Ten Thousand Truths

by Susan White

  Snow started to fall and Rachel’s pace slowed. Deep down, she knew she wouldn’t go, and besides that she knew that getting there would never fix anything. Whoever lived in that house now was not her family. She was a kid with no family and nothing would ever change that—not her old house, not Amelia, and certainly not Donald or Audrey Anderson.

  Social Studies was the last class before noon. Mr. Williston was standing at the front of the classroom, droning on about an assignment they were going to work on this week. Rachel wasn’t paying the least bit of attention. She was completely immersed in the novel she was reading, which was concealed inside the textbook propped open on her lap.

  “Sorry to bother you, Miss Garnham,” Mr. Williston said. “But I think you should be paying attention to the instructions for an assignment that is going to be worth 50% of your December mark. Maybe you could come up to the board and fill in some spaces to show us what I just explained to the class?”

  Rachel looked up at the diagram that Mr. Williston had drawn on the board. The title was “Family Tree.” Mr. Williston printed Rachel’s name in the oval in the middle and then walked toward her, passing her the chalk.

  What happened in the next few minutes was a blur to Rachel. She was now sitting in the principal’s office while he talked to Amelia on the phone. He was using words like “meltdown,” “rage,” “unacceptable behaviour,” and “suspension.”

  Once he finished his phone call, Mr. Harrison told Rachel that she was suspended until after the holidays. She would have to meet with the guidance counsellor and someone from the district office before she would be allowed back in school. He made it very clear that he would not have a student in his school who was a danger to others.

  “Someone could have been seriously hurt when you threw your chair,” he said. “I will not have that kind of violent behaviour in my school!”

  Rachel hadn’t really thrown her chair. She had sat, not moving, while Mr. Williston had kept telling her to get up and fill in the spaces on the board. As she’d sat there, not responding, Mr. Williston had become more and more angry, yelling at her and asking her what made her think she didn’t have to do the assignment. Then he’d grabbed the back of her chair and rocked it, trying to force Rachel to get up. When she’d stood up, the chair had gone flying. Rachel had run out of the classroom and was almost out the front door of the school when the principal had stopped her.

  “Miss Walton is sending her neighbour to come and get you,” the principal told Rachel. “You should be more considerate of her. You know she can’t come pick you up. Besides, she has her hands full with the others. You are old enough now to know how to behave.” Rachel just stared at him as he continued his rant. “I warned you the last time that your outbursts would not be tolerated. The kind of temper you just showed has no place in this school. And so close to Christmas.”

  Rachel stared straight ahead, not saying a word, but her mind was just about exploding with what she wished she could say.

  “So close to Christmas,” he’d said. If only he knew what Christmas means to me! Rachel thought angrily. She had held her breath to get through every Christmas for the last five years. Christmas in all those other homes just made remembering Christmas with Caleb and her mom harder to bear. This year at least she knew there would be no one getting so drunk that she would have to barricade her door to keep him out.

  This year she had helped cut the tree and she and Raymond had dragged it into the front room last night. They had all helped trim it and Amelia had placed presents under it before they went to bed. She had seen presents there for her. She had a stocking with her name on it, too. Amelia had knit it and Rachel hadn’t even seen her working on it.

  “You should be more considerate of Miss Walton,” Rachel repeated in her head angrily. “She can’t come get a foster child.” He has no idea what Amelia can and can’t do! she thought to herself. “Old enough to behave.” Old enough to know that I had nothing to put in a family tree diagram! No father, a dead mother, a dead brother, one grandmother who didn’t want me, and another who lives on the other side of the country. No family equals no branches for a stupid tree.

  Rachel could feel tears starting to well up in her eyes, but there was no way that she was going to cry in front of Mr. Harrison. She sat just there silently, staring straight ahead, fighting back the tears, until Zac knocked on the door. The vice-principal walked her to her locker to get her stuff while the principal talked to Zac, probably warning him about the dangerous offender he was picking up.

  They were almost home before Rachel said a word to Zac. He hadn’t asked her anything since he’d picked her up—he’d just sung along to the radio as he drove. But when Rachel began to speak he reached over and turned the music off. “It wasn’t my fault!” she cried. “Mr. Williston just kept going on about a stupid family tree, and I didn’t know what to do.” She continued on, her words coming out in a jumble between sobs. “I wasn’t going to stand up and tell everyone I don’t have a family, that I had nothing to put in my tree. It’s nobody’s business.”

  When they arrived in Amelia’s driveway, Zac reached over and touched Rachel’s arm. “I know,” was all he said.

  Amelia was sitting at the kitchen table when they entered. She stood up and took Rachel’s backpack from her. “Take these lazy dogs down to the lake, would you?” she said. “You need some time by yourself. We’re having your favourite Hawaiian Chicken for supper and I’ll get you to help me make an apple crisp later on. We’ll talk when you come back up.”

  The dogs followed Rachel out the door. There had been a light powder of snow the previous night, and the sun was glittering off the hill like a million tiny diamonds. The ice was solid now across the expanse of water and the boughs on the trees along the banks were covered with blankets of snow. It was very quiet; all Rachel could hear was the breathing of the dogs.

  Rachel looked back up toward the house, thinking about what the principal had said about Amelia. He had been right about one thing: she should be more considerate towards her. Rachel vowed to herself that she would help Amelia as much as she could in the next few days so that having her out of school would not be a problem. For now, she would try to forget about having to go back in January, which would probably mean apologizing and admitting to being wrong. The unfairness of that didn’t bother Rachel too much, because she was quite sure that when she talked to Amelia later, she would somehow understand. For the first time since she had lost her mother, she had someone who seemed to care about her, someone she could talk to. Two people, actually. She had Amelia and Zac, and that was more than she’d had since the day her mom and Caleb had left and never come home again.

  When Rachel walked into the kitchen after her time at the lake, there was a sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk sitting on the table. She hung up her coat and sat down.

  “You didn’t have lunch, did you?” Amelia asked. “Your tuna sandwich was a bit smushed in your book bag so I made you another one. The snow looks beautiful, doesn’t it? The snow banks were getting pretty dingy looking, but that dusting last night gave everything a nice new covering.”

  Amelia poured a cup of tea in her pansy cup and sat down across from Rachel. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention,” Rachel started. “If I had been, I would have just copied the diagram off the board and none of this would have happened. I’m sorry I caused you all this trouble, Amelia. I didn’t know what to do. Mr. Williston was so mad and all I could do was sit there while he got angrier. How could I go up to the board and in front of everyone admit that I didn’t have a family? That my mom and brother are dead? That I don’t have a father? I know his name and I could have put it down, but I don’t even remember him. I know his mother’s name is Audrey, but I don’t know his father’s name or if he even has brothers and sisters. I tried to wait it out and just sit there, hoping Mr. Williston would give up, but he ju
st got madder and madder. There was no way I was going to cry in front of everyone and all I could think to do was get out of there.”

  “He should have known better than to put you on the spot like that,” Amelia said, putting her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “You did nothing wrong. Although I suppose like you said if you hadn’t been reading you wouldn’t have been caught off-guard. But I’m sure that whatever you were reading was probably a whole lot more interesting than Mr. Williston’s class is at the best of times.”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I’ll go back after Christmas and apologize. Maybe I could do the project about your family or maybe he could give me something else to do instead.”

  “You will apologize for not paying attention. That is all you have to apologize for. I expect an apology from Mr. Williston as well. He has a responsibility to know about his students and to be sensitive to their circumstances. When you came in September all the teachers were told about your background so that something like this wouldn’t happen. I know your past is your business, but some things are necessary to share in confidence. This could have been prevented if just a bit of sensitivity and respect had been shown to you. I’ll call Mr. Harrison tomorrow morning and discuss this with him. We will accept the suspension and you can enjoy a longer holiday. You can help me get all the Christmas cooking done and do the rest of my wrapping for me. You can help Zac get the Christmas groceries and stocking stuffers, except your own, of course. I’ll just have to trust Zac to do that. Don’t be surprised if you get several boxes of peanut brittle. That is Zac’s favourite so he always buys an abundance of peanut brittle. Now finish up your sandwich and go to the root cellar for some apples. And put a stick or two in the furnace while you are down there, please.”

  When Rachel got into bed later that night, she took the pink writing paper from the envelope that she had put under her mattress and read her grandmother’s entire letter.

  Dear Rachel,

  My name is Audrey Anderson and I am your grandmother. Your father Donald is my son. I never met your mom. I have only one picture of you and your brother that your mom sent me when you were three and Caleb was one. I only found out about a year ago that your mom and brother had passed away. I am very sorry for your loss.

  Your father has had a very hard time of it for a lot of years. I don’t know what your mother told you about him but one thing I can tell you is that he loved your mother and you and your brother very much. He was very upset when he heard about the accident. He heard about it from a man that he worked with in Fredericton. He took a really bad turn after that.

  I know it must be a surprise to hear from me. I am sorry that I did not try to contact you sooner. For a long time I have wanted to talk to you and tell you that I think of you all the time. I always told myself that you had your other grandmother and that you didn’t need me. When Donald’s friend told him he thought that you were in foster care, I started trying to get in touch with you.

  I would love it if you would write back to me. Maybe you could send me a picture of yourself.

  Love,

  Your Grandmother

  Rachel tucked the letter back in the envelope, slipped it under the mattress, got into bed, and pulled up the covers, thinking about her grandmother’s words. Maybe there are some branches on my family tree, after all, Rachel thought before falling asleep.

  Chapter 5

  Long Johns and Goose Feathers

  Rachel and Amelia worked side by side all week, and the Christmas cookies, cakes, pies, and treats they had already produced seemed like enough for a small bakery. They had also trimmed every room in the house, made up Christmas baskets for several neighbours, and strung lights on the large spruce tree in the front yard.

  Rachel could hardly contain her excitement about Christmas. After wrapping all the presents she had for everyone she had found a book of Christmas facts in the book room and read the whole thing trying to distract herself. The way she felt seemed too good to be true and a part of her worried that something would happen to ruin things or take away this feeling. She didn’t care how many gifts were under the tree. Just the fact that presents with her name on the tags were mixed up with everyone else’s under that beautiful bushy tree, and people who cared about her had put them there, was amazing to her. Zac had made her promise she wouldn’t shake one of the boxes he had stuck in behind the others last night. He didn’t want her to guess what it was. She thought of her Christmas last year, when some church group had dropped off a box of junk people had donated. Margaret had just pulled things out of the box, wrapped them in cheap ugly paper, and stuck their names on them. The first present Rachel had opened Christmas morning was a Toronto Maple Leaf travel mug without the top. Whatever the presents under the tree were this year, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be receiving somebody’s cast-off “Life Begins at Fifty” T-shirt like she had last year.

  Jodie was coming the day before Christmas Eve to stay for a week. Zac was coming for Christmas Eve supper and Amelia was going to make his favourite lobster chowder. He was going to come for breakfast and stockings and the opening of the presents on Christmas morning, too, and Roger and his girlfriend Leslie were coming for Christmas dinner.

  When Jodie arrived, the twins carried her suitcase and a huge box of gifts into the house. Raymond and Rachel emptied the box and placed the packages under the tree.

  “There’s about ten presents for each of us,” Raymond exclaimed as he came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Amelia and Jodie were already seated there, decorating gingerbread cookies.

  “If you received all of the gifts sung about in the song Twelve Days of Christmas you would receive 364 gifts,” Rachel said as she joined them.

  “Oh no!” Jodie shuddered jokingly. “You’ve caught the trivia bug from Amelia!”

  “That would be a lot of gifts, Rachel,” said Amelia. “I don’t think we would have room under the tree for that many gifts for each of us, not to mention the mess calling birds and French hens might make. Speaking of hens, Raymond, can you please go out to the chicken shed and collect the eggs before they all freeze on us? I’ll need quite a few eggs for the rest of the baking we still have to do.”

  The wind was cold as Jodie and Rachel walked down the hill toward the lake. Zac and Raymond had cleared a spot with the tractor for a skating rink and there was just a skim of light snow over the ice. For her hour, Rachel was going to clean off the rink and she was happy to have Jodie along to help her.

  “Isn’t it amazing how the lake seems different in some way every time you see it?” Jodie asked. “I used to try to come down at the same time every day for a few days in a row and take notice of how the lake was different each time. It might be the direction of the wind, the slant of the shadows, or the sounds I heard. I used to pretend that the lake changed each day just for me. I still find myself waking up some days and feeling a powerful urge to stand on this shore.”

  “I know,” Rachel said as she slid the flat shovel along the edge of the plowed space. “In November I watched it start to freeze over and felt so sad about not having the water to watch, but every time I come down I see something new about the ice. We had a fire on the shore last Saturday night and, sitting around it, watching the sparks shoot into the air, I swear I could hear the water below. I pretended it was telling me it was waiting for me.”

  “We are pretty sappy about this lake aren’t we?” Jodie laughed. “I think Amelia was brilliant to know that what we needed was time alone and a place to love. I think she also knows that this lake is the kind of place that is pretty hard not to fall in love with.”

  “Why did you have to come here?” Rachel asked. As soon as she’d said it, she quickly added, “You don’t have to tell me. It is none of my business.” She couldn’t believe she was talking so freely with Jodie.

  “That’s all right,” Jodie replied with a smile. “You can ask me anythi
ng you want to.”

  “Are your parents alive?”

  “My dad is. My mom died a few years ago. For the longest time I wouldn’t even call them my mom and dad because mothers and fathers are supposed to look after their kids. That was something my parents did not know how to do. God knows they knew what to do to have kids and had eight of them. My mom was pregnant with the last one when Social Services finally took us away. They took the baby as soon as she had him so he didn’t have to live with—or should I say without?—what the rest of us did. He was adopted right away and he lives on Prince Edward Island with his family.”

  “What about the other kids?”

  “The rest of us got put in foster homes all over the province. I’m not even sure where they are now. You’d think that having parents like we had would have made us closer, but it did just the opposite. We were like a litter of wild kittens, each one desperate to get what we needed to survive. I have not seen any of my brothers or sisters since the day Social Services took us.”

  “Was this your first foster home?”

  “No, I had to mess up really badly to get sent here. Amelia gets the kids nobody else wants. Sorry, I guess I probably shouldn’t say that to you.”

  “That’s OK,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “I know it’s true. Nobody has wanted me all along, but I got worse with each home I went to. My social worker made it perfectly clear this was the last resort she had for me.”

  “Well, I’m really glad that you are here,” Jodie said. “This is a good place for you and you are doing fine. Amelia told me about that thing at school and that was not your fault. Believe me, I could tell you some horror stories of some of the stuff I did at school when I first got here.”

  Rachel started shoveling a path to reach the dock, which she could barely see beneath the snow. A few minutes later she looked up and saw Zac and Raymond heading toward the lake, carrying their skates.