A Way With Words - Chapter 19
Late January 1988
"Thank you for the apples. We only have fruit from tin here. That only second time I eat an apple... Why you don't believe? You can buy mangoes some places in America where enough people who like them are living. But European people who come to Sri Lanka forget about apples when they taste our fruits. So nobody import apples in Sri Lanka! In the garden in our house in Kandy we have three mango trees. My brother and my sister and me, we have our personal tree. In mango season we use to go every day to pick the ripe ones. We sit under the trees and eat right there!... You never eat a mango in your life? Ennis, I feel sorry for you. Someday you find one and taste. Mango is my favorite fruit. Second favorite is jackfruit. But nobody know that one here."
"Awww, who're all those kids, Ennis? They're cute."
Lureen was standing in the doorway; he wondered how long she'd been there. He glanced at his office mate, who was absorbed in his paperwork. Odd that Don hadn't greeted Lureen.
It was late January and Ennis was looking through a packet of photos from Christmas that his mother had sent him. To his work address, for some reason.
"They're my nieces and nephews," he told her.
She walked around his desk to get a better look. Don got up with a sheaf of papers in his hand and walked out, heading down the hall to the photocopier. Ennis wondered what was up with him; he'd been ignoring Lureen lately.
Several of the snapshots were of Ennis sitting on the couch at his family's house, surrounded by babies, toddlers and young children. KE had twin six year old boys and a two year old girl, Kathy a four year old boy and twin girls, born in November. The photo that Ennis was looking at showed him resting his heels on the coffee table and holding a baby in the crook of each arm. The two middle children were straddling his extended legs and the oldest boys were standing behind the couch and mugging for the camera, making devil horns over his head. Ennis was grinning broadly.
"Are some of them twins? Those two boys look identical and the babies are obviously the same age."
"And my brother and sister are twins."
"Wow." Lureen had taken the photo from him and was gazing at it. "I don't have any siblings," she said wistfully. "I used to wish I had a twin when I was a girl."
Ennis thought of Jay and felt a pang. On the drive from Wichita airport to the farm, the twin babies had been in car seats on either side of his nephew. Ennis had squeezed into the way-back of his sister's loaded station wagon and played rock, paper, scissors and other games with Tryon over the back of the seat. It was more fun going home now since the family had expanded -- and when he only went there once a year.
Lureen looked at every picture and handed them back with a sigh. Ennis started to put the envelope of photos in his knapsack, then changed his mind. He slid it into his desk drawer, next to Jack Twist's last fax. He debated asking Lureen about him. After all, Lureen had told Jay about her ex at the Christmas party, and then Jay had met Jack with Lureen on New Year's Eve, so there was a legitimate reason for him to know something about him. But to his relief, Susan interrupted to tell Lureen she had a phone call. He felt he needed to get a few facts straight in his mind before asking her about Jack Twist.
Each time he saw that fax he felt dismay. NOTHING, NOWHERE. What did he mean? No degree from any college? Something more existential? Was Jack Twist expecting a response? Twice he'd found himself standing by the fax machine after Susan had left, staring down at it as though he could will the machine to spit out an explanation.
He wrote down what he knew.
1. JT was sitting at RM's desk but didn't correct me when I called him Mr Malone
2. JT answered phone when I called at lunchtime
3. JT is from Colorado
4. JT went to college in TX - why there?
5. JT told me he left law school -- didn't say failed but "couldn't make it"
6. JT and Lureen live in separate apts in house in Somerville
7. JT doesn't know I work with Lureen
8. Lureen doesn't know I've met JT
9. JT asked Ravi about me
He tried to think of a tenth fact to round out the list.
10. JT was happy in 1983.
Ennis shoved the list to the back of his drawer. He wasn't going to worry about Jack Twist - he already had too many people on his mind. He was back and forth to the detention center sometimes twice a week and taking Kaj's calls at home. Ravi had begun to ring him too, usually to request one little thing for the next visit but Ennis could tell he also needed to talk. The solidarity between the Tamils seemed to be breaking down as each worried about his own situation. Kaj had struck up a friendship with a young Pakistani, which should help him improve his English since that was language they communicated in.
A few days before, Ennis had received an anguished handwritten letter in English from Ravi's wife in Germany, begging him to help her husband get out of that place. He didn’t know how to answer her. Kaj told him Ragu had begun attending Rev. Beers' services on Sunday evening. He didn't say as much, but Ennis was sure he did so because he knew she had a good relationship with the director of the center.
He'd tried to start an article about the detainees as he'd originally intended - as Jay was still nagging him to do - but he felt too close to his subjects now.
The following Sunday he spent the morning doing the laundry in the laundromat at the end of the block while Jay was at the Quaker meeting. He brought a thermos of coffee and a novel to read, and settled into one of the orange molded chairs near the front window. The day was cold but bright, and though the weak winter sunlight sent little warmth through the glass, the heat from the tumble dryers made the room feel almost tropical.
The novel was one that he'd found in a carton of old hardback books that had been left by the curb for trash pickup the previous July, right in front of this laundromat. The author was Sinclair Lewis, whose novels Ennis had had to read at BU in an American Lit class. He'd never heard of Kingsblood Royal though. He'd started reading it the day he'd found it, while waiting for his laundry, but hadn't picked it up again back at the apartment.
It was about a white man in the South who, in the course of researching his family tree, discovers that his great-great-grandfather was a black man. Kingsblood slowly begins to empathize with the blacks in his town as he explores the other side of the tracks. He reveals his heritage to one man he meets there and very soon blacks are seeking him out at the bank where he works as a loan officer, when word gets around that he is sympathetic.
Ennis had pulled this novel from his bookcase that morning because of something surprising - but also not so surprising - that Kaj had told him during a phone call two days before. His mother's maternal grandfather was an Englishman, a fact Kaj had learned by accident. His mother had never mentioned it, but an aunt who lived in Singapore had told him this during a visit to family there.
"You never wonder why my eyes are so light?" Kaj had said to Ennis teasingly. "They make big problem for me in Sri Lanka because people remember them."
Ennis could see how that was true.
He was absorbed in his book and his coffee so didn't look up when someone else entered the laundromat, until he saw a woman's knees inches from his own. Reverend Beers was the last person he expected to see when he looked up. He would have risen from his seat then, out of politeness, but she was standing too close to him.
"I didn't know you lived in my neighborhood," she said, looking down at him, not quite smiling. The two other times he'd encountered Reverend Beers he'd towered over her, so this vantage point was disconcerting.
"My apartment's at the end of that block," he said, pointing at the side street directly opposite the laundromat.
"I'm on Lake View Avenue." It was the next street over.
"Then we're almost neighbors."
"You're still visiting Kaj."
"And Ravi and Ragu."
"Kaj will be released soon. Canada has accepted him."
Ennis put his book aside, stunned. Kaj hadn't mentioned it.
"He didn't tell me."
"He doesn't know. I happened to run into his lawyer on Friday evening and she'd just heard. She'll tell him on Monday."
"He thought he wouldn't have a decision until February. So he'll be leaving this week." He said the words calmly but his emotions were in a pitched battle for dominance -- joy, grief, dismay, relief.
"It will take several weeks for all the paperwork to be completed."
Relief knocked out the others. It must have shown on his face because Reverend Beers adjusted her handbag on her shoulder, settling in.
"He speaks of you often," she said, tilting her head, studying him. He wished she would take a step back.
"Well, he speaks to me often. He's always calling, because he's bored." He shifted in his seat. "It kind of annoys my girlfriend."
"Yes, I can imagine."
"He'll have plenty of people to talk to soon," Ennis said, his voice suddenly hoarse. He cleared his throat.
"Especially where he's going. There are over ten thousand Tamils in Toronto."
"That many?"
"Our northern neighbors are much more welcoming."
"I wish I could do more to help him. Them. Especially Ravi."
She gave him a small smile, the first one ever, then stepped away, turning toward the door. "You're doing all you can. That's plenty."
He watched her walk briskly down the street, the muscles of her slim calves flexing under the black tights, and turn at the next corner. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. Time to take a walk, get some air.
19b
Early December 1980
I returned to Boston Thanksgiving weekend in a good mood. Joe had bought me a I heart NY button as a joke when he saw how much I was enjoying the city. Of course I didn't wear it. I'd liked his friend Jon and he'd liked me; we'd quickly developed an easy rapport that came as a relief. He was funny and could say odd things yet make them seem either freighted with meaning or simply easy wit. And he laughed at my "jokes" without rolling his eyes. I'd given him the number of the WBUR studio phone line and he called it the Sunday after Thanksgiving weekend and I let him loose on Tom and Ray. It became a monthly occurence. I enjoyed Jon's friendship, and that was all. With him it was like walking barefoot across a well kept lawn. Pleasurable with no painful surprises. Joe was a beautiful sun-drenched beach littered with shells, pebbles and driftwood and a shifting tide line that divided the cool, firm sand from the warm and yielding.
Sandy and her roommate had switched to a different dorm and she was missing from the class we shared. Her absence was more troubling to me than the sight of her flaming hair had been and I took off where I'd left off before Thanksgiving, seeking out the girls in black that were her antithesis.
One night the second week after our return, I went to the Rat alone. Joe had an exam the next morning but I had no classes until the afternoon. Around midnight I left the club with a Mass College of Art student who had some color to her - black hair but with stiff shock of scarlet at the crown, like a woodpecker. A cluster of people were standing around a metal tray crowded with candles set on the sidewalk. Propped up behind it was a Beatles album cover, Abbey Road. I asked someone what it was about. John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York that night, she said, right outside his apartment building.
Woodpecker and I exchanged stricken glances. During our day in Manhattan at Thanksgiving, Joe and Jon had pointed out the Dakota to me when we were in Central Park. That day, John Lennon had had only ten days left to live. I knew all at once that I didn't want to wake up in the morning next to someone I didn't care about and I read in her eyes that my new acquaintance felt the same way. We walked to the corner. Without a word she turned down Brookline Avenue and I continued up Comm Ave. to Warren Towers.
For the next two weeks Joe and I had too many papers due and exams to study for to be able to go clubbing. We each had our last final exam on the same morning, the day before the end of the term. I was going to take the bus home to Kansas, though, and couldn't linger. Joe generously loaned me his Walkman for the trip, and supplied me with a dozen 90 minute cassettes of albums we'd taped. He walked with me to Kenmore Square, and as we said goodbye at the entrance to the T station, he pulled a paper bag from his knapsack and handed it to me. Lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner, he joked. I looked inside and saw a dozen bagels, a large tub of Philadelphia cream cheese and a plastic knife. Even now, just smelling a bagel makes me think of Joe.
Although I would return to visit my family at least once a year for the rest of the decade, I wouldn't fly there until 1987. I needed that long bus journey as a buffer between my new life and my family. That first Christmas, I could hardly believe I'd only been away for less than four months. As the land flattened, the habitations thinned out and the bumper stickers changed, I felt as though I was traveling to a different universe.
The first thing I did when we pulled into the Wichita bus terminal was take out my earring, unsure how my sister would react to the sight of it when she came to pick me up. It hurt some and I saw there was a bit of blood on the wire. But there she was on the pavement so there was nothing to be done for it.
"You've grown!" Kathy exclaimed as she hugged me. She gave me a squeeze. "And filled out. You look great." She let go and looked me up and down. "Black. O-kaaaay. Ennis, who mangled your earlobe?"
"Well, my roommate-"
"You've got to clean that hole with alcohol."
"Right."
"And leave the earring out for a week."
"Right."
"We'll think of something to tell Mom when she spots your ear."
"Right."
"You are using condoms?"
"Ri- uuuhhh... yeah." A tall guy with very short sandy hair and ruddy cheeks had just walked up to stand close to her. I wondered if he'd heard that last bit.
She introduced me to her boyfriend, Kurt. It wasn't the same guy she'd been with in September.
"What happened to Troy?" I blurted out.
"I see you haven't changed, Ennis."
"Sorry. Tired." I'd hardly slept since Boston. "Troy still pitching for the Wichita Wingnuts?"
"Ennis!"
That was the most interesting conversation of the whole trip. The three of us drove to the farm straight from the bus station. My growth and my clothes were exclaimed over, but no one asked me about the substance of my courses, or much about Boston. KE showed me the new tractor and the improvements he'd made. He had a fiancee, but she was with her own folks for Christmas. He was building a small house near the big one. When they started a family, he and our parents would switch houses. He had it all planned out.
I couldn't wait to go back to Boston.
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