by Carole Lazar
“No,” she says again. “Thanks for the offer, Harold, but I’m not comfortable accepting favors like that.”
“You never think of anyone but yourself!” I yell.
She doesn’t even bother to yell back. She just picks up her jacket and walks out. I feel like kicking holes in our walls. Instead, I run up to my room and pound cushions and scream as loudly as I can into my pillows.
When I calm down, I try to call Siobhan.
Her mom says that Siobhan has gone to a movie with Megan.
I throw myself down on the bed again and scream into my pillows until I’m hoarse.
It’s almost bedtime before I go back downstairs. Dad is sitting at the computer playing FreeCell.
“You never did decide how to split up the furniture,” I say.
“Maybe we’ll just have to see if we can get one of those auction houses to sell it,” he replies. “If you’re going to stay in the trailer and I’m in a one-bedroom apartment, neither of us will have room for much of it.”
I’m so mad at my mom that I don’t even want to go back to her place on Sunday night, but what choice do I have? None, just like always. I’m so depressed that if I weren’t Catholic, I would seriously be considering suicide. I spend the whole week trying to think of a way out of this horrible trailer.
It’s Thursday night and I’m taking the dog for the world’s shortest walk. I have to stay within sight of our trailer so Mom can come rescue me if Brandy sees me. Mrs. Warren calls me over. She asks if I told my mom about the humming noise coming from our shed.
I confess that I haven’t. “I don’t think she’d listen to me. I mean, she was complaining about how high the hydro bill was, and I said it might be because Randy had something in that shed that was using a lot of electricity.”
“What did she say about that?”
“She just says it’s none of our business what he stores in his shed.”
“Humph,” she says, and she walks back into her trailer.
It’s hard to tell sometimes whether an idea comes from God or from the devil. That’s how I feel when we walk into English class one day and I hear Brandy talking to her friends. She’s in a total panic. She’s supposed to be doing a book report – out loud, in front of the whole class. She’s only read the first thirty pages of the book.
“Crap,” she says. “I might as well not even sit down. I might as well just go to the principal’s office right now so he can call my mom and tell her I’m kicked out again. Watch me, I’ll be grounded all friggin’ summer.”
She crashes her books down on the desk behind me. I sneak a peek. She’s sitting with her head resting on top of them.
Ms. Phillips comes in. I don’t think I’m really the teacher’s pet like Brandy’s always saying, but Ms. Phillips does like me. Mostly I think she gets bored teaching kids who aren’t interested in English. She always gets quite excited if I ask questions and we get to talking about some poem or story in more detail. A couple of times, I’ve distracted her so badly that she and I have spent the whole period talking while everyone else sat around looking bored. Usually when I realize what I’ve done, I feel guilty. I thinks she feels guilty too, for ignoring all her other students.
“Today,” she says, “we’re going to wrap up our poetry unit and then Brandy and Greg are going to do their book reports for us.”
She gives us some notes about the last three poems in the unit. There aren’t that many, so we copy them from the overhead. When most of us have put down our pens, she looks around the classroom.
“Is everyone finished?” she asks.
I stick my hand up.
“Yes, Lucy.”
“This is going to sound like a really stupid question,” I say.
She nods. Some of the other kids sigh and roll their eyes.
“How can you tell if a piece is even a poem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the old poems all rhyme and have sort of a beat. Nowadays, poems aren’t like that. Like that one you read us about the plums.”
“You mean, ‘This Is Just to Say’?”
“Whatever. He just says he ate the plums she was wanting for breakfast and that they were delicious. There’s no rhyme, there’s no rhythm; there are no similes or metaphors. There are just short lines.”
She nods. People around me yawn.
“So what about if I leave my mom a note that says ‘Gone to the mall, Shopping, With Siobhan?’ Is it a poem if I put it on three lines? That doesn’t seem right.”
“That’s a very interesting point, Lucy. There has been a trend toward looser and looser forms of poetry over the past half-century …”
She talks for the next thirty minutes.
“Some of the most noted poets of our day say we need to get back to discipline and structure. George Bowering, who was Canada’s first Poet Laureate, said….”
We never get to hear what he said. The bell rings.
For the first time in my life, it’s me who turns to look at Brandy. I give her a wink. What if she hauls off and punches me? She doesn’t. She winks back.
I have just messed up a whole class so she doesn’t have to do her book report. Should I feel guilty? I don’t.
Friday night we’re just finishing dinner when we hear a car pull up outside our trailer. I look out the window. It isn’t Gina. The dog starts barking. Mom goes to the door. The dog rushes out to sniff the shoes and ankles of the two men standing on our little porch. They are wearing casual clothes, but one of them flashes a badge.
“RCMP,” he says.
Mom’s face falls. “Is something wrong? My parents? Harold?”
“Oh no, ma’am, nothing like that. We’d just like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”
Mom steps back from the door. “Come on in.”
No one sits down. The three of them just stand there. I’m back by the cupboards, watching.
“It’s about your shed, ma’am.”
“What about the shed?” she says.
“We’ve had a complaint.”
Mom spins around. “Lucy, did you …?”
I shake my head no.
“Would you mind if we checked it out?” the bigger of the two guys asks.
“I don’t care, but I can’t let you in. I don’t have the key.”
“And who would have it?” asks the other fellow.
“My landlord, Randy.”
The larger cop takes out a notebook and writes something down. “Does this Randy have a last name?”
“Larson,” she says.
“And where does he live?”
“Just two trailers down, on the other side of the road here. Lucy, why don’t you go see if he’s home.”
“It’s just a padlock,” I tell them. “You could break in pretty easily, I think.”
I’ve seen these things on TV.
“We don’t have a warrant,” says the smaller guy. “We were just hoping you’d want to cooperate. Our informant didn’t think you were involved.”
“Involved in what?” Mom asks.
She can be so naive!
“The informant suspects there might be a small marijuana grow-op in the shed. Says she hears humming noises and that you complain that your hydro bill is very high.”
Mom glares at me again. I just shrug. I think we both have a pretty good idea of who the informant is.
“Do you want me to go see if Randy’s home?” I ask the officer.
“No, I don’t think that would be wise. Thanks for your help. We’ll just wait outside here till there’s another officer available to talk to this Randy.”
They walk out and get back into the dark blue Chevy Caprice they’ve parked in front of our trailer. We watch them through the window. One of them is talking on their radio. They don’t start the car.
Mom grabs the phone and looks in her address book for a number. Her hands are shaking a bit as she punches it in.
“Randy, what have you got in that shed?” she asks.
>
There’s a pause.
“Well, I’ve got two police officers in my driveway, and I think they just called for backup.”
There’s another little pause, and then she hangs up without saying good-bye.
“He’s coming over.”
A police cruiser pulls in behind the Caprice. The two officers in this car are in uniform. Randy walks up just as they’re getting out. He’s talking to them, but I can’t hear what anyone is saying. I step onto the little porch. The dog is barking like crazy. This is way too much excitement for her.
A third car pulls up. We have a traffic jam in front of our trailer. A woman gets out and comes up the steps toward me.
“Are you Lucy?” she asks.
“Yes.” Who could this be, and how does she know my name?
Mom has stepped outside and is right behind me.
“Mrs. Jensen?” the woman asks.
“Yes.”
“My name’s Hilda Thompson. I’m a social worker with the Ministry of Children and Families.” She hands Mom her card.
Randy and the four police officers have gone around to the other side of the shed.
“We’ve had a report that your daughter may be in a dangerous situation, and I’ve been sent to investigate. I’ll want to talk to you too, of course. But first I’d like to speak to Lucy alone.”
My mother is looking totally shell-shocked.
The social worker turns to where the police are still gathered at the end of our lean-to and says, “I wonder if Lucy really needs to see all this. Maybe it would be better if I took her back to my office. You and I can talk after you’re finished with the police here.” Then she turns to me. “Would you be comfortable with that, Lucy?”
“I guess so.” Actually, I’d rather stay and see what happens here, but I don’t want her to think I’m just a snoop.
“Would that be okay with you, Mrs. Jensen?”
Mom looks at the business card the worker gave her. “Your office is on Guildford Way?”
“Yes. There’s a bit of a strip mall there.”
“And when do you think you’ll get back to me?”
“Oh, it shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
Mom nods. “Okay,” she says. She’s still standing there, looking at the business card, when we drive off.
Ms. Thompson doesn’t say much while we’re driving to her office. It gives me time to think. If she decides that I’m not safe at my mom’s house, I won’t have to live there. And I already know that my dad can’t look after me because he works such long hours. They might send me to a foster home. If I could get into that group home on Siobhan’s street, I’d be able to see her every day. Of course, I’d miss my mom, and she’d be heartbroken if I was taken away. But I’m sure she’d visit me every single day – even if it is a long drive. When I’m in Langley, I’m lucky if I see Siobhan once a week. And Siobhan is making new friends. My mom isn’t going to get a new daughter just because I’m not around as much as usual. I’d never have thought of a plan like this myself, but God has let it fall right into my lap. I guess He’s listening after all.
When we get to the office, Ms. Thompson takes me to a room that has a sofa and an easy chair in it. There’s a fridge in the corner.
“Would you like a soft drink?” she asks.
“Yes, please.”
When I’m comfortable, she sits down and starts asking me questions.
“Do you know why the police were at your home this evening?”
“I’m assuming it was Mrs. Warren who called them,” I say.
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, I’ve suspected there might be marijuana growing in that shed, and I told my mom about it, but she said I should just mind my own business.”
“So did you tell anyone else your worries?”
“Just Mrs. Warren. That’s why I think it must have been her who called the police. The thing is, I’m on my own a lot – what with my mom working and then going out on dates or to nightclubs – and I didn’t like having that Randy lurking around our trailer.”
Ms. Thompson is taking notes like mad.
“Mom even complained that our hydro bill was as high for that little trailer as it had been for our house, which was over three thousand square feet. You have to worry about the fire hazard too, if he’s got such big lights in such a small shed.”
“What is your mother’s relationship with this Randy?” Mrs. Thompson asks.
“He’s our landlord.”
“Does your mom have a social relationship with him as well?” she asks.
“Well, he came to a party she had at our house once.”
“But they aren’t dating or anything like that,” she says.
“No, it’s Randy’s roommate, Jake, she dated.” I’m trying to think of whether there’s anything else I can say to convince her I should go to a foster home. “Mrs. Warren almost called the police once before,” I say. “There’s a girl who lives in our trailer park who has been bullying me. She was about to beat me up, and Mrs. Warren came out with her phone and said she was calling the police. That scared Brandy off.”
“Where was your mother when that happened?”
“She was still at work. Mrs. Warren didn’t think it was safe for me to be in our trailer on my own, so I stayed at her place till my mom got home.”
When Ms. Thompson is finished asking me questions, she asks if there is somewhere other than my mom’s place that I could spend the night.
“There’s a foster home on One-hundred-and-eighteenth Street that just started up. They only take teenage girls, and they can have up to three. I happen to know they only have one right now.”
“Do you know someone who lives there?” she asks.
“No, but my best friend, Siobhan, lives just two doors down, and she told me all about it.”
“I’ll just call your mom and see if she has any other suggestions,” she says.
Why ask her?
But Ms. Thompson does ask, and when she comes back, she tells me that Grandma will be picking me up.
I expect Grandma to be really mad at Mom, but she isn’t talking about it. She’s just generally crabby. She doesn’t even ask me what happened. She’s only interested in finishing her packing. She and Granddad are leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow. They’re going with Fred and Muriel, a woman Grandma met at her bridge club. Grandma and Granddad went to the casino with them too. I don’t really think it is appropriate for old people to be hanging around casinos, but still I’m glad Grandma and Granddad are going away. When they leave, the social worker will have to send me to that foster home.
I don’t care if Grandma wants to ignore me. I know Siobhan will be totally blown away when she hears my story. I call her right away, even though it’s getting pretty late.
“Two patrol cars?” she says. “Your mom must have been so embarrassed. Did they have their red and blues flashing and everything?”
“No. Actually, the first officers who came weren’t even in a police car.”
“Oh, it was a police car, I’m sure,” Siobhan says. “Some of them are unmarked so they can take people by surprise.”
“So did they handcuff Randy?”
“I had to leave before then, but I imagine they’d have to do that before they put him in the cop car. Did I tell you that the marked police car had that grating between the front and back seats so they could haul away the criminals?”
“What was the social worker like?”
“Quite nice. I told her I wanted to go to the foster home Megan is in.”
“That would be so cool! But Megan won’t be there. Didn’t I tell you that her dad’s coming to take her back to Saskatchewan?”
Well, that’s a relief.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I just wanted to go there because it’s so close to your place.”
“But then why are you at your grandma’s?”
“It’s just temporary. I’m just here while Ms. Thompson is finishing her investi
gation. Grandma and Granddad are leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow. I might spend the weekend with my dad, so I probably won’t get into the foster home till Monday.”
It’s not long before I am totally disappointed. Mom calls Grandma’s house and says they’ve sorted everything out and I can come home.
“But did Ms. Thompson say I could?” I ask.
“Yeah, she’s finished her investigation.”
“But I read that it isn’t safe to live in a house where there’s been a grow-op. There’s mold and stuff, and then half the time they’ve done weird things to the wiring so it’s a fire hazard. I think I should stay in a foster home, at least till everything has been checked out.”
“Lucy,” she says, “it’s been checked out. The humming you heard was Randy’s deepfreeze.”
“But what about the big hydro bills?”
“He had one salmon and a couple of pounds of freezer-burned hamburger meat in there. That was all. It was a full-size freezer, and when there’s so little inside, it really uses a lot of power.”
“So he wasn’t charged with anything?”
“Last I heard, it wasn’t illegal to leave an almost empty freezer plugged in. Anyway, he’s unplugged the freezer and taken his meat over to Jake’s so it’s probably safe for you to come home.”
I feel like an idiot.
“You must be about ready for bed now.”
I am.
“Let me talk to Grandma.”
After she talks to Grandma, she wants to talk to me again.
“I’m going to look at a house tomorrow morning, but Grandma says you can stay there tonight. I’ll pick you up around three tomorrow afternoon.”
“What about Dad? It’s the weekend. I should be going to his place.”
“He’s busy too. He says he’ll pick you up from here around five.”
Do I get any choice about any of this? No way. You’d think I was a piece of baggage. “And who’s looking after the dog?” I ask.
“She’s fine,” Mom says. “I’ll walk her before I go out tomorrow, and she’ll be with me when I come to get you.”
And I suppose I have to be satisfied with that, though it turns out that that is not what happens at all.
