Chapter 16: THE MARKET
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
“Let us go to the market,” El says to Aban from her bedroom doorway.
Aban opens her gluey eyes, seeing him with blurred edges. “Wha?” she mumbles.
“Let us go to the market. Come on Aban, get dressed, get ready quickly, for I am waiting.” And he’s gone.
Aban wonders if she was dreaming. She falls back asleep.
“Wake up Aban. Time for the market,” El barks from her doorway.
She sits up startled, drawing air in sharply, her heart beating rapidly.
“It’s time for you to be ready,” he says and disappears, leaving her mouth open with her retort unsaid.
Glaring at the empty doorway, she stretches and scratches. She lets her body fall back down; the bed bounces softly to her weight. She had her day out already. It’s too hot to move; the heat is like a woolen blanket just out of boiling water, heavy and wet. Who can move? A crash smacks her awake. “All right, all right,” she mumbles. “I’m coming. What’s the rush anyway?”
Moving slowly, she pulls on her white T-shirt proclaiming “Everything is Possible” in purple letters then her camouflage army pants and sneakers. No socks. Maybe her feet won’t broil if she wears them with no socks. She should’ve taken Mom’s Birkenstocks. Why didn’t she?
Because you’re afraid.
“Oh, shut up,” she mumbles and lurches down the stairs to end up in front of El, who is standing by the front door.
“There you are,” El says, nodding. He strides out, leaving her to shut and lock the door. But she’s forgotten her keys and stumbles upstairs in the cloying heat to get them. Getting hotter, she attempts but fails to pick up her pace going back down to lock up. She totters to the sidewalk, veers towards the bus stop, and finds that he’s not there. She stops and unnoticing chokes on the textural air as through the sideways-dawn she looks down the street toward Lake Ontario then up toward the bridge and the Danforth. Aban spots him disappearing up the hill almost underneath the railway bridge. She stumble-runs after him. Sweat pops out on her face, soaks her back and under her arms, and makes her curls lank. “Why the hurry,” she mutters to herself, gasping on the dust and particles in the air. He could’ve waited.
“Why didn’t you wait?” she yells at him, her throat raspy.
“Why were you not ready?” he replies.
“I didn’t know we’re going to the market. You never said.”
“Why do I have to say for you to be ready?”
“What do you mean why? Talk English already.”
“I am. But you do not listen. Open your ears. Do not be like the well-off and complacent, those who see no troubles, who say ‘I’m alright Jack’ and so do not use their ears, do not use their eyes, hear only what they want to, see only what they want to but not what is in front of them.”
“I’m – ”
El picks up speed as if it's a cool, Spring day to be enjoyed, leaving Aban talking to nothing. She hesitates in shock, but her anger ripens, driving her legs forward. She catches up, barely. He hikes silently uphill, while she puffs noisily beside him. Finally, she has enough breath to retort, “You keep talking about hearing. But it’s not fair to wake me up at –. What time is it anyway? You’re not Mom, you know. I don’t hafta get up this early. On a Saturday too. I bet the birds aren’t awake neither, like, who would? No one! You keep talking about being ready. Well, I would’ve been if you’d told me.”
El snorts with impatience, “Have I not told you to be ready for all things? How long must I instruct you before you will listen?”
“Instruct me? Who told you to instruct me? I don’t need no instruction. That’s what Mom is for, and I left her. She can’t get at me now.”
“Is that why you came?”
Aban shrugs, suddenly not having enough breath to reply.
“Aban, you came for a reason. Do you not even know your own mind? Do you not even know why you came?”
“I came for my inheritance.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah,” Aban hesitates. “Yeah, I did. I did!”
El shakes his head and speeds up. Aban strives to keep up with his brutal pace.
He enters the still air of Greenwood subway station and Aban follows about a minute later in silence. Its maroon-and-mucky-yellow tiles echo the sound of El’s token falling into the stile as he walks through it once he sees Aban entering the station. The stile’s metal arms turn and smack to a stop as Aban fumbles with her wallet, her change clanging into the fare box while the guy behind the booth’s thick glass watches her under half-closed lids.
“Have you not yet bought tokens?” El asks her when she catches up to him at the top of the stairs. “You went downtown yesterday, yet you’re so unprepared you paid cash there and back and you’re still paying cash today?”
“Yeah, so what,” she mutters back. “I don’t got enough money to buy tokens anyway.”
“You have no money, no tokens because you put no forethought into it.” His eyes bore into her as they stand at the top of the stairs. Her eyes drop after a few futile moments of trying to hold his gaze. He turns away and leaps down the grey-tiled steps, his arms pumping in tune with his legs, while Aban follows at a run, her hand sliding along the metal rail, picking up black gummy brake dust that lies like a fine cloak all over TTC subway stations. She doesn’t notice. The train blows in as they arrive on the platform, lifting for a brief, refreshing moment her damp curls.
They sit across from each other in the almost-empty train. He looks at her chest and reads out loud, “Everything is possible.”
“Yeah.”
“What if one day you are hit by a bus. Will it be possible for you to stand up?”
“Depends.”
“Depends how?”
“Well, if it like hit hit or just, you know, tapped.”
“You prevaricate like a lawyer.”
“Fine. Whatever that means. But you don’t get it anyway. It’s about...about...you know, you. Your spirit. What you can do with your life. Not about getting hit with a bus.”
“If everything is possible, why didn’t you leave your mother’s house in the last twenty years?”
“I was a kid!”
“Not for five years. Many leave home years before you did, knowing it’s time.”
“You don’t get it.”
El contemplates her. She turns her head away.
They conduct the rest of the trip down to Front Street in stony silence until they get off the bus El had led her onto after the subway. Aban doesn’t know where they are and scans the buildings around her to get her bearings. The early morning light outlines the structures nearby and the haze obscures the tops of the further-away tall office buildings and hides the CN Tower’s tip, but she thinks she recognizes them and takes a step in their direction. But El moves off in the opposite direction. She swivels to follow and almost twists her foot. She grimaces and yells, "Ow!" but El keeps walking. She glares at his back as she limps to catch up.
The darkened buildings across the road remind her of some of the older buildings in the touristy towns near where she lives, but the one on their side of the street is like some boring thing someone plopped down. They come upon an open area. Tables covered by tent-type roofs line up along the sidewalk. A squat, rectangular building rises up behind the tables furthest away from where they are, its concrete façade painted blue with a happy market scene, light spilling out from its centre. She forgets to limp as she stares at the mural then wanders closer to browse the tables. But El has other ideas. He keeps going. She hurries to catch up.
As she passes the end of the last table, just before the building has a cut-out in it where doors are inset, she sees the old, imposing building across the street for the first time with people laden with packages streaming out of the bustling light of its three doors and people streaming in with empty bags. It reminds her of nineteenth century sketches of port buildings sitting on docks, except there’s no water here. Weird. Who’d build a port and a dock in the middle of land? A few people are sitting on the pier part eating. Her stomach gurgles. She wonders what they’re eating but suddenly realises El is once again way ahead of her, has already passed the cut-out, and is about to disappear around the corner. She rushes forward.
As she rounds the corner, she almost bumps into a table laden with herbs. Their freshness scents the air, and her stomach rumbles louder. She had no breakfast; even fresh herbs by themselves seem good to her. She looks around for El, wondering whether she’s supposed to buy food. She doesn’t cook. She doesn’t know how. She wouldn’t know what to do with the herbs. Mom cooked dinner on Sundays, and Dad the rest of the meals.
Aban can’t see El, and she steps away from the table and towards the corner of the intersection. The closest lane is lined with trucks, and the sidewalk is buzzing with people. Where is she? She looks up. “Jarvis,” the blue rectangular sign declares the street’s name. The one perpendicular to it says, “Front.”. She lowers her head and looks around again for El. A group are clustered at the corner, gazing at the other side, kitty corner to where they are. The dawn has lifted the dark, and she can follow their gaze easily. El is near a brick wall with a yellow and red sign blaring “Convenience” overhead. He’s bending over a crumpled heap of clothes while people hurry past, laden with paper bags, plastic bags, Whole Foods bags, Big Carrot bags, Loblaws bags. Everyone wants their name on a bag. Her parents don’t put their shop name on their bags, she thinks smugly. Mom had always said that plain brown paper bags were best. They were good for the environment, and they don’t need to trumpet who they are to get people to shop at their store.
“It was his fault. I saw the whole thing.” A voice next to her interrupts Aban’s reverie.
“Yeah? What happened?”
Aban listens to the voices around her and watches El across the intersection at the same time. El places a hand on the man.
“The homeless guy just wanted some money, you know. Like would it have killed him to give him a loonie? I know him, you know.”
“Yeah?” comes the breathless reply near Aban.
“Yeah. He’s the CEO of the insurance company I work at. He’s always sending memos out telling us how to do our job better, how we have to make the company more money and spend less on claims. Last month he said we'd paid out too much in claims, and he wanted to see a ten percent reduction this month. Bastard.”
“I know. Our management is the same. Always asking for the impossible, like our bosses do any work, those rich bastards.”
“Yeah, well look at him now,” the woman says with a laugh. The other laughs with her. A man near them interrupts them, “But wasn’t he robbed?”
“Yeah, but it was his own fault,” replies the first woman. “I saw it all. He just walked by the homeless man, even shoved him away. I saw it.”
“Tut,” the man utters. “At least give the poor guy a loonie. But those rich guys they live in a world of their own, got no time for us ordinary folk.”
“That’s what I say,” the second woman replies.
El sits the man up and pulls something out of his own pocket. Aban squints to see better and realises it’s a large white piece of cloth. El dabs the man’s forehead with it. Redness stains the man’s face and soon stains the cloth. Gross.
“Well, he’s bloodied now,” the man says dispassionately before turning to resume his shopping.
“Serves him right,” the first woman says viciously. “Now maybe we won’t be getting those ten-percent memos.”
“I doubt it,” the second says. “Nothing but death stops those CEOs from always wanting to cut, cut, cut, take more money for themselves away from people who deserve it.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it.” Aban finally gets the courage to see who's talking. She slants her eyes sideways. The two women are staring at the spectacle across the intersection. They watch contentedly for a moment more until an ambulance draws up, blocking their view of their show.
“Well, did you get that pig shoulder you were going to make for dinner?” the first woman asks the second as they turn back to the market and their shopping.
“Not yet. Is your husband coming or does he still have to work late?”
“Men and their work. I talked to him again...” The two women drift off.
“Why would El want to help a man like that?” Aban grumbles to herself. Mom always said those corporate types were no good. “Psychopaths,” she had called them. He should be locked up not helped. The heat of her anger steams into the heat of the air, and redness suffuses her face. She wipes the sweat off her cheeks and rubs her hands down her sticky pants, over and over. First El pulls her out of bed, saying they had to get going, like, now. Then instead of shopping like normal people, he’s over there getting his hands bloodied and gross, leaving her over here by herself, in a strange place. And for what? Some guy who deserved what he got!
“Why’d you leave me?” she demands of him as he returns to her, still wiping his hands on another white square handkerchief. She hopes that’s not the same one he used on the man.
“The paramedics are looking after him,” El replies wearily. “They’re taking him to St. Mike’s to bandage up his wounds. I must go to the washroom to wash my hands. I’ll be back Aban.” And he leaves her standing there, mouth agape. She hurries after him, almost hitting the washroom door as it closes on her. She wants to enter but conditioning keeps her outside the door, her right foot tapping as she stands in the way of men coming out, who blush or mutter as they almost run her over.
“Well?” she demands as El swings the door open and stops in front of her, nose to nose.
“My neighbour needed help,” he explains.
“Your neighbour? I never saw him on Greenwood.”
“You wouldn’t have seen him, for he doesn’t live there. He lives in the Bridlewood Path area.”
“So why’d you call him your neighbour? That’s stupid.”
“A man robbed him.”
“Yeah, I heard. It was his own fault for not giving that homeless guy a loonie. We should always help the homeless. Mom said it’s 'cause our community takes care of each other, we don’t have no homeless like here. But in the city no one cares. Would it’ve killed him to help? A rich guy like him can afford a loonie. He could’ve given him a hundred dollar bill. I bet he has stacks of em. I bet that’s like a cent to the rest of us.”
“His attacker was homeless, yes. A homeless man plagued by demons who came down from your small town to find help here but found only a concrete bed and all but missions not wanting to know him. But he didn’t attack because the man refused him a loonie. He attacked because for the last several weekends, he’s taken to cursing the man out, telling him to empty his wallet or else, telling him the aliens are demanding his pound of flesh. The man attempted to have the police do something, but they told him to cross the road and refused to help them both. He attempted to have the city’s social workers do something, but they said since he wasn’t harming anyone, since he hadn’t physically hit anyone or harmed himself yet, they couldn’t. He had the right to decide if he wanted help or not. And whenever they asked, he always replied, ‘I’m fine.’ Even when he suddenly went on his own to see a psychiatrist, the doctor told him to go to the ER but didn't lift a finger to make sure he got there. The homeless man had the right to go insane on the streets, unclean, unfed, and uncared for. The man realized giving him a loonie would not help him; the problem was bigger than that. And he didn’t want to think about it either because then he would have to act, and he didn’t want to leave the comfort of his life, to change his life that much. Today, the man tried to go another way to his car in order to avoid the homeless man. But the homeless man had targetted him and jaywalked to catch him. He said that this time he was going to take the man’s wallet because he had tried to avoid him. He punched him and took his wallet, his watch, his gold wedding ring, and his keys. I found the keys a meter away from him. The rest is gone. Because he’d reported him before, they know who he is. So who is to blame? The man? The homeless man for being insane? The city? The police? Or the social workers and nurses and psychiatrists who knew about his growing insanity?”
Aban doesn’t answer.
“If the rich man is to blame, doesn’t he still deserve succour?”
“Huh?”
“Aid, help, comfort.”
“It was his fault,” she mutters.
“Does he not deserve mercy?”
“You don’t know what kind of man he is. He harms people. I heard, you know.”
El bursts out, “Why do you listen to the evil speakers? Are their words not like choice morsels that slide down happily into your heart, causing you to see what is not there even as you watched me clean his wounds? Are the evil speakers you listened to so blameless that they can judge another fairly, that they can say he deserved it no matter what his sins? Are you so blameless that refusing your neighbour aid makes you better than he? You hypocrite!”
Aban reels. Her mouth hangs open. She snaps her teeth shut and narrows her eyes. “Well, he did too deserve it,” she spits out. “He deserved being beaten up. That woman said! And she knows 'cause she works for him. ‘It’s hell working for him,’ she said. She knows. He beats up on people all the time, just not physically so that's, like, okay? Corporate people are like psychopaths, they don't care about us ordinary folk, Mom said so. It’s time someone gave him payback. A man like him doesn’t deserve to exist.”
“Though he may be lost, yet still he deserves to be saved. He is our neighbour, our brother, and our family. We don't abandon them.”