Between the Cracks She Fell

by Lisa de Nikolits

  She had been entirely unsympathetic about my longing to know about my father.

  Joscelyn girl, shut it. You’ve got Simon, and he’s a wonderful dad to you, or at least he could be, if you’d let him. It’s up to you, this is your life. You get to choose. You can get on with it, or you can hang about wondering a thousand what-ifs and feel hard done by. I won’t love you any less either way. Life is choices, pet. You get to choose, see what I’m saying?

  You can make life what you want it to be, Jojo, Mum had agreed. Which isn’t to say you can wake up and say righty, I want my life to be full of scones and cream and ponies and what-have-you, but you can be as hurt or happy or content as you choose.

  I wondered what Gran would say about my current state of affairs, my money lost, my man gone.

  But I didn’t have to wonder. I could hear the words as if Gran was right there: Sorry, girlie. Some hardships you don’t get to avoid. I’m sorry, lamb. I really am.

  I wished I could hide my face in Gran’s bony chest and feel the buttons of her cardigan digging into my face and smell the smoke of her fags buried deep in her pores.

  Gran and Mum were small women with thin sloping shoulders, sparse chests and hips that broadened over time.

  Sparrow women, one man had said, who was visiting Gran with romantic intentions, which made Gran scream with laughter to us in private.

  He had been watching Gran make toasted cheese and onion sandwiches with thick slices of rich old cheddar and generous rings of lightly fried onions, all blanketed between pieces of thick fried white bread. I had been in charge of the tea, and it had to be strong and rich with milk and sugar.

  Gran had looked at him. Sparrow’s are God’s special birds, she had said, flipping her spatula. Gran had tight ginger curls, courtesy of a free perm she got at Mum’s salon, while Mum sported a blonde bouffant do.

  I was born with dark hair that I wore long and straight. My only concession to style was my bangs, which were usually too long and needed to be blown out of my eyes. I never knew why I kept the bangs. I guess I couldn’t be bothered to think of another style.

  I was tall too, close to five feet nine, and I towered over Mum and Gran.

  Must have got my height from my Dad, I had ventured one time. That and my dimples. Must have been a looker, my Dad.

  No response.

  I’m missing vital information about half my gene pool, I had pushed harder. It’s not fair. Why are you both so secretive? It has to be bad. I should know the bad in me.

  Girlie, Gran had said, you are your own person and the quicker you realize that, the easier life will be for you.

  Which was no answer at all but the sparrow women were imperturbable.

  Then Gran died. She was only fifty-eight, and she was gone, and her absence left all kinds of holes in my life.

  After the funeral, me and Mum had looked at each other across the small kitchen table, each holding a mug of tea.

  You going to be okay, Jossy, or are you going to do stuff that will keep me up at night? She wasn’t judging. She had simply wanted to know. I was eighteen.

  What will you do if I don’t, Mum? What will you do if I don’t get into trouble?

  Give up working and go on holiday with Simon. He’s been after me for ages to sell the salon and go on some cruises and whatnot, and I’m tired lassie, I’m really tired. I wouldn’t mind a bit of being looked after myself.

  Sounds good, Mum. Don’t worry about me, I won’t get into any trouble. I’m going to finish school and go to college for accounting and then maybe go to Canada.

  Mum’s eyes had narrowed, but she offered nothing in reply.

  And I had done exactly that. I finished school, studied accounting, and made my way to Canada. Stupid really. What was I hoping? That I’d bump into Dad on Yonge Street and we would embrace and pick up where we left off? It wasn’t like I could even remember where that was. Dad and me together, it was all so fuzzy. I clung to one memory of him taking me to the track where I touched one of the horses that was so big and terrifying, so full of energy he was likely to hurt someone. I held tightly onto Dad’s big hand. I must have been like a barnacle to him that day. We never went again. And I remembered Dad taking us to buy fireworks, but that was all.

  I knew Gran would worry about what I was doing now, and I wished Gran wasn’t up in heaven watching this all unfold.

  Stick to your knitting, Gran, I said, sharply. Isn’t that what you used to say? I am doing the best I can, okay?

  Gran had worried about me since I was little, about my tendency to be alone, about my desire to not play with others and she would not like this. This, she would have said, this homeless thing you’re planning is going a step too far.

  I am what I am, Gran. Remember the time that stupid boy hit me on the head in the playground and I didn’t cry but I refused to go back until I was ready. That’s all this is. Besides, I argued with Gran in heaven, everybody’s losing their jobs out there now, like I’m going to find one? There are no jobs, Gran. I’m just taking some time, that’s all.

  Conversations had, and thus prepared, I spent the last night in my house walking from empty room to empty room, from the basement to the top floor. I ran my hands over the banister of the stairs, and I looked at all the fixtures and ornamentation that I loved, and I apologized for failing them, and said goodbye.

  In the morning, I had one last bath, I tidied a few things. Then, without allowing a single thought of self-pity, I locked the house, dropped the keys in the mailbox, and left.

  It was time to fall from the sky. I hadn’t read much more of The Satanic Verses, as I had been too busy packing up, but it would be the first book I would hang out with, as soon as I got settled.

  I did not look behind me as I left nor did I cry.

  9. THE PILGRIMAGE

  I REACHED MY DESTINATION IN THE EARLY afternoon and faced down a sea of grass. I stepped on the wax pentagram and made my way to the building I recalled as being the most suitable.

  The wind was strong, and my hair whipped across my face, making it hard for me to see. It was a blustery day, and the blue sky was quickly obscured by nasty clouds like the thick grey underfelt of a wet carpet. The tall grass made swishing noises as I pushed through it, and I felt irritated that the elements were not being more supportive or welcoming.

  An ill wind? Great. Now, I was not only homeless, I was talking to myself like some bleeding old welfare geezer. I felt horribly afraid.

  First you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! … How to ever smile again, if first you won’t cry? … I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you.

  I wanted to turn and run back to my house, fish the keys out of the mailbox, and just go home. But the house was no longer mine. I was locked out.

  The thought filled me with a flash of terror, and I rushed towards the abandoned school, knowing that the sooner I got an accurate lay of the land, the better.

  The school, in its prime, had been immense and sprawling, with a series of large buildings scattered across the generous land. There was a gymnasium, a large block with classrooms, a cafeteria, a library, two boarding houses and an administration building.

  The building with all the classrooms had long since been burnt to the ground. I remembered reading in the newspaper that the police suspected local teenage arsonists but had never found any proof.

  The gymnasium had been boarded up tightly, with no way to get inside.

  And while I loved the high-ceilinged cafeteria canopied by generous skylights and fitted with ornately panelled walls, it was, at last sight, populated with wasps and mounds of scattered and decaying food.

  Kids, Shayne had said, stepping on Cheerios. This school’s got a weird history. First, it was a school for messed-up boys. Then in 1941, it was a prisoner-of-war camp where the Allies put Nazi officers. The crazy thing was, it was more like a five-star hotel tha
n a prisoner-of-war camp; it had an indoor swimming pool and a theatre, all kinds of luxuries. After that, it was a Catholic school, then it was a school for Chinese immigrants who wanted to learn English. But that went under when two of the kids figured they weren’t being taught well enough or fast enough and they murdered the headmaster.

  Holy cow, I had said. I hated the nuns at my school but not enough to murder them.

  They didn’t mean to murder him; they just meant to kidnap him. Stand against that wall, I want to get a picture of you in the doorway where it says Out The Box. Yes, move a bit more to the left.

  How did he die if they didn’t mean to murder him?

  He was diabetic and died because he didn’t have his meds with him and they didn’t know.

  What happened to the kids?

  They went to prison. I read in the newspaper that their parents were happy that at least in prison they could carry on learning English. Kind of ironic, really.

  And then what happened to the school? I had pulled up my T-shirt and flashed him for good measure, but he was adjusting something on his camera and did not notice.

  It became an Islamic school but that folded. Now it’s just this, a mess.

  An Islamic school. I had tried to imagine the myriad people who had sat under the skylights of the cafeteria and I wondered if any of them had been happy. It didn’t sound like it.

  I pulled up an old office chair and dusted it off as best I could.

  Shayne sat down on a wooden box next to me, and we looked around that yellow Eden with ferocious peeling paint and the wasps going crazy over the smashed Cheerios.

  Look, I had said, pointing upwards.

  High up in the wall, near the rafters, a fan was idly spinning one broken petal. A long dangling chain swung back and forth, and except for that slight shadow of movement, you would never have known the fan was there.

  That’s like that saying, you know, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? I had said. If we weren’t here, would that fan still be turning?

  Shayne had shrugged and lit a joint. Couldn’t say, he had responded, and he sounded like an underwater diver as he held the smoke in his lungs.

  I love this place the best, I had said. It’s crazy and beautiful and tragic and awesome. And so many rooms. Why so many rooms in a cafeteria?

  Meat lockers, fridges, inventory, pantry, cutlery, kitchens, cookers, Shayne replied.

  He was right, and yes, there were rooms and rooms, but all of them too visible, too open. None of them any good for me now.

  I wanted the most private and hidden room on the spacious property and I thought I knew exactly where that was.

  I forced my way through the thick undergrowth, wanting to avoid a brush with poison ivy.

  I was startled by a sudden scraping noise, and I jumped around in fright, the blood pounding in my ears like a freight train, but the culprit was only a squirrel clawing its way up a tree.

  Better get used to strange noises, girlie. There’ll be a lot of those. I wasn’t sure if it was me or Gran talking.

  I approached the door of the admin building on tiptoe. The door was pushed partway closed, and I pried it open slowly, ready to bolt if an alarm sounded or if anyone called out from inside. But there was nothing in there except the thick silence of the peeling, disintegrating walls and the thud of my frightened heart.

  I went further inside, my senses on full alert. I was ready to turn tail at the slightest provocation, but the interior was still and unmoving. Grafitti artists had been busy though: You Ugly Mother FuckERR said one wall in red and yellow, while Satan’s Waitin’ was in green italics on the opposite side.

  The room to my immediate left had clearly been inhabited at some point. It was littered by a detritus of rotting blankets, a cheap Persian prayer rug, paper plates, old shoes, and a puppy-and-kittens calendar that dated back to 2004.

  The calendar reminded me of all the others I had seen in the abandoned places Shayne and I had explored. Seemed like the homeless were obsessed with what day it was, which made sense to me now. I thought I should get a one too so as not to lose track of time.

  Plastic cutlery lay on the floor amongst moth-eaten clothes. And dead centre and jaunty atop the mess, sailed a box of Kleenex with one neatly-pulled out tissue, like a taut sailcloth ready to catch the wind.

  The wall inside the room bore a message: Come out to the punishment of your Lord and his anger! Follow the teachings of Allah today, may God accept all our weak efforts.

  I wasn’t interested in that room. I peered into the room on my right. A fax machine lay stripped and broken next to an office chair with a shredded seat cover, and a cheap, faux-wood desk was dashed on its side. The broken blinds behind it had been pulled down and hung askew.

  The window was boarded up, but the room was too close to the front of the building for comfort.

  I went further into the building, past gutted photocopy machines and pin-up boards that still displayed safety guides and first-aid advice.

  Even in death you’re bloody ugly, I told the overturned clumsy utilitarian equipment. There’s nothing redeeming about you, darling, not even as a relic.

  I looked into what was once a meeting room, and I thought it had potential, but the glass window looked out into the passage I had just walked down. If the front door opened without warning, I would be in direct line of sight, which was no good at all.

  I turned a dark corner. Arsonists had been busy here. The walls and ceiling were blackened and blistered and my heart beat faster and faster, and the push of blood felt thick and slow as if fear had coagulated like custard in my veins.

  I LIKE CHEESE I LIKE CHEESE was spray-painted, red on a yellow background.

  And then, in front of me, was a small mound of turds and the toilet matter looked horribly human. There was a kindly arrow and a caption: SHIT.

  No shit, Sherlock. I stepped over the excrement.

  I realized something. Doing this by myself was a very different experience to doing it with Shayne. I had not thought it would be — I had not really thought about it at all. But now that I was here, in the moment, alone, it was terrifying. Apart from being alone, the harsh fact that I didn’t have a home to go back to didn’t help my comfort level either.

  I held my breath and stood still, trying to acertain whether I was really alone, but there was no activity, no sound, no sign of life. I was alone, and I plucked up the courage to carry on.

  I swung my backpack off my shoulders and pulled out my new flashlight. When I flicked it on, I was immediately reassured not only by its light but by its weight.

  I pushed on.

  WHERE IS MY MIND? WHERE IS MY MIND?

  The typography told me that the cheese lover had spoken.

  And it was near the end of a small blackened hallway, just a little way off to the right, with violet lettering inscribing Flowers of The Abyss, that I found my new home.

  10. THE ABUNDANCE

  MY NEW HOME HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN a storage room for stationery and small office items, and it was perfect. It was windowless which was exactly what I was looking for; that way, if I was reading at night, no one would see my light. The room was a small cubbyhole, and the metal shelves would come in handy once I cleared the junk off them and cleaned them.

  I dumped my bag inside and shone my light around the room, checking every nook and cranny. There was no evidence of rats or spiders. Surprisingly, the room had escaped the attention of vandals.

  There was a key on one of the shelves, with an illegible tag, and, to my delight, the key fitted easily into the door. I tested it a few times and the lock slid back and forth.

  Being able to lock myself inside at night would go a long way towards getting some good shut-eye, and I wouldn’t have to worry about my belongings if I went into town. This was all working out very well.

  I gat
hered the garbage that had been left in the room: papers, files, and half empty cans of paint, and hauled everything out into the hallway.

  I covered up the SHIT-labelled mound of turds with an overturned old paint can and put a brick on it for good measure.

  I was about to throw out a weighty binder when I realized it was neatly organized and jam-packed with papers. Imran Ali was written in careful cursive on the cover label, and the first page told me that Imran had been a student at the Islamic school. I left the binder on a shelf in my room, curious as to its contents.

  I created a roadblock of chairs and carefully balanced paint tins in the hallway to serve as an alarm system in case anybody came exploring while I was in my room. And, it would be easy for me to see if there had been any visitors in my absence.

  I felt proud of myself, and then I was sad because I missed Shayne, and I wanted to show him how well I had done. I wanted to show him how I had taken all his safety issues into account.

  But Shayne was in Caroline’s basement, far away.

  I locked my backpack in my room and walked down the main hallway, shining my flashlight in front of me. The building was enormous and seemed to go forever.

  The Sex Dungeon dripped down one wall, facing another wall that said, You Won’t Get Out.

  I was glad the graffiti artists were literate when it came to apostrophes.

  I walked slowly, casting my light this way and that, and found a room that held the skeleton of a bunk bed, a pile of boys’ shoes, and a number of binders on the floor.

  I was confused — why were there bunk beds in an admin building? But further investigation revealed a large number of bedrooms. This must have been a dorm as well as an admin building.

  The rooms that followed were tall tiny boxes with twelve-foot ceilings and windows set high up in the walls. They looked quite prison-like, and I wondered if these rooms had housed the Nazi prisoners.

  Then the rooms became normal-sized again with low ceilings, and I stepped inside one and shone my light on a couple of mattresses stacked up against the wall.