Chapter 7: ATASGAH
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
The sign is what distracts her. Nailed above the peeling painted door, in cerulean blue it reads, “Atasgah.” Aban stumbles on a board and lands on the front door with a knock. She straightens up and looks behind her. No one has seen her. She turns back to see a pair of arms coming at her, enfolding her. And a joyous voice booms into her ear, “Welcome Aban!”
For a moment, bright light as if from the sun, flashes into her eyes and fills her, and then she is being released.
The strange man smiles into her face, holding her out, the better to see her, “Welcome Aban!” Sweeping his arm back into the house, he adds, “Welcome to Atasgah.”
She blinks at his bright white shirt, speechless.
“Come, let me get your suitcase.” He bends down first to retrieve something shiny, and she feels her flaccid hand being taken and turned, a key being dropped into it, her fingers being closed around the key. He grabs her suitcase, takes her other hand, and leads her in. She stops where he drops her hand to close the door. He strides by her, carrying her suitcase, heading towards the staircase in front of them, against the right-hand wall.
“Your grandmother told me many stories about you,” he says as he climbs the stairs, in expectation that she will follow. And she does; her feet moving without her will.
“She was fond of you and treasured her memories of you and her together. When she felt her time was near, she gave away much of her furniture. She wanted to leave you her house, but she did not want to impose her taste upon you. Here is the kitchen,” he sweeps a hand in front of him as they reach the top of the stairs, but he continues on, turning left and walking down a narrow hallway with the staircase balustrade to his left and doors on his right and ahead. “And here is the bathroom, and next to it a guest room. And in front of you is the living room. You will love the light in there. It brought much joy to your grandmother. She would sit in the sunshine for hours, reading.”
He doesn’t halt as he talks. He enters a doorway at the end of the balustrade and says, “Come, we go up these stairs.”
Aban gropes her way after him up an enclosed narrow stairway.
“Your grandmother liked to sleep on the top floor. She said it gave her a feeling of being closer to heaven, of being part of the beauty of the cosmos. She also said it was poetic somehow to walk through the cramped dark to get up to the light. Ah here we are.”
They have reached the top of the stairs. He passes the open doorway ahead of them and again turns left and walks down a narrower hallway towards a door on the right. He swings it open and gestures her in. She enters to see a softly lit room, for though the sun is high in the sky, this room faces west protected by the trees standing outside. Before her is a bed with no headboard, no footboard, no skirt. Yet it’s welcoming with its cover of red and blue and green and yellow patchwork quilt. Next to it on the east wall is a pine nightstand with a cosy lamp nestled on top. To her right on the other side of the door, on the north wall, is a small dresser glowing with the warm honey tones of pine. Past it on the west wall is the window dressed with long, gauzy drapes and a cream-coloured blind rolled to the top. Beside it at the end of the bed is a chair with a floor lamp bending over it. She hears a soft fall behind her and turns to see him straightening up from placing the suitcase next to the bed.
Aban stares at him. He seems to read her confusion.
“I’m El. Your grandmother’s tenant. I’ve been waiting for you your whole life and hoped you would come today.”
How creepy, she thinks. Her face remains still.
Yet El smiles and replies, “One can anticipate with rejoicing as a parent waits for a child, not for possession but to meet them again. And today there is a wedding. It is truly a time to rejoice. The bride and groom have sent many invitations out, but few have replied. And many of those that have replied have said they would not come. They have baseball games, open houses to see, hockey camp, and work that cannot wait. The bride and groom told me that these people are not worthy to be invited; none will taste their hospitality again. They are angry too that they asked them in the first place. But if you do not invite, then you will not know who will come and who will reject. They have asked me to invite my friends, the poor, the homeless, the lonely. For they want to celebrate their good news with all of their human family.”
Aban blinks rapidly. What’s he talking about? Family is Mom and Dad, not people off the streets. Then she remembers: Mom had told her she was no longer part of the family if she left. Did she mean it? She fingers the quilt’s ragged edges and the narrow ribbons outlining some of the squares. The ribbon is a pretty blue. It reminds her of ... of something. She frowns.
“Come to the wedding.” His voice jerks her head up.
She’d never been to a wedding before. For the first time, she focuses on him, takes in his black suit pants that hang just-so over his brogues and his pure white shirt with its long sleeves that ends in stiff cuffs held together by simple steel studs. HIs collar is held closed by another steel stud. Suddenly she feels shy and grubby.
“Come as you are. You will be welcomed. They want you, not your wardrobe. But you must be tired and sticky from your journey. It is hot out. Wash first, put on fresh clothes, and join me downstairs. I will be waiting.” He disappears through the door; his footsteps ring as he walks on the scuffed wooden floor of the hallway and jogs down the stairs. Quiet descends.
Aban snaps the clasps open on her suitcase. She rifles through her clothes until she finds a plain white T and an unpatterned pair of khakis with not too many pockets on it. Grabbing clean underwear and socks, she carries the lot down to the bathroom, where towels await her, she notices with a start, realizing that she had forgotten to pack any. She has the requested shower. Though her short damp hair quickly creates humidity around her face, she does feel better afterwards. She takes her wallet and key out of the pants on the floor and shoves them into her right-hand front pocket. Sitting on the damp bathroom floor, she pulls on her white tube socks and then puts on her shoes and laces them up. She scrambles up, and taking a deep breath, she opens the bathroom door and lets the steam out.
She thumps down the stairs to the bottom where he is waiting for her. She stops on the bottom step and rests her right hand on the smooth, yellow-painted round knob that tops the newel post. He beams at her.
“Come,” he says. “Follow me. We will go on the TTC to this wedding.”
El is holding a decorated tall, narrow bag, weighed down with something. Her eyes fasten on it.
“Do not worry about a gift. Your presence will be gift enough. This is a bottle of red wine for the dinner after the wedding.”
Wine means nothing to her. Her parents drink beer: Molson Canadian. The kids at high school drank beer, at that party. She’d been the odd one out at that long, boring party she’d snuck out to. Her one friend had told her how to sneak out, had said how all the kids did it, it was normal. But she hadn’t dared drink once she was there. Mom would find out and then she’d find out about the party too. And she did find out about the party. Mom always finds out things. She drank Coke instead; Mom wouldn’t ever know. Coke didn’t smell on the breath. And she’d wanted to know what it tasted like. It was good. Her classmates were lucky; they could drink it anytime. That was the only time she’d drunk Coke. Mom always said it was a symbol of corporate exploitation and evil sugary drinks was worse than any drug. She’d stared at her in that way of hers when she’d told her again after that party, like she knew. Mom always finds out stuff.
Aban breathes raggedly.
“Come.”
Aban looks up and sees El standing at the open front door, his arm stretched out to her, his palm up. Her breathing calms. She follows him out, and he locks up. Across the porch, down the steps, and through the listing white-picket-fence gate they walk, one in front of the other. He turns right and heads to the bus stop at the corner, two doors down.
They wait.
The humidity slowly sticks their shirts to their bodies.
They continue to wait.
The bus roars into hearing and grumbles to a stop. They climb on. She has a moment of panic; she hadn’t thought about how to pay. But he pays for both of them, asks the driver for two transfers, and hands her one before leading her to a double seat halfway down the dark charcoal-painted bus. It lurches from the stop, and she falls into her seat, hitting him.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
El grins at her and playfully nudges her shoulder with his own. She hunches into herself. He doesn’t mind, and they sit there for awhile in silence, he holding the tall, narrow bag, she shoving her hands deep into her pockets and sliding down into the seat.
He begins to talk.
“The bride and groom met through me. To your grandmother’s house, to Atasgah, one day they came at her invitation. She held many dinner parties, and she invited people who didn’t seem to go together. These two, people would have said, do not belong together, yet your grandmother saw them as going together when I had met them separately one day and told her about them. He is a man of action, as they say. He likes to do things and rarely stops to think. She is a thinker. She likes to sit and read and think about what she has read. He is younger than she. She is fatter than he. Since they have been together, he has grown up, learned to listen, learned to slow down and think before he speaks and acts. She has grown thinner and has learnt to use her hands, to put her mind towards action not just towards her own thoughts. They have rarely been apart in the last nine months, and today we rejoice to see them wed.”
He sure likes that word, “rejoice,” Aban grumbles to herself. What a stupid word, she huffs, not admitting that she doesn’t know what it means.
“Come on Aban, we are at our stop.”
He stands up eagerly, forcing her to stand too. He leads her to the back door, which he opens effortlessly, and she follows him out and across the street, not looking at her surroundings but only at his back. They wait at another stop but not as long this time. A large metal vehicle rumbles up to the stop on rails. It’s that long red-and-white car she saw the first time she was in Toronto. The doors whoosh open, folding and bending to the sides. Narrow steps ascend high to the driver, who is staring straight ahead.
As they cross the strip of road to climb the steep front steps, he says, “This is a streetcar. Torontonians call it “the Red Rocket.” It’s a symbol of Toronto. It holds many more than a bus does. It sits up higher and flies along the road, to the peril of those who do not look out. But it can only go where the rails take it.”
They sit in another double seat; this time she is next to the window and she looks out on the rundown shops going by as the Red Rocket clatters across intersections and along the street. Again, silence reigns between them though his presence seems to be touching her. She hears a baby cry and turns her head to see a young woman struggling with a stroller past the driver. She feels El’s leg tense up as if he is about to move, but a woman with grey-flecked hair nearer the stroller leaps up and offers her seat to the young woman with the child. Aban’s eyes follow the old woman as she walks to the back of the streetcar, and she encounters El’s profile as the woman walks past them. She drops her eyes.
She doesn’t like parties. Her mouth turns down at the thought. They’re all about people getting drunk, and they talk about stupid things, things that don’t matter, things Mom hates and doesn't think she needs to know about. Mom doesn’t like her going to parties. She feels her heart thudding against her ribs. She raises her hand to her chest, but the thought keeps unfolding. A wedding is just a big party, a big frivolous party. Weddings are stupid. Mom had always said marriage is an out-dated institution that is disrespectful to the woman and bundles people together, the man dominant, so that when it’s time to leave, they feel they can’t. People should be free to do what they want, Mom had always said. She used to say it every time one of her friends sent her one of those fancy cards for a wedding. Yet here she is going to a wedding. She has to get off this Red Rocket; she has to go back, go back home. She can’t be going to a wedding, with people she doesn’t know, in this loud, stupid city!
Aban can't breathe.
Aban wiggles.
Aban opens her mouth to speak into El's left ear.
Suddenly El is touching his shoulder to hers, radiating his warmth into her. Yet he remains looking straight ahead, down the length of the streetcar out the front glass. His profile arrests her gaze and her mouth. His brown hair shines where the sunlight coming in through the window hits it. It’s cut in subtle layers. Not as short as a short, back, and sides, and not so long that it curls messily over his collar. But straight, layered, and tidy. His brows are neither too thick nor too thin and form pleasing straight lines over his cocoa-brown eyes, which have the longest lashes she’s ever seen on a man, lashes like those of a giraffe that she saw once at a zoo 'cause Mom said she should see how people use and cage animals against their will. No man should have such beautiful lashes, Aban grouses to herself. His nose slopes down in a straight line towards his wide lips with a curvy bow on top, an ever-present smile slightly curling their ends. His jaw is strong, and his whole head is held up by a powerful neck rising from broad shoulders. He has no extra fat, and though the shirt covers his chest, she has a sense of crushing strength. His power quails her. She decides not to speak, and once more she watches the passing streetscape.
“This is Queen Street,” El says matter of factly. “It’s the longest east-west street in Toronto. It covers many neighbourhoods. You will like this multi-faceted street Aban when you get a chance to explore your new home.”
She wasn’t sure about that word, “home.” She just came to visit. She wanted to find out about her grandmother. Home is back home, where her parents are, except ... except Mom had said not to come back. She shoves that thought away. Home is where her parents are. This is just some urge that will leave her, and then she can go back.
“Do not be too sure of where life will take you. You may say, ‘I am just here to visit.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. Keep your mind open to what is around you. That is where the surprising joy is to be found. In this moment, and all that matters is this moment. This streetcar is taking us to a wedding, a time of joy, a time to celebrate two people in love embarking on a new life together.” He sighs pleasurably.
And that’s the last word he utters as they ride the streetcar and then get off in what seems a weary part of town. Kittycorner to them stands a blackened imposing church with a lawn filled with people lying on park benches. He shepherds her gently across Queen, and they walk side by side down another street for several blocks, she growing hotter and hotter. And then there they are, standing in front of a cathedral made of neat blocks of light-coloured stones that fit snugly together creating a flat surface. The walls soar up to a pointed verdigris tower and a cross on top. Wide steps rise up to an exquisite layered arch, inside which stand large closed double doors. Doubts surge into her mind again, but with a hand on her sticky back, he walks her forward and through those doors into the blessedly cool and quiet interior.