Playgroung of Lost Toys

by Exile

  “Do you know me?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Lizzy.”

  “Madison.”

  “No, I’m Elizabeth.”

  “No, I’m Maddy.”

  “You’re not from here.”

  “You’re not from here.”

  “I found this—”

  “—in the garden.”

  “In the cadaver. And I knew—”

  “—knew it was mine,” Elizabeth said.

  The die on Maddy’s palm was identical to Elizabeth’s, yet she knew if they were to fall together, she would somehow be able to identify her own.

  “What’s happening? What is this place? Do you know?”

  “Don’t you? Twelve is a perfect number, the product of the Earth multiplied by the Heavens. This is just one side. Where did you start?” Maddy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “But you stayed here.”

  Maddy’s hand balled into a fist. “She doesn’t live in this place, not this Maddy; she’s on a different track. And I’ve been afraid, so afraid. Too afraid to cast the die.”

  “You must want to go home. Twelve is a finite number, not like pi.”

  Maddy shook her head. She pulled Elizabeth into a hug. “We were never friends on my side, and we’re not really friends here. What about…”

  “Sort of.”

  “I hope there’s a side where we’re really truly friends.” She let Elizabeth go. “Good luck.”

  Elizabeth rolled the die.

  The pansies were the first thing Elizabeth noticed, even before the absence of music, the absence of Maddy. Her pansies, evidence of life in the dirt. Her heart constricted, as she stepped into the kitchen, silent in the way of sleeping places. She tugged open the fridge and it gave a shivering hack. Home; her heart beat.

  Elizabeth ventured into the living room. The first-floor lights were out, but the recessed ones in the upper hallway glowed softly. She sighed, and then cursed as she stepped on something. A business card poked into her foot, sticking up at an angle from the floorboard. It was for a New Age shop on Queen Street. She tried to remember it, couldn’t quite, and then did. Madison had started work there, a few days ago.

  An argument erupted in the upper hallway. She instinctively retreated into the deeper shadows. Jake’s voice, slurred with drink. Her own voice, tempered with exhaustion. Elizabeth didn’t belong, not here; she’d been wrong. A part of her wanted to see them, needed to see them; she’d leave in a minute, maybe two. They were treading heavily in the hallway, moving quickly. The pitch of their voices rose into a mingled screaming. Elizabeth feared stepping too far into the light.

  It happened too fast. Elizabeth couldn’t be sure: accidental or intentional. She saw herself tumble, thudding down the stairs. Sprawled with a loud crack at the foot. Head turned at an impossible angle. Jake slumped at the top of the stairs. He wept, the sound too coarse to be a comfort.

  Elizabeth gasped. A five-year-old boy whimpered and crawled out from behind a chair. Barefoot, he was dressed in Spider-Man PJs. A toy car fell from one hand.

  The boy stared at Elizabeth. She hesitated. She was in the shape of his eyes, the crooked curve of his feet. She held her arms open and he came running. He smelled of bath time and grape popsicles.

  “Those were always my favourite,” she said.

  Her hands fisted. They were empty except for the business card. She pawed at the ground, though she knew she wouldn’t have put the die down.

  The boy touched her forehead, her ears, and her cheeks methodically, as if looking for the zipper.

  Jake would conquer his shock, soon. She saw the rest of the story unfolding: distraught young man kills wife, then child, before taking his own life. Elizabeth drew an afghan off the couch to cover the boy’s head, to protect him from the scene. He clung to her neck as she backed away. A few more steps and she’d be in the kitchen; then there’d be the door, and then freedom. His bare, pretty, crooked foot bumped a vase Elizabeth didn’t recognize. She counted to ten under her breath.

  “Liz.” Jake loped down the stairs two at a time and skidded around the body, sliding on sweaty feet. “Liz.”

  His blond hair was shorn; the cut made his face severe. He reached out, hesitantly, as if he thought her a spectre.

  “Stay away.”

  “You can’t take him.” Jake’s eyes glistened. “It’s not right. We need to be together.”

  Elizabeth eased backwards. “No.”

  “It’s okay, Liz-Bear. I can make it right. I know what to do. I can do it too,” he said, eyes shining with a maniacal love.

  Elizabeth ran.

  “Wait for me, Liz-Bear, I’m coming with you!”

  She kicked open the kitchen door and shot into the street. The afghan fluttered in the oncoming headlights. Brakes squealed. A taxi driver cursed her while she shoved the boy into the backseat. “Drive,” she cried, throwing herself in beside the boy.

  The driver hit the gas. “Women’s shelter?”

  She couldn’t focus, thoughts scattering like billiard balls.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  He wagged a finger at her. “You know.”

  Elizabeth supposed she did have a relative idea, and she knew then where they were headed; looking at the orange font on the business card, she told the driver to take them to Queen Street. Maybe luck was with her and she’d landed in the world where she and Madison were really truly friends. She watched Jake disappear from view in the mirror and didn’t miss him.

  THE FOOD OF MY PEOPLE

  Candas Jane Dorsey

  Reenie’s dad worked on the rigs. Before the accident he was only home one week in six or eight. He was working so they could have a good future, Reenie’s mom said. Reenie loved him dearly but sort of the same way she loved certain library books she took out from the Bookmobile when it came around, but knew she couldn’t keep forever, that she had to share with the others whose dates were stamped in the back by Jan the librarian.

  Right after the accident, Reenie was only allowed to see him through a glass window, where he lifted two fingers in a tiny wave, and Reenie would spread her fingers on the glass and watch the bandaged stranger with a nervous smile. Reenie’s mom could go in the room, with special clothes on. But they didn’t go very often, because Reenie’s mom, Lori, had to work at the dollar store.

  Lori took her hand one day and they went over to the next door of the row house where they lived, and Lori rang the doorbell.

  “Hang on, I’m coming!” The door opened, and Reenie looked up with awe at the woman in the calf-length cotton pants and the floral top. She’d never seen anyone as big around as she was tall like that. Lori was tiny – Reenie was already almost up to her shoulder, and, Lori said, gaining on her every day – and thin as a rail, and wore thin jeans, cowboy boots and shirts with little pearl snaps that Reenie loved to touch and, since she went to school, to count. Lori said when Reenie was a big girl she could have one of them shirts. This big woman wore what seemed like enough flowered chintz to make a sail and float her away.

  “Well, hi there!” the woman said, looking down at Reenie, then up at her mom.

  “I’m Lori Gervais from next door,” her mom said.

  “Everybody calls me Cubbie, at least everybody polite.”

  The woman laughed out loud, at which certain parts of her shook in an alarming way, as if there was something alive under her skin. Reenie shrank behind her mom and held on tight.

  “I was wondering if you knew someone who could take care of my girl at noon and after school while I go to work?”

  The woman – Cubbie – looked down at her and smiled. “Hello, Renée, honey,” she said, and Reenie went cold with a mixture of fear and delight. Not even Lori called her by her real name. She thought nobody but her and her mama and daddy knew it. And how did the lady know it?

  “Reenie’s daddy is French,” said Lori. “Say hello to Mrs. Cubbie.”

&nb
sp; “Just Cubbie,” said Cubbie. “My husband was Jake Cubb, godrestisoul, but since I been looking like a beach ball, I been called Cubbie by everybody, adult, child or dog.”

  “Hello, Cubbie,” Reenie – Renée – said bravely. “I’m six.”

  “Well, that’s a wonder,” said Cubbie, smiling at her, and then to Lori, “She can come to me.”

  “I can’t pay you much,” said Lori, looking aside.

  “I don’t want your money,” said Cubbie. “Noon hour don’t work for me, so you send Renée to school with her lunch in a bag. When she gets home she can come right here. Make me a sugar pie now and again, we’ll call it even.”

  There was some back-and-forth about that, but by the time it was over they found themselves sitting at Cubbie’s kitchen table, eating homemade doughnuts rolled in cinnamon and table sugar. Lori was telling Cubbie about the dollar store.

  Renée had no idea that people made doughnuts. She thought they came from Tim Horton.

  That was the start of it.

  The next day, Reenie’s mom walked her to school like always. “Now you eat your lunch in the lunchroom, and remember to go next door to Auntie Cubbie when you go home.”

  Reenie remembered.

  That day Cubbie said they were going to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Cubbie showed Renée a box with little bits of picture jumbled up inside, with some of the pieces upside down, and some of them with their little stubby fingers tangled up with each other. Then she showed the lid, and said how the jumbly bits all fit together and made that picture that was on the lid.

  The whole idea was amazing to Renée. How did she get almost halfway to the age of seven without hearing about this thing?

  “Don’t you have them in that school you go to?” Cubbie asked.

  Renée tried to explain about the school kind of puzzle, with only ten or twenty-six pieces, made of wood, no box-with-a-picture-on, and educational.

  “Don’t look so sad. Not your fault that school is kinda backward!” Cubbie laughed and jiggled. “These ones are what regular people do, not educational so much.”

  Not only did Cubbie have a whole cupboard full, some of them in old, worn boxes with old-fashioned pictures on them, but she had a special felt cloth she put on the table before-hand. “Got it from Sara Martin.” Renée knew she meant the Sara Martin catalogue from which Lori got the set of three nesting stainless steel bowls, and the special support bra for well-endowed women to prevent backache and that would last for five years guaranteed.

  “You choose the picture you like,” said Cubbie. Renée put her finger on a big red dot with no detail.

  “That one’s a little tough for a starter,” said Cubbie, “and I usually save it for a special time. You never know when you might have a tricky problem, and if nothing else, making one of these clears your thoughts. But for a first-timer with nothing much on her mind, you best pick something a mite easier.”

  Renée picked a puppy dog in a basket, and fell into a trance of shape and colour until Cubbie said, “That’s enough for today.” She rolled the whole puzzle up in the tablecloth, presto, and tucked it up on the shelf above the puzzles, pushing back a crocheted afghan in pink, yellow and lime green. “I bet you’re hungry.”

  They went behind the kitchen island and Cubbie showed Renée how to make Jell-O. She wouldn’t let Renée near the hot water but, after the ice cubes were in, Cubbie let her stir it. The Jell-O was orange. Cubbie mixed in a can of fruit cocktail, and put it all in a fancy copper dish she called a mold. Renee loved how the ice made a flat little tinkle against the Jell-O mold, but even more she loved how when the Jell-O was hardened and turned out on the plate, the fruit cocktail pieces floated in an orange sky, a sky that jiggled like Cubbie’s laughing folds and tasted like Kool-Aid.

  The next day when Lori dropped Reenie off at school, they both went to the office. “I hear you got Frenchimmersion here,” said Lori. “Reenie’s daddy is French and I want to put her in that.” The principal called another teacher from outside the door, a fancy-looking lady with dyed hair. This was the Frenchimmersion teacher, call-me-Madame, who looked at Reenie’s admission card and said, in a voice with the same music in it as her dad’s voice, “So, Renée, you wan’ to come wit’ us an’ learn français, eh?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Renée. So from that day on she went to Madame’s classroom, and things got strange. She had to do everything en français. Count, ask to go to the bathroom, everything. Some of the kids knew how parler français real good, but Renée was, like most, slow and stumbly.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said to Cubbie. “Two kids make fun of me. I was smart in my other class. I got all correct on my worksheet. I got to work on the computer. In French-immersion they only have three computers at the back, and we have to sit around in a circle and talk Français. I hate it.”

  “Why do you think your mom put you in there?” Cubbie said, not mean, not agreeing with Renée or disagreeing, just asking. Renée shook her head, trying not to cry.

  “Well, tell you what, honey,” Cubbie went on. “You sit down there with some of this delicious Jell-O and finish off that puzzle, and think on the answer.”

  Cubbie unrolled the puzzle, with its finished edges and mysterious middle, and Renée was so instantly absorbed that she hardly noticed how she finished her Jell-O.

  There was one piece with two fingers of pink and the rest of it white. It reminded her of her father, in his peculiar suit of bandages. She laid the piece down in the centre space and started looking for another white and pink piece. She thought about how her father would come home from the rigs and call for her by her real name. He’d say what he always said, “Vienstu, ma petite chou! ” and when she came running, he’d call out, “Bonjour, bonjour, ma petite Renée.” He’d lift her up so she could see over his shoulder to the top of the fridge, that magic secret place only her dad could reach. His tattooed arms were strong and he’d bounce her up and down until she shrieked.

  Wait a minute. Here was another pink bit. It was the puppy’s nose! And Renée remembered that the teacher said, “Bonjour” too. “Bonjour” was français and français was French …“Ma petite chou” was “My little darling…”

  A little white puppy sat in a nasty pink basket. Renée liked the puppy, but if she had a puppy like that, she’d let it sleep on her pillow, not put it in a basket like an Easter egg. The puzzle was done and Renée’s dish was empty.

  “Cubbie, can I have more Jell-O? S’il vous plaît? ”

  Cubbie laughed. “See there, ma petite, I told you puzzles would help.” It turned out that Cubbie knew how to speak French too. Maybe it was just what people did, but nobody knew in her old school, like nobody knew about proper jigsaw puzzles. She had to come to the city for that. So Renée would figure it out, and teach her mother too, and when Daddy got better… but there her thoughts hit a rock and turned aside. She put her nose back into the Jell-O.

  Well, it wasn’t that easy. Like her mom said: “Reenie, nothing in life comes easy.” There was so much to learn all over again. A whole new set of numbers before she could count. A whole new set of words. A bunch of sounds she’d never made before. “Put your mouth like an O and say E,” said Madame, which made Renée’s mouth sore at first.

  Celeste and Marie-Claire ragged on her, but Madame and Lori and Cubbie all said, don’t rag back, be a better person. That was easier said than done, as Cubbie would say, but Renée worked at it. The weeks went on, some of them slow, and some fast. Every day Reenie worked at school, then came to Cubbie and played, did a little puzzle, ate some cookies or a piece of pineapple upside-down cake, then went home with Lori.

  Sometimes they went on the bus to see Renée’s daddy. They had to go a long way in the big hospital, up two elevators. Now they let Reenie in too if she put on the gowns and gloves, but she couldn’t hug him. She said, “Je t’aime, Papa! ” from across the room, and from inside the bandages her daddy said, “Trè s bien, ma petite chou! Je t’aime aussi! ” and waved h
is two pink fingers at her. Lori would say something like, “You stay and tell your dad what you’re doing in school. I’m just going to talk to the staff,” and Reenie would try to think of a story from school that didn’t involve being teased or forgetting un mot en français. Sometimes she told him about Cubbie. He would murmur a word or two.

  One day he said, “Not much happens here. It’s pretty much same old, same old.”

  After they left, Lori was usually pretty quiet. Reenie could relate to that. She was learning it was better to be quiet when she was worried about something – especially what she was starting to think of as same-old same-old worry. Because even worrying got boring sometimes, though she didn’t think she could explain that to her mom, so she didn’t try.

  One Saturday, the doctor met Lori in her dad’s room. Lori said, “Reenie, you go sit on that chair outside a minute,” and she and the doctor talked in low voices, standing beside her dad’s bed. When they were done, Lori came out and said, “Just say hello to your father and then we’ll go, kiddo. He’s real tired today.” So Renée said, “Je t’aime, Papa! ” in a tiny voice, and her dad waved his fingers at her, and then Lori and Reenie went home.

  On Monday, Renée wasn’t concentrating and got three wrong on her math sheet. After school she ran to Cubbie’s with a sick stomach, and held out the sheet with its red red ink.

  “You put that by for now, and let’s try to make crêpes tonight,” Cubbie said. “Maybe if it works out we can make dinner for your mom. Me, I never made these yet, so it’s gonna be a special adventure. Meanwhile, you go see what kind of puzzle you want to start up.”

  Soon she was deep in a picture of a mom in a long blue dress holding a little baby. The lady and the baby had gold plates behind their heads. Reenie was trying to do the border first, like Cubbie taught her, but she had found the face of the mom, so she carefully cleared a place on the felt right around where she thought the face should go. It went on well from there. It was a pretty easy puzzle, actually.

  She heard Cubbie say, “You look like you been rode hard and put away wet. You sit down there by Renée and put a few pieces in that there puzzle.” Reenie looked up in surprise to see Lori, her face tired and flat under her makeup. The metal legs of the bridge chair scraped on the linoleum as Lori pulled it out. She sat down at the side of the table with a sigh.