The Saver (3 page)

In a million years I'll never know why Mrs. Johnston liked me, Xanoth. It wasn't fake, because she didn't like everyone. She didn't like this girl Cecily, for example. She didn't like most of the boys either.

It started on the first day of grade four. I was the only one with my hair tied back, because Mom scared me with stories about lice from when she was a kid.

But Mrs. Johnston didn't know my hair was in a ponytail because of lice, and the first thing she said after writing her name on the board was how nice it was that my hair was tied back neatly, and how she hated hair falling all over the place. She meant the white kids.

Then she talked about the Queen. She had the Queen's picture on the wall, and she played us a tape of “God Save the Queen.” Then she wrote the words on the blackboard, and when the tape was finished she made us all stand up and sing it.

I know that sounds like she was from a bygone era. Maybe she was in some ways, but no one minded and no one laughed. She wasn't the sort of person you laughed at. She had perfect quiet in her classroom. No one shouted out, not even the criminal types who if she was in an alley would grab her purse in two seconds flat. In class she was the ruler. It's just something she had.

Anyhow, I sang really loudly. OK, I was being a suck-up, but I was only a little kid, and it was the first time a teacher said something nice to me. Mrs. Johnston noticed right away and smiled at me.

In case you're wondering what she looked like, she had very neat white hair in waves, rosy cheeks and glasses with light blue frames. She always wore a navy skirt with a white blouse and matching jacket, but with a different scarf and a different pin every day. She said we needed something bright to look at. Her pins were made of rubies and emeralds and diamonds, and they were in the shape of butterflies or fish or just pretty designs, like an oval with emerald teardrops falling from it. No one knew if they were real. I mean, we knew she wasn't rich, but maybe her great-great-grandmother was rich, and the jewels were passed down through the generations.

I even lost weight that year, because one time after class she told me that if I cut down on desserts and soft drinks, she'd give me 5 extra bonus points each month. Every time someone did good work they got a bonus point, and as soon as you had 15 bonus points, you got a prize from the prize bag, like a book of poetry for kids or a joke book or a game, for example those little squares you move around to get them in order. Mrs. Johnston put one hand over her eyes and with the other hand she dug into the prize bag to make it fair, but I think she was feeling for the prize that would fit the kid who was getting it.

I didn't care about the points or the prizes, but I didn't
want her to stop liking me, so I lost around 30 pounds that year. I hate soft drinks anyhow, so that part was easy, and I only let myself have two slices of cake after supper. Two slices and that was it. Every time I stopped at two, I felt I was doing it for Mrs. Johnston, and it was as if she was watching me. All evening I wanted to go to the kitchen and take another slice, but I didn't.

I earned six prizes in all:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, Rubik's Tangle which is little pictures of ropes that you have to connect, a book about famous women and what they did, eight nature postcards that folded like an accordion, Brain Quest Weird Stuff (Strange, Gross and Unbelievable But True Facts), and a collection of crossword puzzles about cats. I think Mrs. Johnston probably found the prizes in garage sales, but they were in perfect condition.

The class was for dummies, but Mrs. Johnston said that if we didn't understand something it was her fault, not ours, because she wasn't doing a good job explaining it. Like when she was trying to explain to us that four quarters make a dollar and two nickels make a dime – a lot of kids were having trouble with that (as I said, the dummy class), so finally she turned it into a game. She made some kids into pennies and some kids were nickels and some were dimes and quarters, and that was how those kids finally learned it. I was the only dollar.

Every day before the bell she read us another chapter from
Tom Sawyer
. We didn't really know what was going
on, but we still liked it. She hated gum chewing. She spent a lot of time on how to use commas. She really drummed it into us about commas. Commas and apostrophes. And capital letters and indent. To indent you put two fingers on the page. She liked cucumber sandwiches. That's what she ate for lunch every day. She was skinny. She made us sign a pledge that we would never smoke, and she gave us all the reasons why smoking was bad. She said it was like drinking from a lake that had gasoline and tar and sewage flowing into it. And if you thought that was disgusting then it didn't make sense to smoke, because you were doing the exact same thing as drinking from that lake. She always used to say “You're right, I'm wrong” when she made a mistake. She had a principle about that.

I wish real life had points. Points for every time you did the laundry and went shopping and didn't throttle someone. Then when you had 100 points, the President of the World would send you a computer, or a car.

I'm going to sleep now, even though it's early. Beauty is sleeping right next to me, with her head on the pillow like a human.

Yours forever,

Fern

Wednesday

November 21

Hi Xanoth,

I had a lot of really bad dreams last night. They started off with the story in
Murder Times Nine
, which is about nine people who get murdered one by one, and the detective is trying to find the connection between them. But then everything changed in the dream and it got very weird and scary.

I finally woke up. I made breakfast and then I called Sunnyview and told them I wasn't coming back. The secretary took the message.

I also wrote to my uncle. I just said,

Hi Jack. I'm sorry to have to tell you that Mom died. Felicity, I mean. I don't know if you're still at this address. I also don't know how long I'll be staying here, so if you write back send your letter to 301 Prince Albert in Westmount. I don't know the postal code but you can look it up. It's one of the places where Mom cleaned. Your niece, Fern.

I put it in an envelope from the junk mail downstairs.
I crossed out VISA and wrote Jack's address instead. All I needed was a stamp.

I don't even know what Jack looks like. Mom has two photos of him, but in one he's a kid and the other is from too far to see much.

After that I had to do something. I knew if I sat around the house all day, I'd go crazy. So I decided to go to work instead of Mom. Apart from giving me something to do, I'd get paid.

Also it's Wednesday, and every second Wednesday she cleaned for the Coopers, which is where I told Jack to write. Mom didn't go last week, which meant they were expecting her today. I figured if I went there I'd be able to tell them in person that I gave Jack their address, and I could ask them for a stamp.

The Coopers live in a big old house in Westmount. They're very quiet. They had a daughter who died. Her picture is over the fireplace. They aren't too interested in anything and there's never much to clean at their place. It wasn't the first time I was going instead of Mom. I took her place whenever she was sick or had a migraine.

They're nice old people, tall and skinny. People who are that nice make you feel bad. Dr. Cooper worked in Africa, but he's retired now.

They've always helped us out. They paid our phone bill because you can't pay without a bank account. Mom gave them the money and they looked after it. They also offered to apply for benefits for her, but she
said no. She didn't want anything to do with the government.

There was a bit of snow this morning, but it turned into rain and fog before I got to the Coopers. I like fog.

I got there at around 11. They told me to help myself to whatever I wanted for lunch. I told them I gave Jack their address because we might be moving, and I asked if they had a stamp. They took the letter and promised to mail it. They asked how Mom was. I said she was taking a day off.

They always go out on cleaning day to visit some old friends. After they left, I made myself three kinds of sandwiches – cold chicken and lettuce, peanut butter and margarine, peanut butter and jam. The bread was the kind you slice yourself.

Then I found a bag of old sprouting potatoes. They were OK once I peeled them. I boiled a few and mashed them with margarine. Then I had spiral cinnamon cookies that were pretty stale, and chocolate milk. I really like chocolate milk. I'd drink it five times a day if I could afford it.

After I ate I cleaned the house cleaner than it's ever been in its entire life. I moved these old big sofas and cleaned behind and under them and I got on a stepladder and cleaned the light fixtures. They were really dusty. Then I did all the windows and windowsills, though I couldn't do the outside. Wonder Woman, that's me.

I stayed a lot longer than I was supposed to, and I was
still working away for two hours after they got back. They were surprised, I think. They gave me a big tip, $40 on top of the $60, and they said they hope Mom gets well soon.

Dr. Cooper said, “She must be extremely proud of you.” I let him have his illusion.

I'm wiped out from lifting sofas and moving beds. I hope I won't have those dreams tonight. I'll think about your planet, Xanoth, and the vegetable gardens and the pink and blue skies and cute sheep. Did you have fun at the outdoor dance with the crystal lights on the trees and the rainbow stars against the dark sky? Did your sister Lulu set the date for her wedding? I wonder where she and Om will go on their honeymoon, and how many children they'll have. I love how it doesn't hurt to give birth on your planet. The babies just slip out, and instead of crying when they come out, they laugh.

Yours forever,

Fern

Thursday

November 22

Hi Xanoth,

I should explain that I can't tell anyone about Mom because of the rent. Julian, the guy who called 911, asked how she was doing. I said we switched hospitals, just in case he gets it into his mind to check up on me. He asked which hospital, but I pretended not to hear. I'm good at going deaf on people.

The thing is, if they find out Mom's dead they'll kick me out of here right away. They've been dying to kick us out because they want to double or triple the rent.

But they always wait before they take action on a late tenant, because taking action costs money, and then if you pay the rent they lose that money. Since we've always been on time, they won't want to take action for nothing. So I can stay at least until the end of December without paying the December rent. That gives me time to plan what I'll do next.

It was really windy and cold today, with rain turning into ice. But I went to clean a house anyhow, just to get my mind off things while I figure out what to do. I had
bad dreams again, by the way. So I went to the Thursday-Saturday house.

Insane people live there. It's amazing how people can be part of society and everything, and be completely insane inside their house. The husband, Mr. Dixler, teaches at university, and his wife teaches aerobics at the Y, so you'd think they'd be normal, but they're not. They have four kids. All the kids are crazy too, probably because of their parents.

I love how no one is gross on your planet, Xanoth, and you don't even have a word for disgusting because you don't know what it is. Here on Earth it's very different.

For one thing, no one in that house flushes the toilet. I don't understand that part. I don't get how they don't mind going to the toilet and being forced to see other people's dumps. They have four bathrooms and it's the same in all of them.

But that's just a small detail. The whole house is a lunatic asylum, dark, filthy, with a million old appliances and tools and probably torture instruments lying all over the place. Just piles of strange things on the floor, which you have to step over as you walk. There's a TV screen the size of a whole wall in the living room and flat screen TVs in every room. They have locks on the outside of all the kids' doors, so the kids can get locked in when they're bad, and their rooms are full of skulls and pet snakes and scorpions in jars and posters from every horror movie ever made, including some they drew themselves.

On top of all that, the place is teeming with cockroaches, and it's a new house. It's new and enormous and probably cost three million dollars, but it's even more wrecked than our building. The whole house smells because of the weird snakes and rotting food, and because of their chihuahua, who sometimes goes in the corner and no one bothers cleaning it up. When no one's home the chihuahua goes to a daycare for dogs, so at least he has a break from the family.

The only time I cleaned this house before was on Saturday, when most of them were home. I won't even try to describe what that was like, with the chihuahua going completely crazy, and every single TV on a different station, plus they put on music, plus they shouted nonstop.

There's three boys and a girl. One of the boys and the girl are twins, I think, around ten, and the other two boys are older. They were all fighting with each other and with their parents. None of their arguments made sense. It's like they were all talking about different things, but they acted as if they were on the same topic.

I spent the whole day hiding in the laundry room. Even the laundry room had this big poster of a giant stuffing the arm of a small man inside his mouth. He's already bitten off the head and there's blood everywhere. The poster was from an exhibition of an artist called Goya. The one art poster they have, and it has to be of a cannibal eating a human head. I had to concentrate the whole day on not looking at it.

I did a million loads of laundry, filling the machine, then the dryer, then folding everything. In between, I cleaned the laundry room. That kept me busy until it was time to go. They didn't care what I did. I think they all have ADD.