“Jeez, Liv. What did you do to them? These twins are walking funny,” he said with a laugh. Liv smiled in a smug way, knowing Firuzeh was hiding and crawling forward under the twins’ immense skirts.
In history, the most preposterous ideas are usually the ones that work the best, Liv thought to herself, willing success as she nervously watched the twins make their way to the ferry dock. Safe passage to freedom was sung behind the backs of slave owners. Sharing self-defence techniques against colonizers had been disguised as dancing. Outlawed Indigenous storytelling survived by being woven as code into textiles. Firuzeh is going to make it, Liv believed. She is going to escape.
It feels like a lifetime since Firuzeh’s story has ended. But my body is doing that thing it does when time does not matter, when my limbs are not screwed on right and my eyes are looking to the upper right corner of my vision, where all the bad memories sit like misbehaved children. They all sit here on timeout, waiting to be triggered and cued into place for me to relive again and again. Only this time, I’m contemplating the shape and form of my Whisper Letter to you, and I need your help, Evan. You see, when I was still in Liv’s basement, I could divine with absolute clarity the transmittance of my messages to you. I could, without a doubt, envision you somewhere, in your respective hiding place, plucking my words from the ether and stuffing them into whatever you lay your head on at night.
Now . . . after hearing the horrors of Firuzeh’s experiences, I fear you’re not in hiding at all. I know now the likelihood of your capture. The commodification of your body. The subdividing of your most exquisite parts into the cogs of the Renovation’s machine. The urge to fight back met with gruesome force.
Is this why I sense you beside me between the physical and spiritual realms? Is this why I feel you holding my hand or laughing at my thoughts?
I suddenly hear the sound of crickets. It is night. I am sitting on my bed. I squeeze my eyes shut after fixating on the frame of the cottage’s window. I look around the room. You’re nowhere to be seen, but I can sense you. Feel you.
Firuzeh stirs in her sleep, then sits up and coughs herself into waking. She looks at me. I cannot see her face, but I can see her piecing together her surroundings.
“Are you okay?”
She shakes her head silently. I slowly walk past Bahadur’s bed and approach Firuzeh slowly.
“I’m not okay either.”
Firuzeh clears space for me to sit beside her on the bed. I try to do so without it creaking, but the springs are too old for it to obey the slowness of my descent. Bahadur turns over on their bed and resumes snoring. We cover our mouths in a soundless chuckle.
Outside the moon waxes across the sky, fatter than the night before. We watch. Without words, Firuzeh rolls up the right sleeve of her shirt and I do the same with my left. We touch shoulders. Warm. Soft. I wonder about the quality of my shoulder compared to Emma Singh’s. I imagine the spirit of Emma sitting on the other side of Firuzeh, joining in on this moment of care.
And then it happens. I sense the spirit of you, on the other side of me, rolling up your sleeve, connecting with my right shoulder. I know now. The past tense of you.
We continue our training.
“You ready?” Beck asks Firuzeh, who nods solemnly and joins us. She has changed into one of Beck’s high-school track suits, and she rolls up her sleeves.
Beck draws lines in the soil beside the cottage’s porch with a brittle birch branch to illustrate the plan of attack. I follow the doodles of his instructions along every grain of sand, trying desperately to understand. Two lines representing Yonge Street. Squares. Xs. Arrows. Every scribble a movement, our movements, using our own bodies, using our own weapons. He makes us stand in formation. He demands that we act out every possibility, from best- to worst-case scenario. He says that for each one of us, the first action will be to disarm a Boot and use his weapon against him.
Days pass. The moon waxes. We continue the drills of four moves to disarm. Deflect end of rifle with left palm. Punch with right fist to the chin or kick to stomach. Butt of the gun to the face. Take the weapon. It is a clunky dance for me and Bahadur. Something stops the full breadth of our extensions, a forced passivity in a world that thrived on our inaction.
In response to this, Beck shows us another exercise. He demonstrates on me. He asks me to lie on my back; he straddles me, and Liv hands him punch mitts to wear.
“You ready? I want you to punch me from where you are. Keep punching and don’t stop.” I look at him. I notice I am holding my breath. My arms are at my sides, frozen. He is suddenly my ma.
“Keith. You are not like other boys. I can see that,” she says.
“Kay? Kay? Feel the ground underneath you. Can you feel it?” I nod. I hear Beck’s firm voice in the present. I begin to feel the rocks and sand on my tailbone. I feel the sun on my face. I can see the silhouettes of people above me. “Good. Breathe. Can you look around you? It’s me, Beck.” I see him. “Look around. Take your time. Can you see things that are blue? Can you find at least three things that are blue?”
Firuzeh’s sweatpants. Beck’s eyes. Liv’s shirt. The sky.
“Good. Keep breathing. Now, I want you to be here. I want you to be here, seeing everything around you, but I want you to punch back at me. Can you do that?” I nod. I punch at Beck standing above me. It is a half-hearted punch, as I am still slowly coming back into myself. “Can you use your breath each time you punch? Can you make a ‘ssss’ sound when you punch this time?” I try. The exhale tightens my core, and the punch is stronger. The colours around me are more vibrant. Beck’s voice is clear. I am more in my body. “Again. Again. Again.”
Firuzeh, Liv and Bahadur clap for me, and the sound of their applause is crisp. My breathing is deep. My arms are warm. “Kay? How are you doing?” Beck searches my face. I give an affirmative nod from my position on the ground. “This time, I want you to punch left, right again and again, non-stop, and I will back off when I feel your energy push me back. Does that make sense? Can you do that?” I shake my head, unsure of myself.
Beck looks right at me, although I am uncertain if I am looking back at him. “Kay? I need you to remember why you’re doing this. Remember how these actions are connecting all of us. I want you to feel that power running through your body.”
I take a deep breath and begin. I punch, again and again. “Ssss. Sssss. Sssss. Ssss. Ssss. Ssss. Ssss.”
“Lying with a man as with a woman is an abomination,” Ma says as she brushes out my curls, my scalp bleeding.
“Ssss! Sssss! Sssss! Ssss! Ssss! Ssss! Ssss!” says the little boy with every punch.
“Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”
“Ssss! Sssss! Sssss! Ssss! Ssss! Ssss! Ssss!” Soap bubbles bursting. Soap souls going to heaven. The sound of applause in the congregation upstairs. “SSSS!” the boy exhales, extends a punch, and the daycare washroom collapses in a pile of dust. Ma covers her ears at the deafening sound. “SSSS!” A soundtrack of Liberace plays at full volume. Thousands of fairy costumes fly through the air, and a kaleidoscope of scripture passages explode into beautiful fireflies protecting his tiny body. “SSSS!” Another final punch and the lattice of the Winchester church implodes. The steel framing melts. Every wall hiding every secret crumbles into shadows. Ma, in tiny pixels, becomes grains of sand. She watches in pain as her body is wished away by wind, by time, by my own breath.