It’s Caleb. She scrambles to her feet and hastily wraps the knife in a motel washcloth.
“Sarah?”
She darts out of the bathroom. A key scrapes in the lock as she stuffs the knife at the bottom of her bag. Her chest tightens, her legs tense. Will he be angry? Will he be sullen? Will he be affectionate?
“Sarah, I’m opening the door, okay? I just want to check if you’re all right.”
Caleb. It’s only Caleb. Not Ben. “Coming!” she calls out.
She turns on the light and picks her way around the broken glass glittering on the carpet, praying she doesn’t cut her feet open. The door jams on the chain lock. Caleb swears. “Hang on, I’ll get it,” she says. She slides the lock. The door bursts open, and winter wind slices through her pajamas to her already goose-bumped skin.
Caleb’s masked figure fills the doorway, backlit by his truck headlights. He’s holding a parka and a pair of lace-up boots. Sarah suddenly realizes she’s not wearing a mask. He’s seen her face now.
“Fuckers squealed out of here as soon as they saw me driving down.” His fists clench in the parka’s faux-fur hood.
“Who were they?”
“Hard to say with their masks on. Jerry or someone at the garage must’ve said something. They broke the windows in every unit. You’re going to have to come up to the house.”
“No, it’s?—”
The intensity in his eyes cuts her off. Her heart pounds, telling her to run, either away from or toward him.
“Here.” Caleb thrusts out the parka and boots, and Sarah’s resolve crumbles. Nice wins, at least tonight. “They’re Elijah’s. He’s smaller than me.” She pulls on a pair of clean socks while he replaces the phone receiver in its cradle. Her feet swim in the boots, and the coat smells alarmingly masculine, like cedar and paint thinner.
“Got anything in the bathroom?”
“Wait—” she starts, but he’s already crossing the carpet. He returns with her damp mask and hoodie. She lunges for the hoodie, afraid he’ll question the bloodstain, but he doesn’t break his stride. He sweeps the door key from the dresser, and she has no choice but to stuff the rest of her things in her backpack.
Caleb holds the door open and takes the backpack as she passes. In the parking lot, tire tracks etch the amber-spattered snow. She can’t tell if it’s beer or urine, or both. Caleb locks the door to the unit and says, “Go straight to the truck. No, don’t look back.”
“What?” She looks; she can’t help it.
Someone has spray-paintedCHINK VIRUSon the door in fierce red letters.
Caleb exhales. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Sarah swallows. She has no history with the word itself. All of her racist experiences in Toronto have been micro-aggressions, like Officer Isaac commenting on her name. Digs so subtle she can never be sure if she imagined them or not. Story of her life.
But the overtness of this hate stuns her. In Sweetside, the wolves don’t bother with sheep’s clothing, and she’s not sure which is worse. She’s read the news stories of increasing racist attacks, yes, but they always seem to happen outside her comfortable boundaries. Outside the city, outside the province, outside the country.
An itch spreads between her shoulder blades, reminding her she’s wearing a target she can’t take off, can’t hide with makeup or clothing. Being female and Asian, she has to wear masks of a different kind. A friendly, innocent smile. Clothes that don’t draw too much attention. A casual speech pattern, dropping the Gs from her verbs and softening her Ts, to show she’s not one ofthem. She’s fromToronno, not Toronto, and she was headin’ to Timmins to visit her bro. She’s harmless. Not worth the trouble.
It’s like living with Ben all over again.
“No, it’s not okay.” Caleb stalks over to the truck and opens the passenger door for her.
Sarah’s reflexes kick in, and she feels the need to smooth his temper’s jagged edges. “It is, really. No one’s ever called me that before. It just makes me laugh. Like, seriously, what decade are we living in?”
“The current one, unfortunately. Here.” Caleb thrusts her hoodie and mask into her hands, thankfully too rankled to scrutinize them. She hooks the elastic over her ears, and her shoulders loosen as soon as her face is covered.
It only takes a few minutes for the truck to roll up the drive to the house. Sarah searches the windows for the figure she’d seen earlier. No one lurks behind the panes. The only silhouette is that of the woods behind the house. Graham had raved about seeing stars up north, but tonight, the sky is overcast. All she can see is dark against dark, the tree-shaped shadows swaying as one, breathing in an irregular rhythm.
Caleb pulls the truck into what looks like a converted carriage house. Inside, it’s a normal suburban garage, which Sarah finds reassuring. Power tools hang on a pegboard over a workbench, and a spool of heavy-duty plastic sheeting leans against a chest freezer. Industrial-sized bottles of bleach and boxes of latex gloves are stacked on a shelf. It’s no less than what everyone has these days in a pandemic.
She follows Caleb out of the garage, clutching her damp hoodie. Caleb carries her backpack. The house seems bigger now she’s standing below its gables, monstrous by Toronto standards, and unnecessarily large for two—now three—people. The woods behind it reach up to the sky. These are the trees from the motel paintings, dark and sinister, moving constantly in the wind.
“Welcome to Sweetside Manor,” Caleb announces, his voice droll. He climbs the porch’s front steps and holds the door open. “I didn’t name the place, by the way. Some ancestor with a taste for grandeur and colonization.”
