Dancing Through the Snow

by Jean Little

  Min almost snorted.

  “But my grandparents live in Calgary,” Harrison said.

  Mr. Harmon laughed. “You can phone, if your parents say it’s okay, or send an email or a fax. Ask for pictures and stories. They’ll probably be pleased to write a real letter the way people used to do in the days before computers were invented,” he said. “Some old people love to put stories on tape. Try that.”

  He handed out pages that had “helpful headings.” Min glanced over them. Where Your Family Came From was at the top. What Your Grandparents Did for a Living. Have You Moved?

  Min got that far and crumpled the page into a tight ball. Then she jammed it into her pocket.

  “I don’t think anyone in this class is from a First Nations family,” the man went on. All the time he talked, he kept smiling around at them as though he knew they were excited about this. “If you are, your family didn’t come from Europe or Asia, of course. But just put in everything you know. It’ll make a rich tapestry.”

  Min wondered what he would say if she wrote, I know nothing, and handed it in. He would ask her about it in front of the whole class. Or should she say, I came from a washroom at the Canadian National Exhibition?

  Celia waved her hand in the air.

  “What if you’re adopted?” she asked.

  Min waited, looking at the man from under her brows.

  “Are you adopted, Celia?” he wanted to know.

  “No,” Celia said, giggling. “I just wondered …”

  “If anyone is adopted, come and talk to me about it,” the teacher said pleasantly. “I don’t see that it would be a problem. An adopted family is still a family with stories to tell. But we can discuss it if you have difficulty.”

  Min saw Penny looking at her. Was that pity in her eyes?

  Then the fire alarm rang.

  “Oh, I forgot! It’s just a practice drill,” Mr. Harmon told them. “Line up quickly.”

  By the time they were back in their seats, the Art teacher had arrived and there never was enough time for the class to do more than think about their life stories. Not a single sentence got written that day.

  When they were dismissed, Min did not wait for Penny, but ran ahead into the park and hid herself in a clump of trees where she could wait unseen. She knew Penny and Jennifer must be wondering how she was going to write her life story, but she did not want to talk about it.

  “Min!” Penny called.

  Min did not move a muscle.

  “She must have gone on home,” she heard Jennifer say.

  And, peering out from between the tree trunks, Min saw them take off without her. Good, she thought.

  Yet she knew, however she ducked and dodged, she would finally have to hand something in. She was determined not to go up after class and talk to him about her situation. Why should she? Her early life with Bruno and the women who came and went was too painful to tell about. So were most of the years in foster care. She couldn’t just tell about the happy months with the Randalls. He would demand more.

  Suddenly she knew why she mistrusted the teacher. It was his eyes. Bruno, the one who had locked her in the closet and sometimes even hit her, had eyes that same grey. And he had smiled too. Smiled and smiled and then knocked her or even Shirl sometimes across the room. Mr. Harmon would not slap her. If he did, he’d be fired. But she still did not trust him, not one bit.

  That night she was certain she would have the dream, but she did not. She lay awake instead, tossing and turning. And finally she realized she was still filled with rage. How dared God and everybody she had ever known treat her as though she was what Laird Bentham had called her. Litter-Bin Min.

  She ground her teeth and pounded the head of the bed until Cassie ran away from her and slid headfirst over the end of the mattress onto the carpet. She let out an astonished whimper.

  Min started to leap to her rescue and then didn’t. “You gotta learn,” she told her precious puppy. “Life is rough.”

  Jess knocked lightly then and, without waiting, came in to see what was the matter. As she asked, she scooped Cassie up and put her back close to Min.

  But Min only punched the pillow hard, turning her back, and said, “No! Everything is fine, just fine.”

  Jess left the room without quizzing her further. Min gathered Cassie into her arms but still lay dry-eyed and stiff with a fury she only dimly understood.

  “They all piss me off,” she told the squirming puppy. “None of them really knows. Whatever Jess says, nobody understands.”

  In the morning, Min said her throat was sore and her nose was stuffy and she felt too sick to go to school.

  “Let me take your temperature,” Jess said.

  “No. I’m sick and I’m not going to school whatever you say!” Min yelled. She spun around, ran back into her room, slammed the door and dove back under her quilt.

  Jess followed her, sat on the edge of the bed and watched the back of Min’s head for what seemed like years. Then she said, very quietly, “Well, we all need time off every so often. Let me know if you want to talk about it. Or when you feel well enough to go back.”

  “My throat really is sore,” Min called after her, doing her best to sound croaky.

  “See you at lunchtime,” Jess answered calmly and left the house.

  Penny phoned when she got home. Min called out that she was too sick to talk. Jess came in with juice and cheese and crackers for her. Min ignored them until Jess left and then gobbled down every crumb. She stayed home for the rest of the week. Jess did not say much, although she finally insisted on taking Min’s temperature.

  “It’s a miracle,” she exclaimed, shaking the thermometer dramatically. “Your raging fever has gone. You’re cured.”

  Her laughing eyes met Min’s. “School tomorrow, I think,” she said gently.

  Reluctantly, Min nodded.

  When she entered the classroom, braced for trouble, Mr. Harmon had finished with autobiographies and moved on to something entirely different. He seemed not to realize that one student had not done the assignment.

  “What was wrong with you anyway?” Penny asked.

  Min swallowed. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. It was true. She did not understand it. Something deep inside her still hurt whenever she thought of her “Life Story” being what the teacher had called “a rich tapestry.” Hers was blank at the one end and dark and ugly since. And she wanted it to stay hidden.

  She had read Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me during her week off, though, and the foster children in it comforted her somehow. The main character was older and shut herself off from people, much as Min had done before Jess came along. And the dogs had comforted her, even though Emily was still distant. She’s like me, Min had thought. Cassie had papers saying she was a pedigreed Peke. But Min had nothing. No birth certificate. No baby pictures. No grandparents with stories to share. Nobody to interview. Not even a real birthday — they had given her the date she was found, not seeming to realize it was also the day she was lost. Min the mutt, she had thought, looking back. Then she had lifted Emily up onto her lap and driven Cassie crazy by giving Emily extra petting.

  She decided to confess to Jess that she had told Penny and Jennifer that she was adopted, but when she tried to think up how to start, she could not find the words. Even though it still hung over her like a black thundercloud, the punishing storm never arrived. She kept on, day after day, carrying the weight of her guilty secret.

  Slowly the anger within her began to drain away. Bit by bit, she, like Emily, could just go inside herself for a while and then come out again, feeling more and more whole.

  Ms Spinelli came back at the end of the first week in February and the concert began to take on more reality. One night Toby came for supper and told them about people trying to match up babies and toddlers with their parents after the tsunami.

  “Two women fought over one baby,” he said, through a mouthful of salad. “They’re going to have to do a DNA test to settle it. I wonde
r what they would have done before they knew about DNA.”

  “You know the Bible story about Solomon and the two women who claimed one baby was theirs, don’t you?” Jess said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Toby said, grinning. “I wonder if that would have worked.”

  “What story?” Min asked.

  Jess found the place in the Bible and read it aloud. When two women each claimed a baby was hers, King Solomon ordered that the child be cut in two so each woman could have half. The woman who was not his mother agreed to this at once, but the real mother cried out that the other woman could take him, rather than have her son killed. So Solomon decreed she was, in fact, the baby’s mother.

  Min stared at the open Bible and thought about the story. Then she raised troubled eyes to Jess’s face.

  “I think, even if I had been the one who wasn’t his mother, I wouldn’t have wanted him to be cut in two,” she said, her voice low. “I don’t think anyone who wasn’t totally crazy could bear to see something so terrible done to a baby. Shirl cut off my hair and I thought she was trying to kill me, but I figured it out when I was older. What she was really doing was disguising me to keep me safe. She shouldn’t have left me the way she did, but even Shirl …”

  Her voice trailed away. Jess looked at her and Min saw sudden tears come into her eyes.

  “You’re right,” she said, her voice more than usually husky. “I have always thought that there was something wrong with that Bible story, but it took you to show me what. I think you’re right about Shirl too.”

  “She was the one who left you in that washroom, right?” Toby demanded, his face hard.

  Min nodded.

  “Well, I think she was wicked and heartless and I don’t care what you say in her defence. Anybody could have picked you up. And she didn’t even hang around to make sure you were safe before she took off,” he said, his voice as unyielding as iron.

  “No,” Min said, thinking back to that day she longed to forget. “I kept looking for her.”

  As Jess put the Bible back on the shelf, Min remembered Shirl, laughing and wielding her long, sharp scissors. The steel blades had kept flashing with light reflected from the window and Min had been terrified, but had not dared to move in case Shirl lost her grip and plunged them into her bared neck. The memory made her grab hold of her braid and cling on until she could calm her suddenly ragged breathing. Toby was right. The little girl trailing through the Ex had been so alone and at the mercy of any passerby.

  Toby was watching her. He looked away abruptly.

  “What’s for dessert?” he demanded in a loud voice, scattering the shadows.

  “Fresh fruit,” Jess said, keeping her face deadpan.

  “And ice cream maybe?” Toby hinted, grinning.

  “Ice cream maybe,” Jess agreed.

  Min jumped up to clear the table. Before coming to live with Jess, she had not cared much for ice cream. But this last foster mother of hers bought rich, fancy ice cream. It tasted like an entirely different food than the stuff Enid Bangs had served. She hoped it would be Pralines and Cream, even though she knew Toby liked Rocky Road better.

  She opened the freezer and saw two containers.

  “Hey, Tobe, double yum,” shouted Min.

  And she did not let herself think about lost babies again that night.

  16

  Bully Run

  THE EXCITEMENT BUILDING as the date of the concert neared pushed Laird Bentham out of Min’s mind. But two days later he turned up, horrible as ever. Min had seen him before, but had managed to avoid him, since they were in different homerooms. She had never told the others all the details of how he had tormented her over the years they had gone to the same school. She could not bring herself to admit the things he had said, the names he had called her and egged other boys into joining in. Girls had added their bit, too. Min had hoped he was gone from her life.

  But she should have guessed it was not going to be that easy. When she came out onto the playground he was waiting, leaning against one of the trees, smiling his fat, nasty smile. It was a smile Min had learned to dread, but she did not see it at once.

  Penny and Jennifer and Amy came out right behind her. They were all deep in a happy discussion of the concert.

  Then his slimy voice called, “Hey, Minnie McDumpster. Do those girls know you were picked out of a garbage bin? Did you tell them you’re trash?”

  Min went rigid. She could not have moved if she had wanted to. She did her best to control her facial muscles, but her eyes burned and her knees shook. What could she say? What was Penny thinking?

  Then Penny sprang into action. While Min had been home “sick,” she had talked to her cousin, as she’d promised, and she was primed for action. She had told the others the plan, and she had started to explain it to Min over the phone once, but had been interrupted. Min had not quite understood it and had not thought of Laird since, what with getting ready for the concert. She looked at Penny now, trying to remember exactly what she had said.

  “Let’s shut his lying mouth,” Penny shrieked to her friends. “Let’s give him a dose of Bully Run.”

  Min felt Penny grab her arm and pull her own arm through it. In seconds the four girls were joined in a line, their elbows linked. And here came Sadie and Hannah.

  “Bully RUN!” Penny began to shout, as they advanced like a mighty army. “Bully RUN! Let’s see the BULLY RUN.”

  Laird did his best to hold his ground and keep his sneer in place. But when a line of six girls came at him, moving as one, shouting something he could not quite make out, his nerve shattered and the sneer vanished from his face. He turned and fled. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them still coming, still chanting. And now there were eight of them and more latching on with every step. And they were laughing at him!

  Min was the only one who was not yelling. She was too stunned. Friends were standing up for her. Even Sadie, who had not been in their class as long as Min. Even Gloria, the class beauty. Everyone was taunting Laird. He was running for his life. When he stumbled, they cheered.

  “Need any help?” a boy’s voice called.

  “No way,” shouted Penny. She was dancing about now, shrieking with glee as the boy who thought he was all-powerful tried to escape and went floundering into a snowbank.

  “He’s actually blubbering,” Amy reported, peering after him.

  Min snapped out of her trance and began to laugh too. She had never seen anything so wonderful as Laird Bentham fleeing with his face all red and tearful and with snot coming from his nose. Penny leaned down and scooped up a wet handful of snow and sent it flying after him. It landed in a sloppy smack on the back of his neck that sent the girls into fresh whoops of delight.

  “What is the meaning of this?” a deep voice demanded.

  It was Mr. Smithson, the Phys Ed teacher.

  “Ask Laird, sir,” Jennifer told him.

  “We’re teaching a bully not to mess with us in future,” Penny said sweetly, dusting the snow off her mitts. “But we have not laid a hand on him, have we, you guys?”

  “No,” they chorused. “Didn’t touch a hair of his head.”

  The teacher went after Laird, but he did not hurry.

  “It was Penny’s cousin’s idea. I bet it’ll work every time,” Jennifer said. “I almost wish there were more evil boys around so we could do it again.”

  “But what if …?” Min began, uncertain what she meant to ask.

  “If he had a gang with him, you mean?” Penny said. “Somebody would go for help then, I guess. But I don’t think old Laird will be able to come up with a gang, not after Bully Run. My cousin says people who make friends with bullies usually follow after them because they are scared that if they don’t, they’ll be beaten up. Cowards, he says.”

  “I was always the one who ran before,” Min whispered, her cheeks reddening with memories of her years of being publicly humiliated.

  “You were alone, right? He’s big and he’s mean,” Penny
said scornfully. But bullies are usually pure mush inside. You only need some friends to help you stand up to them to scare the pants off them. My cousin Edward told me. If nobody is with you, get people and go for them next time. What a creep that Laird is!”

  Min thought of how exultant she had felt watching him run. She supposed she should have pitied him, but he had never pitied her, not once. Now she was positive he would never mess with her again.

  She hesitated before telling Jess what had happened, but finally she could not keep the jubilation to herself.

  “Oh, the power and the glory!” Jess said. “Bravo for Penny. She sounds as though she’s a great friend to have.”

  “Yep,” Min said.

  “Would you like me to speak to the principal about Laird?”

  Min opened her mouth to say yes when she realized that Laird was in the principal’s office day after day. She had seen him there, hunched over, on the bench where kids waited to be told off.

  “If there’s a next time,” she said slowly, “but I think maybe my friends fixed him.”

  “Good,” Jess said. “It’s wise to fight your own battles whenever possible. You tell that Penny I think she’s a wonder.”

  Min nodded. She stared at her hands, which were balled into fists in her lap. What would Jess have said if she had seen Min before, standing like a post, scared witless? Or fleeing down the street?

  “When I got chased like that,” Jess said quietly, but with the hint of a smile, “I used to wet my pants. In public!”

  And Min knew she understood everything.

  17

  Rock-a-Bye, Baby

  SUDDENLY IT WAS FEBRUARY and the concert was only days away. Penny and Min practised their duet daily. Min wished she felt her singing was improving.

  “You need to PROJECT, Min!” Penny’s mother urged her. “Shy voices, however sweet, don’t reach the ears of the audience.”

  “Maybe Penny should sing by herself,” Min mumbled, scuffing her toe back and forth on the rug and not looking at the woman.