Uncle Vincenzo had a factory far away in a cold and icy country called Canada. A place where the maple and pine trees covered in ice went to sleep in the winter. I could not understand why Papa was so determined to uproot his family and move us away from our beloved home. We came from the hills and ocean, to this place where people shuffled around in the cold and did not look at who passed by. This was a place where people went to work only to retire much later to their small castles, lifting the drawbridge and barricading themselves against strangers and neighbours. This was a place of small communities, flung wide apart in a vast land of dreamers who came to this land one or two generations ago.
We landed at Toronto Pearson Airport on a cold and windy December night. On arrival, we settled in a place called Scar-borough. It was one of those suburban communities planted in places where strawberries and corn were once cultivated.
The fulfillment of a dream would come much later to my father, a country farmer who had tried to make his way on an assembly line, making ceramic tiles at my uncle’s factory. There was no shortage of demand for tiles. They were arranged on floors of housing developments by workers from different areas of the globe, mostly Europe. Papa rose to the position of line manager and later owner of his own tile company.
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Over The Spiked Picket Fence
Soon Papa saved enough money and moved us to a place called Woodbridge, a place above the city. This was a house adorned with heavy pieces of furniture and all imaginable cement statues and fountains. It was a place stripped of old maple and pine trees, not far from the rapidly growing metropolis. My father took special pride in the fact that our house of brick and stone, with three spacious garages, loomed high above the rest. It was a large, imposing house enclosed by the tall spiked picket fence which guarded us from the riffraff who defined the under-belly of the city.
This house was so different from the one that I had grown up in. It could not be compared with my farmhouse by the natural stream and rolling meadows. Most of all I missed the warmth of my grandmama singing songs and telling old stories. The old town was a place where the family was all, family meant everything.
I grew up believing that what mattered most were the people that you loved. Was this cardinal rule now a faded memory, after a too long trip from home to the faraway life of my papa’s dream?
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Chapter 4
Dan
I had followed the North Star to Toronto – some say Hog-town – Toronto the good. It was this same city that I had heard some people say was part of the long golden Canadian Shield range that was often covered by fluffy whiteness in the dead of winter. That is what I had been told. Here I had come to find new opportunity in this land of the First Nations, pioneers entering the prime of my life, a twenty -two year old smooth and shiny guy staring down or up at the world below my feet. At twenty-two, I had already explored many options in this new country, moving from job to job to job in Hog-town, from one factory to another, from day shift to night shift and back again, from day school to night school, until a buddy knocked some sense into my head by telling me to get a license and my own taxi. This was not the job that I had dreamed of, but it was a job that would give me independence, and it suited my natural roving nature. I knew that this had been quite a come down from what I had dreamed to do but it was a step up from the fish market. I was still young and willing to take the fight to those who would keep the doors to this promise land fully sealed to the errant pilgrim.
“Hi, how are you?” I had offered this hooded figure standing in the cold crisp early evening wind.
“I am ok,” she had replied hesitantly as she had quickly looked around, as if to see if anyone else was a potential witness to this scene.
I had stared at her. I had noticed that when she spoke her eyes shone, and her lips curled into a pout. This young woman
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Over The Spiked Picket Fence
who was clearly a creation gem, must have always turned heads wherever she stepped out onto the street. Despite the nervousness that she must have felt being alone here at the bus-stop with a stranger, she was aware of her beauty. She was a woman who was quite aware of her good looks. Men on the streets passing by stared at her, both young and old, who were moved by the dazzling looks of this girl standing by the bus-stop.
Much later she had told me how she had felt when she had encountered me at the Scarborough bus-stop. She had trotted quickly onto the bus, glad that it had arrived to get away from me, a rather forward stranger. She had been more than a little uncomfortable, she said, and taken aback when she had seen me an hour later in the hallway of the city college. Walking down the hallway examining the lecture room numbers, she had already missed her first class of the semester and didn’t want to be late. She was in her first year towards qualifying as a social worker and was still uncertain if she had made the right career choice. Social work had been agreeable to the wishes of her parents, especially her father who was glad that she was going to university, and what difference would it make what the course of study was – after all college was only a place to meet someone who was pursuing a noble profession, like medicine or law. “These are good professions, with sure and good money,” her father had said, adding, “Who the hell is a social worker anyway?”
At the college, on this my first day I had watched her read the number on door 490 while glancing over her shoulders. She had then walked quickly into the room straight to a seat at the back of the class.
“Am I in the right room? Is this Social Psychology?” she had whispered to the person beside her as she seated.
“Yes, if you mean Social Psychology” I had offered from my seat across from her. I had snickered at my own brashness. And she had had a blank look on her face which implied that I had been presumptuous, responding to a question that I had not been asked.
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Over The Spiked Picket Fence
She had been determined to ignore me. But in spite of the effort to ignore me, I had caught her eyeing me out of the corner of her eyes. You never knew with these women.
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Chapter 5
Kate
He was much taller than I was and considerably younger. He was six feet or taller and quite slim. His skin was black with eyes like a night animal. His teeth were slightly uneven, yet there was something unique about his smile. He had long hair all in curls tied up at the back. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, gabardine bell-bottoms and platform shoes. He looked like a golden oldie from the seventies and he had the nerve to think that I would even say hello to him. He was clearly not for me.
I reflected on my own immediate past, to test the audacity of this strange foreigner who would not go away. I had been prom queen in high school, popular with my peers. I had been Tom Harper’s girl. He was a very good musician and a good athlete. Tom was Anglo Saxon with eyes as blue as the Adriatic Sea. He was the coolest guy at Cedar High.
