What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (phonics story books txt) 📕

said, “Hey, bro.” Or was threateningly silent. Truly only the pimps and whores got into the Elephant Walk with no trouble. If you were like Jackie’s mother, fresh out of the Brown Derby on Gottigen Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia, you were out of your depth. Jackie’s father only had the look, he didn’t have the play of those dudes he imitated in their morning coats and slanted hats. And even they weren’t always the real deal. The dudes who didn’t front and didn’t talk so much about being players, they were the real deal. They looked like death. There was a nothing sound around them, not even a calm sound, just the dead sound of nothing—no compassion, no humour, no feeling.

Jackie’s father used to be a barber down home at Al’s Barbershop and he went to work at Golden’s on Bathurst Street the second week after he arrived in Toronto. He was reckless, though, and recklessness got him into the Elephant Walk, which is where one of those dead men threw him down the three flights of stairs for trying to horn in on the action. His leg was broken, and he’d walked with a limp ever since. He really made a name for himself when he came back on crutches and sliced the man’s left quadriceps with an old-fashioned razor.

All this took place at the Elephant Walk without benefit of police or charges. Or, at least, the police questioned but got no answers. That community was so tight that if there was a fight in the Paramount and reinforcements were needed, it would only take thirty seconds before word hit Alexandra Park a block and a half away, and five seconds later they’d be there. It didn’t matter the time. It was usually one o’clock in the morning. They had radar—advance-warning radar. And it worked well, especially if cops were in the park. Salt-and-pepper cops was how the police decided to deal with Alexandra Park—one white cop, one black cop. The black cop was supposed to smooth the way. One of “their own” to make them feel comfortable and make them talk. Only problem was that the pepper cop was from the West Indies and the cops had miscalculated racial bonds. Though not even the West Indians would talk to the West Indian cop. To everyone, cops are just another race altogether, and as far as they were all concerned the pepper cop was a race traitor. The time when they were looking for Jackie’s father after he worked on that dude’s hip abductor, Jackie’s father knew before the two salt-and-pepper cops hit 113½ Vanauley Way, but he sat waiting for them. He gave them a good view of his broken leg. How could he have? it asked them. What was he—Superman?

Ab und Zu advertised itself as selling post-bourgeois clothing. The store was just on the border where Toronto’s trendy met Toronto’s seedy. The rent was cheap, and Jackie had had the foresight to think that the trendy section would slowly creep toward Ab und Zu and sweep the store into money. Next door to Ab und Zu was a greasy spoon—Sam’s—recently taken over by other hopeful trendies—a couple of women who were anarchists. There, a mix of the old neighbourhood—the working class, the poor, the desperate—and an increasing number of anarchists—mostly friends of the two women—drank coffee in mutual curiosity. Every morning, the two women and Reiner, because he opened the store, would have to wash the sidewalk of last night’s vomit or piss. There was a pimp, Ronnie, who preyed upon the most drugged-out women in the neighbourhood and who used Sam’s as his office. When the two women took over, Ronnie menaced them into letting him stay, and in the first weeks he succeeded—until they tried to fix up his workers and get them counselling and rehab. Then Ronnie moved his crew along farther west, but not without a parting touch of vindictiveness. A broken door that the women suspected was Ronnie’s doing. No more trouble though, Ronnie couldn’t afford too much heat, just the destitute puking their stomachs out occasionally in front of Sam’s and Ab und Zu when they could lay their hands on some alcohol.

Reiner was waiting impatiently for Jackie. He was dressed in his usual gigging black. He was a lean tall man. A tattoo of the planets in their orbits ringed his left forearm. His face, slightly pocked from childhood illnesses, was hard, square-jawed, and roughly handsome. He had his gear near the door. He had a gig in Kitchener tonight. Reiner lived at the back of the store and his band practised in the basement. This all helped with the rent of the storefront, where two women were now browsing through dresses.

“Hey, babe, glad you’re here …”

Jackie came through the door. “Hey, hon, sorry”—then seeing the two customers—“Lorraine! Lorraine!—Long time no see. I’ve got just the thing for you, girl.”

Reiner tried to get her attention again. “Jacks, baby, Claude’s coming with the van …”

“I know, I know, sweetie, hang a sec. Lorraine, come on over here.” She headed for some racks, dragging the customer called Lorraine behind her. “Missoni, Lorraine, big print, lots of colour, chunky new look, combination bohemian chique—opulent glamour, very northern Italy. You too, honey”—she turned on Lorraine’s friend—“very sixties. Try it on.”

“Jackie, here’s Claude now …”

“Yes, sweetie …” Her encouraging gaze still on Lorraine and her friend, Jackie walked over to embrace him, kissing him, running her hand over his cheek. “Bye, honey, have a good gig. See you tomorrow, oh no, Sunday, right?”

“Yeah, you gotta open tomorrow, Jackie.”

“Of course, sweetie. What did I tell you, Lorraine? Very south Austria, right? Warm, bold, you, honey. Bye, baby.”

Reiner loaded the amp into the van at the front door, then came back for his guitar. Jackie felt him lingering and broke off from her sales pitch.

She embraced Reiner again, saying what he wanted to hear, “I’ll miss you, babe.”

“I’ll miss you more.” He had been hoping she would have come