Queen of the Crows

by Harmony Wagner

  © 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  P.O. Box 22024

  Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

  C1A 9J2

  acornpresscanada.com

  Edited by Penelope Jackson

  Copy edit by Laurie Brinklow

  Cover and poster design by Jason Rogerson

  Feather illustration by Matt Reid

  Photography by PixbyLorne

  eBook design by Joseph Muise

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Wagner, Harmony, author

  Queen of the crows / Harmony Wagner.

  Based on short film with same name.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927502-68-6 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-927502-73-0 (html)

  I. Title.

  PS8645.A385Q44 2016 jC813’.6 C2016-906470-0

  C2016-906471-9

  The publisher acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts Block Grant Program and the support of the Province of Prince Edward Island.

  for A.V.R

  Caw! Caw!

  Crows darted and flapped outside the window, waking Elsa at dawn.

  She tried to sense the presence of someone else in the house. It felt still and empty.

  Elsa crept down the hall and glanced down the stairs. No shoes by the door. She simultaneously felt relief and despair. Sometimes, when she saw her mother’s high heels sprawled there, accompanied by a pair of big boots, she knew not to continue down the hall.

  But with no shoes there at all, there was still hope. She crept quietly towards her mother’s door and peeked around. The messy bed was still empty. The weight of the situation pulled down on her heart, pushing out a loud sigh. Elsa quietly made the bed.

  Her mother had been gone for four days now. It wasn’t the first time she had disappeared, though no one else knew that. But this was the longest she had ever been gone. Elsa had managed to go to school and act normal, but sooner or later she knew someone would figure out what was going on, and then what? She wasn’t willing to find out.

  The dim light outside cast a grey-blue shade over the kitchen. Elsa pulled the empty peanut butter jar down from the cupboard and scraped the last bits out with a spoon. She opened the fridge. The harsh glare of light hurt her eyes. A dilapidated bread bag and egg carton sat lonely in the otherwise empty, dirty fridge. She ceremoniously pulled her last meal out onto the counter. With no butter or oil left for scrambled, she put on a little pot of water to poach the egg. As she waited, she fished into the bowels of the bag. After three days of eating only two eggs and a piece of bread per day, she was down to the two sad-looking heel-ends of the loaf.

  Out in the yard there was a flurry of black in the grey morning.

  Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!

  Three big crows swooped and darted at a small, mangy-looking crow that had landed with a pizza crust in its beak. The big crows pecked at the small crow to steal the prize.

  Caw! Caw! Wings flapped and black bodies bounced around in the light snow.

  “Hey!” shouted Elsa as she opened the back door. A big crow snatched up the pizza crust and flew off. The others followed, leaving the sad little crow looking at her with a tilt of his head.

  “Sorry,” she said, her skin bracing at the cold late November air. “I was just trying to help.”

  The crow looked straight at her. Its head tilted again slightly. Elsa looked down at the two bread rinds in her hands.

  “Here.” She gently tossed a piece towards the crow. She’d never loved the crusts anyway, especially not the cheap white spongy kind. The awkward shape of the bread wobbled in the wind and didn’t make it past the deck.

  Elsa closed the door and dropped her egg in the boiling water. She put her heel of bread in the toaster. She knew she was going to be hungry either way, so why not help out a fellow straggler? The crow gazed cautiously through the glass of the door, then hopped up onto the stairs of the deck and pecked voraciously at the bread.

  Elsa sat at the little kitchen table dipping her dry toast into the warm gooiness of the egg. She finished up her homework assignment, slowly chewing the precious bites of her meagre breakfast. Her heart lifted a little bit watching the crow gulp down her gift. But she sighed at the thought of the day ahead of her.

  In addition to food, she was out of clean clothes. She hunted the couch, cupboards, and her mother’s dresser for any stash spots of spare change. Nothing.

  She needed money for the laundromat. She knew coming to school in the same old dirty clothes might tip off the adults that something was up. Not that Mom actually did the laundry. Elsa had been handling that, the shopping, and pretty much everything else since she was nine. As she rooted through her mother’s drawers, she knew she had to do her best to keep a low profile. She was playing the long game. She could do this. And Mom would be back. Eventually.

  It was always a double-edged sword when Mom returned. For a while there would be a flurry of hugs, compliments, rambunctious adventures, maybe even some ridiculous gifts they couldn’t afford and then…the crash. Elsa longed for those little windows of happy attention. But she also knew they came with a cost. Mom would soon be flat in her bed staring at the wall. Elsa would know where she was, but she didn’t really get to have her, just the shape of a body under those messy blankets.

  Elsa sifted through the shirts in the drawer. Most of them were obviously too big or too sexy for an eleven-year-old. She shut the drawer with a thud. Then she spied a bulging plastic bag from a thrift store in the corner of the room. She dumped it out onto the bed and rummaged through the clothes.

  Mom spending money they didn’t have was always one of the signs that she was going to go on an upswing. So was her provocative dressing. Elsa batted aside a bunch of lacey leopardskin stuff and saw an orange-and-white striped shirt with a little blue anchor on the chest. Under that was a small pair of cotton lavender pants. She felt a flicker of delight that Mom had been thinking of her, too, as she tried them on. The pants were a little tight, but they would have to do. She took off the shirt to cut off the price tag. It still smelled like a thrift store, but it was better than the ketchup- and grass-stained options in her room. She slipped it back on and looked at herself in her mother’s mirror. She could almost see her future woman self, about to push out from under her skin.

  As hard as this had been, she felt proud of what she had accomplished so far. Now it was time to get outside. She still had an hour before school and she had work to do.

  With her last big blue plastic bag in hand, she locked the front door.

  Caw! A crow cawed from the tree across the street.

  Elsa looked up to see the crow spread open its wings as it clutched the branch. Two feathers were missing from its right wing.

  I wonder if it’s the same crow?

  Elsa gave it a little smile and a small tilt of her head.

  Crllllll, chirped the bird.

  Elsa had always wondered what it meant when crows made that throat-rolling sound. Maybe it meant “thanks.” She smirked and warmed a little from the thought as she tucked her cold bare hands into the sleeves of her jacket.

  One of Elsa’s tricks was waking early and collecting returnable bottles and cans from the public trash cans
on the way to and from school. She always went through the park near her house first. There were lots of spots where she could collect without anyone seeing her, and she was keenly aware that staying under the radar was in her best interest.

  Her mother didn’t do well with parent-teacher interviews. Over the years there had been plenty of visits from cops, social workers, and psychologists, all asking Elsa leading questions, and she knew where they headed: being separated from her mom. Dana wasn’t the most perfect woman in the world, but Elsa burned with anger at the thought that strangers could take away her own mother.

  She checked over her shoulder and then stuffed a few pop cans into her bag. The crows cawed loudly in the trees overhead as the sun burst out from behind the low clouds on the horizon.

  Elsa loved this park. The river, the trees, and the thousands of crows that roosted in them over the winter. This was the place where she felt at home. Where she felt peace.

  After visiting all her usual trashcans, her bag was a quarter full. Normally, she would stash it in the woods and then check them all again on the way home from school. But desperate times called for desperate measures. She decided to carry on closer to school to see if she could find a bit more so she would be able to cash it in after school. A stuffed-to-the-gills bag was worth around five dollars. And she wanted to eat something other than bread and eggs tonight.

  She took the quietest path she could think of. Small neighbourhood streets with as little car traffic as possible. The last thing she needed was a teacher or classmate to drive by and see her picking through the garbage.

  She knew it was recycling day on Thursdays starting on Garden Street. She scurried to find pay dirt. Garden Street was lined with blue bags in front of every house. It was a run-down side street in a low-income neighbourhood. She knew no one would bat an eye at her picking through the recycling. Unfortunately, people in this neighbourhood often kept their returnables so they could cash them in themselves.

  The sun was already high and the city was waking up so she worked quickly, scanning the bags that had the most valuable containers. She opened a few and fished through the bag for various things of value. Pop cans, beer cans, juice cartons, bottles of all sorts. On high alert, she winnowed through, trying not to get dirty. Also, she had seen hypodermic needles in a bag on this street one time.

  Dana! Why do you put me through this?

  Elsa worked fast, her stomach clenched. She turned her back as a car passed. Despite her high stress, she remained true to the code of all gleaners: never rip the bag. She and all the other folks who sifted through other people’s recyclables for a living knew not to mess with a good thing. Ripping the bags annoyed the people who put this free money out on the streets. The cold wind bit at her hands as she worked at the knot in the plastic.

  You know we’re coming; why don’t you just leave them open for us?!

  Elsa could taste bile at the back of her throat. Was it the nerves, the hunger, or the rage? Probably all three. She stuffed her own bag full and tied it up. Now to stash it somewhere and just hope to dear god no other gleaner found it while she was stuck at school. She erased that thought. She couldn’t even bear to think of it. Quickly, she scuttled across the main road and headed up to the part of Garden Street that became more industrial. She found a set of stairs in the alley behind an empty building. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, she shoved her blue bag underneath the concrete platform. She leaned a ratty old piece of plywood over it and hoped it would be there when she got back.

  Without her load, Elsa could quicken her pace. She always tried to get to school early. Being late drew attention. As she neared the next main road, she saw another gleaner bent over a blue bag. The old woman looked up from her squat position and smiled with recognition.

  “Hallo!” she beamed and waved her tiny little gloved hand with the fingers cut out.

  Elsa’s throat tightened at the realization that this was the first time anyone had smiled at her all week.

  “Hello!” smiled Elsa.

  The woman’s beaming face brightened even more. As if she, too, was hungry for the nourishment of really being seen.

  The woman was the grandmother of a Karen family that had come to the city as refugees from Burma that fall. Her grandson, Eh Ta Taw, was in Elsa’s class.

  They were immediately recognizable when they first arrived because, first of all, the city was small and not very multicultural. But they especially stood out to Elsa because they wore such brightly coloured clothing and walked down the road as a group in single file, with the men at the front. Another thing she had noticed immediately was how they gleaned with no shame in their hearts.

  Elsa often thought about how cold and isolated they must have felt coming here. The boy in her class was so quiet and no one talked to him. A few weeks after he arrived, Elsa drew him a card with a maple leaf on it that said “Welcome to Canada,” but she had been razzed to no end for having a crush on him when the mean girls found out.

  Then one very windy day last month, Elsa had seen the grandmother trying to carry two very full bags of cans and bottles down the street. The tiny woman and the big bags were being blown around with such force it was almost comical. The woman was clearly unable to carry both bags into the force of the wind, but also seemed determined not to sacrifice the value of a bag by putting one down. So instead she squinted and heaved, leaning into the gusts that whipped the heavy bags around her tiny body, making very little headway at all.

  Elsa ran across the street and helped carry one of the bags a few blocks to their apartment above a store. The woman had giddily tried to use the little English she knew and smiled glowingly at Elsa the whole way there. It was as if by carrying the bag, Elsa had also lifted some of the burden of being invisible.

  Elsa wished she could remember the woman’s name. That would have blown that beaming smile right off her head. Instead she pointed to her own chest and tapped.

  “I’m Elsa.”

  The old woman’s eyes sparkled with joy.

  “My name…Pee Takaw Paw.” Her smile seemed to stretch to her ears.

  “Pee Takaw Paw,” repeated Elsa awkwardly. She didn’t pronounce it exactly right, but the woman nodded encouragingly anyway.

  They beamed and waved at each other from either side of the street, eyes glistening with the joy of being acknowledged, unable to break from each other’s gaze.

  In the distance the school bell rang.

  “Oh! I have to go to school now!

  “Go school yes,” the grandmother nodded warmly.

  Elsa turned up the street and the woman went back to rooting through her bag. As Elsa wiped the tears from her eyes, she tried to convince herself it was just from the wind.

  She sniffed her hand. It smelled garbagey. She braced against the cold as she rubbed her hands into the dusting of snow in the grass. Wiping it away, she blew on her hands to warm them. Her breath smelled like hunger and bile. She quickened her pace now, almost running to get to school on time. As she ran, she passed a cedar tree and broke off some of its leaves. She crumbled them in her hands to freshen their scent. As she neared the school she stopped at the gummy pine tree and picked off a bit of resin. She slipped it in her mouth. It tasted terrible, but she hoped the pine smell would cover the telltale scent of hunger. She rounded the corner and clambered up the stairs as the final bell rang.

  Elsa struggled to quiet her breath and slow her heart as she foisted her coat into her locker.

  “Try combing your hair sometime,” sniffed Breagh, the leader of the mean girls. Gabby and Lenore giggled by her side as they passed in the hall.

  Elsa looked in her mirror. She did look windblown. She quickly smoothed her hair and grabbed her rumpled old backpack and rushed into the class last. Ms. Witherspoon looked at the clock and watched Elsa settle into her seat. It was three past nine.

  “Okay, class,
let’s take a look at the math assignment from yesterday.”

  Elsa unzipped her backpack. It was empty. The homework was still sitting on the kitchen table. Elsa’s head fell into her hands. When she looked up all the other students had their assignments on their desks and Ms. Witherspoon was staring right at her.

  “Is there a problem, Elsa?”

  All eyes burrowed into her. Gabby and Lenore looked at Breagh with eyebrows raised. Breagh gave her famous little shoulder-bouncing sniff. Elsa tried to speak but nothing came out. She cleared her throat.

  “Um, no. I just forgot it at home.”

  Ms. Witherspoon’s gaze narrowed with disbelief. “Elsa, we have talked about this before.” She placed a fresh handout firmly on the desk, with a condescending smile, and said in a shrill voice, “We are just going to have to work a little harder, aren’t we?”

  If only you knew how hard I work!

  Elsa bit the inside of her cheeks and pushed her feelings way down. Instead of exploding, she stared blankly at the teacher because she knew it bothered her.

  Lunch hour had always been a problem. Today’s was going to be especially difficult. To make things worse, at precisely 11:50 a.m., in the midst of a quiet writing assignment, Elsa’s guts began not just to growl, but to howl at their emptiness.

  RrrrrrRRRRRRRaaaooollllllll!

  Ms. Witherspoon looked up. Elsa sank into her seat, trying to crush her stomach into silence, burying her face in her notebook.

  RRRRRReeeeeeeeoooooooooorrr.

  This time the students around her couldn’t help but snicker.

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled softly. She looked up at the clock. Nine more exhaustingly long minutes to go. The students went back to their writing.

  EerrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRrrrreeeee.

  Now everyone laughed. Even Ms. Witherspoon couldn’t keep a straight face.

  “Everything okay, Elsa?” she asked, mostly just to settle the others.

  NO. Everything is definitely NOT okay!