Skin Folk Read online

  That Friday afternoon at work, Old Man Morris came in for the usual. I stacked his order on the counter between us and keyed the contents into the computer. It bleeped at me: “This selection does not meet the customer’s dietary requirements.” As if I didn’t know that. I tried to talk him into beefing up the carbs and betacarotene. “All right, then,” I said heartily, “what else will you have today? Some of that creamed corn? We just got a big batch of tins in. I bet you’d like some of that, eh?” I always sounded so artificial, but I couldn’t help it. The food bank customers made me uncomfortable. Eleanor didn’t react that way, though. She was so at ease in the job, cheerful, dispensing cans of tuna with an easy goodwill. She always chattered away to the clients, knew them all by name.

  “No thanks, dear,” Mr. Morris replied with his polite smile. “I never could stomach the tinned vegetables. When I can, I eat them fresh, you know?”

  “Yeah, Cynthia,” Eleanor teased, “you know that Mr. Morris hates canned veggies. Too much like baby food, eh, Mr. Morris?”

  Always the same cute banter between those two. He’d flattened out his Caribbean accent for the benefit of us two white girls. I couldn’t place which island he was from. I sighed and overrode the computer’s objections. Eleanor and old man Morris grinned at each other while I packed up his weekend ration. Fresh, right. When could a poor old man ever afford the fresh stuff? I couldn’t imagine what his diet was like. He always asked us for the same things: soup mix, powdered milk, and cans of beans. We tried to give him his nutritional quota, but he politely refused offers of creamed corn or canned tuna. I was sure he was always constipated. His problem, though.

  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 desig
n 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?”

  “Yeah. Flowering kale. Rich people’s cabbage.”

  Mr. Morris laughed. “Yes, but I bet you see it somewhere else, besides the grocery store.”

  I frowned, trying to think what he meant. He went on: “You know the Dominion Bank? The big one at Bathurst and Queen?” I nodded, still mystified. His smile got even broader. “You ever look at the plants they use to decorate the front?”

  I almost spat the salad out. “Ornamental cabbage? We’re eating ornamental cabbage that you stole from the front of a building?”

  His rich laugh filled the tiny room. “Not ‘ornamental cabbage,’ darlin’: ‘flowering kale.’ And I figure, I ain’t really stealin’ it; I recyclin’ it! They does pull it all up and throw it away when the weather turn cold. All that food. It does taste nice on a Sunday morning, fry-up with a piece of saltfish and some small-leaf thyme. I does grow the herbs-them on the windowsill, in the sun.”

  Salted cod and cabbage. Flavoured with French thyme and hot pepper. My mother made that on Sunday mornings too, with big fried flour dumplings on the side and huge mugs of cocoa. Not the cocoa powder from the tin, either; she bought the raw chocolate in chestnut-sized lumps from the Jamaican store, and grated it into boiling water, with vanilla, cinnamon, and condensed milk. Sitting in Mr. Morris’s living room, even with the remains of dinner on the table, I could almost smell that pure chocolate aroma. Full of fat, too. I didn’t let my mom serve it to me anymore when I visited. I’d spent too much money on my tight little butt.

  Still, I didn’t believe what Old Man Morris was telling me. “So, you mean to say that you just… take stuff? From off the street?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the chicken?”

  He laughed. “Chicken? Doux-doux, you ever see chicken with four drumstick? That is a wild rabbit I catch meself and bring home.”

  “Are you crazy? Do you know what’s in wild food? What kind of diseases it might carry? Why didn’t you tell me what we were eating?” But he was so pleased with himself, he didn’t seem to notice how upset I was.

  “Nah, nah, don’t worry ’bout diseases, darlin’! I been eatin’ like this for five-six years now, and I healthy like hog. De doctor say he never see a seventy-four-year-old man in such good shape.”
r />   He’s seventy-four! He does look pretty damned good for such an old man. I’m still not convinced, though: “Mr. Morris, this is nuts; you can’t just go around helping yourself to leaves off the trees, and people’s ornamental plants, and killing things and eating them! Besides, um, how do you catch a wild rabbit, anyway?”

  “Well, that is the sweet part.” He jumped up from his chair, started rummaging around in the pockets of his old tweed jacket that was hanging in the hallway. He came back to the table, clutching a fistful of small rocks and brandishing a thick, Y-shaped twig with a loose rubber strap attached. So that’s what he kept in those pockets—whatever it was.

  “This is a slingshot. When I was a small boy back home, I was aces with one of these!” He stretched the rubber strap tight with one hand, aimed the slingshot at one of his potted plants, and pretended to let off a shot. “Plai! Like so. Me and the boys-them used to practise shooting at all kind of ol’ tin can and thing, but I was the best. One time, I catch a coral snake in me mother kitchen, and I send one boulderstone straight through it eye with me first shot!” He chuckled. “The stone break the window, too, but me mother was only too glad that I kill the poison snake. Well, doux-doux, I does take me slingshot down into the ravine, and sometimes I get lucky and catch something.”

  I was horrified. “You mean, you used that thing to kill a rabbit? And we just ate it?”

  Mr. Morris’s face finally got serious. He sat back down at the table. “You mus’ understan’, Cynthia; I is a poor man. Me and my Rita, we work hard when we come to this country, and we manage to buy this little apartment, but when the last depression hit we, I get lay off at the car plant. After that, I couldn’t find no work again; I was already past fifty years old, nobody would hire me. We get by on Rita nurse work until she retire, and then hard times catch we ass. My Rita was a wonderful woman, girl; she could take a half pound of mince beef and two potatoes and make a meal that have you feelin’ like you never taste food before. She used to tell me, ‘Never mind, Johnny; so long as I have a little meat to put in this cook pot, we not goin’ to starve.’