Baby Khaki's Wings Read online

  “You want money, hanh?” My dadima reached down into her maxi and retrieved a bundle of shillings, held together with an elastic band. She waved the money at my mother. “Take it! Take it if you think I am such a burden.”

  My mother clucked her tongue and then turned her head toward me. “See that? Your dadima—I swear she’s mad. As if we don’t have enough things to worry about.”

  “Stop it,” my father said firmly. “Stop this nonsense.”

  My dadima continued. “If it wasn’t for your thieving brother, we wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Haramjada! Enjoying himself while we’re here suffering like nobody’s business.”

  “Suffering? Who’s suffering? Not you, that’s for sure. It’s me breaking my back each and every day….”

  “Stop it, Shamim,” my father pleaded.

  “No! Let her hear the truth for once. I’m sick and tired of all her nonsense. Doesn’t lift a finger all day and still has the gall to complain. No wonder no one can stand living with her. Not even your father could take it anymore.”

  “Shamim!” My father banged his fork and knife down on the table.

  “It’s true!” My mother slapped the table. “Why are you trying to protect her?” she said angrily, and then turned to my dadima. It was as if she were a skier who had suddenly found herself on a dangerous run, but continued down it anyway, unable to stop herself. “Did you hear that, Ma? I said your husband couldn’t take it anymore. He isn’t dead! He left you. Even has a new wife. And who the hell can blame him?” My mother turned her gaze back to my father, her face flushed red. “Why don’t you tell her, Shiraz? Go ahead. Tell her the truth for once in your life!”

  In a single moment, my father stood up and reached across the table, his arm raised above him. But then, as if he were a machine that had stalled, his fist dropped down and smashed the table, making the plates and cutlery reverberate.

  My father placed a palm to the table and then leaned in to my mother, pointing a finger at her face. “You want to hear the truth? The truth is that your brother stole our money,” he said in a fierce tone. “And if it wasn’t for him—that bastard—I would never be in this position. Never!” He threw his chair to the floor and stormed out. A few seconds later, a door slammed.

  I sat at the table, terrified. It was as if I were inside a snow globe, which had been picked up and shaken ruthlessly; each part of me had unhinged itself from my body and now banged against the glass. I started to cry uncontrollably.

  My mother, it seemed, was unable to move. She just stared at the table, the tips of her fingers over her lips.

  My dadima dusted her hands over her TV dinner, wiped her mouth with a tea towel, and then lifted herself out of her chair. She shuffled away to our room, closing the door behind her.

  —

  THAT NIGHT my father slept on the couch. He lay still under a blanket, his arm over his eyes. I went to him and nudged him gently.

  “Are you okay, mituri?” he asked, turning to me.

  “Can I sleep here?”

  He pushed himself against the back of the couch and pulled me in. “It’s all going to be all right,” he said, kissing my forehead.

  I nodded, but in the street-light streaming into the living room, I could see his eyes were red. I pressed myself to him; his heart pounded against my back. Through the balcony’s glass doors, I could see that it was snowing.

  —

  JIMMY UNCLE NEVER FOUND our money and we never found out what happened to it. My mother suggested we ask him to help us out. After everything my father had done for him, it was his duty. My father agreed on one condition: Jimmy Uncle had to accept responsibility for what had happened. But Jimmy Uncle refused. “Why should I?” he said. “Please, Jimmy. Please,” my mother begged him. “But it wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Then whose fault was it?” my father asked my mother. In the end, my father took the money grudgingly. Jimmy Uncle could not replace all of it. Instead he sent a monthly stipend for years, which would on its arrival sometimes start an argument like a sudden snowstorm between my parents.

  Eventually my father saved enough money to successfully apply for another government licence, this time for a Lottery Booth in Grande Prairie, far from the Rockies. My father, with my mother’s help, grew the business to three lottery booths, two here in Grande Prairie and one in Peace River. In time, my father began sponsoring the rest of his family. My dadima lived with Kamru Uncle at first, but she was later admitted to a full-care nursing home, where she lives today. My aunties and uncles blamed my mother for the deterioration in her health.

  My parents are now separated. My mother waited until I moved away for university before she finally left my father. “Who needs this bullshit?” she said to me. It was the first time I heard her swear in English. My mother lives in a condominium, a few blocks from my father. My father lives in the house I grew up in, a semi-detached bungalow on Hillcrest Drive. He and I never learned how to ski, although he still exercises each morning, speed walking the corridors of Grande Prairie’s shopping malls.

  I am now enrolled in Business School at the University of Alberta in Edmonton; I hope one day to be a chartered accountant. My father calls me almost every day. We often talk about the same things—the weather, what we had for dinner, our health. He mails me articles with titles like, “How to Avoid Lightning,” “You and Your Heart,” “Carbon Monoxide Detector Saves Family.” The letters arrive, unmarked, a photocopy of the article inside. When I return to Grande Prairie during school breaks, I work at the Lottery Booth—just as I did when I was growing up. My father and I sit behind the counter, drinking Tim Hortons coffee or eating our lunch or dinner from one of the stalls in the food court. Many of my father’s regular customers stop by daily even if they have already purchased their week’s tickets. They are like friends now. They know him as Sam.

  The Rubbermaid Princess

  Zera Pirmohamed waves goodbye to Altaf as he drives toward the staff parking lot in his polished red Mustang, fitted with a car bra and spoilers. It is six-thirty in the morning, but the August sun still hasn’t risen—stuck, it seems, under the Calgary horizon. What would I do without him? Zera thinks to herself as she steps through the revolving door of the Ralph Klein Auxiliary Hospital. Altaf is part of the Ismailia Volunteer Corps; he is responsible for driving the northeast jamati minibus, which takes seniors from areas like Whitehorn and Temple to jamatkhana for their morning prayers. Zera wishes she could attend jamatkhana, if only once in a while, but she has not been for years now. Zera relies on Altaf for other reasons. He helps her with her home-based cooking business, but more importantly, he works at the hospital’s laundering facility on the early shift, 7 A.M. to 3 P.M., and gives Zera a ride to and from the hospital, allowing her to visit her son, Tajdin, more easily. Sixteen years ago, at age twenty-nine, Tajdin was in a terrible car accident and is still in a coma.

  Inside the hospital, Zera first stops at The Gift Shop, as she does every morning, to purchase a copy of the Calgary Herald. She tucks the Saturday paper, which is packed with advertisement supplements, into her large canvas handbag. The handbag bears a screen-printed picture of a cowboy, his knee pushed into the back of a heifer that’s been wrestled to the ground, his gloved hand wrapped around the rope that binds her legs together, and his arm triumphantly above him. The words across the top read: THE CALGARY STAMPEDE, THE GREATEST OUTDOOR SHOW ON EARTH. The volunteer salesclerk, in her candy-striped pinafore, smiles broadly as she gives Zera her change. Zera counts it carefully before she shovels it into a small gold-coloured change purse and tucks it down the front of her paisley print maxi. She turns to leave, oblivious to the clerk’s giggles, and as she walks away, she rocks from side to side like the pendulum of a clock. Zera has arthritis in her hips and knees.

  Zera continues, as she always does, down the long hallway directly to the elevator. These days, she is no longer aware of the acute smell of the hospital—as if pails of rotten eggs mixed with antiseptic have been used to sa
nitize the dull-white floors—a smell that used to make her pinch her nose. As the elevator doors open and close on the way up, Zera also doesn’t see the patients wheeling oxygen tanks or IV bags with tubing trailing behind like overcooked noodles, or the ones in the dimly lit TV room, some of whom are sprawled out, ready for a long day, others with nurses bent over them, spoon-feeding them porridge or Jell-O. Instead she passes them as if she’s riding a freight elevator in a warehouse. When an automated voice calls out, “Floor Five—Cafeteria,” Zera carefully steps off. Visiting hours in Tajdin’s ward do not begin until eight o’clock.

  Zera spends the first hour and a half in the cafeteria, where she orders her usual: a cup of hot water. She takes her cup to a table by a window that faces Suncrest Mall and sits down. The streets are empty today as they are on most weekend mornings. People are still at home, sleeping in, exhausted perhaps from the rigour of their week. Zera removes three Rubbermaid containers from her handbag—one stuffed with bags of Red Rose tea, another with a row of Maria biscuits. The last one is empty. She struggles to open them, her fingers still stiff from hours of cooking earlier this morning.

  —

  ZERA PATS A KITCHEN TOWEL to her sagging bosom and tries to soak up the oil that has spattered onto her cotton nightgown. She flips the towel over her shoulder, dips a wooden spoon into the simmering pot, and leaning over the stove, takes one final taste of the kuku paka. She shakes her head, reaches for the bottle of lemon juice, and pours generously. Pushing her thumb up against her teeth, she shifts her dentures back into place, then takes another taste. Yes, much better. Hopefully, even the fussy ones will like it very much. Some people, they just expect too much from the world. Sometimes in life, you have to compromise, accept things, instead of asking for so much. Yet, Zera has noticed, those who ask for a lot often get a lot—even if they do not deserve such a good life. Zera glances at the cluster of framed photographs of Tajdin on top of the microwave, which is speckled with grease. What, dear God, did he do to deserve such a fate? She tightens her grip around her wooden spoon. If only he had left his girlfriend’s house a few minutes sooner.

  A set of alarm clocks sits on the kitchen windowsill—one in the shape of the Prophet’s mausoleum, another, a plaque with a poem about struggle as the meaning of life, a canary-yellow one with bluebirds that was Tajdin’s as a child, and an electric one with number-cards that flip forward. The Prophet’s mausoleum rings; Zera slaps it shut. It’s already 2:15 in the morning; Altaf will be here soon. She rushes to the pantry, which is stacked from floor to ceiling with Rubbermaid containers in all shapes and colours. She removes several sets and lines them up according to size, first covering the kitchen counter, then the dining table, and finally, bending slowly, she resorts to the floor. Smells of coconut and coriander rise from the kuku paka as she shuffles to the counter, carrying the heavy pot. She carefully sets the pot down and wipes her sleeve across her nose. She then ladles the right amount of sauce, chicken, and eggs into the different containers. Many of her customers order only for big occasions like Eid or when relatives were coming, but some families are on a daily schedule—mostly the youths, who nowadays, thank God, hire people to do everything in their houses: cooking, cleaning, mowing, shovelling, fixing-bixing. Just like back home in Tanzania, Zera thinks. But who knew that one day she would be the servant?

  Soon after they arrived in Canada in 1975, Tajdin’s father died quietly in his sleep, leaving Zera a widow at the age of forty-five. The doctor had not been able to say what happened. “He seemed in good health,” he said, “especially for a seventy-year-old.” Zera was sure that her husband’s body had just given up—unable to adjust to all the changes of moving to a new country. Men’s bodies are like that—the slightest of problems, a little cold, an upset stomach, an ache here or there, and kalas. All day they will be complaining like a kasuku. And who wants to listen to a parrot all day? But women’s bodies, now they are very different. Built to endure pain. Otherwise how else would we be able to survive childbirth? Mind you, Zera had not experienced childbirth herself.

  Tajdin was only twenty-three when his father died; still, he told Zera confidently, “Don’t worry, Mummy. I’ll take care of everything.” He was at SAIT studying Hotel and Restaurant Management. Until he graduated and was able to work full-time, Tajdin took up various part-time jobs, like the one at Superstore where he wore roller skates and helped customers quickly locate items among its vast aisles. After paying off his student loans, he had saved enough for a down payment on a house, and they moved out of their basement suite in Pembrooke to a nicer area of town. “What blessings to have such a good son,” Zera told the neighbours. “Finally, we will be able to move to a proper house!” They had been living in their Falconridge townhouse for a year when Tajdin had the car accident.

  Zera now turns off the stove’s whirring hood fan and sprays a little Joy perfume into a bowl that is made out of tinfoil and lined with sugar. She places the bowl on the front element of the stove, hoping to fumigate the house. This is yet another reason she doesn’t like cooking. All the smells that seep into her walls and, like stubborn stains, are impossible to remove. Zera often wishes she hadn’t been forced to close down her fourteen-year-old housecleaning business—a business she opened after Tajdin had been in a coma for three months. Her body had ached with pain after a day’s work, but cleaning gave her great satisfaction. Cleaning was nothing like cooking: the evidence of your hard work did not disappear in minutes. You could admire your work all day—in the shining sink, the gleaming floors, the perfectly tucked-in sheets, or the stacks of neatly folded towels. If only the extra-strength Tylenol and hot-water bottles still worked for her. Two years ago, she found she could no longer bend over bathtubs, carry vacuum cleaners up and down the stairs of those big-big houses, or scrub the floors to the same shine. Business dwindled even when she cut her rates in half and placed weekly flyers—like so many others: Tammy’s Aesthetics & Hair Salon—Best Prices in Town, Amyn’s Auto: Lube & Oil Change Special, Amway, A Sure Way to Success!—under the windshields of the cars parked outside Calgary’s jamatkhanas.

  Zera fills the other rows of containers with rice, faloodho, and chutney. She lets the steam escape, then snaps the lids on, running her finger around the outer edge to make sure each one is tightly sealed. She pulls a sheet of plastic wrap from a restaurant-sized roll, purchased at Costco, and wraps it over a stack of manis. She then places each completed order in a plastic Safeway bag that has been pre-labelled with the customer’s name using masking tape and a red marker. She is about to go to her room and get ready when Altaf raps lightly on the glass patio door. Zera looks up in surprise. She checks her many clocks: 2:45 A.M. Why is he early?

  At the beginning, Zera asked people to pick up their tiffins, but then she heard that Roshan Dossa’s husband died of a heart attack as he shovelled the walk after a heavy snowstorm, and she was now offering a delivery service with her tiffins. Zera started to deliver to as many customers as she could—she knew the bus routes well. One day on his way to work, Altaf saw her at a bus stop and stopped to offer her a ride. He suggested that he could help her regularly. She said no at first, but eventually accepted when he agreed to take money and a daily lunch tiffin. She did not want to carry any bhar, the weight of returning a favour. Now, they had a well-established routine. Each day he arrived at three in the morning. Zera would accompany him as he picked up the seniors, then dropped them off to jamatkhana, after which he and Zera would make their rounds to her customers—most of whom lived in areas like Coral Springs with its man-made lakes or Edgemont with its perfect vistas of the Rocky Mountains. From some of those houses, the specially built ski-jumps at Canada Olympic Park were clearly visible, like gigantic cement waterfalls in the middle of the valley. What a waste, Zera thought. So much money just so a few people could jump from here to there. I swear, people who have nothing to worry about always spend their money foolishly. When they arrived at a customer’s house, Zera would sit in the minibus w
hile Altaf tied the plastic bags around the doorknobs of front doors or left them in designated spots like a children’s swing set in the backyard. Altaf had mapped out an efficient route and their timing never varied. Calgary’s roads were consistently empty at this hour, so Altaf joked to Zera, “Who needs to go to jamatkhana when you can meditate right here on McKnight Boulevard?” They would return to jamatkhana in time for the driver making the return trip at six o’clock and then transfer into Altaf’s Mustang for the drive to the hospital.

  Zera rushes to meet Altaf at the patio door. Did one of her alarms not go off? What if I’ve upset him—then what? She partially slides open the door. “Sorry, bheta, sorry. I didn’t know I was running late…”

  “Ya Ali Madat, Ma.” Altaf rubs his goatee, shaved in the style of a Zanzibari man. (And to think he’s from Uganda!) Altaf is tall and plump; his belly presses against his pullover and makes him look like a man of more experience than his thirty-one years. He adjusts his gold-rimmed glasses. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come and see if you needed a hand.”

  “So nice of you. But everything is fine, bheta.” Why hadn’t he called first? “I’m sorry, I’m not even ready yet.”

  “Aye-wino. Take your time. I’ll wait.”

  Everything inside Zera falls into disarray—as if a completed puzzle had been turned upside down, the pieces scattered on the ground. Oh God, what choice did she have now? “Come, bheta, come. Have some tea and tepala first.”

  “No, don’t worry. You go and get ready. I’ll start loading the minibus.”

  “Sure? It won’t take long at all.”

  “Seriously, Ma. Bhook-nye-laygee.”

  Altaf, like so many youngsters these days, mixed-up English, Kutchi, and Swahili—as if they were cooking kichro, Zera thought. Why couldn’t they speak one or the other properly, like the British, instead of this Canadian-style English, mumble-jumbling everything from anywhere and everywhere they liked? Zera’s father had insisted that she and her brothers, as well as their mother, take turns reading the English newspaper to him. “This is the way of the new world,” he would say and point to a photograph of the Imam with his beautiful European wife. Under the photo was the inscription “Adopt simple colonial dress. Yours affectionately, Aga Khan.” Zera’s father would lie on his charphoy while the reader stood at full attention next to him and another sibling massaged his feet. One error in pronunciation and kalas—he would dispense a slap across the poor reader’s face. Try crying and you’d only get another. But worse than the double slap was the fear generated for the foot masseur. The slap would often create an equal and opposite reaction, as in a line of dominoes, somewhere else in their father’s body. If you were lucky, he would only release a loud rumbling fart, but if not, then the poor masseur would get a swift kick out of nowhere.