Aban's Accension

Chapter 3: Toronto

Chapter 3: TORONTO

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

She half-closes her eyes against the early morning sun entering the Greyhound bus window on her right. She leans her head against the warm glass and turns it away from the rising sun and pale blue sky. The seats are filled with regular commuters all reading their newspapers or holding flat glassy things. The commuter beside her has one. She arches forward surreptitiously and sees the print change on it as the commuter swipes her finger. Weird. The commuter looks up at her, and she quickly shrinks back. When she feels it’s safe again, Aban looks past her seatmate into the other seats. Another commuter has wires disappearing into his ears. The wires reminder her of headphones but without the fat, round parts on either side of his head. She furrows her brow: his head bobs like her former classmates used to when she'd catch a glimpse of them from a distance. A sudden spurt of words takes her eyes off him toward his seatmate, who seems to be talking to a ghost. She hears a flip, and the woman behind those two, barely visible from her angle, is raising a small phone to her ear. Mom has one of those things for work but had told Aban that they’re an expensive toy and not for her.

She rubs her hand on her seat. The fabric is soft. The big cushy seats with their multi-coloured fabric block out much of the noise but not the low whine of the engines as they roar down the highway. She looks out the window. The sun has grown stronger, and she can barely see against the light. Why is she here? She rubs her hand over her face and wipes the thought away. She had left the house early before her parents had gotten up. She doesn’t know why she needs to go to Toronto.

There are so many cars going the same way.

As the sun rises higher out of her eyes, she sees that the green trees and wild brown grass have given way to houses. Cookie cutter buildings rise up into view on either side of the elevated 401. The traffic slows, and the bus becomes boxed in by cars and trucks. So many trucks. Her bus curves off the highway right, then curves left underneath a bridge and up onto another, smaller highway. It feels claustrophobic, with cars and trees and narrow-feeling lanes hemming them in. But it soon presents her with a view of a tree-filled valley with a thin ribbon of a river meandering through its brown bottom. She’d thought Toronto was all buildings, all cars, all bad people. This glimpse of nature puzzles her.

The bus enters the chaos of the city and slows down more. Too soon, it is pulling into a station, parking underneath an overhang, and the commuters are getting up and getting off. Fast. She shuffles behind them down the aisle, down the steps, and onto the concrete pedestrian area. She looks around perplexed.

“Do you need some help?”

Folks in Toronto are friendly? “Um, yeah.”

“Where do you want to go? Do you have a map?”

“Map?” No, she’d totally forgotten to buy a map in her rush to get out and to the bus before her parents awoke. She shows the man the lawyer’s return address that she’d ripped off the envelope and stuffed in her pocket in her dramatic rip-up at breakfast two days earlier, before Canada Day.

“First Canadian Place. That’s easy. You go out the station here, through those doors, turn right, walk up to the traffic lights, and you’ll see a red and white bus stop sign. Wait there and get on the Bay bus. Don’t bother asking the driver to announce the stop. He’ll probably forget. Just listen to the automatic announcements. When you hear “King” get off; the big white building is First Canadian Place. Good luck.” And the man is striding off. She hitches her army pants up, stuffs her hands in her pockets, clutching her wallet that is deep in her pocket, and follows him and his directions.

At King, she gets off the bus and stops. The buildings are so tall. They loom over her. They -- the cars, the people, the different sounds coming together in one cacophonous noise -- confuse and overwhelm her. She hunches into herself and looks around until she sees imposing white across the street. She peers up cautiously and follows a wall of white stone and glinting windows up and up and up until her neck hurts, it's craned so far back. She takes a deep breath, lowers her head, and heads to the intersection. She crosses the street with the men in suits and women in dresses, almost tripping over tracks running down the middle of the road, and hurries through the nearest door.