Aban's Accension

Chapter 28: The Question II

Chapter 28: THE QUESTION II

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

One day Aban goes for a walk. She pauses on the sidewalk outside Atasgah and checks out the scenery. This isn’t like her woods, the ones she walked in back home while Mom and Dad did their yoga. In her woods trees hid human life from her; they filtered the sunlight and brought a hush around her ears. On the ground, pine cones and leaves, acorns and lichen, drew her attention, while birds secreted in their nests peeped at her from above. Occasionally, a flash of stripes heralded a passing chipmunk, and in the winter, tracks told her of the animals that had passed by. But here, there are no trees.

As she surveys her surroundings, Aban is forced to admit that there is one across the street and up a little bit, its fat trunk bifurcating into two, ending in a weedy top of dead leaves. But looking south, only one giant is visible from above the rooftops, many houses down. All around her is greyed sidewalk, greyed road with faded paint lines, hard brick walls, some walls painted green and some a natural yellow, small squares of brown grass with edgings of hard green weeds, and the odd struggling bush. She sighs. Why did she come here?

El’s questions echo in her head: Who are you angry with? Who do you want to be?

She fists her hands and pushes them into her pockets. She sets off, her feet trudging along the concrete in their dust-smeared sneakers, her head down, watching her feet going one, two, one, two toward the railway bridge. She passes unseeing the two-story blocks of buildings with their neon signs and billboard hats on her left. She doesn’t notice the Canadian flag drooping from a long pole attached to a house opposite, its red and white still jaunty through the layer of pollution that’s settled on it. She doesn’t observe the trees opposite that separate the industrial side of Greenwood from a new residential area. Aban wants to watch her feet; she doesn’t want to be here; she doesn’t want to think about those questions.

The road dips down to pass underneath the bridge. Then on the other side of the tracks, it rises again. Aban stops. This road is too familiar. She turns around and looks back south. She turns around and looks east. She doesn’t remember how El got them to that ravine, where all those trees and shrubs were. But somehow she knows it was east. She turns around again and looks north. They went thataway first. But she doesn’t want to go thataway. She doesn’t want to go where El took her.

Aban resolutely turns south and heads down Greenwood as far as it will take her, to Queen Street. Tracks splits this street in half along its length. A streetcar rumbles and clacks past as she crosses the intersection to head east and then crosses to its south side to get out of the haze-filtered sun burning her dark curls. Though her hands are sticky from sweat, she keeps them shoved down deep into her deep pockets.

She trudges on, eyes watching feet, one, two, one two, hypnotizing her mind into silence.

At Woodbine the landscape changes and catches her attention. She looks south and sees a wide road filled with cars and houses on either side, some painted brightly, some looking older, edging the sidewalk all the way down. She looks east and sees an energetic street, filled with people hustling and cars creeping slowly. Stores bump up against each other while an old-fashioned fire house with its squat square clock tower remains distant from the smaller structures. The wide nose of a streetcar faces her. The traffic light changes, and the cars cross the tracks on their southbound journey, their tires, one after the other, sounding a snappy rhythm. She turns right and follows their direction, her head up, her eyes scanning this time.

She likes the houses on her right. They look fresh and happy. The road curves right, and she’s trekking west, but across from her are trees and, and -- a beach? Aban had never heard that Toronto had a beach.