The Dime Box

by Karen Grose

  The detective put her pencil on the table. “At fifteen? You worked full-time? Day and night?”

  She bit her lip. “I gave up running.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I couldn’t do it anymore. Everything was too dark. Too heavy. I had so many questions about my mom. About her life, our life together. I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

  “Do you know now?”

  She shrugged. “Kind of, I guess.”

  The detective turned her clear green eyes on her. “Which is it? Either you do or you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. Mostly.”

  The detective leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. Her look didn’t change.

  When the spring weather arrived, the warmth lifted the thaw from the ground, but the ache in Greta’s heart and stomach remained. Then, one Saturday afternoon while on Skype with Latoya, what in the past had seemed insurmountable became crystal clear. She googled a map of Ontario and calculated it was a little over a two-hour drive to Toronto. For fun—or out of boredom, she had no idea of which—they’d also figured out that, if someone were crazy enough to walk, it would take six or seven days. She wasn’t an idiot.

  Detective Perez took notes and, when her pencil stopped, she forged on.

  “The woman with the answers lived here,” she said.

  “In Toronto?”

  “Colleen.”

  Detective Perez looked up. “This Colleen Jones?”

  She nodded. “So I packed up my things and left.”

  The detective’s eyes widened. “By yourself at fifteen? Pretty bold.”

  “My birthday’s in July and I left in May. So, technically, I was nearly sixteen.”

  Detective Perez’s eyebrows rose unnaturally high, right into the top of her forehead. “It’s still young to be—what did you say?—striking out on your own… Down to a city you’d never been to before.”

  “Back in the pioneer days, by the time women were fifteen they were married and had probably popped out a kid or two.”

  “Thank you, Greta. I’m aware of history. I’m grateful women have been empowered since then.”

  Greta frowned. Empowered? Odd choice of words. Had all women? Some maybe. Others, not so much. She wanted to dig into the conversation, but it wasn’t the most suitable time to get into a debate.

  She thought of her mother. She would have jumped at the chance. Maybe there was more of her mother in her than she realized.

  TWENTY-NINE

  M ay 2015. Greta stood in the Greyhound Station at the Riverside Inn in Bracebridge, alone and elated. Dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a light jacket, she had everything she valued, everything she loved, folded up and stuffed into a backpack. As the bus pulled up beside her, she took one last look around before she stepped on-board. “You can do it,” she’d whispered to herself. “You’ve got this.” She scanned the aisles, found a window seat, and put her backpack beside her. The bus pulled out, and the rocks and twisted pines of Muskoka turned slowly to snow-capped fields around Barrie. She wasn’t hungry, but she dug into her backpack anyway, wanting to make sure the lunch Mr. and Mrs. Xiangzi had packed for her was still there. She sniffed and wiped her eyes, turning her face to the window.

  There were three fortune cookies nestled on the top of the bag. Greta took them out and unwrapped them one at a time. You inspire others with your principles. She squirmed; she hadn’t inspired anyone by dropping out of school. She turned over the thin slip of white paper. Vous inspirez la confiance rien qu’avec vos principes. It sounded a lot better in French, but it still wasn’t true. She cracked open the second. Keep your ideas flexible, and don’t ignore the details.

  “Restez soupies,” she pronounced out loud, laughing. She had no idea what it meant, but it sounded hilarious. “Dans vos idees et ne negligez pas les details.”

  She stopped. Her mouth tightened, and she felt her pulse in the base of her throat. She hadn’t spent a lot of time working out exactly what she was going to do when she reached Toronto. The last fortune cookie provided a jolt of inspiration. You are about to receive a big compliment. She smiled. That would be nice. She copied down the numbers on the back. 1 21 26 41 42 49. For Lotto Max Friday. Maybe luck would take care of the pesky details she’d neglected before she left. She’d need to find somebody to buy her one for her when she got off the bus; she wasn’t old enough to buy one herself. But if she won, she decided, she’d give them a cut—a good one.

  The bus slowed, Greta dozed, and when she woke, it was pulling into the terminal downtown. With the five hundred dollars she’d saved up from working at New Haven all rolled tightly and stashed in her backpack, she stepped off the bus and into a diesel cloud of idling coaches.

  When the bus pulled away, for one long excruciating minute, Greta simply stood there. It was midafternoon on a bright, sunny day, but she had no idea where she was. She strolled down Bay Street to the bottom of the city. Facing a strong breeze off the harbor, she sat on a white bench beside Lake Ontario.

  After sitting and watching the boats and windsurfers for a while, she walked back up Yonge Street, excited and terrified of the sights and sounds. There were horns blasting and music blaring through the open front doors of the stores. There were happy families and strange faces. Every restaurant was packed. She’d never seen so many people rushing everywhere and in every direction. She estimated there were probably more people on a hot Saturday afternoon in one square block of Toronto than in the whole of downtown Bracebridge on a summer weekend.

  By early evening, the sun faded. Greta felt her stomach growl, and so she dropped into Taco Bell to quell her hunger. While she chewed slowly to make the burrito last longer, it struck her she had nowhere to go.

  Night fell and the streetlights switched on. She searched around and found a small, parkette south of Yonge and College, full of people, littered with dirty fast food wrappers and empty Starbucks cups. Couples strolled by, hand-in-hand, and others gathered in small groups. Some people sat by themselves. She wondered whether they were there in an effort to be alone.

  With her eyes growing heavy, Greta parked herself on a bench tucked into the back. When exhaustion took hold, she tried to fight it, but she’d run out of steam.

  Suddenly, a garbled voice roused her. “Yo, lady.”

  She didn’t understand who was speaking at first. It sounded like the voice was coming through a wind tunnel. It’s just a dream, she told herself. Just a dream she’d forget when she woke up.

  “Hey, miss,” she heard the deep voice grumble.

  Then something poked her. She shot up. Her head wheeled around. A strange man stood in front of her.

  “Hi.”

  She looked at him and said nothing. Scruffy and unshaven, he had a series of colorful tattoos inked up the side of his neck. He wore a long beat-up black leather coat.

  “New here?”

  She pulled her backpack up as tightly as she could to her chest. As if that would save her.

  The man stuck out his hand. “The name’s Max.”

  She didn’t take it; his fingers were filthy.

  “This here’s my hood,” he told her, pointing around the square. “I take care of the newbies.”

  How did he know she had just arrived? Was it that obvious?

  “Need anything?”

  A strong whiff of alcohol pulsated off him like cheap cologne.

  “Nope.”

  He jabbed a thumb towards a group of girls across the square. “Those’re mine.”

  She craned her head in their direction. “They belong to you?”

  “I give them a place to stay. Something to eat.”

  She stared at the girls at the edge of the parkette, their pinched faces pale as they shivered in the night air. They had red-lacquered nails and pretty dresses, but they all looked really skinny.

  “No, thanks.” She rolled off the bench and stood to her full height.

  He looked her up and down. “Once you’ve been here a
few days, you may change your mind.”

  Her nerves jangled; something didn’t feel right. She smiled and tried to keep her voice from shaking. “See you around.”

  He didn’t smile. Instead, he reached out to touch her face. She shrunk back. There was no chance of that. Then he stepped away, walked across the parkette, and disappeared into the shadows.

  Greta exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath for most of the conversation. She shut her eyes to focus. Slow, steady breaths. Then a sudden thought struck her. She dug deep in her backpack to make sure everything was still there. Money? Check. Clothes? Check. Library card? Check. She felt down to the bottom for her dime box and ran her hand along the grooves carved into the wood. She rubbed all four sides, taking in every crack, the familiar feeling under her fingers calming her. She looked out into the darkness, feeling safer, but the parkette was pitch black and the quiet she’d craved earlier was now giving her the creeps. She squinted at her watch. It read 2:00 AM. With nowhere to go, her only option was another bench across the parkette; one that was out in the open, flooded by the light of a streetlamp. There was one no one had claimed. She looked around, stood, shouldered her bag, and ran over. She took it for her own and fell fast asleep.

  Detective Perez’s notebook slipped off her lap and fell onto the floor with a thud. “Lucky break.”

  Greta saw the detective’s face had paled a little since they’d first sat down that morning. She understood why. It was only later she’d realized how narrowly she’d escaped being trafficked or pimped out.

  “I took precautions. Slept in wide-open spaces. Kept my money tucked inside in my backpack. Kept to myself, too.”

  The detective stretched her arm down, felt around the floor, and put her notebook on the table. “How long were you out there?” she asked.

  Greta ignored her grating voice. She looked at her reflection in the one-way mirror and sighed. “Longer than I’d hoped for.”

  After two weeks of sleeping rough, forced by hunger and tenants in the parkette who wanted to share her bench, she relinquished it. With her clothes wet and chilled to the bone, she walked to Queen Street, past St. Michael’s Hospital, through Moss Park and Corktown, and over the bridge into Riverside. Further along, she reached Leslieville, a gritty pocket in the east, gentrifying in spots. She slept in a brown cardboard box in an alley behind a restaurant. It became her comfort, her prison, her home.

  Over the summer, the heat reminded her of the cabin in Ravensworth. A sad, comfortable familiarity crept in. Everyone who passed her on the street fought the suffocating air in slow motion, their eyes fixed to the ground, their shoulders slumped. She was never alone, but she felt alone. She guessed it was a city thing.

  The detective’s face lost whatever colour it still had. “You panhandled?”

  “Yeah.” What did she think she did?

  “Better than the alternative, I guess.”

  Slouched in her seat, she startled at the mention of what the detective was insinuating. She hadn’t even considered it. “Queen and Carlaw was a jackpot,” she said.

  “Really.”

  Was she shocked? Or judging? Either way, she clearly did not agree with her definition.

  “How much could you pull in?” the detective asked.

  “Twenty—”

  “Dollars?”

  “Why are you whispering? That’s more than enough for Tim’s or Wendy’s.”

  “You ate it every day?”

  “On slow ones I made two or three, but I packed away loose change to cover those off.”

  The detective folded her arms across her chest. “Where did you learn to be so financially prudent?”

  “Grade Nine Business didn’t cover hunger as a motivation for saving.” She stuck her hands under her thighs. “It might be a good addition to the course.”

  On one night, Greta woke to unfamiliar sounds that startled her. Scrabbling, chattering noises. A cantankerous family of well-fed raccoons were making their way down the edge of the alley, rummaging in and out of the trash bins in search of a midnight feast. After they’d gone, the moon, luminous in the sky, shone down into her damp cardboard castle and wouldn’t let her sleep. She reached for her backpack. The one she’d bought before she’d left was built for people like her; people who needed to keep papers and documents safe from the changing seasons. She unzipped the mid-sized waterproof pouch. Birth certificate. Library card. A few toonies. A tarnished loonie. Two damp fivers with Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the front peaked up from the bottom of the pack. She dug past the stern, blue face of Canada’s seventh Prime Minister, felt around inside, and pulled out her dime box.

  She dug through it. At the bottom was her Kindergarten class photo, creased deeply in quarters. It was yellowish and had cracked with age. She unfolded it and smoothed it out on her lap with care, then stared at the little girl standing to the right of Latoya. Who was she? A small pale face looked directly into the camera. Not petulant, not confident either. A full head taller than any of her classmates, bony and sinewy, but not malnourished. Children sat on the bench in front of them, palms on their knees. While most clutched Beyblades, Hot Wheels, Transformers or Strawberry Shortcake dolls, her hands were tight-fisted at her sides.

  Greta stroked the photograph. She was pretty; large blue eyes under unnaturally long lashes, like college girls around her pasted on for weekend parties in miniskirts and stilettos. A fringe of black bangs unevenly cut lay halfway down her forehead. Two hasty knit braids, tied with beige ribbons, hung either side of her face. There had to have been some thought put into those ribbons because they matched the colour of the pants and the shirt she was wearing. Greta peered more closely. Hers wasn’t a big wide-open smile like the other kids on the bench beside her. It was less pronounced. Understated. Uncertain. Tears slipped down her cheeks and splashed onto the photo.

  Weeks turned to months, and Greta’s cardboard box grew wafer-thin, its dank, earthy smell overpowering. Cold to the bone and hungry, she sold her watch at the local pawnshop. When the first snowflakes fell, she was convinced it was time.

  THIRTY

  “T ime for what?” Detective Perez said.

  “To get off the streets.”

  The detective puffed out her cheeks to the size of balloons, and then blew warm air slowly straight out of her mouth. The whole thing looked kind of awkward; almost painful.

  “I remember the exact day,” Greta said.

  “You went to…” the detective rummaged through the papers in the file.

  “Penn House.” She studied the detective’s face. Her eyes looked tired, but even with her fully packed bags of exhaustion, she was visibly relieved.

  “With the street worker?” the detective asked.

  She nodded. “In her car. Not hers—the city’s. I thought it was funny she was driving a white Ford Escape. You know those ones built for active lifestyles? But there she was, stuck in traffic, succumbing to road rage.”

  The detective said nothing.

  Greta guessed cars weren’t her thing. She smiled. “I can still feel that first blast of heat.”

  “You must have been nervous.”

  “At first, but when we walked in, a dark-haired intake worker winked at me. I remember walking two scenarios through in my mind.”

  The detective’s pencil stopped.

  “One: he was a friendly guy; two: he thought I was a catch.”

  Detective Perez looked up. Her mouth dropped.

  “Hey, with my mismatched clothes caked in dirt and my greasy hair, why wouldn’t he?”

  Detective Perez laughed; not a chuckle—a full out laugh. “How did you keep your sense of humour?”

  She shrugged. “After the mountain of paperwork, he explained the rules. No drugs. No alcohol.”

  The detective’s smile vanished. “Reasonable.”

  She snorted. “I was the ninja of rules.”

  “Did you tell them that?”

  She balked. “I’d known them for, li
ke, five minutes.”

  The corners of the detective’s mouth tipped downward. “Fair enough.”

  “They had no idea about consequences dealt. Besides, I was an athlete.”

  “You’ve never done drugs?”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Greta’s jaw clamped shut. Her outburst with Mr. K. in elementary school hadn’t gone over well. He’d looked so hurt and she’d felt badly. She wasn’t going to make that same mistake again. “Sorry. No,” she said politely, “I don’t and never did.”

  As the detective wrote in her notebook, Phil reached for the pitcher of water. Ice tinkled against the sides as he filled the three glasses and passed them around the table. She picked one up and took a sip. “Penn was great—an old rambling brick house. It was indoors with a full roof. It wasn’t damp. And there were showers, which we were encouraged to use regularly. I think I sunk Lake Ontario two inches every time.”

  “No doubt a welcome change.”

  “The bathroom was stocked with miniature bottles filled with soaps and lotions and shampoos and creams. The smell gave me flashbacks to when I played with my mom’s make-up.”

  The detective smiled.

  “And we didn’t have to steal them. More just magically reappeared every day.”

  The detective avoided eye contact. “How long did you stay?”

  “I was part of the residential program so I got my own bedroom. Penn’s not like those adult shelters; you know, the ones with line-ups for a bed every day. Sometimes people get in. Sometimes they don’t. It’s like gambling. You take a chance.”

  The detective pursed her lips. Greta could tell she knew exactly what she meant, and she didn’t look happy about it.