The Saver (8 page)

Saturday

December 15

Hi Xanoth,

I know there's no pain on your planet, but here on Earth we have a lot of pain. The only thing you can do is take drugs, but they don't always work. Today I got my period and I always get it bad. I saw a doctor about it once, but she said the painkillers have side effects and the best thing for me is to take Tylenol, which you can get generic for around $5.50 for 100.

I didn't have any period stuff left, so I took Mom's bathrobe and cut it into pieces and I'm using that instead of pads. I'm soaking the used ones in a pail, with a million soap bubbles so you can't see what's inside. Gross, but who cares. That's what women must have done in the old days, and probably still do in some countries.

I also took the last six Tylenols I had.

The phone rang nonstop about the empty apartments. I kept a neat list of names and phone numbers and appointment times, so David can see I'm doing my job. I managed OK with the French ones, don't ask me how. Eleven people said they were going to come see the
apartments, but only four showed up. They all filled in application forms. I gave the first three a 1 rating, but I gave the fourth one a 3. I had bad vibes from him.

Apart from that, I lay in bed and moaned.

One problem with this apartment is that the TV doesn't work here. In our old place we managed to get two English channels without cable, but here all I can get is one blurry channel in French. I felt like smashing the stupid TV.

Yours forever,

Fern

Sunday

December 16

Hi Xanoth,

I had an idea. I remembered Ricardo's sister Michelle telling me about this clinic for teens, Head and Hands, that gives out free condoms. I'm hoping they also give free painkillers. I have to wait until tomorrow to call. They're closed on Sundays.

I'm worried that they'll be closed tomorrow too. We're having a blizzard again and they're predicting another 30 cm of snow. I went out to shovel about ten times, and each time it was like I was starting from scratch. Good thing the walkway is short.

I have to start thinking about a job with free food, but I can't concentrate. I didn't ask David if I'm allowed to have another job. If you don't ask you can say you didn't know.

Xanoth, I feel really down today. I hate this stupid tiny apartment. I hate that Mom died. How could she just die like that? Now I'll never have a chance to say goodbye or tell her I'm sorry.

Too bad I don't believe in God or heaven. Ginnie, a
girl I was once friends with, told me humans invented the idea of God millions of years ago to explain things like thunder and lightning.

Ginnie was the only girl I was ever friends with. That was in grade four, the same year I had Mrs. Johnston. She was in a different school, but she lived in the building next door. That building's a dump, but it tries to look like not a dump. They have a buzzer and a lobby and a laundry room in the basement, which we were allowed to use because the same company owns both buildings. They were more strict about who they rented to there.

Ginnie's apartment was smaller than ours, but it was in better shape. Ginnie had a sister who was three, and we used to babysit together when her parents went out. Grade four is kind of young to babysit, but all we had to do was stay awake and call Ginnie's parents on their cell if there was a problem.

Her parents were strange. The father was a nightclub singer and very old-fashioned. He was from France and he wore a suit and tie. The mom was very into looking sexy and having sexy underwear and perfume and done-up hair and low-cut sexy dresses. She always acted like she was in a play or a movie.

Ginnie was probably the nicest person I ever met. You don't usually get niceness like that in kids. She had a happy face and brown hair that was hard to brush because it was so curly. Everything she had, she wanted to share or give away. Even when her grandmother from
France sent her two hair clips with rhinestones, she gave me one.

I used to spend every weekend with her. On Saturday morning her parents made a special breakfast and they invited me. It wasn't really breakfast, because it was at noon, but they called it breakfast. They had marble cake and a lace tablecloth and blue candles in silver holders. Ginnie's dad said some prayer in another language and then they sang some of their old-fashioned nightclub songs in French. Ginnie and I wrote down the words of one of the songs, Ne Me Quitte Pas, and we sang it in the park at the top of our lungs, and everyone looked and we cracked up. I still remember the words. All the things I'll do for you if you don't go away.

Then all of a sudden in May, before school was even over, Ginnie's grandmother died and they moved to France to live in her apartment. Ginnie sent me two postcards. I still have them. One's of the Eiffel Tower and one's of a statue. In the first one she gave me her address – Ginnie Sassoon, 147 rue de Sévigné, Paris 4ème. The year we were friends I wrote Fern Sassoon on all my books and notebooks. I forgot about that.

I thought of writing to her a few times, but she's probably got a million friends and barely remembers me. I only fit into her life because we were both little kids and I lived next door and she didn't know anyone else.

Anyhow, Ginnie's the one who told me God was invented. After that, I couldn't go back to believing. I
only believed in the first place because of Simone. When I was little Simone told me about Adam and Eve and Jesus and Satan. But Ginnie said Adam and Eve couldn't be true because of evolution, and the stories about Jesus were made up a hundred years after he died, and Satan was like Dracula, just something that's meant to scare you. So that was it for me and God.

Xanoth, I'm trying to think about your planet, but I have to admit it's not working at the moment. My whole body from my waist to my knees hurts like hell.

This is so freaky – just as I was writing “hell” there was thunder and lightning! Right in the middle of a snowstorm! Maybe God didn't like what I was writing...

Yours forever,

Fern

Monday

December 17

Hi Xanoth,

I called Head and Hands this morning and told them my situation. They said I should come to the walk-in tonight. Usually the walk-in is on Tuesdays, but they're having an extra one this week because they'll be closed for the Christmas break.

They said it's a three-hour wait on average and they only take ten people, so I have to show up at least an hour early. My period isn't as bad today. The first two days are always the worst.

I thought maybe I'd walk there, but it's at least half an hour by foot, and it was minus 20 with the wind chill. So I took the metro to Vendôme and the 105 to the clinic.

The whole city is one big mess. Lots of sidewalks aren't cleared and you have to walk on the street or climb over huge mounds of snow. I don't know what old people are doing.

I was two hours early, so it was a long wait. I didn't mind. It was nice in the waiting room, with lots of magazines and old sofas and other kids who mostly looked even more messed up than me.

One girl was with her boyfriend. The whole time he
had his arm around her and she had her head on his chest. She had a million piercings – ears, eyebrows, lips, nose, tongue. It looked like overkill to me, but I guess her boyfriend liked them. I was jealous.

Everyone was very nice to me there. I told you Canada was a good country. I got free painkillers – a new kind that you take two days before your period's due. If the pills work, I can get more in three months. The nurse was funny. She wore this crazy hat with velvet flowers. Not what you'd expect a nurse to wear.

She also gave me a booklet that tells you where you can get help for different things. Reading the lists of all the services made me feel lucky that I didn't need them. Rape Crisis, Conjugal Violence, Immigrants, Bereaved Parents, Cancer Survivors, HIV, Colitis, Bipolar Disorder, Suicide Survivors... it goes on and on for pages.

They also have lists of things you can get cheap or for free, like free haircuts at a hairdressing school. I always cut my own hair though. I just chop off the ends when it gets too long. There's no point trying to do anything with your hair when it's as boring as mine. I used to cut Mom's hair too. She had nice hair, black and straight. My father was blond. Either one would have been good, but no such luck.

The nurse insisted on giving me some free condoms. What for? Even with Ricardo we didn't go all the way. But that's a whole other story.

Yours forever,

Fern

Tuesday

December 18

Hi Xanoth,

I spent the whole day cleaning the building. I even cleaned the elevator doors on all the floors and the glass of the buzzer door. Mom taught me a trick for cleaning glass with rolled-up newspapers.

There's an Asian family right opposite me on the ground floor. The kids are really adorable. I told the mom I could do babysitting in exchange for food, because they're probably too broke to pay me, and the smell of food coming from their apartment is really good.

She nodded and smiled, but I don't know if she understood me.

Yours forever,

Fern

Friday

December 21

Hi Xanoth,

Today David came over to get the application forms. He was impressed that I kept a good list of everyone who called and all the appointments. I also showed him how clean the place was.

David said it all looked great and then he asked me again if I'd come across any missing papers and files. He's very nervous about them being lost.

I said maybe they're in a safety deposit box, but he made this sarcastic sound and said, “That'll be the day.” I don't think he gets along with his father.

Luckily Beauty was hiding under the bed. Pets aren't allowed in the building.

After he left I noticed I was running out of toothpaste. I remembered when I was a kid, they always gave us a free toothbrush and a little tube of toothpaste at the dentist's. So today I walked all the way to Côte des Neiges, to the building we used to go to. It was minus nine, but at least it wasn't too windy. I have thermal socks and a huge mohair scarf, both of which I found at a vestiaire.
Sometimes you get lucky at those places. My coat sucks though. It weighs a ton and isn't even that warm, but it's all I could find in my size.

The building on Côte des Neiges is full of dentists. I went into the first office I saw, and asked for a toothpaste sample. I said it was for a project on teeth at my school. The receptionist gave me two different brands plus a toothbrush.

I was going to leave, but then I figured if I had luck at one office, maybe I can try some others. So I got a plastic bag from the pharmacy downstairs, and I went from office to office asking for toothpaste. Some receptionists were real bitches and looked at me as if I had a contagious skin disease, but most were OK.

I now have enough toothpaste for five years, and enough toothbrushes for the rest of my life.

Yours forever,

Fern

Saturday

December 22

Hi Xanoth,

I finished putting everything away. I stacked six boxes in the equipment closet with Mom's purse, her wallet, her dresses, her jeans and her belts. Simone and I chose her dresses for her when we went to Value Village. She wouldn't have bought them by herself, but I liked dressing her up, especially when I was a little kid.

The belts were the only thing she bought on her own. She liked wearing carved or braided belts with interesting buckles in front.

I felt horrible folding her clothes and putting them in the boxes. I didn't even think it was possible to feel so horrible and sad. There were like a hundred levels of sadness and they all joined together at the same time. I kept thinking Mom was standing behind me watching me, and I even had to turn around a few times to make sure. I was crying my eyes out. I remembered how we played Mille Bornes and how she didn't want to give me the obstacle cards and it made me feel like I was shriveling up and dying.

I remember exactly the day I started being mean to her. It was when Ricardo broke up with me. I got home and Mom asked, “How was your day?” and I just got so mad at her suddenly. I screamed, “Get away from me,” and I went to my room and slammed the door.

I guess you're wondering about Ricardo. I met him in the park. He went to Sunnyview, but I never noticed him in school.

It was the beginning of May and really warm, and I was sitting on the bench with a bag of chips, getting some air. Then out of nowhere, Ricardo came over.

I thought he was going to ask for something, like a light or some chips, but he said, “Why you be chillin here alone, girl?” I ignored him. I figured he was probably either stoned out of his mind or else he thought I was a hooker.

But he sat down next to me on the bench. We were sitting there not talking when an old guy walked by with his poodle. This poodle was really tiny, like a puppy, but he began barking at us as if he thought he was some kind of huge ferocious guard dog. The old guy was walking really slowly, so the poodle had a lot of time to bark, and we started laughing.

Somehow that broke the ice and we got talking. Ricardo said he liked dogs, but his older sister Michelle liked cats, so they never got a pet. I began telling him about Beauty and why cats are good pets. I convinced him, and he said he'd get Michelle a kitten for her birthday.
The next thing you knew, he invited me over to his place.

There are a lot of things I still don't get. Like why he went out with me.

I knew it wasn't a dare or anything, because his sister Michelle told me it wasn't, and she was into feminism. She had all these posters and buttons saying
WOMYN POWER
. She'd know if he was lying.

So maybe some people are just weird. Like you hear about guys who like all kinds of messed-up things that you wouldn't believe could turn anyone on.

In school we only said hi, and on Sundays Ricardo worked at Wendy's, but we got together on Saturday and Saturday night.