super, purse, press, spur, pure, ruse, user, uprise
AS NOVEMBER BEGAN, so did the rain. The days were shorter too, and because we were in a basement it sometimes felt like we were living in a cave, even in the middle of the day. I didn’t mind so much, but it bothered my mom. At first, as a treat, we’d put on all the lights when we woke up in the morning and keep them on, but it wasn’t environmentally friendly and it made Mom choke when she got the Hydro bill, so we had to stop.
By the middle of the month, we’d settled into our new routine. Because Mom now worked till ten and didn’t get home till almost eleven, our days started later than they used to. We’d both sleep till eight-thirty, then, without bothering to get out of our pajamas, we’d eat our breakfast of no-name cereal and fruit, and Mom would have two mugs of coffee and read the Economopouloses’ Vancouver Sun newspaper from the day before (they always left it by our door when they were through with it). Around ten o’clock, we’d review the work that I needed to do that day (which was sent by the district correspondence school), then Mom would make me shower and get dressed and I’d get started on my work by ten-thirty.
I could get through my work surprisingly quickly. Take away the classroom setting and a teacher who had thirty other kids to manage, and suddenly stuff that filled a six-hour school day took me two to three hours. While I did my work, Mom would mark papers, grumbling at the students’ poor spelling or lack of critical thinking.
‘I teach the ones who don’t want to be there,’ she’d tell me, even though she’d told me this a million times before, in every place we’d lived. ‘Like the engineering students who have to pass one English course, or the E.S.L. students. The tenured professors get to teach the ones who’ve actually chosen to be there. They dole out the crappy courses to sessionals, like me.’
After my schoolwork and her marking were done, we’d go out for some exercise. Usually this meant a long walk along the beach. Once in a while, we’d go ice-skating at the Kitsilano Community Centre, but I didn’t like that so much because Mom insisted that I wear one of their rental helmets, and since she was also worried I’d get head lice from the last person to rent the helmet, I had to wear a toque and then the helmet and it was uncomfortable, not to mention dorky.
On Thursday afternoons at two o’clock, we’d walk over to Cypress Elementary together so I could use a terminal in the computer lab. The first time, I had butterflies in my stomach – more like elephants, really, because I did not want to run into the Three Stooges. But it was good timing. All the kids were in class, and the lab was empty. Two weeks in a row, Mr Acheson dropped by to see how I was doing.
‘Your mom sure works hard on your behalf,’ he said to me one day, with my mom standing right there. I found this kind of annoying. It was like he thought I had special needs or something and needed an advocate. But my mom didn’t seem to mind, even when he put one of his beefy paws on her tiny shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
Every weekday at five, Mom had to leave for work. Her new schedule meant we couldn’t have our nightly Scrabble games, but sometimes we’d squeeze one in before she left.
She had a list of rules that I was supposed to follow, and she even gave me a cell phone so I could call her no matter where I was (which, according to the rules, could be no further than our local library, four blocks from our house).
At first I enjoyed these evenings to myself. I was my own boss. Mom said I was limited to an hour of TV a night, but she wasn’t there to monitor me so I watched as much as I wanted. But since our TV got only one channel, that thrill didn’t last too long.
For a while I found other things to do, like eating what I wanted, when I wanted; but Mom didn’t buy junk food, or any food that said MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS, and, to be honest, eating half a loaf of spelt bread in one sitting didn’t exactly make my heart race.
One night I wandered eight blocks from our house, a full four blocks farther than I was allowed. Another night I tried some of my mom’s wine from an open bottle in the fridge, but it tasted gross.
I was supposed to go to bed at nine-thirty and read, with lights-out by ten, but that was hard because I wasn’t used to falling asleep without my mom there. And I guess you could say that I also needed to know she was safe. So most nights I’d wait till I heard her come up the walk, then I’d flip off my light and pretend to be asleep.
By Thursday night of the third week, the novelty was wearing off and I was pretty bored. I’d already snooped through my mom’s drawers, which didn’t provide any interesting discoveries and left me feeling kind of yucky. It was pouring rain outside and the wind had picked up, and once in a while the window frames rattled, making me think that someone was trying to break in. I turned on the TV for company and watched David Suzuki’s ‘The Nature of Things’, while eating a rubbery piece of my mom’s ‘famous breaded chicken’. I was trying to convince myself that there was no escaped psycho killer on the loose, when there was a knock on the door. I almost leapt out of my skin. For a moment I sat silent because Mom had made me promise not to open the door, in case a paedophile was waiting on the other side. But since I could clearly see Mrs Economopoulos’s stout figure through the gauze curtain that hung on the window right beside the door, I decided to live life on the edge. I got up and opened it.
Mrs E held out a plate of baklava. ‘No peanuts,’ she said.
‘Thanks!’ I said, and I meant it. Her baklava was like biting into a crisp yet moist piece of heaven.
‘Your mama’s at work?’
I nodded. She gazed at my plate of food. ‘You make that? It looks terrible.’
I figured I shouldn’t rat out my mom, so I just said, ‘It tastes terrible, too.’
Mrs E took the plate out of my hand and set it on the table beside the baklava. ‘You’re eating with us. I made moussaka.’
Who was I to argue? I dumped the rest of my chicken into the garbage, being careful to cover it with other, older garbage so Mom wouldn’t see it. Then I followed Mrs E upstairs.
‘Mrs E, you’re the best cook ever,’ I said, as I settled onto their plastic-covered couch to watch The Amazing Race with Mr E after supper.
Mrs E pinched my cheeks and handed me another honey cookie before she headed back to the kitchen to do the dishes.
I was belching under my breath and watching the recap from last week’s show when the doorbell rang. Mr E looked very comfortable in his La-Z-Boy, so I offered to answer it.
‘If they want money, you slam the door,’ said Mr E, as I walked out of the room.
But the guy at the door didn’t look like he was going to ask for money. He was twenty-five or so, average height, with muscles bulging out from under his tight black T-shirt. His dark brown hair was cropped short, almost like an army buzz cut, and he had a tattoo of a laughing skull on his right bicep. He was holding a duffel bag, and I was thinking of telling Mr E to call 911 when the guy spoke.
‘Who the hell are you?’
That wasn’t any of his business, so I just said, ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Who is it, Ambrose?’ shouted Mrs E, as she approached from the kitchen. She was carrying a plate, and when she saw who was at the door, she dropped it. It smashed into a bunch of pieces on the floor.
The crash was followed by a high-pitched scream, and I hoped Mr E was calling the cops because Mrs E launched herself at the guy. I thought she was going to hit him, but instead she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight.
‘Cosmo! My baby! My baby is home!’