Firefly, page 3
I sit down, and Aunt Gayle drops a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in front of me. I pour myself a full glass of orange juice. Try not to shake. This is the social worker who would not shut up yesterday in the car.
She was the one who was there when everything happened.
The one who nabbed me.
“Sleep okay, Firefly?” Aunt Gayle asks me. She comes over to my side of the table, takes the chair next to me. The two of us look across at Sharlene Baker.
My aunt has her arms crossed.
“Yeah. The bed was really comfortable,” I say, and my aunt smiles. I tuck into the bacon and eggs. For the next five minutes, I don’t say a word. I eat. I drink orange juice. I drain two cups of coffee. But it’s horrifying.
Sharlene Baker talks and talks, asking question after question from the clipboard on her lap.
How old am I?
Thirteen.
When’s my birthday?
December 6th.
When’s the last time I went to school?
Last June.
Do I have any siblings that I know of?
Geez, lady.
Do I have any contact with my father?
Who?
When was the last time I saw a doctor?
Uh …
A dentist?
Wow.
A school counselor?
A what?
Are my immunizations up to date?
Isn’t that something the school should know?
Can I read?
Okay, just stop.
Can I write?
Really, stop.
Do I have a police record or have I ever been arrested?
Stop, now.
Have I ever been in foster care before?
What?
Do I have any STDs that I’m aware of?
STOP!
The dizzying list goes on and on, and Aunt Gayle takes bullet after bullet for me.
She says things like, “Now’s not the time to ask Firefly that,” about five times in a row. She says, “No, we won’t be doing that,” a few times too. She answers or she doesn’t. She shrugs, waves questions away.
Once she even gets out of her chair a little, places one hand on the table, and stabs a pointer finger at Sharlene Baker with the other. She says, “There is NO WAY she is giving you blood, or having a physical right now. That’s not even happening, so don’t ask again.”
The only thing we say yes to, in unison, is if I know where the local school is. I don’t know, but I feel like I have to join in. Show a little solidarity.
“Okay, we can do a more thorough intake in a few days when you’re more settled.” Then Sharlene Baker snaps her briefcase closed, or tries to and fails because it’s so stuffed. So she clamps it under her arm, gets up, and stomps off. She’ll be back, clearly, but at least she gets my name right when she leaves.
“Bye, Firefly,” she says. “I’ll call next week, but you can both call me if you need anything right away. If you can’t reach me, leave a message or call the number on the message. It’s a real line, a real person will answer and get your message to me.” She drops her business card on the table, picks up her briefcase, and spins toward the door.
Then Aunt Gayle sees her out, and I watch as Sharlene Baker’s sensible, blue, four-door sedan zips past the kitchen window and careens right on Carlaw Avenue.
That was the car that drove me here. That was the car.
Aunt Gayle comes and pulls her cigarettes out of a drawer, lights up, and offers me one. I shrug and shake my head.
I don’t really smoke, Aunt Gayle.
But thanks for asking.
FOUR
Sunday
The first full day with Aunt Gayle is calm.
So calm.
After Sharlene Baker drives away, we drink more coffee, and we don’t talk about the fact that Aunt Gayle was like an invisible shield between me and the social worker.
My Warrior Aunt.
That was a lot of questions and I couldn’t. I just can’t. Not right now. Not yet.
After we have coffee, Aunt Gayle says, “I have a little paperwork to do in the office, then we can go shop for clothes and whatever you need. Okay?” I nod, and she drifts off to the office beside the front door. She shuts the glass door and goes on her computer.
I can see her in there, typing away, cigarette after cigarette burning to nothing.
I wander around. Time for a little investigation.
The shop has a wide countertop beside the front door. Above the door, there’s a sign in beautiful handwritten script: The Costumer is Always Right.
Cute.
There’s an old-fashioned cash register on the counter. I touch a few buttons, but nothing happens. Behind the counter there’s a long, low table with a measuring tape glued to it, and four different kinds of scissors on it. Long, thin scissors. Short, curved scissors. Fat-bladed scissors.
Lots of scissors. Beneath the table, there are dozens of boxes on low shelves. Boxes of thread. All kinds of thread, different colors and thicknesses. Boxes of buttons — big, little, cloth, leather, bright rainbows, puffy, white, black, pearly, rosettes, glass, plastic, gold, fabric … buttons, buttons, buttons.
There are needles everywhere, too. Not syringes, which is a nice change from the park, but needle-and-thread needles in every possible size and thickness. There’s one needle that looks like a kid’s toy. It’s about as long as my forearm and has a huge eye in it.
There’s tape with handwriting on the underside that says, “Horse Hair/Weaving Needle.”
Weird. Horse hair?
A box of measuring tapes, all carefully rolled. Scraps of material in cloth bags, stored under the table. Balls of wool in a bin, a long, thin box of knitting needles beside it. Dozens of knitting needles in the box. Dozens.
Glue sticks. A hot glue gun. A box of rhinestones that I shake gently, then open and my magpie heart thrills a little. There’s another box marked “Fake gemstones.” A box of “feathers, real and fake.” A shelf of weird stuffed birds, lace, hat pins, and ornate gems that says “Fascinators.”
I take a look at the far wall of the workshop, and there are more shelves, with more boxes. Boxes that run around the outside of the shop floor, right up to the ceiling.
There’s too much to look at. Just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boxes filled with costume supplies to create any kind of costume you could ever, ever want. There’s lace. More buttons. Hemming material. Patches. Necklaces. Costume jewelry. Rings. Belts. Rubber molds for masks, or hands or feet.
Then there are the rows upon rows upon rows of costumes hanging on the racks, floor to ceiling, two stories high.
I have to look away and calm down. There’s just so much in here. You could be anything, anybody, from your wildest dreams.
I open the double doors of an enormous closet.
It has hundreds of hanging pocket racks, all the pockets labeled. Pockets marked sunglasses. Reading glasses. Lorgnettes (which is two tiny lenses). Monocles (which is one lens). Then sub-sections. Aviator sunglasses. 1950s sunglasses. Ladies’ reading glasses. Men’s. Kids’. Colorful. Wire. Plastic. Antique.
On and on and on. It’s mesmerizing. Obsessive. You could sort forever in here. I haven’t even started looking at the thousands of racks of costumes.
Seven million pieces.
Part of me starts to feel a little panicky. I know hoarders. Lots of the ladies at Jennie’s hoard, or did when they still had homes. Now they hoard whatever is left to them in their cart or sometimes in a chain of them.
Moss Cart hoards what he can in his shopping cart. It’s his only control over the world.
Stuff. But in particular, his stuff, carefully selected and placed in a very particular way that nobody should mess with. I never do. If he ever asks me to get something for him from his cart (a clean pair of socks, for instance), I just smile and politely say no. Unless he really needs me to, anyway.
I learned that lesson early. I accidentally moved a soccer ball of his once without asking. Just picked it up because … well because I wasn’t thinking and I didn’t know him very well yet and it was clean, and right there on the top of the cart.
He started crying.
I wonder, just for a second, what Moss Cart would think of The Corseted Lady? He who spends hours organizing and re-organizing the clothes, books, cosmetics, boxed granola bars, juice boxes, and other essentials in his My-Little-Pony-covered shopping cart. I get a sudden pain behind my eyes.
He’d never get out of here alive.
Hoarding wasn’t one of Joanne-the-mother’s problems, though. She sold everything. By the end of the summer, her house was almost empty.
I wander through the shop a little more. There are three antique, over-stuffed couches beside an ancient piano near the front door of the shop. A suit of armor — it’s not real armor, I discover with a little plunge of disappointment — guards the front door beside the piano. There’s an umbrella stand stuffed with Mary Poppins-looking umbrellas. Beside that is a tall, beautiful statue of a rooster, for some reason.
I must have seen all of this last night when I followed Aunt Gayle upstairs. But I didn’t take any of it in. It’s like I’m seeing all of it for the first time.
I bounce up and down in one of the couches, and it’s comfy. The whole place is kind of well-used, but classy. Built for comfort. And sorting clothes into obsessively labeled groups.
Seven million pieces make me uneasy, though I’m not sure why.
Juggers slinks out of the darkness of the costume racks and crouches, eyeing me.
“If you catch any mice, cat, don’t bring them to me.”
Stray cat, stray cat, where your kitty-katty home be at?
I get up and walk past a whole rack of clown costumes, which make me shudder. There’s a rack marked “Halloween” with a lot of weird, colorful, lumpy costumes in bags. Behind them is a rack of Santa suits and elf costumes. Beside that is a rack of monk cloaks and nun’s habits. Then a rack of broken-down clothes with a label that says, “Hoboes, Urchins, Street People.”
I rush past, then go and have the second bath of my new life.
Which is twice as many baths as I’ve had in months.
FIVE
Beloved Baby Soccer Balls
We don’t go shopping.
I just couldn’t do it. Aunt Gayle stopped working a few hours later, and she came and asked me what I wanted to do, what I needed, and honestly I just couldn’t tell her that I needed anything.
What do I need? What do I want? I have no idea.
But one thing’s for sure, I’ve never, ever wanted to go shopping. I’ve been finding second-hand clothes for myself from Jennie’s for almost a year now, I just can’t imagine pulling new clothes off racks in an overly bright store, then submitting to the horrors of a change room and a perky salesperson.
Instead, I find a good, artfully ripped (expensive) pair of jeans in the pile of Amanda’s clothes that Aunt Gayle left on the bed. She folded all my clean stuff from Jennie’s on the chair in the bedroom, so I grab a gray T-shirt (probably once white, but nothing to do with Aunt Gayle’s laundry skills), and my black, zippered AC/DC hoodie.
I found this hoodie at Jennie’s at the beginning of the summer, and I haven’t gone a day without it. Although, what’s AC/DC exactly? A band, I think? Or something to do with electricity? Not sure.
I tell her, “I’m sorry, Aunt Gayle. I’m not really up for shopping today.”
And she says okay. And she doesn’t make a big deal about it, and instead we walk through the neighborhood so I can find my way around.
It’s the third week of October, so it’s not too cold. Not too hot. Hoodie weather.
This part of Queen Street East is trendy. There are so many stores, I can’t keep track. There are food stores and specialty food stores, bars, then specialty bars that serve liquor like just wine or just scotch, which I tried once because Moss Cart had a bottle, and it is truly disgusting. Lots of Starbucks coffee places (I count four in as many blocks), but some nice little family-run coffee places, too. There’s a library with an ornate front door and I peek inside. I’ll be back.
Librarians don’t mind if you use the bathroom or take a nap for a while in an overstuffed chair. Just make sure you’re holding a book.
We walk along, mostly quietly, as I take in the neighborhood in my carefully ripped, second-hand jeans and AC/DC hoodie. My hands are stuffed in the pouch, right where I can keep them safest. There’s a lot to see. I’m quiet but watching.
At lunch time, we have burgers at Aunt Gayle’s favorite local pub, where everyone seems to know her.
It’s called The Royal Fox. She introduces me as her niece, Firefly, and everyone says “Hey, Firefly” and no one asks any questions. I get the feeling that Aunt Gayle is their favorite customer, since they are quick to bring our lunch, and as people leave or come, they almost all stop to say hello to her and get introduced to me.
Everyone is really pretty nice. No one asks any embarrassing questions, like “Why are you staying with your aunt?” or “Where are you from?”
Which is good, because I’m really not sure what I would say if they did.
I’m staying with Aunt Gayle because I have to.
I’m from the park across from my mother’s house.
After lunch, we walk around the neighborhood some more. We walk east on Queen, then cross Leslie Street and head north two blocks. Aunt Gayle is good company. She’s been quietly telling me a little about the business — the kind of film and television customers she gets, the latest movies she’s been working on — and I listen, impressed. But honestly, it’s been so long since I’ve seen a movie or television that I can’t tell her I know what she’s talking about.
I don’t. I don’t know any of the actors or shows. We haven’t had a working television or a computer for a long time at Joanne-the-mother’s house. For the last little while, at the end of the summer anyway, we didn’t have electricity either because she stopped paying the bills, so it wouldn’t have mattered if the television worked.
I have some serious catching up to do here.
We stop in front of Leslie Street Central High School.
It’s a big, red brick building with white trim around the windows and doors. A Canadian flag blows on the flagpole in the October sunshine. A bunch of high school boys are playing soccer, or maybe it’s soccer practice. I’d guess it’s a school team thing, judging by the identical purple shirts and the coach with a whistle yelling at them.
A boy winds up and boots the ball. It sails straight at me.
I duck.
It flies over where my head just was and rolls out into the street. The annoyed-looking boy trots past us to get it.
His knees, his broad shoulders, his clean, carefully trimmed hair. Everything about him screams normal. I can barely look at him as he trots back to the pack of boys in identical shirts and shorts.
I feel edgy and dirty. I pull my hood up, tie it tight.
Then we walk around the outside of the school. I see the front door, the gym through the window, the sturdy, 1910 engineering of the place. We walk through the large side field ringed by huge trees, through the parking lot, then we wander into the quiet, urban neighborhood. People pull cars into driveways. They unpack groceries. They set up hockey nets in the leafy street, or kids take slap shots at garage doors.
This is almost too normal. And none of it is normal for me.
I understand that tomorrow I am to start school for the first time since June, weeks after everyone else. And it’s high school.
Moss Cart has his soccer ball in his shopping cart, wrapped in a pink blanket. He calls it Baby. Talk to Baby, Firefly. I hold Baby, talk to Baby. Hello, sweet Baby. How are you today, sweet Baby? Is Daddy taking good care of you, Baby? Moss Cart takes her back from me, cuddles her … she’s a girl, I think … places her lovingly back into his shopping cart.
I have come to a stop. I’m standing perfectly still in the middle of a small park. Kids swing nearby. I hear them shriek. Aunt Gayle is right beside me, staring into my face.
“Firefly? Did you hear me?” She looks a little worried, and I come back. I shake my head.
“Sorry. It’s been, you know, a while. School, I mean. I’m a little nervous, I think.” Aunt Gayle nods.
“Of course you’re nervous. New school, grade nine. I can’t say it’ll be a breeze, but the kids at that school are okay. It’s downtown Toronto. Anything goes.”
“Aunt Gayle?”
She stops. I can hear the kids behind me shrieking, swinging. Carefree. They have never held beloved Baby soccer balls, I’m betting. She raises her eyebrows. “What, Firefly?”
“What exactly are we going to tell the principal tomorrow? About why I’m starting school late? Like, what do we say?”
Aunt Gayle considers me. She takes a drag of her cigarette, then drops it and grinds it under her heel. The sky gets darker, splatters of rain gust across the park. A few leaves blow by. It’s suddenly colder. She pulls her coat around her. She told me it’s a red barn coat — super urban looking.
She looks at me with the most interesting look. Caring. Considering. Aunt Gayle is figuring it out.
“We tell the principal whatever you want, Firefly,” is what she says.
I nod. “Okay. The truth would sound stupid.”
Aunt Gayle looks at me, then looks down at her feet. “Well, it wouldn’t be stupid, whatever the truth is. I imagine the principal at this school has heard a lot of different things from kids. It’s a very diverse neighborhood, kids from all over the world and lots of different cultures, and probably lots of kids get home-schooled for a while …”
