Ten Thousand Truths

by Susan White

  After Roger left, Amelia went into the pantry and made a peanut butter and banana sandwich. She put it on a tray along with a freshly baked molasses cookie. Then she walked to the fridge, poured a glass of chocolate milk, and added it to the tray.

  “They tease him because he is so fat,” Rachel spat at Amelia as she started peeling the potatoes for supper. “Maybe if you didn’t feed him all the time he would lose weight and it would be easier for him. You’re supposed to make things better for him, not make his problems worse!” Rachel’s anger took her by surprise—she was almost shaking with rage.

  Amelia put the tray down on the kitchen table and gave Rachel a long steady look before speaking.

  “Raymond has used food all his life to fill up a place that no amount of food will ever begin to fill. He came to me two years ago, abused and neglected, at a weight that was in danger of ending his life. Little by little, I have tried to fill those empty hurting places with a feeling of belonging and value. I will not take the pleasure of food away from him, but I will try to give him the things he needs to fill up the holes in his soul.” Amelia picked up the tray and left the room.

  Holes in his soul, thought Rachel. What would it take to fill the holes in mine? She finished peeling the potatoes, guiding each movement of the paring knife through the blur of her tear-filled eyes.

  A light snow covered the ground and flurries were falling as Rachel walked up the driveway on a day in late November. All day Rachel had dreaded coming home. She had been so angry this morning and a bad feeling had sat in the pit of her stomach all day like a heavy rock. As she rounded the turn and walked into the yard, she could see Mrs. Thompson’s purple PT Cruiser parked in the driveway. Amelia probably called her to come and get me, Rachel thought.

  “You are not my mother, Warty!” were the words she had screamed at Amelia this morning. She had followed that with “You’re just a disgusting wart-covered old woman!” She had just caught the look on Amelia’s face as she’d slammed the door behind her. The hurt she saw in Amelia’s eyes had haunted Rachel all day.

  I don’t blame her if she gets rid of me, Rachel thought as she threw her book bag on the veranda, called to the dogs, and headed down to the lake.

  Rachel threw Sam’s stick along the shore and walked as far as she could away from the dock. Even though it was freezing cold outside and her toes were starting to turn to icicles, she was determined to stay at the lake for her whole hour. It was a rule and she was going to follow it.

  When Rachel came up from her hour at the lake, she saw Mrs. Thompson walking to her car. Mrs. Thompson noticed her and beckoned her over. “Amelia said things are going quite well,” she said as Rachel reached the car. “If you keep having trouble in Math, Social Services will provide some tutoring money. And Amelia said you haven’t used your clothing allowance yet—I can come and take you to the city sometime if you want to get some new clothes.”

  Rachel nodded, confused, thinking, Isn’t she here to take me away? But Mrs. Thompson just finished her spiel, gave Rachel a half-hearted hug, and got in her car.

  As she watched the PT Cruiser pull away, Rachel let out a huge sigh of relief. She couldn’t believe that Mrs. Thompson hadn’t come to take her to another foster home. It didn’t even seem as if she knew about what happened this morning.

  Rachel watched the purple car until it turned off the driveway, then picked up her book bag and entered the house.

  Amelia was shoveling a walkway to the chicken shed. The snow was heavy and each time she lifted the shovel she was reminded of her age—fifty-five—not old, really, but she definitely wasn’t as young as she used to be. Her aching muscles were telling her that loud and clear. This was her thirty-first winter here, and even though she always tried to keep herself in the present and be grateful for the life she had, sometimes it hit her hard that she had been exiled to this place. Almost her entire life had been spent running this farm and caring for other people’s children. She had always tried to convince herself that she had chosen this life, and it wasn’t the horror of her face that had driven her to hide herself away. She rarely let herself have any thoughts of how different her life could have been.

  As Amelia turned to dump the shovel, she saw Rachel walking toward her. “The greatest snowfall officially reported in Phoenix, Arizona, was one inch,” she said, happy to have her thoughts interrupted. “The first time they got that much snow was on January 20, 1933, and then another inch fell again four years later on the same date.”

  “That wouldn’t be much to shovel, would it?” Rachel replied.

  “Would you finish the path, please?” Amelia asked her. “I’m going to head into the house and start making a stew for our supper.”

  Rachel lost herself in thought as she watched Amelia walk away. Amelia had never once mentioned the rude outburst she’d had two weeks ago or punished her in any way. But the look in Amelia’s eyes had stayed with Rachel and made her think more about how her mean thoughts and words had hurt this woman, who’d never done anything to hurt her. She would not call Amelia that awful nickname again.

  Rachel sat in math class, willing the day to end. Her class had been taught by supply teachers for the last two days while her regular teacher, Mrs. White, was off with a sprained ankle. And today a new woman was standing at the front of the room. Rachel was already having enough trouble in math, and having three different teachers definitely wasn’t helping.

  “Do review questions 1, 2 5, 8, and 10 on page 157,” the teacher said, wrapping up the lesson. “Your test will be tomorrow.”

  Rachel opened her notebook and slowly wrote the date and page number, trying to use up as much time as she could. She had no idea how to do any of the questions she’d been assigned. She probably would have asked Mrs. White for help, but she had no intention of letting this stranger know she didn’t have a clue how to do any of the questions.

  Rachel looked up at the clock and saw that there were only a few more minutes of class left. She put her head back down to the page, returning to the intricate doodling of a meaningless picture.

  “Rachel, what question are you on?” asked a voice from above.

  Rachel looked up from her book and saw that the supply teacher was standing right behind her, looking at the doodles in her notebook.

  “I don’t understand this stuff,” Rachel mumbled, hoping the bell would ring and save her.

  “If you were having trouble, you should have told me,” the teacher said, looking at her watch. “I don’t have time to help you now. I suggest you get your mom or dad to help you tonight.”

  Rachel did not respond.

  The bell rang and everyone started moving. Rachel picked up her books and rushed from the room. As she walked through the doorway, another kid walked in and Rachel bumped right into him.

  “Get out of my way, asshole!” she screamed, pushing him with her free hand.

  A few minutes later, Amelia received a call from Mr. Harrison, Rachel’s principal, informing her that Rachel had assaulted a fellow student and would be required to do an after-school detention.

  “I was unaware of Rachel’s anger issues, Miss Walton,” Mr. Harrison said in what came through as a slightly accusatory tone. “I am very disappointed that you and Rachel’s social worker didn’t provide me with that information. I’ve always tried my best to accommodate your foster children, have I not?”

  “Yes, Mr. Harrison,” Amelia answered, knowing that a long debate about the shortcomings of the school and how complicated it was knowing what these kids need would take more energy than she had and a lot more time, she was sure, than the principal had at this moment.

  Mr. Harrison went on to explain that any further outbursts from Rachel would result in her suspension. Amelia calmly thanked him for the phone call and hung up the receiver, letting out a deep sigh.

  “Do you know how to add and subtract positive and negative
integers?” Rachel asked Zac as he pulled his truck to a stop. He had picked Rachel up after her detention and she hadn’t said a word all the way home.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” Zac answered. “I’m guessing that maybe you don’t or you probably wouldn’t be asking me. It doesn’t seem like something you would be just waiting to brag about.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “Of course I can. Let’s eat supper first and then we’ll find our way through all the positive and negative stuff.”

  “Sir Isaac Newton, who invented calculus, had trouble with names to the point where he would sometimes forget his brothers’ names,” Amelia said as she sat down at the table across from Rachel and Zac, who were hard at work on Rachel’s math homework. “I’m glad you asked Zac to help you and not me, Rachel. I’m still spinning just listening to all that positive, negative talk.”

  Rachel had driven by the ferry on her way to school every day but she hadn’t been on it since Mrs. Thompson had brought her to Walton Lake in August. Now, sitting high in Zac’s truck as they headed across to the mall to do some Christmas shopping, Rachel could see a row of bubbles all the way along as the ferry moved through the cold, grey water. Zac explained that the bubbles she could see were from an underwater system that kept the ferry track from freezing.

  “I think I’ll buy Amelia a pair of earrings,” Rachel announced. “I want to find earrings with flowers on them, pansies maybe.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Zac said. “I often have a hard time deciding what to get her. She always surprises me, even though I’m the one that does all the shopping. Last year she ordered carved knobs for my kitchen cupboards from the Lee Valley catalogue and she got Terry Fullerton to pick me up a pair of new chainsaw pants. I think I’ll get her a new sweater. That old brown one she wears needs to go to the rag bag. She always thinks of other people, but never thinks about getting herself new stuff.”

  Rachel sat quietly, staring out the truck window as they got onto the highway. She thought about her reaction when she’d seen Amelia for the first time. The lumps on her face had scared her and she’d found them hard to look at. She remembered the first time she’d seen Amelia in her bathing suit and how she’d gagged at the sight of her bare back.

  She broke the silence with the question that had been eating her up for months. “What’s wrong with her face, Zac?”

  “I wondered when you would ask about that,” he said. “Some kids ask right away. Travis asked Amelia the minute he got out of the car. He asked her if whatever was wrong with her face was contagious.”

  “I never thought that, but I thought it was gross. At first I tried not to look at her face.”

  “She has the disease NF1, which stands for Neurofibro something. I don’t even try to pronounce it. It causes tumours to form under her skin.”

  “Like cancer?” Rachel asked.

  “Not exactly. They aren’t cancerous, but they come in clusters and they never clear up completely. She gets them on her neck and back, too, but usually she covers those up with her clothes so no one can see them.”

  “I made up a name for her when I first saw her,” Rachel admitted. “In my head I called her ‘Warty.’ The lumps on her face gave me something to hate her for, and when I called her that I could convince myself of how disgusting she was.” She spoke slowly now, trying to keep the emotion from her words. “It was the same with the twins and Raymond. I wanted to hate them, so in my head I called the twins ‘Tweedle Dee’ and ‘Tweedle Dum’ and I called Raymond ‘Balloon Boy.’”

  Zac pulled into the mall parking lot and turned the truck off. A few seconds hung in the air before he spoke. “I was really mean to Amelia when I first came, too,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “I hit her once and told her to get her filthy leper’s face away from me.”

  Rachel couldn’t imagine Zac ever hitting anybody. It was even harder to believe that he’d ever given Amelia a hard time. He was so respectful of her now and helped her in so many ways. Maybe there’s hope for me, too, Rachel thought.

  “I’m going to buy Raymond a guitar,” Zac said. “He’ll drive us all crazy with it, but he’s really musical. I know a guy that will give him lessons. Do you want to go in on it with me?”

  “Sure,” Rachel said, relieved for the change in subject.

  “I don’t know what to buy for Chelsea and Crystal,” Zac continued. “I don’t know how to pick clothes out for little girls. Can you help me with that?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s go get some serious shopping done. How about we start by buying you some winter boots? Those orange sneakers won’t hold up very long in this snow!”

  Rachel placed her shopping bags on the floor of her closet. She’d actually been able to find a pair of earrings with pansies on them for Amelia, and hadn’t even minded paying almost half her chore money for them. She’d gone in on the guitar for Raymond with Zac, but he had refused to take much money, and she’d found a Barbie Cruise Ship for Chelsea and Crystal. But the thing she was happiest about was being able to buy Zac a hooded sweatshirt without him seeing her. The one he had now was just about worn out, and he was always saying how great a hood was to keep his neck dry when he drove the tractor under tree limbs heavy with snow.

  Rachel hadn’t received any mail since she’d arrived at Walton Lake—or in any of her other foster homes, for that matter—so when she got the mail from the mailbox two weeks before Christmas and found an envelope addressed to her she had no idea who it could be from. She held the envelope up, studying both sides. The postmark said Golden, BC. The Walton Lake address had been printed on the front of the envelope under Rachel’s name, which was written in fancy cursive lettering. There was no return address in the left-hand corner, but a sticker sealing the flap on the back of the envelope read: “From the desk of Audrey Anderson.” The name Audrey Anderson meant nothing to Rachel. She looked at the letter for a few more seconds and then headed into the house and upstairs to her room.

  Rachel sat down on the edge of her bed, opened the envelope, and pulled out a piece of bright pink paper. As she unfolded it, the first lines of the letter jumped out at her:

  Dear Rachel,

  My name is Audrey Anderson and I am your grandmother.

  Rachel hadn’t even made the connection. She knew her father’s name was Donald Anderson, but it had been so long since she had heard his name spoken it hadn’t occurred to her that this letter might be from someone related to him. Her mom had mentioned her dad’s name every once in a while, and she’d always said the same thing about him: He wasn’t able to be a husband or dad and had left after Caleb was born so that he could get some help. She’d always hoped that maybe some day he would be well enough to be with them. Rachel had never understood what her mom had meant and had long given up hoping that her father would come back. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like. They had always been just fine, the three of them. Even after the accident, Rachel had never believed for one minute that her father would ride back into her life and take care of her.

  Rachel thought about going downstairs, throwing the letter in the woodstove, and pretending that it had never come. What could a grandmother I’ve never met have to say to me? she wondered. The grandmother she did know, her mom’s mom, hadn’t cared enough to keep in contact with her, let alone take care of her after the accident, so why would she expect anything more from this one?

  Rachel refolded the paper, placed it back in the envelope, and tucked it between the mattress and box spring. Then she picked up her book bag and dug inside, looking for her science homework. She didn’t have time to think about her father and grandmother right now. Besides, she thought, it’s not like my father and grandmother have spent much time thinking about me in the last thirteen years.

  Rachel picked up a wreath and straightened the bow. She was helping Amelia and the others de
corate the house for Christmas. Raymond and Zac were stringing lights up in the second-storey windows and the twins and Amelia were sitting at the kitchen table making a garland of fir boughs to hang from the stairway banister. Rachel put her coat and boots on, grabbed the wreath, and stepped out onto the front veranda so she could hang it on the front door. As she lifted the wreath up over the small window in the door, it made her think of the front door of her old house on Regent Street. That door had a half-moon-shaped window, with four panes of pie-shaped glass. Her mom had always made a big production of stringing the outside lights on the porch and hanging the wreath on the door. The last Christmas they’d had together, her mom had held Caleb up so that he could be the one to place the wreath on the nail above the window.

  Rachel threw the wreath across the veranda. She had been trying all day to pretend that all this Christmas stuff mattered. And she had been pretending to be part of this makeshift family. But I already had a family, she thought to herself. And I messed that up. After what I did to them, I don’t deserve another one. That last thought hurt the most.

  Rachel walked quickly to the end of the driveway. She figured that if she kept walking, she could get to the main road before dark. She could hitchhike from the end of Walton Lake Road to the Westfield ferry, and then walk to the highway and try to get a lift to Fredericton. She didn’t know where she’d stay when she got there. She just wanted to be close enough to see the lights of her old house. She needed to see the lights through that moon-shaped window and for a few minutes pretend that she still lived there and that what had taken her real family had never happened.