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Authors: Michael Helm
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had been no reprisals yet against the family. Then silence for over a year. Nearly every day Rodrigo sent a small note into the silence.
He felt a great need to lie a little about his days, to make the stories better than they were. He wanted to write that he had a job selling TVs or coaching football, they called it soccer, that he was in school learning business, that a woman he loved was in love with him, or even that their love was impossible, that she was married to a rich man who treated her cruelly. In one version of his life he played a Mexican on a TV show. He imagined these stories at work and at night before bed. But so far he had never written them to Uriel. To write them would be to feel the full difference between his life as he imagined it and his life as it was.
He tried to describe his two thick work shirts. A shirt here could be described in terms of shirts from home, but not the need for them against an October morning in Toronto. In winter he wrote about the snow, but he knew Uriel could never imagine it, and he couldn’t write it into imagining. Instead he just wrote, “The days are very cold and there’s snow and ice. I have good boots,” knowing Uriel wouldn’t picture the right kind of boots.
He put down his thoughts as they came to him. He could never allow himself to be questioned by police. He’d met his girlfriends at a language school before he stopped going. It was important not to get hurt on the job and once when a stairway collapsed he’d fallen on his hand and hurt it badly but he didn’t tell anyone and now there was a ridge between his knuckles and wrist and it still hurt him and was useless by the end of theday. The first girl was named Halia, she was from somewhere in Africa and he couldn’t even kiss her because of what had happened to her in her country. The other girl was a woman, a teacher at the school, named Julie. She wouldn’t go out with him while he was in her class and so he had quit and they went dancing. When she had broken up with him, it was only because they could never be married. He was illegal and could be sent back at any time. He didn’t tell Uriel that this was the first time he realized that his future here was small.
Now it was Rosemary who helped him with his English. Whenever they ate together she had him read out loud to her from the newspaper and then asked him questions about what he’d read. The stories she chose for him were about deportations and cruel governments and black boys shot dead in the clubs. The news was full of warnings and he felt it made his English more serious than his Spanish. She asked him once which language he thought in and when he couldn’t answer her, she asked if he was mostly full of feelings and pictures. His only problem was expression, she said. Maybe she felt she’d insulted him, that she’d made him feel stupid. She said only that he should use English in his thoughts, and it should sound like his voice when he lowered his head at dinner to recite English grace.
Only once had she asked him to tell her his story from beginning to end. He’d been downstairs when she’d come home and he called up hello but she hadn’t answered, and then he heard her crying in the kitchen. He let her be. Soon she came down and explained that she’d just found out that a woman she was helping had been detained and deported last week, and the woman would be persecuted in her home country. She said when this happened she suddenly wanted to believe that thepeople she helped were all lying, that they would be safe when they returned. But she knew, she had proof, that some had been killed, and she grieved for them and there was no place to put the grief, no funerals or graves, except her prayers, but the grief never ended that way.
And so when she asked him to tell his story again, he thought she was asking him to lie to her in case he was ever returned. But he couldn’t lie. He wasn’t good at it. And anyway his new life owed
He felt a great need to lie a little about his days, to make the stories better than they were. He wanted to write that he had a job selling TVs or coaching football, they called it soccer, that he was in school learning business, that a woman he loved was in love with him, or even that their love was impossible, that she was married to a rich man who treated her cruelly. In one version of his life he played a Mexican on a TV show. He imagined these stories at work and at night before bed. But so far he had never written them to Uriel. To write them would be to feel the full difference between his life as he imagined it and his life as it was.
He tried to describe his two thick work shirts. A shirt here could be described in terms of shirts from home, but not the need for them against an October morning in Toronto. In winter he wrote about the snow, but he knew Uriel could never imagine it, and he couldn’t write it into imagining. Instead he just wrote, “The days are very cold and there’s snow and ice. I have good boots,” knowing Uriel wouldn’t picture the right kind of boots.
He put down his thoughts as they came to him. He could never allow himself to be questioned by police. He’d met his girlfriends at a language school before he stopped going. It was important not to get hurt on the job and once when a stairway collapsed he’d fallen on his hand and hurt it badly but he didn’t tell anyone and now there was a ridge between his knuckles and wrist and it still hurt him and was useless by the end of theday. The first girl was named Halia, she was from somewhere in Africa and he couldn’t even kiss her because of what had happened to her in her country. The other girl was a woman, a teacher at the school, named Julie. She wouldn’t go out with him while he was in her class and so he had quit and they went dancing. When she had broken up with him, it was only because they could never be married. He was illegal and could be sent back at any time. He didn’t tell Uriel that this was the first time he realized that his future here was small.
Now it was Rosemary who helped him with his English. Whenever they ate together she had him read out loud to her from the newspaper and then asked him questions about what he’d read. The stories she chose for him were about deportations and cruel governments and black boys shot dead in the clubs. The news was full of warnings and he felt it made his English more serious than his Spanish. She asked him once which language he thought in and when he couldn’t answer her, she asked if he was mostly full of feelings and pictures. His only problem was expression, she said. Maybe she felt she’d insulted him, that she’d made him feel stupid. She said only that he should use English in his thoughts, and it should sound like his voice when he lowered his head at dinner to recite English grace.
Only once had she asked him to tell her his story from beginning to end. He’d been downstairs when she’d come home and he called up hello but she hadn’t answered, and then he heard her crying in the kitchen. He let her be. Soon she came down and explained that she’d just found out that a woman she was helping had been detained and deported last week, and the woman would be persecuted in her home country. She said when this happened she suddenly wanted to believe that thepeople she helped were all lying, that they would be safe when they returned. But she knew, she had proof, that some had been killed, and she grieved for them and there was no place to put the grief, no funerals or graves, except her prayers, but the grief never ended that way.
And so when she asked him to tell his story again, he thought she was asking him to lie to her in case he was ever returned. But he couldn’t lie. He wasn’t good at it. And anyway his new life owed
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