Aban's Accension

Chapter 23: The Taxman

Chapter 23: THE TAXMAN

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

The next day, Aban stops on the last stair, her T-shirt proclaiming “Be Present in the Now,” her right hand on the newel post, not feeling the peeling painted surface of it. Instead Aban is staring at the mail on the worn wooden floor. Funny, she hadn’t thought of this place as getting letters. El sees people in person, and bills aren’t a part of his life, or so she had assumed. After all, she hasn’t seen him handle money, other than the Metropass for the TTC. Yet here the mail is, lying on the floor, just like at home. She steps down onto the old floorboards and stoops to pick up the letters. As she straightens, she sees the mail slot in the door. She blinks at it. Was it always there? She finishes straightening up and riffles through the mail.

All of it is for her.

Who would write her? They all have her name typed on them, kind of like the ones her parents get. She wonders what she’s supposed to do with these letters. She looks around for a place to toss them until she feels like opening them.

El pokes his head out his living room door, “What do you have there Aban?”

“Mail.”

“Just mail?”

“What do you mean?”

His head retreats. She stands there for a bit, then sighs. She huffs her way back upstairs and into her kitchen where she drops the mail on the tiny kitchen table as she swivels on her foot to retrace her steps. But the letters bore a hole into her back. Sighing, she returns to the table, sits down, and begins to slit them open roughly with her thumb.

One’s a letter from Bell, on glossy paper, telling her about some new service. She has a phone. She must. Every house has a phone. It never rings. What else does she need? She tosses it to the side. She opens another one. This one’s from Rogers selling her cable. What does she want that for? Mom didn’t believe in TV, and she doesn't neither. She’d gotten used to not knowing what the other kids were talking about at school and not caring about it. And it doesn’t matter now. She tosses that one towards the first one, not noticing how it almost slides off the Bell ad letter and skitters to the edge of the table. She scans the rest. Are they all going to be like that: stupid crap? She sighs and picks up another one. She opens it. Again from Bell. She’s about to throw it toward the first one when she realises it looks different. It has numbers on it. She reads it and gasps. So much money for a phone that never rings? She’d rather send that to Greenpeace. She goes to throw it toward the other discarded ones when the thought that maybe she should pay it halts her hand. But how? She stares at it for awhile, thinking it might reveal the how. But it doesn’t. She sets it carefully down to her left and picks up the next letter. It’s from the City of Toronto, reminding her about Water and Solid Waste Management. She has to pay for water? Who pays for water? You turn on the tap, and water comes out. This is stupid. And what is solid...she squints at the top of the bill again...solid waste management? It must be a scam or something. But she sets it down on top of the Bell bill. She’s not sure if she wants to pick up the next one; it kind of looks like the one she’d just opened. It too is from the City of Toronto, with lots of different folded pieces of paper in it. Some in languages she doesn’t understand. Don’t people speak English in this city? What is she supposed to do with all these? The bill falls out of the pile as she’s flipping through them. She picks it up and sees that the city wants taxes, something about a final property tax bill. She flips the multi-folded bill around and around to figure out what it’s about. The back is a busy page of numbers and dates. When she realises the numbers are what she owes, she gasps. She can’t pay that. She’s never had that kind of money before. What has Grandma left her? How does she even pay that? She slaps the tax bill on top of the other bills and shoves the rest of the letters and inserts away from her.