A Way With Words - Chapter 21
"Hellooo, this is Kaj."
Ennis knew immediately that Kaj was out of detention because the background noise was different. He recognized the whine of a female voice singing in an Indian film.
"How do you like freedom?"
"It taste like mango."
"What?" He could hear Kaj smacking his lips.
"I am eating a mango my friends buy me. Best mango I ever eat even if it's not as good the ones from my tree."
"When will you go to Toronto?"
"I leave for the bus in ten minutes."
"Wh-what?"
"I am joking with you. Why you ask me when I'm leaving when I just get out? You are fed up with me and want me to go?" Kaj said this in a teasing voice and Ennis relaxed. Until that moment he hadn't realized how tense he had been, waiting for this call.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, where he’d parked the phone that evening, and Jay was in the living room, working out with the dumbells to Lloyd Cole and the Commotion so she didn’t hear it ring. Perfect timing. Before he could think of a reply, Kaj extended an invitation.
"Alma is having a party at her house tomorrow for all the guys who get out. She say you can come."
"Others were released?"
"Some Afghan guys, Iranian guys, a Bangladeshi... Some of them get asylum. Some make appeal and Alma make pressure on the director to let them wait on outside. So everybody coming and also their visitors. She say bring some food and we all share."
The three-decker Reverend Beers lived in was nearly identical to Ennis and Jay's. The door of the ground floor apartment was ajar. He could hear voices speaking several languages on the other side, so he pushed it open with the big, hot cast iron pot he was holding in front of him. He had taken the casserole out of the oven and simply carried it out of the house with oven mitts on his hands, walking briskly down to the corner and halfway up the next street, steam wafting through the cold night air and into his face. He even forgot to put on a jacket.
He'd been at a loss as to what to bring to this potluck dinner. Jay was working so he had to handle the cooking on his own. In the end he decided to go with what he knew best, so he made Cheesie Beans but with one addition.
A forty-something white man with a round, open face greeted him just inside and introduced himself as Bill Monroe or "Mister Beers" he added, making quote marks in the air. Ennis mumbled a hello while he scanned the living room, recognizing several faces but looking for just one.
"Hello Ennis." Reverend Beers had appeared at his side. "It's good you came. Kaj would've been disappointed not to see you. You can put that in the kitchen. Mmmm, it smells... spicy."
He made a beeline to the doorway she'd pointed to; he was starting to feel the heat of the handles through the thin mitts. But just as he got there a man stepped through it, blocking his way. Ennis paused, his attention on his heavy, steaming pot as he waited for him to step aside - couldn't this guy see that he needed to get to the kitchen right away? Then he looked up.
For some reason he had imagined Kaj would still be dressed in an orange jumpsuit, not neatly pressed gray slacks and white dress shirt. His hair was cut and shone with oil. He wore a thin gold chain around his neck and a wide smile. Ennis hadn't changed into anything nice or even clean. Kaj used to call Ennis his "social worker" but at that moment he felt as though their roles were reversed.
"Ennis! Almost I ask Alma where you live so I can go and make you hurry. Why you spend all the time cooking when I'm waiting here?"
"Uh..."
Kaj stepped aside and Ennis staggered to the kitchen table, setting the pot down with a thud. Then he turned, pulled off the right mitt, put out his hand and smiled. Kaj took it in his own and pumped it hard, grinning. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. Finally Kaj let go and looked down at the pot. He stared at the expanse of pale, melted cheese coating the surface of the casserole.
"What is it?"
"It's a bean dish. I made it spicy for you, though."
Kaj took a spoon and heaped some on a paper plate. He pushed the cheese to one side, scooped up some beans, blew on them and took a bite. Ennis heard crunching, then saw Kaj frown.
"What spice you use?" Kaj asked after he'd swallowed.
"Madras Mix."
"You mean Madras curry powder?"
"No, uh, I mixed in a packet of those snacks you like."
Kaj burst out laughing. "Okay, I tell my mother she must take cooking lessons from you! Now we go eat and talk."
They filled their plates from the buffet on the kitchen table and moved into the living room. Ennis was introduced around to the other ex-detainees and their visitors. They discussed the detention center a little but mostly the men wanted to talk about their futures.
Eventually Ennis found himself sitting on the couch next to Reverend Beers' husband - he was her second, it turned out. She was originally from Vermont, had married young and had two grown daughters. But she had divorced her husband when she was in her thirties and when the girls had left home she'd made the surprising decision to move to Cambridge to study at the Episcopal Divinity School, which Ennis had passed many times while riding his bike to Harvard Square. Monroe was the manager of the Boston Food Bank and had been introduced to her at an Amnesty International meeting.
"Her girls still in Vermont?" Ennis asked, instead of what he really wanted to know, which was Why does she look at me that way?
"Yeah, they both live in Burlington, near their dad and his partner. They're pretty close to him. Alma takes that kind of hard, though I keep telling her it's nobody's fault."
"What isn't?"
Monroe looked around, then shifted closer to Ennis on the couch, lowering his voice. "Her ex left her for a man. Now she's a bit paranoid and thinks any good looking guy is gay until proven innocent." He laughed and added, "That's why she married me!"
"Well that's... that's just crazy."
"Sure it seems irrational but these days-"
Ennis saw Kaj coming toward them with a full plate of rice and curry. No cheesie beans though, he noticed. Monroe leaned back and smiled at the Tamil. "I see you're making up for all those potatoes," he joked. "Think I'll go get seconds."
Kaj sat down in Monroe's place after he'd left for the kitchen. They talked about the food for a minute, then Kaj asked Ennis if he would mind giving him a tour of Boston sometime. Ennis smiled and said of course he wouldn’t. They agreed on the following Saturday and Ennis suggested they meet outside the Government Center T stop. Kaj's friends had already taught him how to use the subway.
Then Kaj said he wanted to show Ennis something, and drew an envelope from his shirt pocket.
"My mother send a photo of me that she take two years ago." He slipped a snapshot from the envelope and handed it to Ennis.
The handsome man in the picture was a shade darker and wearing a shirt with big, bright blue flowers and sunglasses on his head. He faced the camera with his arms crossed pridefully over his chest and was smiling broadly. The veranda he stood on was part of a very large white house set in lush tropical greenery.
The sight of a healthy and happy Kaj, handsome and confident Kaj, hit Ennis like an electric charge. He also felt a familiar, heavy sensation building in his chest, the one he’d felt with just one other person, or maybe two. He shuddered once and clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. I'll never put myself through that again.
He hoped that Kaj's paperwork would be ready very soon.
21b
August 1981
In late August I made the return journey to Boston by Greyhound and went directly to our apartment. It was on the second floor of a three decker and felt palatial compared to our room in Warren Towers. The previous students had left some furniture but only one bed, a twin, and I let Joe have it while I slept on the couch, since he hadn’t enjoyed a proper bed all summer.
On the last night of August we roamed the neighborhood, checking out the piles of furniture left on the curbs of the streets. Most leases ran from September to September, to accommodate the student population, and this was the best time to find furniture that had been left behind. Joe and I made multiple trips to our apartment carrying our finds: a double mattress from one street corner, a bed frame for it from another, a dresser, a kitchen table and chairs, lamps. We stayed in that place for almost three years and scavenged regularly; by the time we graduated, some of the furniture actually went well together, we were told.
About that double bed: our biggest argument then was over who would have it. The strange thing was, neither of us wanted it. Or rather, we each insisted that the other should take it. It was as if we both wanted an excuse not to have company in it but couldn't admit that. Eventually we compromised: the bedroom at the front of the apartment, facing the street and therefore noisier, would get the double bed and we would switch rooms halfway through the year. Joe would start off there, because he was used to traffic noise after DC. But we never did switch.
When Jack and I moved in together, I told him the story of that bed while we were unwrapping the new mattress I'd insisted on buying. He'd heard a little about Joe, but he hadn't yet met him.
"Poor guy, I bet he was waiting for you to make the first move. I can relate. Did he sleep in that bed over on one side with his back to the empty side?" Jack had taken off his shoes and stretched out on the mattress. "Like this?" He turned his back to me as I stood on the opposite side. He wiggled his hips once.
"Yeah, actually. But he didn't do that."
"Sure. But you weren't tempted?"
I didn't answer. I was thinking it over, trying to remember how many times I'd stood in the doorway of Joe's room while he was in bed. Not often. But then I remembered that when we got back from Kansas in our senior year, he changed position.
"He switched to lying in the middle of the bed a few months before we graduated. After... after he came to Kansas with me for Christmas."
Jack turned over and looked at me, waiting. I slid onto the bare mattress.
"So tell me about this trip. You drove all the way?"
"Yeah."
"Straight through?"
"No."
"You stayed in a motel." He was unsnapping my shirt now. "And I bet they had no more twin beds."
“You think you got it all figured out, huh? You’re a real-”
"And I bet one of you offered to sleep on the floor."
"Joe did." In front of the desk clerk, anyway.
"But then...?"
"We got drunk on Jack Daniel’s while watching The Wizard of Oz on TV. And passed out."
"And during the night..." He was unbuckling my belt now. It was getting... difficult to remember the exact details.
"I had a dream."
"Just a dream?"
"Not... sure how much... was a dream."
"Mmm hmmm, I'd like to hear more about this dream. Did it by any chance involve a tornado?"
I chuckled and pulled him to me, felt the mattress was very warm already. "Yeah," I breathed in his ear. "But not Dorothy. Now, imagine you're Cary Grant running toward a corn field...."
Chapter 22 >>