Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
1986
Evelyn Jackson tramped through the snow, the bottom layer a thick slush from the heat of the black asphalt, the middle a mix of salt and dirt and all manner of detritus from the city, the top attempting to be fresh and pure but dulled by the haze of pollution it had pressed through on its way down.
She stifled a sigh at the way the gray slush dampened her pants—new, pulled from her closet to mark this special occasion. She raised her gaze and yelled, “Don’t eat it!” Antony was stopped in front of her, face to the sky, arms and tongue out. At her words, his look of glee transformed to one of despair and obstinacy. He withdrew his tongue, crossed his arms, then stuck his tongue out again tentatively, staring at her instead of the clouds, waiting for a reaction.
She wanted to grab his arm, chastise him for this attempt at defiance. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him close, kiss his cheeks, his forehead, to make up for not having the heart to explain that snow was now dirty, rain dangerous. Acid, falling from the sky.
His brown and only slightly rosy cheeks crept upward into an almost-there smile too cute for words. She smiled back, deciding she’d let him do what he wanted. He should be able to stick his tongue out, let the flakes fall and tingle and melt. Be a child. She knew all too well that childhood could be ripped away faster than a Band-Aid torn from tender flesh.
Antony’s grin blossomed, his tongue out all the way now. She reached for his hand. “Come on. We don’t want to miss our trolley.” She squeezed, smiling, remembering her own rare joy at catching the falling snow—a girl in a field, spinning, letting her cares melt along with those flakes on her tongue, able, for a few minutes, to forget what waited at home.
It was easier to smile now, to focus on the good times. Everything easier than it had been when she’d fled Nova Scotia, and then, years later, when they’d fled Jamaica, Antony still a babe in arms and fear for everyone they’d left in Kingston making her perpetually on edge.
Back then, trying to push the dread aside, she’d pushed her baby through the slush in a rickety stroller or carried him in a makeshift sling—the way the women on the island had shown her but that seemed foreign to the women here. The white women, at least, who’d lean their heads in to see— Is that a baby you’ve got in there? —then pull back, their smiles twitching or faltering or vanishing altogether.
Antony tugged at her. “Can I surf?”
Evelyn laughed. “Yes, sweetie. If there’s space. Now, come on!” She tugged, but gently, eager to race the trolley gaining on them. It pulled to a stop just seconds after they did, the doors opening to blast them with a gush of hot, stale air. Antony skipped up the steps, waving at the conductor as Evelyn dropped their tokens into the receptacle, the sound clanging over the voices of the other passengers. Antony strode to the back, walking tall, proud, just the way his papa did, and spread his arms in front of a seat—reserved just for her. Evelyn sat, nodded primly, as if he were a porter and she a fine lady. Just the way he liked it. “I can surf?” he asked again, his gap-toothed smile making it hard to hold back her grin.
“If you’re careful.”
Antony positioned his feet and arms, a look of pure determination crossing his features. Evelyn kept an eye out for the people crowding in, conscious of assuring that no one was getting too close or giving looks that might turn into a complaint. Then she looked at Antony—riding the trolley, exuberance flowing from him as if he really were out in the ocean, conquering a massive wave. He’d been asking to surf the streetcars and trolleys almost since before he could string together a coherent sentence. When you’re six, she’d told him, again and again and again, thinking by then she’d feel ready, thinking six was ages away. It had come so fast.
As the gentle sway of the bus took them deeper into the city, joy bubbled up in Evelyn. The look of her son’s face, the sun glinting off the snow on the awnings of buildings, which, from this far away, looked almost as white as the snow of her childhood.
Life had been hard, with only patches of good times. Those first years after she’d moved to Jamaica were the gold standard, before fear crept into every day, reminding her of what she’d tried to escape in Juniper Cove. But the fear in Kingston was different: unrest, politics on everyone’s tongue, war in the streets. And since returning to Canada, it’d been a different fear again, a different struggle—adjusting to city life, to the stares, to never knowing whether she and her family would be accepted or judged or worse. Here, life was full of so many little disappointments and frustrations: regarding Kingsley’s education and then job search, always trying to make ends meet, all of it taking years longer than they’d intended; regarding the slights and injustices they could never quite prove. It’d been exhausting. Not at all what she expected. But they were, at last, on track. And she wanted to believe this wouldn’t simply be a “good patch,” as transient as the snow, but their life now.
Except situations popped up every day that made it hard to believe.
Her joy fizzled when she saw the newspaper in the hands of a man across the aisle. Words in bold black letters. A war. But not the kind that sent soldiers to faraway lands. The man stood up at the next stop, leaving the paper on the seat beside him. Evelyn crossed the aisle and held it in her hands, reading beyond the headline. A war against drugs, Mulroney’s sanctioned message said. But everything else pointed to no, not really. She’d heard chatter on the streets and on radio shows, seen signs of the discontent brewing, the outrage toward the Uzi-toting Jamaican thugs , who spread through the city in murderous posses.
And now here it was, in black and white: a war against Kingsley. Against Antony. Even though they had nothing to do with it. A war against Caribbean men—Jamaicans, specifically—demonizing them. As if they were all derelicts. As if it were a part of their genetic makeup.
She pulled the cord for their stop, trying to force the article out of her mind—the fear it prompted. They were on their way to Dulcie’s Fresh and Tasty Authentic Jamaican Cuisine . Not Evelyn’s first choice, nor Kingsley’s. It was food they could make at home, though didn’t often, but Antony had begged, his interest in all things Jamaican seeming to increase by the day, so they’d agreed, because today was meant to be a celebration—Kingsley, at long last assistant professor at City University—but the words on that newspaper robbed her of any sense of festivity. Evelyn knew more than most what headlines could do to a city. How articles and talk shows on politics transformed into fighting in the street, guns, violence, bloodshed.
Like the slogan that had covered Kingston’s newspapers in the early days, Prime Minister Manley shouting it from podiums, making sure it was in every newspaper: “Better must come!” And the tongue-in-cheek truth that followed on whispered lips: Dem say better must come, but fe sure, bitter did come.
Evelyn looked again to the article, a sense of foreboding working its way through her bones. They’d fled to Canada to get away from that unrest. To give them all, and Antony specifically, a better life. To keep him safe. Yet the words, discarded on the trolley seat, swam before Evelyn’s eyes. She stood, gripped her son’s hand, and walked away from the paper, the fear it prompted. She was ready to walk into this next phase of their life. Their good, solid, finally-where-they-wanted-it life. However, as she watched her skipping boy, dread and frustration seeped through her at the realization that danger seemed to follow them always, that despite how much she tried, she’d never be able to keep the ones she loved safe.