Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo

Author:Shani Mootoo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookThug
Published: 2020-02-23T18:44:57+00:00

* * *

Turning out of the driveway, I announce that Prakash will arrive any time. I laugh and say I can’t imagine him and Alex spending half an hour alone together.

Skye doesn’t respond. She isn’t even smiling. It feels awkward, and I’m compelled to carry on. I feel she wants to say something, but she must know there’s a point where her interventions might feel like meddling. It’s a fine line.

“He’s like a brother,” I say. I’m sure that sounded as if I were apologizing, or making some sort of excuse. But why should I have to defend myself to her? We’ve known her for less than five years. I’ve known Prakash for decades longer. Who is she to reproach me? I tell myself to breathe, relax.

Just before the turnoff into the town of Macaulay, we approach the little white clapboard house of new residents, Syrian refugees recently sponsored by a local group. I seize the chance to change the subject, remove my foot from the accelerator to slow, and point out the house to her. She says, “Yes, I know. Everyone in town seems to know.” Three kids, perhaps between the ages of six and nine, dressed in winter jackets and toques, are riding bicycles, given to them by a business in the town, around a blue van parked on the grass in the front yard. I tell her that every time I pass this house I look for them and want to pull into their driveway and tell them I’m pleased they’ve come to live here. But after that, then what? I don’t want to initiate a friendship. We might well find we don’t share the same values and don’t actually like each other.

She says just about everyone she knows has done just that with them, dropped in on them, taken them food and clothing and house items. Apparently they have more winter clothing than they may ever use. They themselves made a donation to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, a handover that was photographed and written up in the local papers.

“What a gift,” I say, “and what a burden. Imagine having — on top of being in dire need — to constantly smile and be grateful to everyone you meet. There’ll be many of us they likely won’t care for, or approve of, if they got to know us. Never­theless, they’ll have to show gratitude. Seems to me there’s something demeaning about that.”

Skye says, “Yup, very likely. They’re dependent on us right now, and we get to feel noble and good and righteous. They won’t always be in need, but they’ll forever be beholden. At least the first generation of them. But that’s a better problem to have than the one that got them here, I suppose.”

I recall Prakash’s experience and, without mentioning his name, I paraphrase and contemporize what he’d long ago told me: “They’re not blind or deaf. They’ll eventually feel the envy from people right here in the town who see themselves as also in dire need but who were never given a free house or car.

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