The Chaos Page 6

  The stage was near the entrance, with a big picture window behind it. There were a couple of mikes up there. The spotlight was on center stage. Rich’d be standing in that light soon. I’d love to be in that light, dancing, with all eyes on me. I could hardly wait for Raw Gyals to make our debut.

  Bar None was right at the foot of the city. The window looked out onto Lake Ontario. Which, seeing as it was night, meant that the only thing I could see out the window was mostly blackness, pierced here and there with the running lights of small planes landing at the Toronto Island Airport, and the lights from those party boats you could rent so you could have your office party on the lake, complete with DJ and dancing.

  Somewhere out there in the darkness was the string of small islands in the lake. It’d be so wicked cool to live on Toronto Island and have to take a ferry to and from Toronto every day to go to school. But Dad said that people who had those homes never gave them up, just passed them on to family or friends. Ward’s Island was out there. And Centre Island. I hadn’t been to the mini amusement park on Centre Island since I was a kid. Maybe Ben, Glory, and I could do that thing we’d planned to do this summer before things with Tafari blew up. We were going to take the short ferry trip out to the island, go to the amusement park, and take a swan boat ride, just like we were six-year-olds again. The swan boats were so hokey; small, white fiberglass boats in the shape of a swan. They could seat about six people. Only they didn’t really float, and they weren’t even on the lake. They were in an artificial pond inside the amusement park. They were attached to a track below the water. There was a pedal on the floor of the boat. You pedaled the boat out along the track, and there was someone in the boathouse timing how long you’d been out on the pond. When it was time for you to bring your boat back, you’d hear this tinny voice on a cheap speaker system call out, “Swan number twelve, come back to the deck!” I loved that part. It’d be a scream for the three of us to do that. When I’d suggested it back in June, Tafari hadn’t wanted to go. Said it was kid stuff. Didn’t he realize it was only kid stuff if you were still an actual kid? If you weren’t, it was, I dunno, retro, or something.

  The bartender brought my drink back. I paid her. She had only stuck one lemon wedge on the rim of my glass. I love lemon wedges. I tried to call her back, but she was busy at the other end of the bar and didn’t hear me over the music. But there was a little bowl of lemon and lime wedges right there on the bar, just one stool over from me. Was I allowed to take from it? I looked around the bar. There were two more bowls just like it; one at the middle, one at the other end. But they might belong to people. People who liked lemon wedges even more than I did. I sipped at my drink and considered; try to sneak a couple of the wedges, maybe piss somebody off, or ask the guy beside me whether anybody could take them? And look like a real newbie. As if.

  A girl came up to the bar, took a wedge, plopped it into her drink, and walked away. Cool. I touched the shoulder of the guy beside me to get his attention. I leaned over and said, near his ear, “Can you pass me that bowl, please?”

  “Of course. My pleasure.” He handed me the bowl, trying to make like he wasn’t noticing my cleavage.

  “Thank you.” I loved it when guys tried to pretend like that. It was so sweet. It was only gross if they made a big deal of it, staring at your chest as if they wanted you and resented you at the same time.

  The guy asked me, “You here for the show later? That poetry thing?”

  “The spoken word open mike? Uh-huh. You?” I took a casual sip of my drink, as though I spent every Friday night in downtown bars talking to older guys. He was kinda cute. Looked white, maybe about twenty-two. Pretty hazel eyes, brown hair shaved just a little bit above his ears so it showed off the full cap of it above. His green sweatshirt was bulky, but not too bulky. Not so tight that he looked gay, but it didn’t hide how he had broad shoulders. Loose black jeans, rolled up neatly at the cuffs. Nice runners.

  He said, “Not me. I didn’t know there was a show on. Just came in for a quiet drink after a long week at work, you know?”

  “Uh-huh, I know what you mean.” I didn’t, but I would pretty soon. Mom and Dad were going to flip when I told them I was taking a couple of years off before going to university.

  The guy looked doubtfully at the stage at the front of the bar. “I may leave before it starts. I’m not the poetry type.”

  “Oh, it’s not like that! It’s not guys in berets with a bongo drum playing in the background.”

  He chuckled. “No? What’s it like, then?”

  “When it’s good, it’s like rap, it’s like freestyling.”

  “I dunno. I can’t really get into that if there’s no music.”

  “The words and the rhythms are music. You should stick around, you’ll see what I mean.”

  Now he was noticing more than just my breasts. “Wow,” he said. “Maybe I will stick around. Especially now that there’s a beautiful, intelligent woman to tell me all about it.”

  Oo, nice. “I’m sitting over there.” I pointed to where Rich had found us a table, about halfway between the bar and the stage. “But I could come and hang out with you a little bit.”

  He looked where I was pointing. His face got wary. “So, that guy’s your boyfriend?”

  I laughed. “Naw, he’s my brother.” I was testing him now, though I bet he couldn’t tell.

  He looked at Rich. He looked back at me. He said, “You’re kidding me, right? You’re just trying to pretend he isn’t your boyfriend.”

  Oh, he was skating on thin ice. “No, for real, he’s my big brother. You can go ask him.”

  He got this look of hopeful comprehension. “Oh! So he’s your half brother, or something? Or one of you is adopted?”

  Yikes. He could still pull this one out of the hole he was digging for himself, but the signs weren’t good. But his was a reasonable question, right? I didn’t have to be so trigger-happy. Still, my voice came out a few hundred degrees cooler than before. “We both have the same parents. One black, one white. Can’t you see how much we resemble each other? I came out lighter and Rich came out darker, is all.”

  “Wow.” He visually compared me and Rich again. “I never thought it could happen that way. I just figured the kids would all come out, I guess light brown, you know?”

  “Uh-huh . . .” Our champion only has one more chance for a comeback! Can he do it?

  “I think it’s so neat that you’re each a different mix. You’re both unique.”

  Okay, a step in the right direction. I gave him a little smile.

  Again he tried to hide how hard he was checking me out. I knew this blouse would rock with these jeans! Totally worth the price I’d paid for it.

  He leaned forward and said, “But you know what’s really cool?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t look like you’re half black. I mean, you could be almost anything at all, you know?”

  And, he’s down. Down AND out. My smile froze on my face. Nothing left but the shouting, folks. “I could, huh?”

  “Yeah! You could be Jewish, or Arabic, or Persian. I had a Persian girlfriend once. You could even—”

  “Pass for white?”

  He stopped, a confused frown on his face. “Well, yeah, if you wanted to. But you don’t have to be black or white. You’re, like, a child of the world!” He smiled, threw his arms out to punctuate his not-the-least-bit-triumphant conclusion.

  I slid off my stool, picked up my drink. “Yup, that’s me. Child of the world, daughter to none. I’m going back to my table now.”

  “Oh. Well, can I come and sit with you guys?” He was halfway off his own stool.

  “No, you can’t.”

  He stopped midslide, one foot frozen in midair, the other on the floor. “What? You really mean that?”

  “I really do.”

  “What’s wrong? Did I say something?”

  “Oh, you said plenty.” He genuinely had no clue. They never did. I was seething as I wa
lked back to our table. I could be anything. Right. I could pretend to be Jewish, maybe from one of those old Montreal families. Invent a whole different set of parents, of relatives. Disown my brother, maybe, so no one would see him and wonder about me. Disown my mum, too. Or I could hint at some “exotic” Middle Eastern heritage. Or Greek, or Gypsy. I could be anything but what I actually was; the daughter of a white Jamaican and a black American. Yeah, that would be so freaking cool, to have no people, no culture.

  I threw myself into one of the empty chairs at our table. “People can be so stupid,” I told Rich.

  He didn’t look up from the sheet of paper in his hand. “Who was it? That guy you were talking to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which kind of stupid was it? He say something sleazy, something dumb, or something racist?”

  Fake brightly, I chirped, “I’ll pick numbers two and three, please!”

  He smiled a little, shook his head. “Yeah, well it be’s like that some days. Most days, actually.” He tore his eyes away from the piece of paper. “Hey; you okay? He didn’t do anything creepy, did he?”

  I shook my head. “Naw. He was just trying to be friendly. In a thoughtless kind of way.”

  Rich made he-man muscles with his arms. “You want me to go over there and kick his ass?”

  I giggled. “It’s okay.”

  “Cool.” His eyes were back on the wrinkled piece of paper.

  “I don’t know how you can even see your handwriting in this dark room.”

  “Shush. I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Yuh bumbo.”

  “You know Dad would ground you for a week if he heard you say that.”

  “Yuh bumbo.”

  “After he got done laughing at your accent, that is. Just let me concentrate for a few minutes, nuh?”

  I sighed. Rich could be so irritating. One minute he’d talk to me like an adult, and the next he’d be going all older brother on me, trying to tell me what to do. “You should already know your stuff by heart.”

  His shoulders slumped. “I did when I came in here.”

  That’s when I realized just how nervous he was. I leaned over and lightly cuffed his shoulder. “You’ll knock ’em dead,” I said. “Don’t fret.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Then he was back to whispering at his piece of paper, like a wizard’s apprentice muttering a spell he was unsure of.

  “Hey,” said a voice from beside our table. My heart leapt in recognition at the voice before I even looked up to see who it was. Sure enough, it was Tafari. He scowled at me.

  Rich looked up from his piece of paper, saw Tafari, and leapt to his feet. “Bro!” They gave each other that shoulder-bump hug-to-the-side thing that straight black guys do. Tafari pointed at me with his thumb and hissed, “What’s she doing here, man? She could get the place shut down.”

  I glared at him. “I will not! Why’re you talking to me like I’m some kid?”

  He ignored me. “Rich, if your parole officer finds out you snuck a minor into a bar . . .”

  “Scotch is all right. She’ll be cool.”

  I stuck my tongue out at Tafari. Okay, so now I was acting like some kid, but whatever. It was the best I could come up with while fighting the urge to get up and kiss him, tell him I was sorry, take him to a quiet table where I could explain everything. About the marks on me. About the Horseless Head Men. And then he’d look at me like I was some freak, and first his eyes would get far away, and then the rest of him. I could be magic like that.

  Tafari said, “But she’s got a drink!”

  As though he’d never snuck me a vodka tonic or two when we were on dates.

  Rich’s eyes were all for the empty stage. He darted a quick glance at my glass. “Bet you she doesn’t.”

  He hadn’t even asked me first. He just trusted that I wouldn’t do anything stupid. I loved my brother so much right then, I could barely stand it. Smirking, I held my glass out to Tafari. “It’s ginger ale. Here, smell.”

  He waved it away, shaking his head. “If the place gets busted, I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  That hurt.

  Rich was so jittery; tapping his fingers on the rickety round table, looking around every which way.

  “Still nervous?” I asked him.

  He smiled. “Yeah.”

  “When do you go on?”

  “There’s an opening act. Some chick. Open mike starts after that.”

  “And?”

  “I’m the first one up.”

  “Wow. No pressure there, huh?”

  Rich didn’t look as though he appreciated the joke. I tried again. “But that’s good, right? That way, you get it over with quickly.”

  “Put it like that, I guess so.” He didn’t seem reassured.

  Tafari clapped him on the shoulder. Rich jumped nearly a foot. “You’re gonna kick butt,” said Tafari. “Serious poetry slam butt.”

  Over by the bar, the guy I’d dissed was talking to someone else; an olive-skinned girl with long, wavy black hair. Her background was even harder to place than mine. Maybe he had a thing for that. Maybe he’d be smart enough to try a different line on her.

  Tafari and Rich had their heads together. Looked like Rich was repeating his pieces and Tafari was coaching him. He could, too; like me, he’d heard those rhymes till he could recite them in his sleep. Kinda weird, being jealous of your own brother’s friendship with your boyfriend. Your ex-boyfriend. While Tafari and I were still dating, it hadn’t bothered me that he and Rich were best buddies. It was just one more thing we had in common. But now I was on the outs, but Rich could still call Taf up for a chat, go hang with him at the mall, and do stuff together.

  Oh, I was such a shit. How could I begrudge Rich having a friend to hang with? Three months ago, he hadn’t been able to go anywhere, with anyone.

  My wrist was itching. I slipped the other hand under the sleeve of my blouse and scratched the slightly raised place. If this kept up, pretty soon, I’d be nothing but one big, sticky blob. A real, live tar baby.

  I checked out Mr. Be-Everyone-But-Yourself again. He and that other girl had progressed to laughing at each other’s jokes, occasionally giving each other a light touch on the knee or shoulder.

  He hadn’t been able to tell I was black. Was I really looking that pale? My skin did tend to fade to a more yellowy brown in the winter, but it was only mid-September.

  There was another guy eyeing me, from one of the tables over by the wall. He was sitting with three other guys, all of them excited, yakking at the tops of their voices. He was cute.

  “Soon come,” I said to Rich and Tafari. I stood up and gave the guy a quick eye flash. You know; the kind where they’re not exactly sure they’ve caught you looking? Then I looked down demurely, like I was too shy to keep looking. I’d wander back his way after I’d checked on my makeup. Tafari saw what I was doing, and scowled. It was pretty much the same way I’d caught his attention, those first few times at school. I looked away from him. It’s not like I was trying to hurt him. It was just better if we both moved on.

  I had that ointment in my purse. Not the nighttime mixture from the naturopath; the other stuff, the one that Mom and Dad didn’t know about. The guy who’d sold it to me had said I could put it on anytime I wanted, as many times a day as I felt like. “Be right back,” I said to Taf and Rich. Taf’s scowl deepened.

  I found the signs to the women’s washroom and headed where they pointed. Down narrow stairs, brick walls with about an inch of latex paint layered on. So tacky.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Why did bathrooms in public places always smell so weird? It’s like the ghost of rotting cabbage from fifty years ago had seeped into the walls and was slowly leaking out. And talk about cold. I didn’t notice that the toilet seat was metal until I sat my naked butt down on it. Yow! My bladder cinched up so tight, it was like the shock had made it forget how to pee. Not quite, though. I peed, washed my hands in water as hot as I could make it. So the
n I had warm hands, which made the rest of me shiver even more. I got the ointment out of my purse. It was in one of those tiny eight-sided jars, clearly a Tiger Balm jar that someone had soaked the label off and glued a handmade paper label onto. The label used to read, in wavery, badly photocopied black pen, YONKER GENE’S NATURAL REMEDY FOR BLISTERS AND BLEMISHES. The tin screw-on lid had the same message glued onto it, also written on cheap white paper. Both labels had mostly worn away through weeks of my handling the jar with damp hands. The Tiger Balm logo on the tin lid was showing through. I screwed the lid off. My nose wrinkled at the weird sulfur-mint smell of the muddy green ointment inside.

  I pushed the sleeve of my blouse up. The new patch of tar on my wrist was like the others; black, weirdly shiny, slightly raised, a teeny bit sticky. I rubbed the ointment into it. It tingled, probably from the peppermint oil the guy in the little shop behind the market had told me was in it. He’d been kinda vague about what else was in it. I rubbed and rubbed until the ointment had all soaked in. I resisted the urge to scrape at the patch of skin. It’d only hurt if I did; I’d found that out long ago. I stopped rubbing, peered at it. Had it spread since last night? Was it edging up onto my hand a little? They did grow. The one on my shoulder had started out as a quarter-sized patch. Now it was bigger than my hand, edging its way around to my armpit, with a little piece of it, like a tributary, heading toward my collarbone. I could never have let Tafari see me like this.

  No one knew what was causing my skin condition. My parents had taken me to doctors, skin specialists, allergy specialists, a nutritionist, even a psychologist. I’d been given antibiotics, antihistamines, injections, special diets. I’d been scanned, biopsied, had an MRI. All negative. And none of the treatments worked. Okay, so sometimes I’d cheated on the diets a little. It just wasn’t fair to have to put apple cider vinegar on your popcorn instead of butter and salt.