Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,11
don’t know how to talk to me, so we just play cards and pretend that nobody died. While we sit there eating our PB&J, they silently imply the loss of a father should be a bigger deal. I should be weeping and pulling my hair out like I’m in a Bollywood film or something. But I can’t be bothered because I have training to do and a mother to wonder about.
I can’t stand their pitying looks during our lunchtime card games. Like I’m the broken one. Me. Not Dad.
The only person who acknowledges something is up to my face is the school’s only guidance counsellor, Mrs. Nunez, but she’s too day drunk (as usual) to care that much. I sit in her office, which is full of psychology books I bet she’s never read. She takes her sweet time to go over my file, to remember who I am and why I’ve been sitting in her office for the past five minutes. When she reaches the part in my file where it says my dad just died, she puts on an appropriately concerned expression. I spend about ten minutes saying I’m sad. Yes, it was a tragedy. Horrible. Some other adjectives thrown in. Once, an adverb. She asks if I need help. I say no, because of the warning glances Ma has been shooting me at home.
Omertà, Ma. I get it. My lips are firmly sealed around my mouth guard.
My English teacher hands me a book after class on my first day back. He’s been giving me sad looks ever since he heard about Dad.
“What’s this, Mr. Abdi?” I say, even though I can see it’s clearly a novel.
“Soucouyant, by David Chariandy. A local Trinidadian author. I thought you might want to do your final essay on this. It’s from your culture.”
Okay, hold up. This diversity thing has gotten out of hand. I don’t need to be racially profiled like this! Why can’t I have The Great Gatsby like everyone else? But I don’t say that, obviously. I say thanks and slip the slim volume into my bag. I’ve heard about soucouyants but I don’t know why anybody would want to write a book about some unknown vampires from the Caribbean.
“I hope you take some English classes when you go to college. I think you have something, Trisha.” Then he looks embarrassed, like he shouldn’t have said this at all.
I smile at him like I’m gonna think about it, but what’s the point? I’m on my way to a degree in business management, no matter what he thinks. All this “books improve lives” BS he doles out from time to time falls deaf on our cash-strapped immigrant ears. We all know what’s up. Get good jobs, marry richer or up the colour-line, buy houses, take care of our overworked parents who keep reminding us that they put us into the world and they can take us out of it at any time. We don’t have time for this literature shit. How are we supposed to pay off student loans with an English degree?
* * *
There’s no training today.
Kru is teaching at the downtown gym and I don’t want to take two buses and a train all the way over there in hopes of a short pad session, so I decide to skip it. Plus, I’ve got at least three hours of homework ahead of me.
I walk home from the bus stop and see Pammy watching me from her window. It’s cold, the moment before winter clenches the whole city in its grip. As I take my gloved hands out of my jacket to fish around for my keys, I can feel her intensity. Pammy sends me these looks sometimes, like, I’m so sorry, boo, that your Ma still has a man in her life. Because Pammy sent her ex packing three years ago after what Columbus calls the Worst Fucking Day of His Whole Fucking Life.
It started at Canada’s Wonderland, an amusement park they had to drive for what seemed like hours just to get to. The whole thing was set off by Columbus back-talking his father in one way or another. Maybe he didn’t say anything at all—Columbus doesn’t always remember it the same way—maybe it was just a look. But what he doesn’t forget is when his dad went off the rails and whaled on him like you wouldn’t believe, right in front of everybody. He’d just lost his construction job and was maybe looking for some energy