Tuesday morning is gray, and I’m happy for the big sweater. The grass is damp on my legs when I crouch to pee. (Thank goodness, no period yet. Maybe the fire scared it out of me.) The rain has helped cool down the wreckage, but the smell is stronger, like inhaling deep inside a chimney. Underfoot is mucky, wet and black. I’d been thinking I could forage through, find a few things. We lived at the top of the house, so maybe our stuff will be close to the surface? But after wandering through, poking and sifting, I see there’s nothing to salvage. Muck and ash. I can identify a few charred shapes, like our metal bedside cupboards, one of the bathtubs, a heap of book-shaped lumps. But not one item I’d like to pick up or hold.
My sneakers—in fact, my legs—are sogged and sooty up to my knees from standing in the ruins. Everything in sight—the only home I know—is melted into a huge ugly heap. My eyes and nose get that hot swelling feeling, and the tears come leaking out. My family isn’t here anymore. The reasons to leave are staring me in the face, smoldering all around. I’m not leaving the home I know or the girls I’ve loved all my life. They’ve already left me. I’m the only dummy who didn’t see there’s nothing here anymore.
This isn’t promising new territory waiting to be planted and built upon. This is rubble, what used to be, not the place where I need to start over.
I rinse my legs and scrub off my shoes as well as I can, using the rain barrel in the vegetable patch. Now they’re as wet as wet. How long do shoes take to dry? Another thing I’m going to find out.
BOYS COME
I go to sleep before it’s properly dark, worried about what to do in the morning. Tomorrow will mean making decisions all by myself. No suggestions, no teasing, no chatting, no Sevens.
Only me.
I fix the shopping bag under my head to make a better pillow. I tuck the burlap sacks around my middle. I drift.
But then, snap! I’m awake and sitting up, my skull creeping. One second of total silence and in the next second, craack!
The shed has one window, set into the door.
Craack! The small pane shatters, thanks to a brick or a stone being whacked against it. They aren’t even trying to be quiet.
I’ve stopped breathing. I hear muttering voices, and a chunk of masonry comes through the window. The door’s not locked, you morons. I edge my way in the dark to hide behind the door, so when they finally figure out to try the handle and it clicks right open, I’m lurking like a shadow in the corner. Two shapes blunder in, led by a dancing flashlight. They might not have even seen me except that the door smacks me hard and I say, “Ouch!”
“What the…?”
The flashlight hits me in the face.
“Will you looka here,” says Luke. “A door prize.”
I KNOW THAT BOYS HAVE A PLACE
In the Greek myth about Achilles, when Achilles was a baby his mother dipped him in a magic fountain where the water coated him from head to foot in a powerful enchantment to protect him from harm when he eventually went into battle. Only she had to hold on to him, right? When she lowered him into the water, she held him by one heel, so her grip prevented the magic water from reaching that area. And twenty years later, that’s how he was killed. Someone shot an arrow straight through the small vulnerable spot on the mighty man’s body.
But the vulnerable spot with most boys is where their legs meet, where they keep what Tess calls their “equipment.” I’m a little vague on what exactly the equipment is, since Dr. Blunt hasn’t been too blunt on that point. He says that the less we know, the safer we’ll be. But one thing we do know is that if you need to stop a boy from hurting you, a fierce whack in the place will do the trick.
That’s what I do now. I have a clay flowerpot in one hand and a trowel in the other. Whomp! I get him smack in the place. Luke yelps like a hurt dog and drops the light so it lands with a smash.
“Oh Jesus! Crapping Jesus!” He doubles over, and then he’s on his knees. I’m kind of dismayed at how effective it is, but I’m not hanging around to worry about it.
The other boy scuffles in the dark, but I know the shed better than he does. I rescue my shopping bag, scoop up my wet sneakers and slide out the door. The boy abandons Luke and thumps out seconds behind me, only he zooms off in the other direction, down the back drive. For the first second, I’m aiming along the path for home, but then I remember.
There is no home.
I run as best I can in bare feet, with the lumpy Simpson’s bag clutched to my chest. No way am I waiting for Luke to stand up and move. He’s shouting the N-word. The word Joe says will burn tongues in hell. I can hear Luke moaning till I’m through the gate and onto the road. Then all I hear is pebbles skittering under my toes and my own gulping breath.
LORETTA’S DINER IS OPEN
Who knew a restaurant could be open all night? Who ever comes here at four o’clock in the morning?
I’m worried that Luke and his buddy might stumble in on their way home, so I sit in a booth away from the window and sip a hot chocolate till I stop trembling.
There’s a bus to Toronto, first thing at six, Mrs. Clifford tells me. It stops right outside the grocery store, and I can buy the ticket there. She runs the diner and sometimes the post office too. I’m sort of dizzy with not sleeping. And with running like I’m fueled by Russian rocket power. My feet were dirty and cut up with road grit, so I put my sneakers back on before I came into the café. Which I’m still amazed is open. Only the beginning, I think. The world holds many wonders beyond the gates of the Home.
Mrs. Clifford puts down a plate holding a bacon sandwich. She shakes her head when I object. “My treat,” she says. “A goodbye present. Goodbye and good luck.” I pick up the sandwich. The first bite is beyond delicious—salty and hot.
“Where you headed, honey?” says Mrs. Clifford. “Not off to some foreign place like Sara, are you?”
I tell her I don’t even know. Three days ago I would have gone into the school library, pulled down the Canadian atlas and turned to the Ontario page, run my finger around until it found the town that is printed on my bracelet.
“Did you ever hear of a place called Parry Sound?” I ask her.
Mrs. Clifford shakes her head. “I’m gonna say north.” She waves her arm vaguely, as if we’re talking north of the main road past the gas station. “Your best bet is to get on the Toronto bus and ask the driver. He’ll set you right.”
WHAT I HAVE WITH ME
I keep thinking how smart I was to put my shoes on before we left our room. I only wish I’d grabbed some soap and my hair pick too.
What I have with me:
my skirt and two blouses from the pile at the church
the zipper-pocket sweater that I have come to love
the toothbrush so generously donated by Dr. Fenton
two pairs of undies and one bra, thanks to Guthrie’s Bridal
$138—since Mrs. Clifford doesn’t make me pay for the hot chocolate or the sandwich
one hospital bracelet
Mrs. Hazelton didn’t steal the bracelet, but she definitely kept it hidden for sixteen years. Why did she do that? It wasn’t greed, not like Sally from the workhouse who stole the gold locket from Oliver Twist’s mother, the one that holds locks of hair that can identify his parents. Was Mrs. H. protecting someone? Me? Or someone else? I don’t want to be mad at her, but…holding on to a clue that reveals a person’s true identity? That can’t be right.
EVERYONE ELSE ON THE BUS IS WHITE
It is not a new situation. I have always been the only person who is not white. I’m also the only person getting on at this stop.
The driver says, “No luggage?”
I lift my shopping bag. “Just this.”
“Sit anywhere,” he says, because I’m hesitating, not knowing what happens after I hand over my ticket. There’s no room at the front. I find a place about halfway down the aisle. I set the Simpson’s bag on the floor between my feet, and I fall asleep nearly at once.
I wake up as t
he bus lurches into the station in Toronto. I guess the shed wasn’t the most comfortable place to rest. I wait in line at the ticket counter and ask where Parry Sound is and how I can get there. The man sells me a ticket and says the next bus leaves in one hour and twenty minutes. Part of me wants to sit right there in one of the station seats and not move. But more of me is hungry. The bacon sandwich at Loretta’s seems a long time ago. The bus to Parry Sound will take nearly five hours.
“Outside,” says the lady selling newspapers when I ask where I can find something to eat. “Turn right, turn right again.”
When I get to the corner, I freeze on the spot. I feel like Dorothy landing in Oz. There might be more people on this single street than all the people I’ve ever met. I know that Chinese people exist, but I’ve never seen one before, let alone a million on one block. Their skin is not yellow, by the way, but I’d say they’re shorter and slighter than most white people. And they seem to be wearing clothes they maybe brought with them from China, as if they’re from the same orphanage—dark-blue smocks and wide dark trousers, even the women. And all so busy! Hurrying or strolling, everyone is carrying something—shopping bags, baskets, vegetables, newspapers, bundles or boxes.
Over our heads are signs painted with red or yellow Chinese characters. The store windows are crammed with things that I linger to identify. Green stone statues of ancient warriors, tiny crocheted animals with threads for whiskers, heaps of lacy place mats that make me think of weddings, painted fans spread wide to show elaborate rippled landscapes, brass bottles that look as if a genie might emerge at any moment, bins of gnarled roots and dried mushrooms, rows of roasted ducks hanging upside down…
The air is fresh, and the sky is so blue it sparkles. I bet most of these busy people are wishing they didn’t have to go to work today, the sun is so bright. But for them it’s a regular day. Their houses didn’t burn down. They didn’t wake up this morning with creepy boys barging into their rooms. I lean against a wall for a minute, watching a gazillion people I have never met until my eyes blur. Nobody knows I am Baby Fox.
The strung-up ducks remind me of how hungry I am, though obviously I don’t want a duck with its head on. Do Chinese people eat normal stuff too? Like Velveeta-cheese sandwiches and bananas?
I join the throng and inch my way along the street. I spot a store that says Becker’s in big green letters and has window signs in English advertising Popsicles and chocolate milk and Cheez Whiz. Inside, I’ve arrived in food heaven. I go up and down the aisles in rapture. I am Babar the orphan elephant arriving in Paris and shopping with the Old Lady. So many delicious things to buy! Stuff we never got to have at the Home, like potato chips and Cheetos and peanut-butter cups. I buy chocolate-chip cookies and a box of pink popcorn.
Who knew there was pink popcorn?
THE BENCH IS A GREAT INVENTION
Safely back in the bus station, I sit on a bench and eat half the cookies while I watch all the little stories unfolding around me. A mother tells her son to send a postcard (but I bet he doesn’t). A girl is crying like crazy while her boyfriend kisses her goodbye. A lady can’t find her bus ticket. I pat my zippered pockets to feel the bumps of my own ticket and the envelope from Mrs. Hazelton. Is there anyone else in all of Toronto who is holding an envelope with a secret history inside?
ON THE BUS
Remembering my promise to Joe, I choose a seat closer to the front this time and next to the window, so I can look out. The bus is not full, so I end up with both seats all to myself. I slide off my damp shoes, find the socks donated by Woolworth’s and tuck my feet under me, thinking maybe I’ll have another nap. After a few more cookies.
I feel the lady across the aisle watching. I give her a half smile, wondering, What did I do? Why is she staring with those round blue eyes?
“You all alone?” She has an accent that chops the sentence into pieces. Russian? Norwegian?
I don’t think she’s a robber or a creepy person, so I nod.
“You very young,” she says. “Where you go?”
“Umm.” How to answer? With a wish. “I’m going…to meet my mother.”
My mother’s ghost anyway.
FIRST THERE’S CITY
And when the buildings dwindle away, there are fields and trees. Lots of fields and lots of trees. My eyes go blurry and I sleep again. When I wake up, wow! This part of the highway was made by cutting through gigantic rocks, so the road is often flanked by towering orange crags. Where the rock subsides, I get glimpses of inlets of glittering water dotted with islands, docks and boats and white-barked trees.
The scenery is like pictures in a book, spread out as if I’m flying over it instead of just riding along. I’m a bird for a while. Or snuggled up next to Santa Claus in his sleigh.
EVEN SANTA CLAUS WAS AN ORPHAN
True fact. I’m an expert, like I said.
Saint Nicholas was born in Greece or maybe Turkey, to parents who had prayed and prayed for a child. When baby Nick finally came along, his parents vowed that his life would be devoted to God, so when they died he landed with his uncle, the bishop. It seems unfair not to have given him a choice in the matter, but those were the olden days.
This is now. And I do not have an uncle.
FOUR
FINALLY
The driver calls out, “Parry Sound!” as the bus pulls to a stop. I wave to the lady across the aisle and climb down with wobbly legs and still-damp shoes. Gold light touches the upper windows of buildings, that late-afternoon light that comes in summer to tell you it will be summer again tomorrow. Makes a place look pretty that is not pretty at all.
This is where I was born? Quite a disappointment, these low shabby buildings with weathered signs and dusty sidewalks. It seems duller even than the town near the Home. There must be more to it than I can see from the doorway of the bus depot. I know there’s a hospital, for one thing. Proof of that is in my pocket. And doesn’t Sound mean an inlet or some other body of water? I will explore tomorrow. Right now, I want some supper.
And where the heck am I going to sleep?
A FEAST
I am hungry, even though I ate snacks the whole way here. I have $123 in a sock in my pocket, more than any orphan in any book I ever read.
The restaurant across the street from where the bus lets me out has a sign on the roof shaped like a bucking stallion, with twinkly little lights that spell out the words ROCKY’S DINER. I sit at the counter and read the menu from top to bottom twice before I can decide. I’m curious about the dill-pickle sandwich, but what if I spend fifteen cents and don’t like it? I order a hamburger with mashed potatoes instead of French fries, plus Jell-O and a milkshake. The lady behind the counter has Mona embroidered across the pocket of her uniform. She winks at me and says, “You got an extra stomach nobody else got?”
I’m hungry, that’s all. It’s four thirty in the afternoon, and did I have breakfast? No. Supper last night? No. I haven’t eaten a real meal for days and days, since before the fire. Only what the church ladies gave us, the bacon sandwich at Loretta’s and cookies and pink popcorn. The smells in the diner are so delicious, I think I might faint or go cross-eyed. I watch Mona while I’m waiting. She is carefully slicing a pie into six big pieces. It’s a creamy-yellow pie topped with white fluffy stuff that has golden ripples on it.
“What is that?”
“Honey, you never had a piece of lemon meringue pie?”
“No, ma’am,” I say.
She shakes her head and clucks her tongue.
My food comes, and I go into a trance, bite after rapturous bite. The hamburger has pickles and lettuce and a mealy tomato that I replace with extra ketchup. The mashed potatoes absorb four extra pats of butter. I feel like a lioness, yawning between mouthfuls, expecting to burp in a lioness growl. I can practically feel my tail switching idly from side to side in complete contentment.
The milkshake is chocolate, thick enough to keep the straw upright. The shakes at Loretta’s Diner are skim milk
compared to this. And then, instead of the Jell-O I ordered, Mona gives me a piece of that lemony pie.
“I never saw anyone so skinny eat so much,” she says. “This pie is like a dare. Can you do it?”
I do it, all right. Every last scrumptious crumb. I unbutton the waistband of the charity skirt and then I pay. Luckily, I remember about tipping from Sara’s working at Loretta’s, so I leave Mona two dimes tucked under my pie plate.
“You new in town?” she says. “I’m sure I never saw you before.”
“Just visiting.”
“Where you staying?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I wonder if the bus depot shuts up at night.
“Did you try the women’s hostel?” Mona says. “Over on Broad?”
CHECKING IN
Her directions are exactly right. I find the building. A sign beside the doorknob says HOSTEL 2ND FLOOR. The paint on the walls is dingy and peeling, the color of ear wax. Up a flight of stairs is a sort of office, where a woman sits on a stool behind a counter, typing on a typewriter like Mrs. Hazelton’s.
“Can I help you?” She keeps typing.
“Yes, uh, hello.” My mouth needs a drink of water; the lips are gumming together. “The lady at Rocky’s Diner sent me here. I’m looking…I need…”
“You want a bed?” She looks just a couple of years older than I am, but there’s a little sign propped on the counter that says LINETTE BARNES, ASST. MANAGER. Linette seems like an exotic name for this pasty-faced person with her hair tucked into a kerchief.
A Big Dose of Lucky Page 4