Accusation (7 page)

Something happened.

Everything in him, she thought, resisted speaking to her. She thought, I can’t do this. She would take the next exit, somewhere in Pickering, turn around, and ferry him west to the airport, or find a gas station, a truck stop and cajole someone else, a trucker, another driver, to carry him onward.

As if he sensed her retreat, his posture shifted. She felt him move. I am under a lot of stress. I’m sorry. One of my performers is injured.

That’s not good.

When she glanced over, he was staring at his hands in his lap as if they were unattached, creatures that he was surprised to find there.

She waited to see if he’d say anything more before continuing, What happened to him, or her?

He fell during a rehearsal.

Was he badly hurt? She thought back to the show in Copenhagen, wondering which boy it was.

He can’t move his legs. They say paralyzed from the waist down.

Oh, I’m sorry. His words hit her in the gut, entered her foot pressed to the accelerator, her hands gripping the wheel. Of course you want to get back.

Nothing like this has happened before. We are so careful. It is terrible that it happens when I’m not there.

Who is there, was there, when you’re not?

Our trainer, Tamrat Asfaw. He works with them every day. He called me this afternoon. They are all in shock. This happened only today, yesterday, Friday morning.

So you knew during the show.

I felt sick. I wanted the whole time to vomit, flee, get away, be with them, and I couldn’t. Half of me is there, not here. It was the hardest thing to do, all this talk tonight. A nightmare. I couldn’t tell anyone there what happened. Not yet.

Is the boy in hospital?

Yes, for now, though I don’t know how long he will stay or what kind of care he will need. He had angled himself partially to face her, seat belt pinning him in place, and he looked wide-eyed and small with fear.

How old is he?

Twelve, around that.

Do you know how it happened?

They were practising a balancing routine, Tamrat says. They do it all the time. They’ve done it a thousand times. They climb on each other’s shoulders. There are four boys in the bottom row then three boys then two then Yitbarek on top, with one foot on Moses’s shoulder and one foot on Bereket’s, and he leaps into a somersault and lands. They were on mats. Tamrat says he lost his balance, maybe someone wobbled. He was beginning the jump, but he twisted and fell. He is not careless. He fell on his back. When they went to him he couldn’t move his legs. They got him in the truck and took him to the hospital.

In a truck?

Yes.

Have you spoken to the doctor?

Not yet. Not his family. He let out a rasping sound.

Which one is he? Yitbarek — She was casting back again to the show she’d seen, the pyramid act, boys climbing up each other’s bodies to stand upon each other’s shoulders, what boy had been at the top, boys of around twelve, boys juggling, boys on stilts, the boy in blue.

He’s, he’s the — Twisting in his seat, he threw up his hands, as if to ward her off or distract her from the fact that he was near tears and couldn’t speak.

She had to keep her eyes on the road. Maybe when you get back you’ll find out it isn’t as bad as you think.

You have no idea.

I don’t. But people do recover from spinal cord injuries, some do.

He was silent. They passed the sign for Clarington. He said, You don’t think of the worst until it happens. You don’t think the worst will happen until it does.

Is there any kind of health insurance?

Not yet, he said. There should be, but there isn’t. It’s because of the UNICEF grant. We are supposed to have this money and we don’t have it. In the beginning, you know, we were so small. All of it was voluntary, me and the children, we did it in the afternoons and on weekends, and then more children came, and we started the school and the school for street kids, and the NGOs heard about us and came onboard, but it was still so — Nobody has any money. The children can’t pay. No one can pay for classes or equipment. We feed them. We are in a borrowed place, a local councillor has given us space for offices and to rehearse. We teach the street children so maybe they can go back to the street and busk and make money. No one has money to see the shows. And it’s okay for me to give up my job and live on very little because I am called to do this, everything in my life has led to this. But I still need money for the circus.

He ran a hand across his mouth before continuing, and maybe it was easier to talk about all this than the boy. So UNICEF heard about everything we’re doing, the work with children, the social circus work in communities, and said, We will support you. Big multi-year funding to help us as an organization, and I thought, Fantastic, this will be our breakthrough. There’s an application, a grant. They say, It is a formality, and it is approved, we sign a contract. But this is over a year ago. There is still no money. I call them, I send emails, I say, What’s going on, where’s the money, and they say, It’s coming, but it takes time. How am I supposed to plan? We have grown so much, and we are stretched so thin. We need things, we need insurance. I am not trained in all this, but I am trying to hold it all together.

In his lap, his fingertips pressed against each other and released, pressed and released.

It sounds like a lot for one person to do.

Yes, yes.

How much money are you talking about?

One hundred and seventy-five thousand US.

A serious sum of money by any account.

Yes. I want to buy land so we have a permanent home, and pay the children for their work and time. I’ve borrowed against it. There are other funders, but no one else can offer this level of support. I’m talking now to the Cirque about multi-year funding. But with UNICEF, we have a contract, they promised me money, and I’m trying to look after the children and go out into these communities and do the work, and they can’t even tell me when the money will come. What do they want me to do?

I’m not offering excuses, but you’re dealing with a very large, top-heavy, and rather dysfunctional bureaucracy.

Who are supposed to take care of the welfare of children.

Yes, only in an organization of that scale, there’s no one person accountable, and things sometimes do move unconscionably slowly. I’m not trying to defend them.

You think I am naive.

It’s a difficult business model. To be dependent in this way. I don’t envy you.

So what am I supposed to do, he shouted. His voice dropped. I’m sorry. His hand reached out to touch her arm before skidding away. She had a sudden image of him flying through the air with his children, high over the ocean, and wondered if there were times when he shouted at the children too. No insurance, she thought, this wasn’t good. I can’t believe the thing that’s happened, he said. It is so terrible, I think, if I go back, it won’t be true, it can’t be. When she glanced over, he was touching his knees with his fingertips, his thighs, the edges of his jacket. If I was there it wouldn’t have happened, if I had stayed, if I had not come away. If he fell, I would have saved him. He is, of all of them, he is —

You can’t think that.

But I do.

They passed the Welcome Port Hope sign, a trick, two places welling out of the dark, though Sara had no idea where Welcome was. An irradiating pair of halogen headlamps sped up from behind her, blinding her through the rear-view mirror before the car passed and became a pair of red taillights receding into the dark. Headlights flared from across the meridian, and the broken white line of the lane divider strobed up from the dark tarmac to either side, small flares glimpsed across his face, felt on hers.

She tried again: Would I have seen him, Yitbarek, perform in Copenhagen?

Raymond Renaud was silent, as if holding himself against all that churned through him. Yes, he said at last. You would notice him. He’s small but not the smallest. He is so alive when he moves. He does the act with the torches. He came to us in Dessie in the north. After a show he found me and he was so excited to show me what he can do. He was imitating the others, and even then you could see — he was so quick, so flexible, so daring, he just has so much natural talent. I said to his parents, You must let him come with me. You must let him do this. He is that good. I will make sure he stays in school and does all his schoolwork. I will look after him, I promise.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, bent forward against the seat belt, as if he were about to be sick.

Raymond, are you okay?

He started up again, eyes shining. I am responsible for them. Don’t you see? They are in my care. Everything has been so crazy, like a runaway horse. I am trying to hold on to the reins. When I get back, I will do everything for him, raise money for him, do all the rehabilitation, whatever it takes. I will tell them all, he will walk again. We will all be stronger, we will come through this.

She looked down at the speedometer to find herself racing along at one hundred and forty, past the sign for the Big Apple, then the Big Apple itself, round and large as a house, the car shuddering only when she lifted her foot from the gas. Raymond seemed unaware of their speed. He sat back, palms pressed to his eyes, breath ragged, body shuddering a little, wildness charging through him, as if, left alone, he would have gone galloping through the night, and in his grief he reminded her of David, which made her heart move toward him. I’m doing my best to get you back as soon as I can.

Other moments surged up, out of the dark and those delirious hours of night driving. Somewhere between Brighton and Trenton, calmer now, a presence more felt than seen, he said, The year we were in Côte d’Ivoire, in Agboville, my mother and I, I was bitten by a snake. It was under a chair, outside, I reached for it. She was a nurse, but she did not know this snake or its venom or its antidote so she took me to an old woman who sucked the venom out. She says it was in a clinic, but I remember it as a hut and dark. It was not at the hospital where she worked. I know she was terrified. She thought she had brought me to this place and killed me.

Your father didn’t come with you?

They were having some trouble. He was often away. But she went back to him.

They met in Montreal?

He met my mother and my aunt. Angèle and Philomène. The Désir sisters. He had to choose. That is the story.

She told him how in Moscow, her father, the third secretary then the second secretary at the embassy, would come into the kitchen where she was eating porridge or a boiled egg and balance a spoon by its bowl on the end of his nose or pull a ten-kopek piece out of her ears. Of going out for pastries and hot chocolate on Saturdays in Berlin with Anna, the woman who looked after her. Of her amazement, upon returning to Ottawa, at ten, to discover how many different kinds of toilet paper there were in North America. Wandering the long supermarket aisle with her mother, she’d stared agog at the pictures of kittens and babies and snowflakes on the plastic packaging, the various patterns of dots and swirls imprinted on the bright white rolls themselves.

Neither she nor he had siblings, although Raymond said there were always cousins around in Montreal, and other children had lived with them that year in Agboville and he’d liked having them around, the almost-siblings.

He said, In those days when I was with my mother, and she talked to me and confided in me sometimes like a husband, what I wanted most of all was to be seen.

Then he spoke again about the boy, Yitbarek. He will come up to me in the hall or at the house and go, Teach it, or Teach it me, he was just always so eager to learn new things, always, a move or routine, whatever it is.

She felt that there was something he needed her to understand about the boy, that he was handing her this vision urgently.

A tractor trailer roared past, behemothic in the dark, and a yawn quivered through him, escaping from his mouth.

You can sleep for a while if you want, Sara said. It’s okay. If I get too tired, I’ll wake you and make you talk to me.

Maybe I will a little bit.

They were approaching Belleville, and she was glad of his calm, although it didn’t mean his distress had vanished. He hiked back the seat so that he was near to horizontal, the top half of his body disappearing from sight, his hands wrapped around him, shadowy in the dark when she glanced over, and she listened to his breath slow and grow hoarse, and thought how strange it was to see him like this, strange to have a man in her car at all, since David was seldom in it, and she was used to driving alone, and here was this man, Raymond Renaud, founder of a children’s circus in Africa, laid out now beside her in the vulnerability of sleep, and it was impossible not to entertain the thought that in this state she could do what she liked with him, take him anywhere.

She slowed in the exit lane that led to the service centre just beyond Odessa. If he didn’t wake, she would leave him sleeping while she went inside to buy a coffee, needing that fuel to keep herself alert, but as the car decelerated, he stretched and yawned, then pulled the seat upright, and, yawning again, breath curdled, voice nasal with sleep, asked where they were. Sara told him they were near Kingston, and he could stay in the car if he wanted, she could get him something, but he said no, he’d come inside.

It was glorious to climb out into the cool night air in which crickets were singing, to stretch her arms, squeeze her toes in her blue sandals, tottery on the heels, creases furrowing her linen trousers and shirt, her party clothes. Beyond the grassy ditch separating parking lot from highway, the slipstream of trucks pushed waves of thundering air toward them. On the far side of the car, Raymond Renaud stretched too; then, as they made their way toward the glow of the circular service centre, beneath the hum of the mile-high lot lights, he said, In this country they eat a special food called doughnuts very late at night. No one knows the true reason they are called this.

Tell me what they’re like, Sara said, both of them giddy and bumping shoulders as they passed the truck lot, where the great trucks, like elephants, flanked one another, some rumbling, engines idle, running their air-conditioning or refrigeration units. Giddiness didn’t take away from the underlying horror of the paralyzed boy; it was bound to this, to the fact that the boy’s plight was now shared knowledge between them. Then her perception shifted and all she wanted was to get this errand, this crazy thing she was doing, over with as quickly as possible.