Theories of Relativity

by Barbara Haworth-Attard

  “It must be hard to walk around with all that weight,” she says.

  Now it’s my turn to look puzzled.

  “From the chip on here.” She taps my shoulder. “I don’t go to this or any other church. I’m helping out today because they’re short-handed. Whether I believe in God or not, or whether you do, is our own business. Don’t worry, I’m not going to convert you.”

  “Oh.” I feel cheated. I’d been all set to get into an argument.

  “I saw you at the drop-in centre. I’m Ainsley.”

  She sticks out her hand and her sleeve rides up to reveal a criss-cross of scars on her wrist. Suddenly, I see red blood flowing from the wounds down her hands. Life dripping from her fingers. I set my fork down on the plate, appetite gone. I’m losing my mind.

  She drops her hand and pulls her sleeve down. “That was from a different time,” she says. “I know Amber and Twitch . . .” She scrutinizes Jenna, and I’m reminded of the police and the photograph.

  “I’m Jewel, and this is Dylan.” Jenna introduces us politely, like we’re at afternoon tea with the Queen. I can’t believe her sometimes.

  Twitch pushes his plate back, food nearly untouched, and coughs deeply.

  “You don’t sound too great,” Ainsley says. “You need a doctor.” Then she turns to me. “I like the way you stood up to that jerk at the centre the other day. That takes a lot of courage.”

  Courage? Try stupidity. But I don’t say that out loud. Not with Jenna here.

  “You shouldn’t be mixing it up with Lurch,” Amber says. “You’re fuc—” She swallows the word with difficulty. “You’re asking for trouble.”

  “Death wish,” Twitch says.

  “Shut up!” I tell both of them.

  Ainsley gets up and gives the table a swipe with her cloth. “If any of you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “She’s nice,” Jenna says, after Ainsley leaves.

  It’s suddenly too hot in the church hall. Police, photographs, scars on wrists. I can’t think straight. My chair slides noisily across the floor as I push back from the table. “I got to go. I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

  I leave the room and charge up the stairs, taking in great gulps of air to steady myself. At the outside doors, I stop. Wide stone stairs lead away from me into the church. Slowly, silently, I climb, feeling like I’m ascending into heaven. At the top of the stairs, heavy, carved wooden doors are closed. I gently pull on one, expecting it to be locked, but it opens effortlessly. I slip inside and the door shuts, muffling the city sounds, leaving me in a hushed space.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Soft yellow lights glow along the walls. I’m reminded of the light I put in Micha’s bedroom to ease his nightmares. Are these God’s nightlights? Or would those be the moon and the stars? I breathe in the smell of God: musty books, lemon furniture polish, and a sickly sweet odour I can’t identify. As I walk up an aisle, my foot knocks against a pew. The resulting bang echoes into a high ceiling that the lights don’t reach. The church is big, much bigger than the plain white wooden church my grandma and granddad took me to, yet it shares the same restful silence. Maybe God gets tired of hearing our groans and moans and needs some quiet—like my mother did when she had a bad headache and we boys were fighting. Shut up in there or I’ll give you something to yell about!

  I walk up the side aisle and study the elaborately painted walls, the carved columns, the stained-glass windows and the statues set every few steps. In contrast, Grandma and Granddad’s church was stark and simple. Same God, two very different churches. I wonder if He has a preference.

  I stop in front of a statue of a man, hands outstretched, sculpted brown hair over his shoulders, face frozen in a bemused smile. Jesus. I remember that much from the few times I went to church. A large cross hangs on the wall behind the altar; another man is suspended from it, hands nailed to the crosspiece. Jesus again. No wonder he had that bemused smile back there. Anyone would if they knew they were going to be nailed to a cross

  Then I see it, a statue of a woman with a baby on her lap, and I catch my breath. This is old, much older than the church, yet the woman’s face is eternally young, born again in Jenna. It gives me the creeps how much she looks like Jenna, yet I can’t look away because the statue is beautiful.

  “Lovely, isn’t it? Someone told me it was sent from Rome.” Ainsley has come up behind me, coat on, obviously on her way out. Probably scared I’ll steal the church’s silver.

  She examines the statue. “You know, she sort of has the look of that girl who was with you,” she says. “What’s her name again?”

  “Jewel,” I say. With the police looking for Jenna, I don’t want to use her real name.

  “She’s young,” Ainsley says. “Jewel, I mean. It scares me to death, these young girls out here. I worry what can happen to them.”

  “What would you know about it?”

  “I was one of them,” Ainsley says shortly.

  She turns and walks partway down the aisle. “We shouldn’t be in here.”

  “I thought God’s house was everyone’s house,” I say flippantly. But a part of me is hurting. Longing. “Einstein didn’t believe in God,” I say suddenly. It feels safer having Einstein say it, considering where I am and the possibility of lightning bolts.

  “Einstein?” Ainsley says.

  “Yeah, the genius. I’m reading a book on him. He didn’t believe God existed.”

  A smile slowly blossoms across Ainsley’s face. “You read. Come on, you non-believer. We have to get out of here before someone finds us. We’re supposed to stay in the basement,” she says.

  As I follow her down the aisle, I draw in one last breath of God’s smell and wish I could come back. It wouldn’t matter whether I believed in him or not. The stained-glass windows could splash red and blue over me, I could slide my butt over the polished pews, study the paintings on the walls and ceilings and admire the statues, and maybe—belong.

  Chapter 11

  The Garbage Man snores softly across from me in the library lounge. He reeks with a stink radius of half the room. I sniff my own pits discreetly. How big is my stink radius?

  I watch the hands of the clock on the wall race toward closing time. It’s strange how, when I’m out on the street and it’s freezing, time ticks with excruciating slowness, but when I want it to move slower, it speeds up. Do you have a mathematical formula for that anomaly, Einstein?

  I don’t have the nerve to pull out the ripped-off Einstein book here, so I’m flipping through the pages of a book on gargoyles, though mostly I’m focused on the clock. Really focused, as in obsessed. I bet that’s how the Garbage Man started. Got obsessed with those green bags, and things deteriorated from there.

  “Ten minutes until we close,” a disembodied voice announces. “Please bring all books to the Checkout counter.”

  I jump to my feet and grab my pack, heading for one last pit stop at the washroom before I hit the streets. I’ve pretty much lived in the library the past two days. Yesterday, like the day before, I peered around the corner of the office tower to see the Bandana Kid and his friends sitting there. In my spot. Taking my money. I’ll have to find a new place to beg soon, because I’m almost out of cash.

  I hold the gloves Glen gave me beneath the dryer in the washroom to warm them. I wonder if he came by today and saw the Bandana Kids. Did he sit down and talk to them?

  I head into the cold, my hands shoved inside the warm gloves. The temperature dropped all day and—I sniff—there is a metallic smell of approaching snow. I remember Granddad sniffing the air and telling Grandma the weather. His nose was as accurate as those jokers on television with all their Doppler radar crap.

  At the bottom of the library’s granite steps, I stand and look up and down the sidewalk. Which way to go? Doesn’t matter. I don’t know where, or if, I’ll sleep tonight. I can’t go to Mandy’s. Despite my one moment of bravado at the church dinner, I’m leery of Lu
rch and the Bandana Kids. Keeping a low profile is keeping me alone. But who needs people? Einstein didn’t. He had his theories for company, like I have mine.

  The cold has emptied the streets, most kids having found a floor, the back seat of a car, or some nook or cranny to sleep in. As I walk, a window display of radio-controlled cars grabs my attention. Micha would go crazy if he got one of those for Christmas. I read a small sign attached to the inside of the door: Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted. Yeah, well, that’s only if they catch you. I smile grimly when I think of all the “gifts” I’ve ripped off over the years for Micha and Jordan. They deserve Christmas, too. Not just the rich kids.

  Around the window are strings of small white lights that blink on and off. They remind me of that summer Granddad took me out late one night to see fireflies. I was so scared to go, but he coaxed me and folded my hand inside his huge one. Crickets chirped so loudly they nearly deafened me, owls hooted, and small animals scratched and rustled in the bushes. The air was wet and scented with pine. Then, over Grandma’s garden, I saw tiny lights winking on and off.

  It’s their asses that light up. That’s what Granddad said. Well, not in those exact words. He always said bottom. Granddad and Grandma didn’t have asses, they had bottoms or behinds.

  I read a book in the library all about fireflies and behinds. The female flashes her butt at the males and they flash back, trying to find a mate Not so different from humans, really, the girls wiggling their butts to attract the boys. In some firefly species, if the female doesn’t like the male, she eats him. Again, not so different from humans.

  I bet Einstein thought fireflies were mighty cool. I also think Einstein would say ass.

  Snow begins to fall: large flakes, thick and soft and silent, covering the street, sidewalk, my shoulders, my eyelashes. It swirls about me as I move through it. Perhaps this is how Einstein saw particles of light, dancing, twirling about him, the air alive.

  A car swishes past, black ribbons from its wheels parting the white blanket. A man lies prone on a park bench, a blanket and newspapers over him. Snow fills the valleys and gathers on the hills of his body.

  At the old bank building, I gaze up at the gargoyles’ stone heads. Capped with snow, they’ve lost their ferocity and look slightly ridiculous.

  “Got somewhere to go for the night?”

  A cop stands in front of me, bulky in his winter parka.

  “Yeah.” I look into his eyes.

  “Where would that be?”

  “A friend’s place. Brad. He lives in a church. Or, it was a church. It’s been converted into apartments,” I add hastily.

  “On your way, then.”

  I nod and stride away, trying to look like I have somewhere to go, where someone is expecting me. Except there is no place and there is no one. I jangle the change in my pocket, enough for one cup of coffee. I turn into a burger place, buy a coffee from a pimply-faced boy, and find a booth at the back. There’s a clock on the wall over the counter and I sit facing it.

  Eleven o’clock: Can I stretch the coffee out for an hour? It depends on how time moves in here—slowly, I’m guessing.

  A couple of goth girls come in: black hair, black lipstick, whitened faces, dressed in long black coats and trailing black scarves. I’ve seen them on the streets before, chatted to them once or twice, but I don’t make eye contact tonight.

  Eleven-fifteen: I worry about Jordan. He’s headed for trouble and I’m not there to straighten him out. Mom’s no good at that kind of thing. How could she just throw me out? What did I do? I open a packet of sugar and dump it in my coffee, followed by a second and a third, hoping it’ll give me a boost to keep me awake.

  Eleven-twenty-five: I wonder if Grandma and Granddad are still alive.

  Twelve o’clock: A drunk weaves his way among the tables, stinking of booze and vomit. Asks Counter Boy for a drink. Counter Boy reels back from the stench and tells him they don’t serve alcohol. The drunk throws straws, condiments, and napkins. The Counter Boy retreats and picks up the phone. I slip into the washroom.

  I slide down the wall and listen to the struggle outside. Drunk shouts, cops placate him. Then silence. My eyes close drowsily. Maybe I’ll just spend the night here.

  “Did you want another coffee?” Counter Boy stands in front of me.

  I stare at him blearily.

  “Do you want another coffee?” Translation: Have a coffee or get out. I struggle to my feet, hoist my pack on my back, and, with a final glance at the clock, leave.

  Twelve-ten: It’s a new day. Why didn’t Granddad try to find me? I wander aimlessly, keeping an eye out for cops and Vulture’s people. I step into a doorway out of the wind.

  Twelve-forty-five: The church clock chimes the quarter hour. Through the veil of snow, a figure climbs out of a car. Amber. She joins me in my doorway.

  “Hey, Dylan.” She greets me like a long-lost friend. Her legs are bare, her shoes are soaked, and the bottom buttons of her coat no longer fasten over her belly.

  “Hi,” I say.

  I don’t really want to talk to her. She’s too annoying. But she’s also the only person I’ve seen out tonight, and I suddenly feel a desperate need to use my voice.

  “It’s fucking cold,” she says, hopping from foot to foot.

  “When’s the baby due?” I ask.

  She grimaces. “In four months. It’s hard to get anyone interested in you when you look like this.” She thrusts out her belly and half laughs.

  “Isn’t there somewhere you can go? A home? You know, until the baby is born?”

  “Go?” Her eyes widen in astonishment. “Fuck, Dylan. I’m a working girl. I owe Brendan for clothes and food. He’s none too happy about the baby.” She gestures down to her bulge. “That’s why I’m out here in this fucking weather trying to make it up to him.”

  “Is Jenna working for him, too?” I ask.

  A car approaches. Amber leaps from the doorway and strikes a provocative pose, but the vehicle goes by. She rapidly steps back beside me and hops from foot to foot again.

  “Jenna? Oh, Jewel. She’s not on the game yet. She’s his fucking pet. Just like I was once.” She says this without any bitterness.

  “Can’t you warn her?” I plead. “Tell her what it’s really like. What Brendan’s really like.”

  “And have Brendan beat the fucking crap out of me when he finds out?” Amber says. “I have to think of my baby.”

  “Think of your baby?” I repeat. “You’re out here turning tricks. Smoking. Using—”

  “Hey, what the fuck do you know about it?” Amber yells at me.

  “I know that’s not good for a baby,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, you would. Mr. Fucking High-and-Mighty-I-never-use-drugs, I don’t-smoke, I-don’t-say-goodbye.” She comes close and pokes a finger into my chest. “You wait. Your turn will come. You haven’t been out here long enough. It’ll get to you, and you’ll find yourself doing anything you can to make it go away.” She pushes her face into mine. “It is getting to you, isn’t it.”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Yeah.” She takes a step backwards. “My baby is none of your fucking business.”

  “What are you going to do when the baby comes? Are you giving it up for adoption?” I ask. I can’t seem to let it go.

  “No.” Amber’s face softens. She’s still mad, but she likes talking about the baby. “I’m going to keep this one. I already gave one up. A boy. Children’s Services made me. But I’m not letting them get their fucking hands on this one. That’s why I’m staying right here on the street until this one’s born. Once I have the baby, I’ll be able to get some government money, get a place of my own. It’ll be someone for me to love and someone to love me.”

  I pull off my toque and slap it on her head, and leave.

  One o’clock: I’m freezing my ass off, then remember there’s a hot-air vent in front of the office tower. I follow two sets of footprints in the snow down the sidewalk. Granddad took me
one January afternoon to the bush out back of the farm and showed me animal and bird prints in the snow. Tracking, he called it. Tracking rabbits, squirrels, birds, deer.

  “I wonder what kind of prints these are,” he said, pointing to boot marks in the snow.

  “Mine,” I cried.

  One-ten: A lighted sign over the office tower door flashes the time, then the temperature. I stare back at my prints, coming from nowhere, going nowhere.

  One-twenty: Lukewarm air blows up from the vent. I climb inside my sleeping bag and lie on top of the hard metal strips, pulling my knees to my chest for extra warmth. I stuff my backpack under my head for a pillow. An orange light shines directly above me. I’m too visible, but I can’t take the dark tonight. Not on top of the cold. Don’t sleep, I warn myself.

  One-thirty: Shit! I nearly fell asleep. I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands to keep myself awake. Is my father tall? Thin? With black hair like mine? Grandma and Granddad didn’t have any pictures of him in the house and they never spoke about him. It was like he’d died, or never existed for them. My mother had a few things to say about him: useless bum, loser. She’d scream at me that I was just like him. But I didn’t know if she meant I looked like him, or that I was a useless bum.

  Two o’clock: Last year, Mom told Micha there was no Santa. His face was white with disappointment, so I decided to make Christmas. I stood in a line to register us to get a turkey and some presents for Micha and Jordan. When I got to the head of the line, I was told only an adult could register. I told them my mother had pneumonia, and I described her fever and cough. We got the turkey. We got the gifts. I told Micha they were from Santa.

  Two-fifteen: The air vent keeps my butt fairly warm, but the top part of me is cold. Why did I give Amber my toque? I’m so stupid.

  Three o’clock: Snow swirls about me as the wind picks up. I should leave this city. Get away from Vulture. Trouble’s coming. I can feel it. If I asked her, would Jenna go away with me?

  Three-fifty: My hand scrabbles under my head to make sure my pack is there. I couldn’t leave Micha and Jordan.