Summary
Laura
The children are playing at recess and a fancy, pretty girl named Clara asks Laura why her hair is so oily. She then announces loudly that Laura must be new. Laura says nothing but Sylvie comes over and asks her what her name is. Laura tells her, and Sylvie and Clara snipe at each other.
Laura makes her way into the school through the side entrance. It is nice and quiet inside. She can see an open door and hear music, so she walks over to where Ms. Hina is standing in her room. A few parents drink coffee and toddlers play.
Ms. Hina compliments her My Little Pony bag and Laura is pleased to hear that Ms. Hina’s favorite is also Minty. Ms. Hina asks to see her lunch bag, which is empty, and says that there are a few extra muffins that the parents made earlier.
Laura haltingly tells Ms. Hina that her father said she eats babies. Ms. Hina asks Laura if she thinks that is true and Laura says no. Laura asks why she wears what she does, and Ms. Hina replies that it is her hijab and reminds her of who she is.
Ms. Hina goes to the storage cabinet and brings back a foam letter “h.” She tells Laura the sound it makes and says that letters make words and words make stories. She asks if Laura might keep the letter and think of a few words that it begins, and then bring it back. Laura is excited about this.
Bing
The Principal is talking to Edna, Bing’s mother, while Bing listens. He recounts the “incident” Bing had on the bus earlier but leaves out numerous details. Bing thinks about how he was opening a granola bar when Aidan Redden slapped the back of his head and called him a “fat fuck” (63). Bing reached down onto the ground to get it, and Cole Hester stepped on his hand. Mrs. Emerson told them all to calm down but did nothing from the front of the bus. The boys continued to bother Bing until Sylvie told them to stop and gave him her sweater when she saw what had happened—he’d pooped his pants.
Bing tells Ma this after they leave. She is visibly upset and is immensely kind to him—even more so than normal—for the rest of the day, watching TV with him and caressing him and telling him how much he is loved.
Bing will never forget those boys, nor how Sylvie stood up to them, nor how reduced the Principal’s account of the cruelty was.
Sylvie
Mama has another emergency but Mr. George is not home so Sylvie will need to stay with someone else while Mama and Johnny and Daddy go to the hospital clinic. As they are waiting to transfer buses Sylvie espies the Incredible Nails Salon, where her friend Bing’s mom works.
Sylvie tells Mama this as she and Bing wave to each other. They walk over to the salon and Edna comes over to Mama when she sees her and gives her Sylvie’s clean sweater. The women exchange a wordless understanding and before Sylvie knows it she is able to spend the whole day with Bing.
Bing tells Sylvie to wait until one of the white ladies comes in and then they can sneak away. They eventually do so and Bing says they are going to say hello to Ivana. Ivana has an air “like she knew everyone either hated her or wanted her, or both” (68). She is smoking outside the Oasis Spa where she works.
She greets Bing and shows him a pair of sunglasses she got from one of the last men who came in there. Sometimes they leave things and don’t want to come back to get them because they’re embarrassed they came for a “tug.” Bing puts the glasses on his face and Ivana shows them a lighter with a woman on it whose breasts light up when you click it. She gives it to the intrigued Sylvie.
When Sylvie goes home, she puts it in her Forever Box. This box made up for a birthday present Johnny ruined: a puzzle she had been working hard on; Johnny destroyed, ate, and vomited parts of it. Sylvie had been so angry and felt it was unfair because she wanted to finish her puzzle. Johnny cried and cried when Sylvie yelled. That night, Mama gave her the box and this was hers only and told her no one would ever touch it.
Sylvie remembers how her family was kicked out of the community housing townhome complex because of Daddy’s gambling. That last summer was a time of “holes being burned into the entire neighborhood” (72) because of the drugs. The white trash people would gather, laugh, and whisper, exchanging money and punches. Mitchell, who lived next door, had a hole bored right through his teeth. An explosion happened because of the meth and Mitchell’s skin was burned to a crisp.
Sylvie also remembered the cops in the cul-de-sac, and Victor, a Black neighborhood kid. Victor, who was six-three, always let Johnny climb up his legs and hang like a monkey. He was a talented artist who sketched people’s portraits in his notebook. Sylvie loved watching him. The neighborhood missed him when he got his grant to paint the Orton Park Bridge. Sylvie watched while he worked and he told her that the squares of concrete needed pictures. He was accepted to OCAD University that summer.
When Mitchell’s meth operation blew up, though, the police saw Victor in the cul-de-sac and said they needed to talk to him. Sylvie was shocked at how different he became, for he utterly turned himself off and his eyes went blank. The police frisked him and unscrewed his paint bottles and eventually arrested him, though no one knew what for. Because he was arrested he could not go to school. He came back to the housing complex and drew bridges in his sketchbook.
Sylvie goes to the common area to see “slutty” Christy, who is often there. Christy’s arms are covered in tattoos. She likes to sit down and ask what Sylvie has for her today, which means she wants Sylvie to tell her stories.
Sylvie begins a story about the orangutans at the zoo. She uses the first person, talking about being a baby and how protective her mom was. Her mom was transferred to the San Diego Zoo. Sylvie is about to explain more but Mama comes in, looking disapprovingly at Christy.
One day, Sylvie and Mr. George had gone to the dollar store, and Sylvie had loose change. He held her hand as they crossed the street and she wished she had a grandpa who would take her to the store and let her get what she wanted. Sylvie explored the cosmetics aisle and saw the “Super Secret” aisle with condoms and pregnancy tests.
While they were there, a white lady in a muumuu started pushing a man with a UFC bandanna and leather jacket into shelves. They yelled at each other. Mr. George could always recognize a good Scarborough fight, so he led Sylvie to the back of the store and they crouched down and watched. The hysterical cashier called for the manager and police sirens began blaring.
People waiting in line had seen it all before, though, and just wanted to check out even as the fighting continued. By the time the lady and man were cuffed and escorted out, Sylvie had decided on a light-up yo-yo. It was like nothing had ever happened.
Cory
Cory and Laura are walking to the No Frills grocery store and they pass the Everything Taste Good Caribbean restaurant. The Black woman outside looks at them and Cory wonders what she will ask from them, but she only asks if they want some free chicken because the freezer system went out and needs to be fixed. The woman answers a phone call while Cory waits for the chicken. A boy pokes his head out and Winsum yells at him because she is on the phone. As she begins to package up the chicken she complains about hiring family to work here and laughs that her “chef” nephew ought to get a degree in common sense.
Cory hurries Laura away with their chicken, telling her they better be fast since free food will draw more Black people. Laura tells him she needs a Halloween costume.
At the literacy center, Laura eats Cheerios while Cory sits. Ms. Hina comes over and he groans inwardly. She tells him Laura seems to like the fairy costume. As she talks, Cory reminisces about how in the old days, he and his buddies wouldn’t have stood for these sneaky “towelheads” and would have taken a bat to the center like they did at the Scarborough Town Centre food court. This woman would have known her place, and he and his boys would get free food, scare people, drink, smoke, and toast their good fortune.
Ms. Hina tells him he can take the costume and he snatches it, smarting that she used his name which such audacity.
Laura
Laura knows a few “h” words now. She knows “Happy” from “Happy Birthday” that the class sang to her a few days ago; she did not even know it was her birthday. She knows “Halloween,” which is coming up. She knows “have” because Clara, the snobby girl, told her Rouge Hill is a “have-not” school.
She comes to the center at lunch and Ms. Hina procures a banana and granola bar for her. Laura brings out the foam letter and Ms. Hina delightedly asks what she came up with. Laura tells her and Ms. Hina high-fives her. She gives Laura a “u” next.
Bing
It is custom in the Philippines to trace someone’s foot on a piece of paper and then use it while shoe-shopping so the person does not need to come. Bing had found a Ziploc bag of his father’s foot tracings and that was the first time he realized how much he missed him. He cried and cried.
He remembers the novena being sung in honor of his uncle’s death and how the repetitiveness of the rosary prolonged the sorrow and made everyone wail, releasing Tito Ferdie. Thus, Bing cried to release his father, feeling that it was right to treat their parting as a death of sorts.
Bing dreams of becoming the first Filipino country music star. He wears his kamiseta and underwear and stands before the washroom mirror and sings, imagining himself thin and handsome. His father would recover from being mentally ill and have a job and regret his past behavior and would see his son on the screen and proudly tell everyone in the bar that this was his son. Everyone would be amazed and then the two of them would reunite and do all the fun things they used to. Bing loves this fantasy.
Another fantasy is brewing, though. It is Halloween and Ma allows Bing to be a priest and calls him Father Bernard. Before the bell that morning Bing pretends to give Sylvie communion and she giggles, obliging. Laura, wearing a fairy costume, asks for some of the haw flakes. He does this for all the kids until they are out.
Edna pulls out a red lipstick before they have to go to class; she draws circles on Sylvie’s cheeks because she is Raggedy Ann. She asks Laura, who is watching, if she wants some. Laura happily assents and gets red lipstick and cheeks. Bing privately wishes he could have some as well.
Bing’s Ma whispers into his ear, “Not here,” and suddenly Bing knows she knows—knows about her heels out of place, her dresses hanging wrongly on the hangers, the used lipstick tubes. He looks up and she is smiling, teary-eyed, at him.
Daily Report
Hina reports that Halloween was a blast despite the rain. She mentions how she has been talking with Mrs. Rhodes about Bing’s potential giftedness. She also relates with affection how sweet Bing and Sylvie were with Laura, letting her make friendship bracelets with them.
Jane Fulton’s Email
Jane writes that she is unsure why Hina’s Halloween numbers were low, as Halloween is a big attendance day for most of the centers, and wonders if Hina was able to flyer the area. Also, she writes that she thought she saw Hina at an Indian Cultural Event with the NDP. She isn’t totally sure if it was her, but she cautions that “the centres pride themselves on being non-political zones” and especially since the centers are the pride of the Liberal Party, she wants to “ensure that your NDP sentiments won’t hurt the neutrality of your workplace” (97). Finally, she says she is concerned about the grocery bills because it seems like there are a lot of requests for cereal and milk and she wants to make sure people aren’t expecting a breakfast program.
Hina’s Email
Hina thanks her for the feedback and says she will happily start flyering when she understands how she will be compensated for this labor; perhaps, she suggests, they can talk to their union representative about it together.
She says the footage Jane saw was of her cousin Raj, but perhaps she was confused since there were many South Asians in attendance. The “Indian Cultural Event” was a fundraiser for “Because I Am A Girl,” an international movement to end gender inequality. She concludes, “my personal time is my own and is very important to me—as is my hijab. You can rest assured that my dangerous NDP views won’t be heard at the centre. J” (99).
Analysis
Much of this section features the three central child narrators of Laura, Bing, and Sylvie. Their voices make their circumstances and their experiences more immediate and impactful. They see things that the adults around them do not and have more open, tolerant views of the world, such as when Laura tells Ms. Hina that she does not think that the Muslim woman “eat[s] babies” (61) even though her father says so.
Bing, perhaps the most perspicacious of all the characters, recognizes that when the Principal is recounting what happened to Bing on the bus, he is trying to fashion a narrative that does not implicate the shortcomings of school officials and the cruelty of the students, who mostly go unpunished. Bing is intuitive and insightful, and he has a longer view of the things he experiences as a child—“For the rest of my life I will remember the names of Cole Hester and Aidan Redden. Their faces and names are etched on my chest. I will remember the bus driver who saw it all through the rear-view mirror, his eyes looking listlessly at me as I cried for help. I will remember Mrs. Emerson and her empty orders. I will remember Principal Sankiewicz and his abridged version of what happened to me” (65). He also is mature enough to know that it is okay to grieve his father and to wish things had turned out differently, but that he must acknowledge the parting, which felt “like a death” (90).
Sylvie is less emotionally mature than Bing, but she is still a grounded, compassionate young woman. She feels anger towards her brother for messing up her birthday present and for generally taking most of her mother’s attention away from her, but she is not overly resentful and ends up comforting Johnny after yelling at him. She understands her mother’s struggles and does not complain or act out. This is a testament in part to Marie’s parenting, which is portrayed as sustaining, nurturing, and unceasingly loving regardless of the socioeconomic obstacles she faces.
And Marie is just one of the adults with grave obstacles in their paths. Edna works tirelessly at the nail salon to support her son after fleeing from her mentally ill husband. Cory, while unlikeable and unsympathetic for most of his vignettes due to his racism and hostility, still garners the reader’s compassion for his impoverished upbringing, the difficulties of single parenthood, the loss of his own dreams, and perhaps some undiagnosed but very palpable anger or depression issues.
Hernandez’s nonjudgmental representation of her characters is one of the things critics laud the most about Scarborough; for example, Jonathan Valelly says that “the novel explodes stereotypes about Scarborough’s working poor, disabled, and racialized folks by giving the reader access to the psychic pain and hyperspecific logics of survival that motivate her characters,” and “Hernandez goes deeper than most writers dare when it comes to the complexities of racial and cultural violences, unafraid to unpack the explicit and implicit prejudices that inform her characters’ behaviours, white and racialized alike. There are many disheartening moments in this book, where the odds are stacked against just about everyone. But for each instance of unnecessary hostility or institutional suffocation, there are slices of solidarity across social position and background, episodes of superhuman resilience.”
