I was tempted to take another look at this strange looking guy next to me. He was certainly not from my world. He was the type I would not have given even a second glance in high school. Not that I would have been the least bit interested anyway, but to have done so would have been at my own risk. That had been the constant warning communicated every day at my table at supper time. It was the line that should never be crossed.
“Excuse me; I missed last week’s class. Would you mind filling me in?” I had asked the young girl beside me.
“Sure – as if you missed anything anyway, they never teach anything in the first week, a real waste of our time and money,” this classmate jumped in to respond.
21
Over The Spiked Picket Fence
I was already agitated having traveled on the TTC, squished against a sweaty psycho carrying a vacuum cleaner which seemingly he was having a conversation with. Evidently, he had vacuumed his cat’s ashes from the urn and now took the remains everywhere with him. Poor suffering soul. I just shook my head and said, “I guess you have the cat in the bag then,” and moved away from him. It had taken me an hour and one half to get from the city’s west end all the way to the college campus in the east, just to take this godforsaken course. And now here HE was again crowding my personal space.
Before I could answer him to put him in his place, the professor had approached the front of the room indicating that the lecture was about to begin.
Chapter 6
Dan
“We’ll talk at break,” I had offered the woman, thinking to myself, hmmm… perhaps there was a good reason for taking this course after all. This place was full of fine woman to pick and choose from, so many that it would make any man’s head and reason spin out of control. If a man wanted a woman, this city was the production factory of the world’s finest. Am I allowed to say that? Do I have to mind my manners?
At twenty-six now, I had made quite a journey from my small island hilltop village not far from where the river flowed into the wide open Caribbean Sea. At twenty-six I was at the beginning of a new kind of a pilgrimage, a kind of journey. Now here I was what they called a small entrepreneur, owner of a small fleet of taxis whose drivers hustled the lonesome streets from midnight to dawn across the cold and sometimes mean streets of the shimmering lights of the city. Tired of being told that I had needed Hog-town experience to get a living wage, I had gone back to school, to join the ranks of the new arrivals jockeying for positions in the fight to escape from factory and cleaning of washrooms. I had hustled and struggled to make it into the good times.
I remembered the days at college, sitting with this fine girl. Later I had come to realize that this was the forbidden fruit, and here I was sitting on the bench by the Japanese maple tree on the still warm days of September with this girl from the city not too far away.
“Individualism is the root of capitalism, this is the philosophy of Marx, practiced by the great nations of China, Russia and Cuba, ushering in egalitarianism and progress. Capitalism
23
Over The Spiked Picket Fence
will self-destruct!”
I recalled how impressed this girl had been as she had warmed the bench beside me. She had soaked up my foolish wisdom, like a fly entering into the web of the spider. Yes, I had been a man in command, thumbing my nose at those who stared at my Kate, at those who dared to challenge my brashness in choosing to hang out with whomever I had wanted. I had been a man on a mission and I would settle for only the best that this land had to offer. Why would anyone not sample the complete feast at the table than settle for the same old menu? Yes, I had arrived in the land of hope and glory. This would be the Promised Land indeed.
It had been then, sitting on the college bench on that warm September day when she said had noticed my eyes.
“Your eyes are very beautiful, mysterious and haunting.”
What if her mother were to see her now! Is this what she had been raised for? This girl knew how to make a man’s heart flutter. I recalled how I had wormed my way into her life, re-fusing to take no for an answer, believing as I did the nonsense that if a girl said no, that always meant a kind of yes. All that I had to do was to persevere, to break her down - to get her to
change the no to yes.
I remembered how she had accepted my advances which were like sweet, sweet music to my ears.
“I’m Kate. Okay Dan, one drink after class.”
She had clearly suspended the timeless wisdom passed on at the supper table in the great house of her parents, that there was an invisible line never to cross, or there could be a point of no return. Imagine the catastrophe, and the shame and the anger that were bound to result in excommunication. She would be cut off from family, given up for dead, disowned forever to wander in the wilderness with the many strange and nomadic people who were passing through Hog-town. What a high price to pay for straying away from the fold in a land fraught with booby-traps set by those who hated tradition, by those who hated the timeless wisdom that people should stick to their own.
24
Over The Spiked Picket Fence
This was what was wrong with this our home and native place called Hog-town, where there was a variety of tasty dishes set before me, and what a spread it was, both rare and well done, but I was expected to go on a public diet, or taste the dishes in private.
25
Chapter 7
Kate
The clothes were piled up on my bed. I had tried on four or five dresses to find the right one that would have caused the blood pressure of a man to rise. To cause a man’s heart to palpitate was the evidence of a woman in control. Control must be established from the beginning to set the tone and to let a man know who was in charge. I smiled as I thought about my mama. Oh yes, it was for sure papa who brought home the bacon, but my mama who decided when and how to prepare it. She had had her own way of cracking the whip whenever she could.
I spent hours in the bathroom putting mascara, my blush, lipstick, fixing my hair and spraying my best perfume. These things took time. It’s funny how I had thought about him all week and I could not wait to go to class. This was a much too sure of himself island man. He would not take no for an answer. Yes, here I was throwing caution to the wind, laughing in the face of tradition. But who cared about tradition? Shit, this was Toronto, where even the humble dared to dream.
I’m going to be late for my class, ‘I said to Lisa and hung up the phone. Why all the rush, Lisa must have thought. If only she knew, she would have pinched my cheeks and teased me.
I arrived just in time and the Professor was already at the front of the class and had begun droning.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, as I made my way to the seat that had been reserved for me. I sat down and
