Little Bastards in Springtime (32 page)

“So, what are you doing?” one of the cops asks. “Who are you? I don’t get it.”

There I am fixing busted hinges on an outside window shutter. There I am carrying away broken stuff, replacing it with new stuff. This woman, all alone with five snotty, pale, exhausted kids.

“I was drawn in by the junk on the porch, in the yard,” I say. The cops stare at me without expression. “Soggy boxes. Two bikes. A coat stand. An easy chair. Two tennis rackets. A skateboard. A swing set. All broken. It’s not right.”

There I am screwing down loose porch planks, levelling the walkway, setting up porch chairs. I like porches. I wish we had one where Mama could sit peacefully in the summers watching the world go by.

“We’re either doing bad or we’re doing good,” I tell the cops. “There’s no neutral in between. But it’s not always clear which is which, that’s the thing.”

They leave the room and are gone for what seems like hours. There’s nothing to do except think too much or sleep and dream. When they come back, they bring a bottle of water.

“You know it’s still a B and E even if you’re doing that shit,” says one cop.

“You know that people don’t like strangers messing with their stuff, even if it’s crappy junk,” says the other. “You know that do-gooders, interfering people, are our worst headache. They’re the crazies doing creepy shit, you know? So what we’re going to do for you is we’re going to send you for a little psych test. How does that sound?”

“My school social worker at school thinks I’m a total writeoff,” I tell them.

“You’re a piece of work, that’s for sure, son,” says the other. “What’s the accent?”

He really does use the word
son.

SPRING 1998

Ready for a Brand New Day

T
HE DOOR SLIPS SHUT BEHIND ME. NO CLANG.
Just a tight little click and then quiet. Cinder-block hallways, shiny floors, faintly buzzing lights, no clouds racing by, no green sprouts bursting out of moist soil. As soon as the door closes, I feel dizzy and breathless. Water, food, electricity, phone, books, TV, fresh air, movement, all these will be rationed again, just enough to keep me alive. I have a sudden fierce need to be in the wet weather, walking through crocuses, purple and white, an icy rain slapping my face. I remember this feeling: you’d kill like an animal to be outside in the open, going wherever you want to go.

A woman is directing me to a chair in the hall, she’s asking me about something, drug use, illness, medication, diet, pestilence, famine, fire storms, failed states, massacred peoples, I don’t know, I can’t focus. My idea was that getting caught would save me, that it would straighten me out, rein me in, make things clear, but I hadn’t counted on feeling terror all the time, terror of rooms, walls, shut doors, of being inside twenty-three hours of the day where the air never moves, the seasons never change. I can’t help myself, I get up and walk back toward the door. The woman follows me, trotting like a pony,
saying that I have to calm down, look on the bright side, that I can turn this time to my advantage. Then there’s a commotion behind me. Two big men wearing guns are charging down the hallway toward us. It’s completely futile, but I just keep walking toward the door anyway, without looking right or left. They grab me before I reach it, they throw me to the ground, they bind my hands behind my back.

“I’m your youth worker,” the woman says. “And this is not how we like to do things.” She’s crouching next to me, my cheekbone crushed against the glossy floor, little flecks of coloured stone catching my eye. “We want this to be beneficial. It’s up to you.”

A lot of time has gone by since the cops arrested me, one long year in remand in Mimico, where kids forced each other to eat shit out of toilets and got beaten into comas on a regular basis. Where I waited in vain for swarms of friendly social workers to tell me what was what, where I fought for my life like a dog each day, where I thought too much about all that had happened. Every bad deed I’d done burned inside me, the terrified homeowners, the tied-up housewives, the screaming, shouting, sobbing citizens, how innocent and oblivious they’d all been in their comfortable houses until we showed up. And the family’s sacrifices to get me out, Mama begging acquaintances for money, Aisha studying the law like the freakishly proactive kid she is, trying to find some loophole defence involving victims of crimes against humanity, or some such crazy piece of genius logic.

Sava, Madzid, Zijad, and Geordie rolling their eyes at me in the courtroom.
Why get caught
, their eyes said,
why confess to all that stuff they could never prove?
Because they knew I got caught on purpose. They knew I told stories about weapons, duct
tape, broken bones, that I confessed all. But I never gave names, that’s one thing I can hang onto, I didn’t cave on my Bastards. The thing is, Mama couldn’t raise the cash for bail while I was waiting for trial, and she wouldn’t take it from the Bastards. How would I account for it all, she asked them, when I bring your dirty bundles to the police station, or to the teller at the bank? Mama, finally, playing concerts again, which reviewers called stunning, uncompromising, passionate, the essence of humanity. But it didn’t make her rich, she still couldn’t get her shit-for-a-son out of his cell. She begged the judge, tried to find strings to pull, got psychiatrists involved. They talked about war children, about post-this and -that, but I guess I seemed pretty solid to them. Everything I said was rational, maybe even more rational than usual, the experts reported. We’re the canaries in your dust-filled coal mines, I told them. You should thank us for drawing your attention to the hypocritical bullshit that glues society and nations together. For my lack of remorse, they sentenced me as an adult, and I got four years of detention, minus my year done in remand. Structure and safety, Mama said finally, when she had no more moves, at least you’ll get that. She said it with forced optimism, the same way she sent me off to school all those centuries ago. Lots of people make this mistake about jail.

O
RIENTATION
is a lecture, then another lecture. The rules say, Obey the rules whatever they are, and whatever they are they are for your own good.

Night comes after day, even in here, and sure as the world turns I am welcomed to detention by some of the crazy boys, the stupider ones, while the guard reads a magazine, his ears
unhearing, his gun lying flaccid on the security table. Sure as the sky goes black when the sun goes down, they saunter into the bathroom behind me and lay me flat on the floor again, but this floor is rough and wet, there are no colourful pieces of stone, and they are taunting me with their dangling penises, their honking laughter and poetic curses. They’re a skinny-assed jailhouse gang, I can tell by how they all move the same way, their walk, their gestures, the tilt of their shorn heads, like they’re dancers with parts choreographed for them, dancing the musical of their own sad fucked-up lives, some in the front, the leaders, some in back, the followers.

“Get the fuck down,” they hiss. “Fucking pussy. Lick the fucking floor for us, show us you love us, you fucking Euro-trash piece of shit, you cocksucking motherfucker. Fucking crawl before us, you bitch-fuck, you cunt.”

They gather round, they poke at me, they grab their skinny-ass balls, they say I’m their bitch, they tug on their puny little dicks, they say, bitch, suck on this. It’s just skin and tissue, I say to them, spitting in their direction, and a small amount of blood from time to time. Who’s scared of that, that small amount of flesh and blood? And when they try to show me who should be scared, when they push their hard little faces into mine, when they throw me onto my stomach, when they kick me and try to strip my shorts off, when they start slapping my ass with their nail-bitten hands. When they say, submit bitch, we’re gonna fucking do you like the bitch-girl-next-door, I spring up and fly at them with so much fury, arms punching, legs kicking, claws out, teeth bared, that they back right up. They get kind of scared by how I’m frothing at the mouth and barking like a dog, how I’m trying to jab my fingers into their eye sockets and actually pull out their eyeballs. They stand in
a wider circle around me, they take aim at me from a distance, they beat me up at arm’s length. They see they’ll have to kill me before they can fuck me up the ass like drunk, coked-up soldiers in UN-patrolled safety zones, oily red faces, alcohol breath, jerking back and forth and grunting like wounded animals. And I suddenly remember it so clearly, that time I crossed the river. There I am, running, I’ve been running forever, I’m trying to catch my breath, it’s dark, but still the footsteps of the unknown soldier, thug, killer, are closing right behind me. I see an open door, a dim light. I run there, I go inside, I sprint up the stairs, I open the door at the top of the stairs. And there they are, the soldiers in uniform partying and laughing and yelling at each other, trousers around their ankles, raping three teenage girls. Rape, I know what it is, I was right all those years ago, it’s not sex, it’s total war, scorched-earth policy, firebombing body and mind and the will to live all in one go. I see the whole scene, I walk through it, I check out the soldiers’ faces, I smell the sharp smell of their alcoholic, drug-sour sweat. I tell them, I see you clearly, I recognize your faces, I’ll know you for the rest of my life, so you watch out, you sad, fucked-up losers, you broken specimens of humanity, you lowest of the low. Then I’m looking at the crazy boys again, how their faces are kind of blank, how they’re just a skinny-assed gang of neglected, loser kids in an Ontario juvenile detention centre, and I wonder about the raping soldiers, about their skinny asses and their pathetic lives and dismal stories and everything makes sense. I see how the whole world works, this circle of violence and pain and violence, on and on, down through the generations, that old saying, you reap what you sow.

So I say, you don’t scare me, you can’t hurt me, I’ve seen a lot worse, you have no idea. And I begin to laugh high and crazy
at the obviousness of it all, how we all just react to shit in our lives so predictably, so stupidly, then pass it on to whoever is closest. I begin to jump around like a deranged baboon. I say, it’s so clear, you idiots, you’re doing exactly what you’re set up to do, look at yourselves. And they look at each other and make weird faces, they say, you’re fucked in the fucking head, you crazy little bastard, and I don’t stop laughing and jumping until they slink away into the dark hallways like urchins into alleyways, like shadows into shadows, and the guard can suddenly hear again and comes and kicks my ass back to the dorm, me trailing blood from my nose.

The bottom bunk is narrow and hard but enclosed and protective like a cave. I fall asleep with my teeth chattering and dream of everything that exists beyond walls, fences, trenches, basements, enclosures of any kind. On this first night of three more years, I crave things I’ve never paid attention to on the outside, like a thunderstorm over a lake, a meal at dawn, trips to the corner store, the smell of cigarette smoke in sunshine. I wake in the murky brown darkness to Dušan hovering over my bed.
Come on
, he says,
what are you doing here? Come with me.
And I get up and see that there’s a door next to my bunk that I hadn’t noticed and he’s opened it and is waving me through.
This dump
, he says,
why are you hanging out here, it’s so stuffy and smelly with a bad vibe, come with me, we’re out there where the weather is wild, where we can explore.
And together we walk out into moonlight. In the park, the wind is loud, branches creak and moan above. I lift my face to the wind then look around. I notice Papa, that he’s waiting for us out here, lying on his back, his hands behind his head, staring up at the wild, restless movement all around. He says,
Oh, Jevrem, there you are, why are you wasting your time in that place, you should see this. Look up, the branches are dancing to the music.
So I lie down next to him and look up. Mama always told us to
listen when we went for walks in the mountain forests. Listen to the music that the elements make, she said, and I wanted to hear that nature music more than anything. Sometimes I did.

When I wake I’m still listening for it, but there is no music, no door, no moon, no Dušan, no Papa, no wind in trees, just the sound of boys breathing.

‡ ‡ ‡

B
REAKFAST IN THE CAFETERIA IS LOUD AND GLIT
tery. The tables glare and the metal trays catch light like mirrors. I eat a mound of soft, greasy, salty food and watch the boys, who swagger, slouch, scrape their chair legs, and don’t say a word, it’s too early. Later on, I will deal with them, one by one. But now my attention is on the doors. On the windows. On who is in charge, how many, how they carry their keys. I pay attention to the walls, I ask them to tell me where they are weak.

I’m in the office with the youth worker, who is a butterfly, flitting here and there, sorting papers. I think, why is she nervous, I’m the one locked up, but then she sits very still at her desk and stares at me. She says her name is Ms. Ghorbani. She says, you can also call me Dr. Ghorbani, if you feel more comfortable with that. I say, it doesn’t matter to me that you’re a doctor, if that’s what you’re trying to tell me. I know doctors who have murdered, I know doctors who have ugly, ignorant ideas, who have ranted about blood bonds and cockroaches. Just because you’re a doctor doesn’t mean you’re good. She looks at me with interest, then studies the contents of the file.

I ask, “What does it say about me? What do those papers say? Tell me.”

“It just gives me your history, Jevrem,” she says.

“Oh, my history,” I say. “In such a thin folder? My history wouldn’t squeeze into a thousand folders. A million. It’s the story of invasion and rebellions going back hundreds of years. It’s the story of empires and freedom fighters.”

“I mean
your
story, Jevrem. Not your ‘people’s’.” She indicates quotation marks with two fingers of each hand. “You know that, I’m pretty sure.”