Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
2001
As her foot landed on the front steps, Evelyn stiffened. The shouts were muffled, enough that the neighbors wouldn’t hear, but already Evelyn could make out the tension in their voices, imagine the standoff: her two men, so similar and so different. Each unable to see through the other’s eyes.
She gave Kareela’s hand a squeeze, put her key in the lock, and stepped inside, knowing in mere moments she’d have to decide whether to step between them.
“Education doesn’t solve everything!”
“It solves a lot.” Kingsley’s voice, on the edge of anger, trying to hold in a full yell, trying to seem reasonable, calm, and even-tempered.
“Oh, really? Like what?”
“Respect, Antony. It gets you respect, a place in the world, and from there—”
“From there you get passed over, year after year, and you smile, their little lapdog, their Uncle T—”
“Antony!” At Evelyn’s voice, the two men turned, Kingsley’s jaw and fists clenched tight, his back ramrod straight; Antony slouched, shifting foot to foot, a mix of sheepishness and determination on his face. He kissed his teeth to the side and cast his gaze away from both of them.
“Let him talk,” said Kingsley. “He thinks I’m an Uncle Tom? That’s what you were going to say? Why? Because I’m not yelling in the street? Because I’m putting food on our table, a roof over our heads? Your head, while you live here, rent free. Because I’m not yelling, Racism! every time the world doesn’t go exactly as I’d like?”
Antony stepped forward. “That’s not—”
“Kareela.” Evelyn peeled the girl’s arms from around her leg, then crouched so she was eye level. “I think Holly doll needs a nap. Why don’t you go to your room and check?”
Kareela looked between the men, her eyes taking it in…her ears, too.
“Go, sweetie.” Kingsley smiled at his daughter, gestured toward the hall, and she scampered off. He turned to Antony. “I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it.” He sighed, the sound thin yet forceful, like wind squeezing through attic eaves. “I’m just saying find other ways. Safer, more practical ways. Yes, change sometimes comes from yelling, from marching in the street. But it also comes from getting the notice of people in power. More change. Safer change. So finish school and finish well, then go further. Become one of those people.”
“What?” Sarcasm dripped from Antony’s voice. “Like you did?”
“No.” Kingsley stopped, lips tight, everything still clenched. “I’m a medical sciences instructor, not a policymaker or politician. But if that’s where your passion lies, become someone who enacts change through the proper channels.”
Antony stared, slumped again, his whole body a sigh. “I never said I was dropping out.”
“But you’re planning to miss an exam to prep for a rally? I’ve seen your grades lately. You’re better than that. Do better.”
Antony looked from Kingsley to Evelyn, back to Kingsley. Evelyn wanted to reach out—for all the pain she saw in him. To tell him they’d support him, no matter what.
“Do both, if you must,” continued Kingsley. “But not one at the cost of the other.”
She wanted to side with Kingsley, too, to help keep Antony far away from all the activists drawing dangerous attention to themselves. “I have to go.” Antony crossed between them, the front door closing with a thud.
Kingsley looked to Evelyn, his hands raised in surrender. Evelyn stared at the door, then turned to her husband. “His exam is tonight?”
Kingsley nodded.
“Do you think they’ll let him retake it?”
Another sigh. “I may be able to pull some strings, but I shouldn’t have to.” Kingsley sank to his armchair. “This boy just doesn’t understand. If he knew, really knew, what it was like, what it can be like. If he could see…”
“Maybe you should tell him what it was like.” Evelyn perched on the edge of the chair, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “Why we left.”
Kingsley looked across the room, his gaze focused on something Evelyn couldn’t see. He’d witnessed so much more than she had, experienced the horror, the pain, in ways she hadn’t. And maybe if he shared—
Kingsley stood, their hands pulling apart. “We left so he wouldn’t have to know.”
Hours later, the house quiet and dark—Antony, who knew where, Kareela asleep in her bed, and Kingsley in his office—Evelyn crossed to the living room, her shoulders heavy with the weight of memories, with all their son didn’t know, with the loneliness of not being able to tell him, to talk about it with Kingsley, even.
If they’d stayed in Jamaica, Antony’s skin color would have been an asset, helped him rise through the ranks and become one of the powerful people Kingsley was talking about…if he’d survived that long. And that’s why they’d left. So he’d survive. Be safe.
She sat in the rocking chair. The same one they’d bought in their first months in the city—similar to the one that had sat in their home in Kingston, where she’d nursed and rocked her baby boy.
She’d rocked throughout her pregnancy, too, the chair placed strategically to catch the evening’s breezes, as she tried her hand at knitting. Once Antony had arrived, the nurses laughed at her haphazard attempts, told her she couldn’t put a baby “in dese t’ings.” Cotton shifts—lightweight, breathable—was what he needed. Antony had been in one of those shifts, months later, while she rocked him to sleep after returning home from a visit with friends. Remembering the bin of laundry ready to be put away, she placed Antony in the bassinet by her bed, then stood, folding clothes, moving from the bed to the dresser to the closet, thinking of the visit, how her friends—fellow teachers, most from the island and some from away, like her—had cooed over Antony, all smiles. Then, as Evelyn probed about their lives, those smiles had faded.
Evelyn, in the haze of life with a newborn, had known little of the state of things. How politics, the upcoming election, had transformed the parish into a war zone. There was no more staying late after class. The whistles from men were now the least of the women’s worries. Just last week, one of them had been attacked, her purse stolen, her necklace ripped from her throat, watch from her wrist, earrings from her lobes. The woman pulled her hair from the side of her face, revealing thin scabs.
“I was lucky that’s all they did,” she said. “A few scrapes and bruises, the money and jewelry lost, but a student found my bag in a ditch. I got all my papers back.”
“The police did nothing,” said another of Evelyn’s friends.
“The police aren’t even police anymore. They’re militia.”
The women nodded.
“The officers shrugged,” continued the one who’d been attacked. “Didn’t even ask for descriptions. Told me to stop walking by myself. That beyond that, they had more important things to deal with.”
“And they do,” said another. “War in the streets. Barricades. Roadblocks of garbage, and people gunned down.” She shuddered. “It’s desperate out there—jobs lost, men with families to feed and no concern for anything but that.”
A chill had run up Evelyn’s spine. It did again as she folded Kingsley’s undershirts, stacked them neatly, the faint barking of the dogs growing louder. Their dogs, who hadn’t been there to greet Evelyn when she returned home. She froze at the sound of shuffling—yet Antony was fast asleep. The barking was thunderous now, nails scratching at the loose latch of the back screen door.
A groan mixed with a curse sounded beneath the bed, followed by more shuffling as two hands, then a head, a shirtless torso, khaki pants, and bare feet thrust themselves out from under it and fled the room, not looking back but running toward the front door just as the dogs burst through the back door.
Evelyn chased after the dogs, watched the animals leap against the front door, howling, scraping. She stood watching, terror raising the hair on her arms, wanting and not wanting to open the door, let the animals rip to shreds the man who’d lain underneath her bed, her baby boy just an arm’s length away. But she was frozen.