In From the Cold (2 page)

Rose and Hazel were both bone tired by the time the city sky turned from black to purple. The rest of the night had passed without incident, apart from ducking out of sight when a police car drove by. The hunting had been good, and they were burdened with their treasures. All they had to do now was make it safely home.

Always, on these journeys, Rose wished she were two people. She had to walk in front of Hazel, to protect her from anything that was ahead, but she also wanted to walk behind. What if something — someone — snatched at her daughter as they walked by?

Most of the city was asleep at this hour. The pre-dawn air was cold, as if to encourage people to stay home under the covers.

A large river valley cut through the middle of the city. In the richer areas, this ravine was steep and narrow, with a concrete pathway at the bottom for dog-walkers and joggers. There were streetlights in those parts of the valley to keep the joggers safe at night.

In other spots, the ravine opened up to a wide area of waste land, stretches of undeveloped scrub brush. The river widened there, with weeping willow trees hanging over it.

Rose and Hazel crossed a footbridge over some train tracks. They left the sidewalk and headed down a dirt path into the long grass of the waste land. They had half a kilometre to go before they reached their shack. The streetlights didn’t reach the waste land. Rose and Hazel had to walk in the dark.

Rose would have felt better if they could sing while they walked, but she knew there were others living in their ravine. It was safer not to disturb them. So they walked almost in silence.
Rose only whispered to her daughter now and then to make sure Hazel was still with her.

By now, Rose knew each group of trees, each clump of brush. She knew when to leave the open area and walk into what looked like thick bushes until she lifted away the branches and uncovered the trail. Their hut had been harder to find before the season changed and the leaves fell from the trees.

She waited for Hazel to get in front of her, then she put the branches back in place, like closing a gate.

Their shack could now be seen. It, too, was covered with branches, but they could not hide the blue plastic tarp, draped over the old boards and windows leaning into each other. It was a sturdy little shack, built from things other people had thrown away.

The walls were wooden skids, stolen from warehouse yards late at night. Rose and Hazel had carried big pieces of particle board from a construction site to add to the wood from the skids. Everything was covered with plastic to keep the rain out.

Rose did not waste time admiring the shack. She looked for signs that it had been disturbed.

The row of empty soda cans lined up in front of the door was knocked over.

“Hold it,” she whispered.

This had happened before. The wind, or an animal, had disturbed the cans. It was probably the same this time. But Rose had to check to make sure.

“Mom,” complained Hazel, her arms full and aching.

“Shh. Wait.”

Rose carefully pried open the board they used as a door and peered inside the hut.

Someone was sleeping on the floor.

Rose dumped her armload of treasures. “Get down!” she yelled at Hazel, then she leapt into the hut, grabbing the thick stick that they kept just inside the door.

“Get out of here! Get out!”

The person on the floor was an old man, hairy and scruffy. He stumbled to his feet, stinking of alcohol and filth from the street.

“I’m just sleeping,” he said, in a sound that was part roar and part mumble. His words slurred together.

“Get out! Out!”

Rose waved the stick at him. She wanted badly to hit him. In his drunken state, it would be so easy to knock him to the ground. But then she’d have a knocked-out drunk on her hands. She just wanted him to go, and to scare him enough so that he wouldn’t come back.

“Get out!”

He ran out. Rose chased after him, pounding the ground every time he showed signs of slowing down. When he was a good distance away, she stopped chasing him and threw stones at his retreating back.

“Hazel? Where are you?”

Hazel stood up. She had been hiding behind a clump of tall, dead weeds.

“You said no one would find us,” Hazel shouted. “You said we would be safe.”

“It’s just that it’s fall,” Rose said. “The leaves are gone, and we’re not so well hidden anymore.”

“So what are we going to do, then?”

Rose was tired. “I chased him away, didn’t I? I’ll bet you didn’t think your old mom had it in her.”

It was a feeble joke, but it was the best Rose could do just then. She didn’t want Hazel to know how scared she was.

Hazel had her sulk-face on. She looked exactly as she did when she was two years old.

Not another bad mood, thought Rose. She nodded for her daughter to go inside. Hazel picked up her bags and went into the hut.

“Shoes off,” Rose said.

Hazel peeled off her shoes without untying them first, something Rose hated her to do. It stretched the shoes, and who knew when they would find another pair? But Rose held her tongue. She had decided to be less of a nag. Hazel didn’t pay attention to nagging, anyway, so they might as well have a little peace.

They put their bags down. Layers of tarp covered the dirt floor of the hut, with flattened cardboard boxes spread over the tarps. On top of the cardboard were pieces of carpet taken from a Dumpster.

“It doesn’t look like he stole anything,” Rose said.

“He just stunk up the place,” said her daughter.

“The smell will go away.”

Hazel had a bed, a single mattress up on some boards and milk crates. The mattress came from the trash pile outside someone’s house on garbage pick-up day. Rose wrapped it in plastic garbage bags before she allowed Hazel to sleep on it.

Rose slept on the floor, on a mattress made from extra pieces of carpet. Their blankets came from bags left on the front step of the Salvation Army in the middle of the night.

Hazel flopped down on her bed and pulled the blankets up over her head.

“You’re not going to help me unpack?” Rose asked.

Hazel huffed and got up off the bed.

“I’m not happy with your attitude lately,” Rose said. “You used to help without complaining so much.”

Hazel didn’t answer. She bent low over her sack and started pulling things out. Her bed was soon loaded with books, sweaters, socks, and packages of food.

“You want mice in your bed?”

Hazel took the food and put it on the piece of particle board they used as a table. The square of board, peeling at the corners, was propped up on bricks and covered with a piece of red cloth. A jar usually held wild flowers, but Rose noticed they hadn’t picked new ones in a while. The jar now held just stems and dead leaves. The flowers had died, and neither mother nor daughter had bothered to replace them.

This is not good, Rose thought. I have to try harder. I can’t let us get sloppy. This may be a shack, but it is still our home.

Hazel still wasn’t talking. Rose let her be quiet. Silence was the only way they had any privacy. For four months, neither had been out of the other’s sight. Rose hated for Hazel to be more than an arm’s length away, so she could always grab her.

The food haul was good. Rose built up a tiny fire, just outside the hut, and cooked all five eggs together, scrambling them without oil or butter. She cut up two of the less-battered oranges and then brought all the food back into the shack.

“Wash your hands,” she said to Hazel.

Hazel was back on her bed, thumbing through the books she’d found.

“While it’s hot,” said Rose.

Hazel left the books and squirted hand sanitizer into the palms of her hands. Rose did the same, and they sat on cushions in front of the low table.

They ate directly from the pan. Rose let Hazel eat most of the eggs.

At least she’s eating, Rose thought. She’s safe and she’s eating.

Rose ate the eggs that Hazel didn’t want, and she finished the orange pieces that Hazel was too full to eat.

It was usually Hazel’s job to clean up, but Rose did not trust her daughter’s new moody attitude. She did the cleaning herself. She took the food scraps out into the bush and covered them with dirt. Then she went to the river’s edge with the frying pan.

She was careful not to step on the little toy village Hazel had set up among the tree roots and rocks. Little McDonald’s toys from the Salvation Army, Disney figurines, tiny Care Bears, and cars were arranged around houses made of twigs
and garbage. Hazel had even built a little marina, with tiny hand-made boats she could sail.

Rose squatted down and scrubbed the pan in the river.

The distant sounds of the busy city waking up drifted down to Rose’s ears. What was it the nuns used to say? Be
in
the world but not
of
the world. Rose was in the city, the city she’d lived in all her thirty-one years, but she was no longer a part of it. The quiet around her was an unexpected blessing of their new life.

“The water’s dirty,” Hazel said.

Rose jumped at the sound and got to her feet. Hazel was watching her.

“The heat from the fire kills any germs,” Rose told her.

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“You say that like you know. How do you know? Did you do a germ test? In school, in science class, we did experiments to prove something. Did you do that?”

“Yes,” Rose lied. “At university.”

“You studied history at university.”

“There was a required science course. Heat from fire destroys germs from water.”

“All the germs?”

“Yes. All the germs.”

Rose did not like the look on Hazel’s face. It was not defiance, or anger, or even sadness. Rose could not identify the look, but she did not like it.

She shook the water out of the pan and headed back to the shack. “Let’s get some sleep,” she said.

“I’m not tired.”

“Well, I am.”

Rose held her breath until she heard Hazel fall into step behind her.

At least she’s still obeying, Rose thought.

Their outdoor latrine was a hole in the ground, surrounded by boards to step on. An old shower curtain hung from the trees provided some privacy. They’d used the washroom in the donut shop before heading back to the shack, so they didn’t need to use their latrine now.

Hazel’s pillow was near a window. She picked up one of her new books and turned her back to her mother.

Rose piled up the carpet pieces and got her blankets out of the garbage bag that kept out the damp. She made up her bed. Before crawling into it, she got the long piece of string from the hook. She looped one end around her ankle then took hold of Hazel’s foot.

Hazel kicked her away.

Rose took hold of her foot again.

Hazel kicked again and snorted out a whine.

“Enough!” said Rose.

Hazel finally allowed the string to be tied around her ankle.

There. They were joined together.

No one could steal her daughter without her knowing.

Rose crawled into her blankets. The floor still stank of the intruder, but she could ignore that. She closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t have a nightmare.

Rose fought off waking up.

As long as she was asleep, everything was fine. She was dreaming of something good, something safe. If she could just hold onto it...

But it was gone. She was awake.

She opened her eyes and tried to guess how much time had passed. It was a game she played with herself. Three hours? Four hours? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had eight hours of solid sleep.

Four hours, she decided, then looked at her watch. Off by half an hour.

Hazel was still asleep, curled up facing the wall.

Coffee and a cigarette — that’s what Rose would have. She didn’t like to smoke in front of her daughter. Long cigarette butts tossed onto the sidewalk or stuffed into public ashtrays made up her small stash of smokes. The ashtrays in front of hospitals and office towers were the best places to find these butts. She kept a few in a plastic bag, as a rare treat for when she was awake and Hazel was not.