my sister beside her. Terri looked p.i.s.sed. Senhora Gloria's face tightened as if she had sucked a lemon. Aunt Edite always dressed hippyish. My father said it was a sure sign she was a communist.

"I think I have an extra veil in my-"

Edite touched my mother's hand to stop her from looking for it. She shook her hair in the morning sun and stretched her red lips wide. "I spent half an hour," Edite told her, "flattening my hair with an iron. My hair is my veil." My mother tried to get Edite to go with her to church, but Edite always refused. She pa.s.sed the Catholic test in other ways. She could repeat Bible sayings: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of G.o.d, or He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. These phrases usually ended the conversation, forcing the topic into other areas: the price of mackerel, or urging my mother, who didn't wear makeup, to make extra money selling Avon.

My mother looked at my sister. "Back so fast?"

"We ducked into Senhor Joo's fish market," Edite said. "He let us use the washroom-no need to go all the way home. It's like a circus here," she added. My mother pretended not to hear her.

A spell washed over the crowd. I saw the casket and understood why. It was small and glossy white. It seemed to float in the air, as light as Styrofoam over a sea of black. The bra.s.s handles flopped to the side, unused. Arms shot up to touch the coffin. People spread their palms and wiggled their fingers in the air like hungry children wanting something. The sniffles grew louder, the gurgle of sucking back snot. Some women had fainted in the heat and were carried out onto the sidewalk to be fanned. The smell of mothb.a.l.l.s, cooking oils that had seeped into the fabric of their clothes, glycerine soap, and baby powder caked by sweat became dizzying.

The coffin tilted up at an angle. The crowd's arms carried the box across the blue sky and into the dark, incense-filled church.

I saw my father standing at the top of the steps near the church's entrance. He was dressed in a suit and held a felt hat to his chest. The sun bounced off his shiny head. I saw James there, taller than the rest and dressed in a tuxedo-printed T-shirt. He was about five feet away from where my father stood, his shoulders parting the crowd. I saw my father look back once, then again, and this time he nodded-a thank you, I thought, for James's help on the day of the pig killing. I could see my father moving his lips, speaking to James. James said something back and smiled. My shirt collar was digging into my skin. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the warmth of the sun. When I looked back I saw Manny and Ricky had climbed the half wall of the church. Manny looked cool and relaxed in his shorts and Chinese slippers. Ricky stared at the wrist.w.a.tch James had given him. They sat on the handrail beside James and my father. I could taste copper pennies at the back of my throat. My mother had said that today was a day for families, not friends. I poked my finger into the collar of my shirt and tugged. My mother drew my hand down and held it at my side.

- 8*

"ANTONIO! Come here and help." Edite didn't have a laundry room in her apartment, so she would come over and wash clothes in our bas.e.m.e.nt, when she was sure my father wasn't around. "d.a.m.n sheets. Just hold on to the end until it comes through the other side," she said. "Don't pull, though. I don't want to break the wringer and have your dad blame your mom."

A tip of white sheet peeked between the two rollers of the wringer washer. She dunked her hands into the machine, the water up to her elbows. She fed the wringer again, then patted her hands dry on my mother's ap.r.o.n and pulled a cigarette from her pocket. She lit it, took a deep drag, and blew out the smoke like it was the thing she needed most in the world.