Preview of No Going Back

AGENTS SEARCH ME at the Canadian border. Of course they

do, those fascists.

What exactly is suspicious about a woman traveling alone

by bus from Detroit and into Canada with no luggage, I

ask you?

Well, put that way, maybe it’s fair, but an entire bus is held

up while the border agents in their ill-fitting uniforms conduct

a physical search of my person and ask me questions verging

on the intimate. Intimacy and I aren’t well acquainted, so the

questioning stalls for some time.

“How long were you in the United States?” the female agent

asks again, starting from the beginning. She’s likely doing this

for the benefit of her supervisor, who has decided to join the

party. Though the woman is older, they both look like poster

children for the SS, with their blond good looks and their belief

in harassing citizens of the country they’re supposed to be

guarding.

I tell them what they want to know, even though the information

is stamped right there in my passport. My voice

breaks from the cold. It’s freezing, even inside the checkpoint.

Raindrops spatter the windows, and outside I can see the

wind kicking up fallen leaves. Sending them dancing. The

damp and the gray remind me of Vancouver, my city, but

the biting cold tells me I’m far from home.

“And what was the purpose of your trip?” she asks.

I shake myself back to the present and try to focus. But it’s

difficult. We’ve been through all this before. This is how they

get you: a constant stream of repetition until you change your

story out of sheer boredom.

But I’ve been questioned by fascists before, and I know their

game.

“My father grew up in Detroit. I went to visit his childhood

home,” I tell them. I don’t say that he was a child of the Sixties

Scoop, a program where thousands of indigenous children

from Canada were adopted out of their communities. I’m not

sure if cultural genocide is covered in their cross-border orientation

handbooks.

The agent doesn’t believe me. Her supervisor is too busy

sending me a threatening glare to notice the subtle shift of my

body, the tension around my mouth. My patience is at an end.

They’re either going to do a more thorough physical search

or not. The words strip and cavity come to mind. I have never

liked being touched by strangers, and the idea of having my

cavities inspected verges on the obscene.

Maybe this is why I try to explain myself, for once.

“My father died a long time ago,” I say. “Someone he used

to know showed up on my radar recently, and I had some

questions. I thought I’d go to Detroit to learn more about my

dad’s life.” And his death. But that’s another story entirely. “I

wasn’t planning to stay more than a couple days, but the trip

took a little longer than I expected.”

I hear a door open and feel a blast of icy air on my nape. I

look over my shoulder to see who’s behind me. Whether or

not anyone new has come into the station. It’s an unconscious

gesture, but a telling one.

One that they’ve noticed.

They exchange glances. “Looking for someone?” says the woman.

“No.” My attention moves from the man in the blue toque

who’s just walked in, the man who was sitting near the middle

of the bus we were both on, and snags on the agent’s

latex gloves. I begin to imagine where those gloved hands

might be going shortly. Which cavity they might start with

first. I’m sweating now, despite the chill in the air.

The supervisor steps forward and speaks for the first time.

His voice is deep and smooth, like the singer of a forgettable

jazz band. He looks over my passport. “Nora Watts,” he

says, drawing out the syllables. Is he trying to be sexy? If he

is, it isn’t working. “Did you find what you needed in Detroit,

Ms. Watts?”

“I found that my father is as dead as he’s ever been. Life

moves on, and so should I.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?” The supervisor notices

for the first time how rough it is. How it sounds like it’s been

scraped up from my diaphragm and shoved through my

throat.

“Laryngitis.”

“You say you live in Vancouver but you’re going to Toronto.

Why there instead of back home?” The supervisor takes over

the questioning now, which is a plus. He seems more reasonable

to me right about now, given the choice between him and

the woman with the gloves. And I’m starting to enjoy the jazz

voice.

“My daughter,” I say. “I’m going to see my daughter.”

The real question here is: Will my daughter want to see me?

They step aside to decide my fate. I try to look more like a

fine and upstanding citizen, though my wardrobe and shabby

appearance are telling a different story. That maybe I’m not

so fine, definitely not upstanding, and it’s possible I don’t even

have laryngitis.

I look like a woman on the run from her enemies.

A fair assessment, because that’s exactly what I am.

Part of me wants to tell them that my father’s bloodline

goes back to this land before their ancestors even had the

thought to come here, but the other part reminds me that my

mother was an immigrant from the Middle East, and I may

not want to pull that particular thread right now.

A baby in the waiting room begins to cry, putting everyone

on edge. The baby’s brother, who looks to be about six,

tries to get their mother’s attention, but she’s too busy searching

through her bag for something to distract her crying child.

Toque Man gives the maybe six-year-old a chummy smile.

As the infant continues to bawl, I stare at the gloves and

the female agent’s long, thick fingers. Imagining where they

might go if I’m not persuasive enough.

In the end, they let me back through to my country of birth

with my cavities intact.

Back on the bus, some of my body heat returns. The bus

heaves into motion, and I leave Detroit behind. Finally. With

the greatest relief, I watch the scenery fly by outside the

window.

Oh, Canada.

I relax, thinking I’m in the clear because the Ambassador

Bridge is in the rearview mirror.

The relaxation doesn’t last for very long.

Toque Man is sitting directly behind the six-year-old’s

mother, where he’s been ever since we first boarded the bus in

America. She and the infant have the seat in front of him. The

six-year-old is across the aisle. Whenever the boy turns to look

at his mom, he sees Toque Man. With the bus only a quarter

full, the man’s choice of seating is unthinkable. Nobody wants

to travel in such close proximity to a young family. Nobody

but this guy. At the border, I was too far away to hear what he

was saying when his passport was checked, but I know whatever

it was, he wasn’t being honest. His posture was relaxed,

his smile a little too easy. Practiced.

It was the same way he’d smiled at the little boy.

I don’t like it at all.

I’m trying to keep my eyes open, to pay attention to the middle

of the bus. We’re barely across the border when there’s a distraction I hadn’t anticipated.

The radio comes on.

It’s playing a song I recognize, one that I have sung. The

song follows me into Windsor and then past it. I have left

Detroit behind, but there’s that damn tune in my head—and

now it’s on the radio, too. Sung by an unsigned soul artist

and a former blues singer caught unawares on the airwaves,

the song is a tribute to a relationship heading for the rocks. A

call and response. It’s a good song, maybe even a great one,

but it isn’t the kind of thing you hear on the radio anymore.

Do people suddenly give a shit about independent artists? I’m

as surprised as anyone.

The bus sputters on the highway, and for a moment my fellow

passengers are jolted into a collective prayer that we won’t

break down here, not when we’re so close to our destination.

I don’t know their reasons for the journey, but mine are

pure and decent, for once. I may have lied about the laryngitis,

but everything else is depressingly true. I am on my way to see

the daughter I’d given up for adoption as an infant, Bonnie.

She’s seventeen now. We have not had much of a relationship

up until this point, but I’m hoping to change that. I have made

sacrifices to cross the border from America into Toronto to

see her and to explain that the decision to let her go was made

from a place of hurt. But I want to try to have a relationship

now. If she’ll let me.

The radio host comes on after the song finishes and informs

the listening audience that the man on the record is

one Nate Marlowe, a soul singer who is lying in a hospital

bed, fighting for his life from a gunshot wound. A bullet

struck him in the lung. Various complications have left him

in critical condition. Nobody knows if he will make it, but the

country seems invested in his recovery.

A young black man lost to senseless violence, says the host.

Far too good-looking to die so young, implies his cohost.

The authorities have apprehended two young gang members

who, it is suspected, went to Nate’s house with the intention

of killing another person. He was a casualty in someone

else’s vendetta. They think the female singer on the hook

and the second verse was the real target of the hit. It annoys

me, but they’re right to speculate. She was the target. Nate

Marlowe got in the way of a bullet meant for her heart.

I know this because the mystery woman on the record is me.

I check the urge to look behind me because the instinct is

getting ridiculous now. It almost got my cavities inspected

back at that station.

Toronto is an ugly city, I think, as we drive through it.

Better-looking than Detroit, but it can’t compare in any way

to Vancouver, which is the city where I parked my dog,

Whisper. She’s in good hands, but they’re not mine, and I can

feel her longing for me through the miles that separate us. I

can’t wait to return to her, even going so far as to imagine our

reunion and that silky patch of fur behind her ears.

What I don’t imagine is the reunion that I’m about to have

with Bonnie.

My daughter.

Jesus.

Here goes.

Preview of No Going Back by Sheena Kamal