Saturday in Kensington

On Saturday mornings, Linea takes her son to Kensington Market to shop for fresh fruit and vegetables. Caleb is four, and blessed with a gift for conversation. He chatters all the way to the busy market near Toronto’s Chinatown. His daycare teachers report that he talks all day and is “adept at building strong and positive relationships with the other children through his expression of clear and precise language skills.” When Linea was in kindergarten her teacher told her mother with a pointed sigh that Linea “is as quiet as a mouse, I hardly know she’s here.” Linea remembers feeling quite invisible for the first time, and feeling betrayed by those words. She saw herself as quiet in a smart way, not in a way that made her insignificant. “What a wonderful imagination Linea has,” she thinks her teacher would say to her mother if it were today, “and she is so independent!” Educators are so much more careful with their words these days. She wonders if it is at the expense of truth. Is Caleb popular because he talks a lot or not? Was she liked as a child for being quiet or was she overlooked?  It is so hard to really see ourselves or those we love because we are so close to them, she thinks. She feels like a scientist examining cells through a microscope without even seeing what the cells are a part of.

Linea and Caleb walk to the market. It’s a long walk but Caleb rarely complains, and for fun they always take the streetcar home with their stuffed wire bundle buggy. They always shop first at the store on the corner by the fish market where the Chinese grandmother offers Caleb an Asian fruit gummy. His favourite is lychee. Linea always reminds Caleb to say thank you and he does so only after the gummy is safely stored away in the side of his mouth.

“Fank you Ayi”, he grins with greenish saliva trickling down the side of his chin. The old woman always claps her hands and laughs as if it was the most charming thing she’s ever heard.

”How are you?” Linea politely asks the woman every time.

“Yes!” answers the woman smiling widely enough to show that every other tooth is missing. Caleb finds her gappy grin fascinating but has been admonished often enough by his mother not to ask if she has a toothbrush at home.

Linea asks Caleb to help pick out persimmons, tangerines, green seedless grapes (this week Caleb only eats green, not red), bananas, cooking potatoes, bok choy, lettuce, a cantaloupe and one pomegranate. She used to show him how to squeeze the fruit to check for freshness, but he started to get carried away and began to squeeze so hard he was making juice. Guiltily, Linea had only bought the damaged fruit when she thought the store owner was looking. The rest she casually hid under the fresher ones and moved on. “They have to throw out food all the time anyway”, she tried to reason to herself. She has always noticed the pile of rotten fruits and vegetables thrown to the side of the shop by the alleyway. She remembers also how she had considered taking the abandoned food for herself during her college days, but dignity had always prevented her.

They head towards the children’s wading pool. Linea lets Caleb paddle in the pool on his own while she tries to find a clean spot on the worn out wooden bench by the water fountain. She almost sits on the large, black stencilled face of Che Guevara but can’t shake the ridiculous feeling that she’d feel violated so she finds another spot further down in between an array of cigarette burns and the word “shit” neatly drawn in the kind of bubble letters she’d drawn as a girl in junior high that made her look like she was a real artist. Linea always looks around at her surroundings when she is out in a public place. Just in case something catastrophic happens; she likes to feel she is prepared for anything. She thinks of the Air Canada flight attendants who have to show everyone how to inflate a safety vest and where the emergency exits are and how to use the air masks that might automatically pop down in front of you if the plane is about to crash. She always listens politely to them, figuring, why not be prepared?

Linea watches the few other people with kids at the wading pool today. There is a Jesus looking man with a little girl in a string bikini and bright purple water wings. The man has rolled up his pant cuffs and is now showing the little girl how to kick her legs in the water. Linea shakes the guilt that washes over her as she sits, uninvolved in Caleb’s swim. There is an elderly woman, shouting out to two small boys in Portuguese in a raspy voice,

“Ei! Sai da cabeca do teu irmao lembra’te u que conseu da ultima ves? El vi ser mais grande do que tu qualquer dia!”

Portuguese. Linea has heard enough of the language from living in Toronto’s Little Portugal for the past nine years. Judging from the scene at the pool she figures it would translate into something like “Hey, get off your brother’s head!” Soon, a woman wanders along with three children in tow. They noisily set their things down right beside Linea on the bench. The woman looks to be about 50, although she could be a weathered 40. She is very thin and wears shredded denim cut-offs and a raggedy blue tube top like the ones Linea used to wear in the 70’s when she was 14. She holds a hand rolled cigarette in her yellowed fingers and lets out a rolling, phlegmy cough before wiping her nose on her wrist. The oldest child, a girl, looks like she is about six. There are two little boys also, Caleb’s age or younger. They all have round, turquoise eyes and light brown skin, and blonde dreads dangling below their shoulders. Linea finds them strikingly beautiful and watches them. The girl calls out to the woman they are with,

“Hey Chantel! Chantel!! Did you bring our bathing suits this time?”

Chantel, it turns out, is their grandmother who seems distracted by something or someone up Augusta. She keeps craning her tanned and wrinkled neck and flicking her cigarette ashes behind her. The kids, realizing that Chantel isn’t going to answer, begin to peel off their shorts and t-shirts and fling them aside as they hurry toward the wading pool. The little boys begin to take off their underpants too but the wading pool attendant, a boy named Callum with pock marked cheeks and blonde hair tied into a ponytail calls out to them from his umbrella covered lawn chair,

“Pants stay on, you guys, remember? I tell ya that every tiiime.” He shakes his head like he is their weary father.

The three run into the pool as if they own it. Linea notices how Caleb stares at these three who are allowed to wear underpants in the pool. Caleb usually thinks out loud and she wonders whether he will have something to say right now. Soon enough he wanders over to Linea, talking before he reaches her.

“Mommy, why are they wearing underpants in the pool? They’re not allowed! It says on the sign, see? No underpants allowed! Why can’t I wear underpants in the pool? You said I’m not allowed! Why are they allowed and not me?!” Caleb is very insistent on understanding right from wrong and what is fair. He is pointing at the wooden placard standing beside the pool which lists all the rules of using the wading pool. Caleb is an early reader. Linea has to compose her thoughts before she answers.

“Caleb, rules are really important but sometimes it’s ok to bend rules just a little. Sometimes it’s ok for little kids to wear underpants in the wading pool.”

“Why?” demands Caleb. He is so black and white. How to explain that sometimes it’s ok not to follow some rules?

“Because they are really similar to bathing suits. See how similar they look?” Caleb looks dubiously at the rule-breaking kids with his mouth turned up at the corner. His eyebrows are furrowed and Linea fondly remembers how they were furrowed when he was born. She often lovingly tells her son that he was born with questions on his mind.

“Now go swim quick, we can’t stay much longer or the grapes will melt!”

“Ah,” laughs Caleb, “grapes don’t melt! You’re joking!”

“You got me, mister! Off you go!” She is relieved that distraction still works with Caleb. Right now she wants a little quiet.

Linea tries to keep her head turned a little to the right, pretending to watch a group of youth who are painting a mural on the cement washroom wall near the bench. She doesn’t want to make eye contact with the grandmother to avoid striking up a conversation. However, she can’t seem to help herself from sneaking quick glances at Chantel and the children. Now and then Chantel hollers,

“Abel, you keep that sandwich out of the pool now, y’hear? Nutella don’t mix so good with chlorine!”, or,

“Tosha, I told ya, if ya keep pickin’ at those scabs yer legs’ll get infected and fall off! You’ll end up in a wheelchair like ol’ Shorty!”

Chantel turns to Linea before she can turn away and chuckles with a raspy wheeze,

“Kids, eh? It’s always somethin’. I’ve raised five of my own. Well, the ones I was allowed to keep, anyways. I know a thing or two! People always come to me for advice, they say “Chantel, you’re a child expert, tell me what to do about such and such eh?”” Linea acknowledges Chantel with a tight smile and says,

“Yes, they certainly keep you busy!”

As the minutes wear on, Chantel gets more and more edgy, stretching her whole body to see up Augusta. She lights up one cigarette after the other, extinguishing each one in an empty root beer bottle. She wades into the pool herself and hoists one of her grandsons onto his feet so she can scrape away at a brown patch of something on his thigh. While she is there she attempts to scrape something from her own ankle. She lets off an electric energy that Linea can feel. It draws her into Chantel’s world like a Dyson vacuum. Linea wants to go home–especially after Chantel’s impromptu family bath, and is thinking about calling Caleb to get dried off.  Suddenly, despite her efforts to detach herself from Chantel’s life, she feels the woman’s dry, firm hand on her forearm.

“Listen,” whispers Chantel, “I just need ya to watch the kids for a second. I just gotta get a coffee up the street. Thanks, love, I’ll be right back!”

Before Linea can even respond, Chantel is off, hurrying up Augusta, her thin legs propelling her towards something so important she’d leave her grandkids alone with strangers.

“No!” Linea calls out weakly. “We were just about to leave!” Chantel answers with her bony, white arm in the air, cigarette smoke leaving a trail behind her, but does not turn around. She’s gone.

Linea closes her mouth slowly and turns to face the four children she is suddenly in charge of.

“Don’t expect to see that one back again anytime soon,” drawls a voice behind her. It is an elderly man with a plaid golf cap and cane. He is not looking directly at Linea so she isn’t sure he is actually talking to her or not. “She’s gone to get herself a little something if you know what I mean.”

The man never actually stops walking and before Linea can question him further he is gone. She isn’t sure she wants to know what he means. What is she to do? Her options race through her mind quickly. Call the police of course. 911? Is it an emergency? Wait for Chantel to come to her senses and return? Does Linea even want her to return? She’s heard unpleasant things about foster care, Children’s Aid and people never getting their kids back. These children are known here–surely someone must know where they live. She can ask around. Then a completely ridiculous thought–what if she keeps them for herself? Takes them all? Wouldn’t their lives be better for it, a mother who cares, a warm meal and cosy bed at night? She’s always wanted more kids. Nah, too much work. A worse thought worms its way into Linea’s mind. She doesn’t have to stay. She can pretend she never spoke to Chantel, that Chantel never left her in charge of these three kids. Just walk away with Caleb, act like this past half hour never happened. Linea even shocks herself with the idea of it. She has to shake herself of these random thoughts as Tosha, the oldest of the children is standing suddenly in front of her. She bends over sideways and uses two hands to squeeze pool water from her dreadlocks.

“Where’s Chantel?” she demands. Something tells Linea this child is used to hearing the truth.

“Well,” Linea begins, “she went that way” and points up Augusta.

“Oh, that explains it. She’s gone to see Omar. She won’t come back today.” Tosha nods knowingly as she speaks, and casually peels off a fine layer of sunburned skin that is beginning to hang from her shoulder.

“Well,” says Linea kindly, “don’t you worry. I’ll help you get home again.”

“Oh, Daddy will come get us. He always does.”

Before Linea can answer, Tosha turns around toward an old yellow row house across the street.

“Daddy!” she calls as loud as she can. Abel and Rupert chime in. “Daaaaddddyyy!!” the three yell in unison. At once, a handsome, slender dreadlocked man pops his head out of an upper window, letting his long hair fall down.

“WHATCHUWAAANT BABIES?!” Daddy calls back.

“Chantel gone to see Omar again Daddy, come down get us before the see A ess comes again!” calls Tosha with one hand on her hip and the other pushing back her hair.

“OK babies, I comin’!” smiles Daddy and he disappears from the window.

Within a minute Linea watches as Tosha’s two little brothers leap onto the arms of their tall, muscular father. Daddy holds his arms straight out from his sides swinging one boy from each. He looks at Callum, winks and says,

“Alright?”

“Alright,” replies Callum. Then to the children he grins,

“How is de wataa today? Watch out for de sharks an’ dem! You bathe now, do you? When I young I bathe in de river by me house back home wit you uncles, LORD I miss dem days! We ‘ad no battubs like ‘ere! Good Lord willin’ I go back some day. It ‘eaven dere, like de Garden of Eden! Chantel leave you again, nuh? What good dis woman?! She ‘ere, she dere, but not where she need to be!”

Daddy turns and smiles at Linea suddenly and she comes close to blushing, something she hasn’t done in a very long time. She’d been admiring his ab muscles through his white undershirt and got caught staring.

With the arrival of Daddy, things just seem alright. The madness of Chantel and what Linea had earlier perceived as the children’s neglect dissipates with the warmth and calm that Daddy brings from inside the yellow row house.

Still, the intimate intrusion thrust upon Linea leaves her feeling unsettled and vulnerable and from then on she will consider taking Caleb to the small park that is a little closer to their apartment. There, she feels left out of the circle but in a different way. There, Lululemon mamas holding eco coffee cups bring their children to the park in between yoga class and shopping at the organic whole foods market on College Street on the nanny’s day off. She feels even less a part of that world than at the Kensington Market park but she knows at least her quiet will not be disturbed. Linea moves amongst people in the city, never caring about blending in with them, but feeling content to be on the fringe. She understands why others need to belong but hasn’t ever longed for it very much herself.

They walk to the Dundas streetcar and find a seat at the back where Caleb can look out the back window at the taxis weaving back and forth across the tracks, waiting for their sudden moment to pass the slow moving streetcar. Eventually he turns around and snuggles close to Linea. She loves these cuddly moments that are becoming rarer as Caleb grows older. Linea begins to relax into the seat a little when she is startled by a very pierced teen boy smirking at Caleb and asking,

“What does it taste like?” Linea looks down to see Caleb’s right index finger reaching deep into his nose.

“Yoghurt,” Caleb answers, staring back into the boy’s face with curiosity. Linea feels a mix of embarrassment, pride and revulsion at the same time. She pulls Caleb’s finger out of his nose and sets it into his lap.

At the next stop, the European woman arrives on the streetcar with her plastic bags and her rage, waving her wrinkled transfer in the air. Linea knows her peace will be shattered even more. The woman sits three seats up from Linea and Caleb. Linea stares out the window waiting for the harangue. Caleb stares directly at the woman.

“Why is her hair so messy, Mama? Doesn’t she have a brush?” he asks.

“Maybe not, now hush, she’ll hear you Caleb,” answers Linea.  Linea worries that Caleb is a little too distracted with people’s appearances.

The woman’s tirade begins mid-sentence. Linea wonders if she’d started talking on the last streetcar and has waited to finish on this one.

“After that I went to visit my husband in the forest and my son came too! I remembered where to find him with his mushrooms and red wine and there he was asleep on the moss and twigs and I forgave him and we went to lie down beside him where we fell asleep too.” The woman stares absently out the window for a moment. “Then the people moved into the forest too and we weren’t alone anymore and all we wanted was to be left alone! We didn’t want our son to see the despair, the hopelessness of the city! We tried to hide from them but they were so many and the quiet forest was too crowded and the berries were gone so we moved back to the city!  We found our house and we closed the windows and we were alone once more and to those people that left us alone we said DANKE SCHON! DANKE SCHON! And we danced and danced and danced the waltz.”

By now a band of white spittle has formed around the woman’s lips and now and then bits of it fly off and land on the red seat in front of her. People are slowly and quietly moving away from her, edging closer to the front of the streetcar. They are nervous in the face of uncertainty. A man’s weary voice is heard from the throng, “Shut up already!” but it is anonymous and safe. No one else dares to say anything for fear of having the monologue include them. Linea remains at the back of the streetcar with Caleb and the teenager who has slipped on earphones and is nodding his head back and forth to something loud and tinny. Linea would move if she sensed any danger, but she’s traveled this route with the woman for a few years now and knows they are safe. Besides, they haven’t much farther to go. The woman continues.

“When my husband left two weeks later I said FUCK YOU! My son said fuck you. Fuck you for leaving Papa. I said go eat your berries and drink your red wine and screw the other women in the forest and stay there and rot. They are not better than us and then I danced with my son and kept him away from the wicked people and his wicked Papa.” My son always said thank you for hiding me away Mama, keep me away from those people out there, outside and I always protected him after that.”

Caleb has been listening the whole time and Linea wonders what he is thinking.

The woman shakes her head and chuckles while she picks the fuzzy balls off her worn beige sweater. Then she silently reaches into one of her plastic bags, pulls out a floral makeup case and pulls something out. Linea almost laughs out loud. It is a battery operated fuzzball remover. The woman turns it on and begins to move the gadget up and down her sweater. She is meticulous, as if she is preparing for a job interview. While she works she begins to sing in a wistful but clear voice,

“Danke Schoen, Darling Danke Schoen.

Thank you for walks down lovers lane.

I can see, hearts carved on a tree, letters inter-twined, for all time, yours and mine, that was fine.”

When she finishes, she carefully replaces it in the small bag, zips it up and puts it away in the large reusable grocery bag exactly where she had retrieved it from. There is an opened salami and onion sandwich poking out of the bag. Linea has been wondering where the smell was coming from. The woman sighs.

The teenager puts away his earphones and reaches up to pull the bell cord. He turns to Caleb whose finger has found its way back into his nostril and grins,

“Hey, if you keep picking your nose you’re gonna turn out like that piece of crazy.” He jerks his thumb towards the woman who is now smiling at the floor.

Caleb looks up at the teen and waits until the boy has reached the back doors of the streetcar before he opens his mouth.

“Fuck you,” he whispers tentatively, proud of his newly acquired word.