In From the Cold

by Deborah Ellis

  That last night was an ordinary night.

  The same ranting. The same screaming. The same spitting. Rose remembered Hazel taking her plate of macaroni and cheese out of the dining room and up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Rose had heard of husbands like hers going after their children. Her own husband, thankfully, ignored Hazel. As long as Hazel was silent, to her father she was invisible.

  No, that’s not fair, Rose corrected herself. There were times when he was a good father, before the drinking got so bad. He’d read to her, play with her, and put her up on his shoulders when they walked down the street. He could be pleasant sometimes. Rose just had to watch for when he’d had enough, and get Hazel quietly — and safely — out of the way.

  Hazel had gone upstairs on that last night. Rose was listening hard to her husband, straining for clues that would tell her how to act. But his temper flared up quickly. She wasn’t ready for it.

  She couldn’t remember now what he said. All she remembered was the screaming, her husband’s face large and ugly right in front of her, his spit landing on the skin of her cheeks and forehead. She remembered how loud he was. And she remembered feeling very, very tired, as she tried to retreat into that secret part of her brain to wait out the storm.

  She remembered taking her plate into the kitchen. She had the ketchup bottle in her hand when he came at her. Did she squeeze the bottle of ketchup, or did it get squeezed when he hit her?

  She didn’t know. But somehow ketchup ended up squirting out all over her husband’s face.

  And then she did the worst thing she could do. She did the thing she knew absolutely that she must never do.

  She laughed.

  There were blows. There were kicks. There were slaps and punches.

  And then there was a knife in her hand.

  The knife went into her husband.

  And her husband fell to the floor.

  Chapter Eight

  It’s only pain, Rose told herself. You can’t die from pain.

  The trip to the latrine was almost unbearable. She’d had to lean on Hazel all the way. Rose was determined not to scream. She’d given Hazel a bad enough day as it was.

  She remembered there were a few Tylenol left. Hazel got them for her, and got her a drink of water to swallow them with. The pills wouldn’t take away the pain in her back, but they would make it feel less severe. She got back on the bed, and Hazel covered her up again.

  “Get yourself something to eat, honey,” Rose told her.

  “I’m not hungry,” Hazel said. A moment later, Rose heard her daughter open a box of crackers and twist the lid off the peanut butter jar. Crackers and peanut butter had been Hazel’s favourite snack ever since she was a toddler.

  “You’re not being punished, Hazel,” Rose said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Well, you did something very wrong today, but you know what I mean. Living here isn’t a punishment.”

  “It feels like a punishment.”

  “You used to think it was an adventure.”

  “It was. It used to be.”

  “It still is,” Rose said. “Don’t you like going into the city at night, when everyone else is asleep? Don’t you enjoy going treasure hunting with me?”

  “I want to get food from a grocery store,” Hazel said. “I want to watch television in the evening and sleep in my own room at night. I want to use my library card again. And I want to go back to school.”

  “One day, honey,” Rose said.

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “But when?”

  “Don’t pester me.”

  “We could go back to our house today,” Hazel said. “Daddy won’t be there. Someone would have cleaned him up.”

  “Hazel!”

  “I saw it in the newspapers. Someone found his body and took it away.”

  “You’re not supposed to read newspapers! All that bad news gives you nightmares.”

  “You can’t forbid me to read newspapers,” Hazel said. “I’m a citizen. My teacher said it’s everybody’s job to keep up on current events.”

  Rose wanted silence. She wanted to keep her eyes closed, huddle under the blanket, and wait for the Tylenol to work. She wanted to have only herself to worry about. She wanted another life.

  “It’s not that simple,” she said. “We can’t go back.”

  “But why can’t we?”

  “Do you want me to be arrested?” Rose asked. “Because that’s what would happen. And you would end up in foster care. Do you want to live with strangers?”

  “You said it was an accident.”

  “It was. But people won’t believe me.”

  Hazel didn’t say anything, and Rose started to drift off. The Tylenol was taking the sharp edge off the pain in her back. Maybe this time it wouldn’t last too long. After all, she could rest, here in this shack. She didn’t have to get up and look after her husband. She could rest and heal and be all right again.

  She was almost asleep when Hazel spoke again.

  “We could tell people that I did it.”

  Rose opened her eyes. “What?”

  “We could say I killed Daddy. They won’t put me in prison. I’m too young.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  Hazel shuffled over to the bed on her knees and leaned in close to her mother. Rose could smell the peanut butter on her daughter’s breath.

  “I’ll say it was an accident,” Hazel said. “They’ll believe me. I’ll say I wanted to get him to stop hitting you, and I grabbed the knife to protect myself, and it went into Daddy by mistake.”

  “Stop,” Rose said, even while she was thinking. She’d thrown the knife into the river. Was there anything, really, that could prove she killed her husband?

  Hazel leaned in even closer. Her face was excited, like it used to be when she retold the plot of a movie she really liked.

  “I was in the kitchen,” Hazel said. “I was putting my plate in the sink. You and Daddy came in. He was yelling and hitting you. I picked up the knife to get him to stop, and I accidentally killed him. Then I got scared and ran out of the house. You came after me to protect me.”

  Rose was impressed by the detail in her daughter’s story.

  “How long have you been thinking about this?” she asked.

  “I just thought of it now,” Hazel said, taking another bite of cracker. “But maybe it’s been in my head for a while, waiting to come out. My teacher last year said our brains work like that sometimes. We’ll try and try to do something in math, and we can’t do it, and then one day it all makes sense.”

  “You have a good brain,” Rose told her, “but your plan won’t work. I’ll still be in trouble for keeping you out of school, and for other things, too, I’m sure.”

  “But you won’t be in prison,” Hazel said. “Please, Mom, can’t we go back?”

  It’s so wrong, Rose thought, but she began, in spite of herself, to feel something like hope. Maybe there was a way out of this.

  But no. It was wrong. “I can’t let you take the blame,” Rose said. “It would be a lie, and I can’t let you do it.”

  Hazel slumped back to the floor. She sat again with her back to her mother.

  “I’m going to grow old in this shack, aren’t I?” Hazel said. “I’m going to be thirty years old and still living here.”

  Rose had no comforting words. She had no plans, no ideas, and no thought for anything except to get through another day.

  Hazel kept quiet then, and Rose finally fell asleep.

  She woke up in the middle of the night, freezing in spite of the blanket. She had to pee, but Hazel was asleep and Rose couldn’t make it to the latrine without her.

  She was stuck with a full bladder, in the dark and the cold, with nothing to distract her from the slow passing of the minutes.

  It was a long, long night.

  Chapter Nine

  Rose finally drifted off to sleep at some point. And when the sounds of morning entered h
er brain — the dawn birds, the first wave of traffic into the city — she shut her eyes tighter. She wanted to avoid waking up. Yesterday had been awful. Today would probably not be any better.

  After that last fight had ended, and her husband’s body lay in a lake of blood and ketchup on the kitchen floor, Rose stopped. She stopped thinking. She stopped feeling. She stopped being able to stand. Her legs gave way and she slid to the floor, away from the blood, and just sat.

  She had no clue how long she sat like that. Even now, months later, she didn’t know. And she didn’t know what had prompted her to get up.

  It must have been a noise, she thought. It must have been a noise made by Hazel. Her daughter must have come down to see what all the silence was about.

  Always, before, at the end of a fight, Rose would go up and check on Hazel. They’d empty the pee-pot, if necessary. She’d give Hazel a quiet bath, then they’d go back into Hazel’s bedroom to play or read as if nothing had happened.

  On the last night, Rose hadn’t gone upstairs.

  Hazel must have been very scared, Rose realized. Maybe she thought we had gone away and left her all alone. Maybe she thought we were both dead.

  I must ask her about it, Rose thought. She should get Hazel into counselling. Children could be damaged forever from seeing such things.

  But how could she get Hazel to a counsellor? It would be too dangerous. There would be questions — but didn’t a doctor have to keep secrets? Maybe there was a way.

  Rose gently tried to stretch out her legs to see if her back was still in trouble. It hurt, but she didn’t think it was as bad as it was yesterday.

  If she could get to a doctor, she could get treatment for her back and help for Hazel. She could use fake names. The doctor could not go to the police. Wasn’t that the way it worked?

  Rose kept her eyes closed. As long as she didn’t open them, she did not have to face the day.

  She didn’t hear her daughter moving. Hazel was probably still asleep.

  If she’s gone, thought Rose, I’ll leave. I’ll walk out of here as best I can. I’ll find a tree branch to use as a walking stick. I’ll hitch a ride in a car or a truck and go where no one knows me. Hazel will be fine. She’ll be taken care of.

  Foster homes are better now, Rose thought. Sure, there are some bad apples, but most people are kind, and Hazel is a good kid. If she were treated well, she wouldn’t be a problem for anyone. She’d go back to school, get some counselling, and she’d be fine.

  And she would no longer be Rose’s responsibility. Rose could start again. She’d completed one year of university before dropping out to have Hazel. She’d gotten good grades, too. She was smart. Maybe she’d go out west. She’d head out to Saskatchewan and cross into the United States. The border on the prairies was open, wasn’t it? She was only thirty-one. She could start again.

  Her mind went back to the night of the last fight.

  After Rose got up off the kitchen floor, she pulled the knife out of her dead husband. She wrapped it in a dish towel and put it in her purse. Then she went upstairs.

  Did she even speak to Hazel? She didn’t remember. She remembered dumping out Hazel’s school backpack, getting rid of the notebooks and schoolgirl junk. She refilled it with socks and underwear and a change of clothes. Then she got last year’s backpack out of Hazel’s closet. It had Tweety Bird’s picture on it. Hazel was too old to carry the Tweety Bird pack, so she kept her collection of Archie comics in it. Rose dumped the comics out, took it into her bedroom, and filled it with her own clothes. She remembered toothpaste and toothbrushes, Tylenol, and soap.

  She found a bit of money in her husband’s top drawer and more cash in his wallet. She left the credit cards. They were in his name, anyway. He would not let her have her own credit card, or her own bank account. She didn’t even have her own birth certificate or driver’s licence.

  “You’ll only lose it,” he said. He kept all of her identification papers and documents in a safe in the wall that only he could get into. She had a library card and a grocery-store points card. She had no other proof of who she was.

  She didn’t remember Hazel complaining or asking any questions as they put their shoes and jackets on. Hazel quietly did as she was told. They put on the backpacks and walked out of their house for good. The street was deserted and silent. Unless one of the neighbours was watching from a darkened window, no one saw them leave.

  Why hadn’t she left the city? She’d grown up here, and except for a school field trip once to Niagara Falls, she’d never left.

  I’m only thirty-one, she thought again. There’s plenty of time left to see the whole world if I want to.

  And she did want to! She wanted to see everything and do everything! All she had to do was open her eyes, see that her daughter was gone, and take off by herself.

  She was beginning to feel excited.

  “Mom?”

  That one word dashed all hope.

  “Mom? Look outside.”

  Rose opened her eyes and looked out the window.

  The world was white.

  A heavy frost had covered the city during the night. It lay on the trees and the grass, making them glisten in the early morning sun. The frost had also crept into their shack. It was on their blankets.

  It looked pretty, but it wasn’t.

  It was the first sign of winter.

  Chapter Ten

  Everything was cold and covered in frost — their cushions, their furniture, even the insides of their shoes. As it melted, it left everything wet.

  The cold was a pain, and it added to the pain in Rose’s back. She still needed her daughter’s help to get to the latrine.

  Hazel was in a bad mood again, and she argued about everything she was asked to do. She walked around their shack and yard with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, trying to get warm.

  “It’s dragging in the dirt,” Rose said. “Pick up the ends.”

  “I’m too cold,” Hazel replied.

  “Then you’ll sleep with a dirty blanket tonight.”

  “No, you will. I want my bed back tonight.”

  “I can’t get down onto the floor with my back like this. You know that. Go find some twigs to get a fire going.”

  “You do it. You’re the mother.”

  “When I tell you to do something, do it, and don’t argue.”

  They carried on like that through the morning. The two of them bumped up against each other and nothing got done.

  The pain in Rose’s back was bad, but at least she could move a bit more easily. She took the last of the Tylenol. She tried to get a fire going, but the wood was too wet and the flames wouldn’t catch. Rose gave that up and mixed herself a cold coffee — instant coffee stirred into cold water. It tasted horrible, but it delivered the caffeine. She took her coffee and sat in the sun, trying to get warm. She smoked one of her cigarette butts and ignored Hazel’s whining.

  Finally, the sun got some warmth into it, and Rose’s mood began to improve.

  Her thoughts in bed had taken her to a place of freedom, and she hated to give that up.

  “How would you like to go to Vancouver?” she asked Hazel.

  Hazel looked up from the book she was reading. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t think we were going to stay here all winter, did you?”

  “Vancouver? What’s in Vancouver?”

  “The winters are warmer there,” Rose said. “It hardly ever snows. Besides, it’s beautiful.”

  “Have you been there? Have you seen it?”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  Hazel turned back to her book. “I’ve seen pictures of this city that make it look beautiful, too.”

  “Well, get used to the idea, because that’s what we’re doing.”

  “Will we have to live in a shack?” Hazel asked.

  “Maybe just at first,” Rose said, “but only for a little while. I’ll get a job, and you’ll go to school.”

  “I
can go back to school?” asked Hazel. “But what about my files? You said I needed papers to go to school.”

  “We’ll say you were in school in Nova Scotia, and the files haven’t caught up to you yet. If you behave yourself, they won’t ask questions.”

  “I’ll behave. When can we go? How are we going to get there?”

  “We’ll go just as soon as my back feels a little better. We might even go tomorrow. And we’ll hitchhike. We’ll meet wonderful people all across the country.”

  Rose could see it in her mind as she talked. They would ride in the warm cabs of trucks with drivers who told stories. They’d ride in cars, in the back seats of retired couples who were finally seeing the country, stopping at Tim Hortons for soup and donuts. They’d even get invitations to spend the night. “We have a spare room you’re welcome to stay in,” people would say. “A growing girl needs a proper night’s sleep.”

  They would see the trees and rocks of the Canadian Shield, the wide open skies of the prairies, the amazing Rocky Mountains, and, finally, they would see the Pacific Ocean.

  “It’s not safe to hitchhike,” Hazel said. “The police came to our school. They told us a lot of stuff that I don’t remember, but I do remember they said not to hitchhike.”

  “They meant it’s not safe for children to hitchhike alone. You’ll be safe if you’re with me.”

  The joy that had filled Hazel’s face at the thought of going back to school slipped away. “You don’t really know what to do,” she said.

  “I just told you.”

  “If you can get a job in Vancouver, why can’t you get a job here? Why can’t I go to school here?”

  “Because they know us here,” Rose snapped. When Hazel was younger, her questions were easier. “I’m tired of your complaining. I’m tired of trying to do nice things for you. You don’t want to go to Vancouver? Fine. No one is forcing you.”

  Rose tossed the last of the cold coffee out of her cup and went back inside. The sun had not warmed up the inside of the shack. It was still freezing. She got back into Hazel’s bed and covered herself up with blankets. Her back felt better when she was lying down.