Scarborough

Going into this book, having not really read anything beyond periodicals since the fall, I was scared that I would bounce off this one and that it would be left in some half complete state.

The exact opposite. Once I picked this up it was very hard to put down. Hernandez expertly brings us into the lives of a cast of characters that, for many of us who live in Toronto: we know. Perhaps they are lives we know well, lives that we lived ourselves or, in my case: they are the lives of those people we don't stop and think to imagine complexly: the people on the busses, the subways and behind the till. The faces we see and all too often forget.

Hernandez renders these lives in full colour.

If you haven't, you should read this book.

1) "The black flies have come early this year and have bitten away all the beachcombers along the mouth of the Rouge River. Grandfather Heron watches amongst the reeds before silently flying to his hiding place."

2) "The next morning, dust from the bottom of the cereal box got caught in my eyes. I went to school squinting one eye and then the other, just so I wouldn't bump into anything. Mama always warned me not to act stupid, otherwise the school counsellor would bring me to her office. This counsellor, Mrs Rhodes, likes to collect brown-people things and put them up on her wall. Things like coolie hats, dashikis, masks. Next to these brown-people things are pictures of her and her sunburnt children wearing the coolie hats, dashikis, and masks. I really wanted to play with the tea set she got from Japan, but everyone warned me. Indian kids who go into that office with cereal dust in their eyes are referred to an eye doctor who diagnoses eye disease and gives you a prescription, which your parents can't afford, and the next thing you know, Children's Aid is all up in your parents' business wondering why they can't afford any medicated drops for their children's busted-up eyes. You walk in there a kid; you walk out of there a ward of the state. You can't trust them, coolie hat or no coolie hat."

3) "It was lunch time, and Laura held the magic letter h in her hand. Every letter makes a sound. Letters together make a word. Words together make a story. While she waited for the school's side doors to open so she could sneak in, she reviewed in her head all the words she would tell Ms Hina."

4) "Right beside Rouge Hill Public School is a community centre and hockey arena. Every day after school, families with lighter skin and two whole parents with two whole jobs drive to the ice rink for hockey lessons. Out of the minivans, their back windows illustrated with those family stickers: the largest stick figure, a father; the medium-sized one in a skirt, the mother; and so on to show everyone their three healthy children, their cat, their dog, emerge these perfect families, hockey gear and all, their ice skates clinking as they rush inside. We, the brown kids with one and one-half parents, with siblings from different dads we see only in photos; we who call our grandmothers Mom; we who touch our father's hands through Plexiglas; we wait for their fanfare to be over. We wait through the weekends of extracurricular activity for Mondays, when the Zamboni resurfaces the rink and leaves a pile of chemical-ridden 'snow' outside. This mountain-high remnant of the nuclear family was what we delighted in, mid-winter, climbing to the top in our second-hand sneakers and sliding down on garbage bags. This shadow of the outlines we would never live up to is what we took in handfuls, to throw at each other in fits of laughter and joy."

5) "It was after Daddy had stormed out, after what little twilight was left in the sky transformed from lavender to darkness, that Laura came out of her stupor. All the switches on her body came back on. She swallowed hard. She blinked even harder, realizing she hadn't in a while. She felt a soreness on her chin. She remembered but didn't remember. The room came into focus. Slowly. The fog dissipated, and the details of the apartment became clearer. Where she was situated within the room became clearer. This is my body. This is tomato sauce in my hair. These are my legs. I am sitting on the carpet. I am wet. It is dark outside. I am alone, again."

6) "On that Saturday when Bing led me away from the playground and our sunbathing moms to his secret place in Port Union Commons, knew he was going to leave me. 'Here.' Bing held out his hand. I took it. Like my daddy's buck, he made eye contact with me and made a silent message between our palms. A realization. He led me through a graffiti-filled tunnel to the rocks and lake. A white pagoda stood at the edge, waves crashing into the shore. Change. Inside the pagoda, a fresh patch of concrete and four orange barriers kept people from the wet surface. 'Someone dug a hole here last summer, so they're repairing it,' Bing told me. Bing crossed the orange barrier and took me with him. He gingerly touched the wet concrete. 'If we write our names, people hundreds of years from now will know we were here.' You know someone is leaving when they start taking pictures with their minds of everything around them."