So when you climbed, he said, you had to go careful. You had to watch your older brother and follow close his moves. You had to think back on every step before you took it. Remembering hard the whole way up. ... "And if you can’t memory right," he said, "you lose."
In the book's opening, Michael recounts the time his older brother brought him to a hydroelectric pole they could climb to get a good view of the city. In this passage, taken from the book's prologue, Michael recalls his brother's lesson about closely following his lead to avoid disaster. Although Francis is talking about the danger of being electrocuted, the scene is significant because it represents the brothers' relationship in microcosm and sets up the trajectory of the novel. As the narrative progresses, Michael will finally face painful and tender memories about his brother, using the power of his memory to come to terms with Francis's death at the hands of the police.
We had been stopped by the cops before. There was a routine to it all: we knew that if you carefully played along you’d eventually be released, if not with your dignity, then at least with your skin. But that night we sensed an urgency we hadn’t experienced before. With the blinding headlights upon me, I couldn’t process the commands.
After Michael and Francis witness Anton getting gunned down, the boys run on Francis's command. They are soon caught by the police, who pull their cruisers to a screeching halt and blind the boys with lights. In this passage, Michael comments on how, as a young Black male, he is accustomed to being stopped by the police and knows how to play along by bending to their authority, even if it means some loss of dignity. This time, however, the fear of being confused with the suspects who shot Anton registers in Michael as an urgent panic and inclination to dissociate from the commands being shouted at him. The passage is significant because it speaks to how the police could easily misinterpret the manifestation of Michael's fear as guilt or reason for suspicion.
The world around us was named Scarborough. It had once been called “Scarberia,” a wasteland on the outskirts of a sprawling city. But now, as we were growing up in the early ’80s, in the heated language of a changing nation, we heard it called other names: Scarlem, Scarbistan. We lived in Scar-bro, a suburb that had mushroomed up and yellowed, browned, and blackened into life.
In this passage, Michael explains to the reader how the area in which he grew up is known for its cultural diversity, a reputation that is both mocked and celebrated. Originally a rural farmland east of Toronto, nicknamed Scarberia (as in "Siberia") due to its remoteness, with the post-WWII immigration boom Scarborough came to be known by other names that referred to its high proportion of Black and Middle Eastern residents. By Michael's childhood, the area takes on the moniker Scar-bro, which references the early hip-hop-influenced culture of Francis and his friends at Desirea's. This impression of Scarborough and its youth culture is significant because it contributes to the atmosphere of racial profiling and harassment carried out by police who unfairly associate hip-hop style with criminality and violence.
Always, there were stories on TV and in the papers of gangs, killings in bad neighborhoods, predators roaming close. One morning, I peered with Francis into a newspaper box to read a headline about the latest terror and caught in the glass the reflection of our own faces.
As impressionable children, Michael and Francis are liable to be influenced by what they see on the TV or read in the papers. With the media's focus on sensationalized stories of crime, Michael grows up in fear of the predators and gangsters supposedly roaming his neighborhood. In this passage, Michael hints at how the criminals featured in the papers were often Black men. The quote is significant because it suggests how Michael and Francis eventually shifted from associating themselves with the victims of crime to realizing that others would discriminate against them on the basis of race and imagine them as the perpetrators.
“You know,” he said, “you’ve got to work on things. … Like stepping into Desirea’s the way you did. Like always looking so unsure. You’ve got to be cooler about things, and not put everything out on your face all the time. You’ve got to carry yourself better and think about your look. Doesn’t matter how poor you are.”
Following Anton's shooting, Francis leaves his mother's house and begins staying in the back of Desirea's. When Michael goes to visit his brother, Francis takes him out for a meal that Michael is surprised he is able to pay for. In this passage, Francis insists that Michael learn how to carry himself more confidently and not display the uncertainty on his face. The passage is significant because it captures Francis's ambivalence toward having to be a role model to his brother in the void left by their absent father. While Francis is evidently embarrassed by Michael's lack of coolness, he has a sincere desire to mentor Michael and teach him to carry himself like a man.
In Desirea’s, you postured but you also played. You showed up every one of your dictated roles and fates. Our parents had come from Trinidad and Jamaica and Barbados, from Sri Lanka and Poland and Somalia and Vietnam. They worked shit jobs, struggled with rent, were chronically tired, and often pushed just as chronically tired notions about identity and respectability. But in Desirea’s, different styles and kinships were possible. You found new language, you caught the gestures, you kept the meanings close as skin.
Although Ruth believes Desirea's to be a hangout for criminals, she fails to understand its cultural significance to the children of immigrants in Scarborough. In this passage, Michael comments on how the barbershop was more than a business. A refuge for first-generation Canadians seeking to establish identities separate from those of their hard-working immigrant parents, Desirea's is a cultural hub where young people can express and define themselves as independent.
Would you agree that Francis had a bit of a reputation? Did he sometimes exhibit unpredictable moods? Would you agree, Michael, that your brother possessed a history of violence?
Following Francis's shooting at Desirea's, Michael and the other witnesses take part in the police investigation into the killing. In this passage, Michael paraphrases the questions the police asked him. These questions are significant because they are intended to make Michael submit to the police's narrative about his brother. By conceding that Francis had a reputation for being unpredictable or violent, Michael would help the police make it seem as though Francis was not an innocent young man but a violent individual.
Francis had always protected me. It was his instinct. He saw the vulnerability, understood it all too well. But in that final moment in Desirea's, he had tried to protect another. When a cop with his hand on his holstered gun grabbed Jelly and tried to pull him away, Francis had panicked. "Don't touch him," he'd said, reaching to still the weapon. It was a gesture with history, but unreadable by those around him holding power. The authorities had investigated, interviewed witnesses, pronounced their conclusions. "They called it lawful," I told Aisha. And what else could we do but each look away?
A decade after his brother's death, Michael finally comes to terms with the police killing. In this passage, he recalls how the gesture Francis made was interpreted completely differently by the people who knew him and the police who feared him. While Michael saw Francis's attempt to protect Jelly from being hurt by a cop as akin to the time Francis held a knife to protect Michael from Scatter, the police saw it as a threat to a police officer and opened fire on Francis immediately. Powerless to convince the cops that they were wrong to perceive Francis as such a threat, Michael and his family and friends simply had to accept the police's conclusion that the shooting was warranted.
I return to Mother's stretcher, and she's sitting up now, wearing a hospital gown as neatly as she can make it seem. When she reads my face, she smooths her hair, sits up straight, the paper beneath her making soft crinkling sounds. "It is a new day," she says firmly.
After a night in the hospital following being struck by a car, Ruth wakes up and addresses her son. Michael has spent the night thinking back on Francis's killing, finally confronting the trauma of the event. It seems the night has been transformative for Ruth too, as she says with authority that "it is a new day." Her statement is significant because, after so much "complicated grief" and denial, she and Michael are ready to move out of the shadow cast by Francis's killing and look forward with optimism.
"Can we visit it soon?" Aisha asks. "It's supposed to be warm this weekend." [...] "What do you say?" Aisha presses. "The pathway down should be clear enough to get close to the creek. We'll be sure to go slow, Ruth. Maybe we could borrow a wheelchair. Jelly? Are you in?"
The novel ends with Michael and Ruth leaving the hospital to find Aisha and Jelly waiting with the same wildflowers Aisha earlier saw Ruth picking in the Rouge. The four go back to Ruth's townhouse and have food together while listening to music. In this passage, Aisha enthusiastically presses the others to agree to a plan to visit the Rouge as soon as they can. With this plan, Chariandy ends the book on a note of optimism. The spring melt having cleared away, the path down to the "scar of green" that has always been a place of serenity is now open. The coming of spring suggests the group has made it through the worst of their grief and are ready to enter a warmer, sunnier, more optimistic period of renewal.
