Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
2001
Laughter sounded through the air, mixed with the trill of the robins’ and cardinals’ songs, the pigeons’ coos, the scolding squirrels dissatisfied at the birds trying to steal their stores. The sound of traffic filled the air, too, but in the distance, far enough away that Evelyn could pretend they were removed from it all, in a small town, perhaps, similar to the one Evelyn had grown up in, but kinder, more welcoming to outsiders.
Not that they would ever leave. Again, Kingsley was being considered for tenure. This time, he felt certain they couldn’t deny him. And, with only two years left of university, there was no chance Antony would come with them, and no chance Evelyn would leave her son to navigate this city alone, to sink deeper and deeper into the passions Evelyn feared would swallow him.
And then there was Dani. Evelyn turned to her friend, whose gaze was focused on their children. Hands on either side of her mouth, she shouted to Asher to wait his turn, and who did he think he was, anyway?
They’d met in their seventh month of pregnancy, Evelyn so afraid of the days and weeks with only her and this child in the house from sunup to sundown, that she’d gone to a prenatal class hoping to find someone, anyone, with whom she could share the burdens, help multiply the joys. Fear slowed her steps as she’d approached the building, but she walked forward, hoping the years had changed people or that most of the slights had been in her head. This time, she resolved, she wouldn’t let them be.
The small room, in the basement of a church that smelled faintly of mold and heavily of stale coffee, held a dozen women. Mostly white, but two Black, one Asian. All of them almost certainly in their twenties, maybe one or two having just entered their thirties. Except Dani. She tapped Evelyn’s shoulder, grinning.
“Is this your first?” she asked, her tone making it clear she hoped it was.
“Second.” Evelyn shifted from one foot to the other, the pain in her ankles making her transfer her weight as if she were on a teeter-totter. “But my son is seventeen, so it feels as if I’m going through it for the first time.”
“Ah.” Dani’s eyes held mischief. “Seventeen. So I was right. You’re one of them, too.”
“One of?”
“A geriatric mother.” Dani said the word in an overly loud whisper, then laughed. “I don’t even mind the term. For years, I thought this day would never come, and here it is. I’m tickled pink!”
Evelyn laughed. She’d heard the term, too, feared and hated it. But the way Dani said it, it seemed an accomplishment.
Dani had linked her arm in Evelyn’s, then squeezed her wrist. “You and me, we’re going to stick together.”
And they had, at that class and the next and the next, Evelyn never mentioning Kingsley’s background, or Antony’s. Telling herself she wasn’t hiding it, that it simply hadn’t come up, and fearing the moment it would. More than once, Dani talked about the future—the playgroups they’d attend, the daycares they should apply to, how they should show up to that first day of school side by side, looking down their noses at all the young mothers who thought they were the bee’s knees.
Then, when Evelyn was counting down the days, anxious, uncomfortable, wanting the pregnancy to end, to finally meet this kicking, flipping bundle of life she’d come to love, but also fearing that moment, Dani rushed over at the start of the class, eyes wide with a plan.
“I’ve had the most wonderful idea!”
A dinner party—just the four of them, so their husbands could meet, become the good friends Evelyn and Dani already were. The good friends she was determined their babies would always be.
Evelyn met her friend’s gaze as a shiver pulsed through her. She’d nodded along at Dani’s suggestions, hoped they’d come true, without quite believing it, despite Dani’s enthusiasm to see the friendship grow.
“Your son can come, too,” said Dani, “but he’d probably be bored out of his mind, so I’m guessing just the four of us. This Sunday. I know it’s soon, but next Sunday Charles has some law conference he’ll be traveling for. Besides”—she grasped Evelyn’s arm—“if we wait any longer, it could be the five of us. Or six! Which would be fine, but for this first time, I think four is right.”
“Oh.” Evelyn stepped back, dread hovering above her. This was it, another potential friendship ruined.
“Oh, what?” The excitement in Dani’s eyes dimmed. “You’ll come, won’t you? I’m positively bored. It’s been so hard to make friends since we arrived in this city, and even harder with this time bomb growing inside me.” She laughed. “As thrilled as I am, it’s like everyone is afraid to get to know me, because they think I’ll disappear off the face of the earth as soon as I have a baby.” Resolve coated her features. “But that won’t be me. Oh, no! I’ve seen enough mothers in my time—friends and cousins, all three of my sisters—to know you can be a mother and have a life, if you want to.”
“You can.” And Evelyn had, in what felt like another life, when she’d dropped her baby boy off at daycare on the way to work. When, in the heat of the afternoon, feeling as if she had it all, she’d sit in the courtyard with the other teachers, marking papers and tests, sipping tea, laughing at the lizards scurrying this way and that, perching on typewriters, stopping to stare, then puffing out their gullets.
“I don’t know.” Evelyn eased herself into a seat. “Kingsley’s so busy. Working for tenure, you remember?”
“The man has to eat.”
“I just…”
“Evelyn! Spit it out.”
Evelyn massaged her hands, the dread a physical pressure now, so certain of the way Dani’s expression would shift, how she’d lean back in her seat. “I didn’t just meet him in Jamaica. He’s from there, and—”
“And he’s a Black man?” Dani shook her head. “Oh, Evelyn, you think I’d care?”
“Well, some—”
“Some schmum.” Dani laughed. “I couldn’t care less. I saw you two last week. Outside the grocery on Eglinton East. And Charles won’t care, either. We’re basically an interracial couple ourselves.”
“But I’ve seen Charles.” Waving from the car as he dropped Dani off at a café. “He’s—”
“A Protestant. And I’m a Jew.”
“That’s not—”
“You ask my father about that.” Dani laughed again. “Or Charles’s old man. As far as they’re concerned, as far as most Jews or Protestants would be, we’re interracial, all right.”
Evelyn laughed, too, then shook her head, relief and a flicker of hope growing. She agreed to go, then had continued going, and even hosted on alternate months.
The men were friendly, but Evelyn and Dani, all these years later, were family.
“Asher!” Dani stood, gaze toward the slide, hands on her hips. “Wait your turn!” She turned to Evelyn, flashing an exaggerated grin. “Oy vey! This child!” Dani sat, shaking her head. “And how are you doing? With your worrisome child.”
Evelyn sighed and stared at Kareela, her angel, this girl whom she’d feared, whom she’d prevented for so long, but who was just as marvelous a gift as her son.
“When this interest developed, I thought it was going to be another one of his short-lived passions. But every day there’s more talk of how hardly anything has changed since this continent first started talking about the race problem, how when it comes down to it, those in power still see Black people as ignorant, lazy, criminal. Barely more than savages. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard those terms. It’s as if…” Evelyn shook her head, gaze still on Kareela, laughing, running, blissfully unaware of the world that awaited her.
“Well, he’s not wrong,” said Dani.
“But he’s not entirely right, either.” Evelyn understood him. She hated the world as it was, too. But she’d seen what fighting against it could bring. How fragile life was. She turned to Dani. “And all this anger, this passion…his grades are suffering, because injustice is all he can think of, all he focuses on. He wants to be the one to change the world.”
“Someone has to.”
“Not him.”
“No…” Dani knit her brow. She patted Evelyn’s knee. “At least it’s a good passion. A positive one. Something to be admired.”
Evelyn sighed. “A degree is what he should focus on. Becoming a lawyer or a judge, someone to make policy, help shape it.”
“You sound like Kingsley.”
“Well, Kingsley has a point. All Antony wants to do is write pamphlets, shout in the streets.”
“He’s young.” Dani waved a hand, as if dismissing a fly. “This intensity will fade. He could still become that policymaker yet. He probably will.”
If he doesn’t let his grades fall so low he loses his scholarship, thought Evelyn, or drop out altogether. If he doesn’t follow his beliefs so far he ends up in jail—or worse.
“Listen. It’s risky,” said Dani. “It’s scary. I see that. And I won’t claim to understand what life is like for your son…or your husband. But I know something of what it’s like to be viewed as inferior, to not get the opportunities you deserve, to be seen as less.” Dani stopped. “Asher, if I have to tell you one more time!” She turned back to Evelyn. “I’ve seen that frustration, that anger in my father, my grandfather. How, if a man does nothing about it, it can eat away at him. Make him believe he’s less, if only because he didn’t fight. Antony, at least, won’t face that.”
Evelyn had seen it, too, in Kingsley. Though he wouldn’t say it—never mentioning race each time he got turned down for tenure—he must think it, fear it. Must feel the pressure he’d never spoken in so many words but that she’d seen in millions of actions, or lack of action, the way he made himself smaller than he was.
She didn’t want that for Antony.
“Asher Daniel Thompson, you cut that out right now.” Dani threw her arms in the air, stalked across the playground, grabbed the hand that had just shoved another child to the ground, and practically dragged her son back to Evelyn. Kareela ran behind them, her puff of a ponytail bouncing. “My goodness.” Dani shook her head, her voice firm, but laughter in her eyes. “How parents are supposed to discipline without spanking, I’ve yet to figure out.” She looked to Asher. “No ice cream tonight.”
“Noooo! Mama, no!”
“Yes.” Dani winked at Evelyn. “That ought to teach him.”
Evelyn chuckled, then took Kareela’s hand as Dani waved and walked away.
“Mama.”
Evelyn crouched to Kareela’s level.
“Do I get ice cream?”
Evelyn stared at her girl, seeing the same wide eyes Antony had had at this age, the precious nose, all he had turned into and all she might. She wished, for the millionth time, that it was easier to protect one’s children—from scrapes and bumps, from name-callers, from hurt feelings and disappointments. From the way the seriousness of all those pains grew as they grew. She kissed her daughter’s cheek, nodded, then placed her forehead on Kareela’s.
“Heads!” Kareela laughed.
Evelyn grinned, then pressed her nose to Kareela’s.
“Noses!”
Evelyn touched her cheek to her daughter’s.
“Cheeks!” Kareela’s sweet, clear voice rose into the air before they both broke into giggles.
Evelyn wrapped her arms around her daughter as Kareela’s wrapped around Evelyn’s neck. She tried to focus on her girl, but in her mind’s eye, she saw Antony standing in front of the TV screen a few nights ago, yelling. Turning to Kingsley. “They call us apes!”
During the year Kareela had grown in Evelyn’s belly, a young man had been shot nine times while sitting in his vehicle. It shook Antony, taking an interest and exploding it into an obsession.
“What if they do it to me?” he’d asked after hearing the news. “What if they do it to that baby?” He’d pointed at Evelyn’s belly as she stared back, unable to answer, to reveal it was her fear, too.
When, several months later—after Kareela was in her arms, after Antony’s face turned wan and tired from following the trial, spending the days and nights he should have been focused on his studies searching instead for instances of punishment after police brutality, for hope—the ruling came that the cop was cleared, Antony sank to the couch.
“We have to make it stop, Ma,” he cried, leaning into her, her full-grown boy, letting Evelyn brush away the dreads that now reached his shoulders, then wrap her arms around him. “We have to make it stop.”