In From the Cold (5 page)

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.

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.

Please walk away, she silently begged her daughter. Please take the burden of having to take care of you away from me. Please find someone stronger to bring you up.

But Hazel didn’t walk away. She came into the hut and lay down on the bed beside her mother.

They passed the day that way. Sometimes they got up to use the latrine or get something to eat, but then they got back into the bed.

They talked a bit. They dozed a bit. But mostly they just spent the day together, touching hands and listening to heartbeats.

By the end of that day, Rose knew what she had to do.

The next morning, Rose and Hazel left the shack for the last time.

They’d woken up before sunrise, when the world was all silver and shadow. Rose’s back was still sore, but it was much, much better, and together they tidied and swept the yard and the shack. Hazel even put some pretty, dry grass in the vase on the table.

“Do you think someone else will move in?”

“Someone will,” said Rose. “Someone who needs a quiet place to hide for a while.”

“I wish I had a camera,” said Hazel. “I’d like to take a picture to remember it by.”

“Let’s take a picture with our minds,” Rose suggested. They raised pretend cameras to their
eyes and fixed the memory of the hut forever in their brains. Then they walked away.

“I don’t want you to lie,” Rose said to Hazel as they crossed the field on their way into the city. “That story you made up about you being the one to hurt your father. I don’t want you to tell them that. Tell them the truth.”

“Okay,” said Hazel.

“Promise me,” said Rose.

“I promise. Can I show them where we lived?”

“You show them with pride, honey. We did something very special, so you hold your head up high when you’re talking about it.”

They walked some more.

“If you don’t like the people they put you with, you speak up,” Rose told her as they got closer to the streets and shops. “You are a great kid and you deserve to have great foster parents.”

“It won’t be forever,” Hazel said. “Right? It will be just for a little while.”

“That’s right,” said Rose. “Just a little while.”

Rose was scared to go into the city in broad daylight, but she had to do it. It would be safer for her to leave in the middle of the night, but not safer for Hazel. She had to think of her daughter,
but her heart pounded as they walked out of the ravine. They joined the morning crowd on the sidewalk.

Their first stop was the donut shop. Carmen was off duty but Rose wrote down the address.

“Check in here from time to time,” Rose said. “We’ll use this as our mail drop. I’ll let you know where I am, and then you can write and let me know where you are.”

“Maybe when you get to Vancouver you can finally learn to use a computer,” said Hazel. “Then we can send e-mails.”

Rose’s husband wouldn’t let her touch the computer. He said she only wanted to use it so that she could hook up with other men. But her husband was gone now. She could do whatever she wanted to do. The thought made her laugh out loud. The whole world waited for her!

They started walking again. There were people everywhere, and there was so much noise! Cars, buses, people, dogs! Signs and boxes to walk around. Trucks and strollers to watch out for.

“I like it better at night,” Hazel said.

“Me, too,” said Rose. Then she had a thought. “You’re going to have to do what your foster
parents tell you to do,” she said. “I mean, if it’s safe and reasonable. They’re not going to be happy if you wander around at night. You’ll have to do chores and be polite. If you give them a hard time, they’ll start to pass you from home to home, and your life will be very hard.”

“I can get along,” Hazel said. “Will they make me do a lot of chores?”

“Probably not a lot,” Rose told her, “but when they ask, just do them. Don’t argue.”