It was just a little red boot, but when she saw it in the moonlight, stuck between the bushel baskets and the broken chair, Sharla felt like laughing. She hadn’t seen the boot there before, and to see something in the dark that you didn’t see in the light was magic. She picked up the rubber boot and held it like a doll while she looked around for its mate. There was no second red boot to be found, but that didn’t matter because Sharla’s feet were too big now and she couldn’t wear them anyway. She pulled out the busted-up suitcase, opened it, and put the boot inside. The little red boot gave her courage. She opened the shed door and stepped into the night. Emilio’s big grey van was gone from the driveway but it was just as well if he and Collette were out. Sharla’d already decided she couldn’t ask to come home.
She knew it had rained. She could smell the dampness in the air, and as she dragged her suitcase with the red boot down the mud lane, her feet sank a little and there was no dust left to kick up on her shins. There was no television sound and no radio sound and no lights in any of the trailers. It made Sharla feel like she was in a dream. She wondered if she’d wake up and still be smelling garbage in the shed.
She was counting the trailer numbers in her head, number seven, number six, number five, and right then a breeze snuck up behind her and she smelled that sweet piss smell. She didn’t know it was the little white flowers. She thought it was a dog, or maybe a trailer tank was broken because that happened sometimes. She even put her fingers to her own parts to see if she’d pissed herself and just didn’t know it.
The moon pushed aside a cloud and it was suddenly so bright it might have been day if it weren’t night. The moonglow pointed out Addy Shadd’s long white trailer, number four, and the prim square of white flowers in front. Sharla looked at the trailer, hoping it was real.
There were three metal mesh steps up to the door, and Sharla could see them clearly in the bright night. She parked her suitcase on the ground and counted as she climbed, one, two, three. She put her ear up against the door. There was no sound at all. Sharla’d been told never to knock when a grown-up was sleeping, so she settled on the top mesh step, thinking how it’d mark a pattern on her thighs. She looked at the night sky and breathed in the piss smell she was already starting to feel fond of. She noticed the trailer beside, smaller than this one with torn sheets for curtains and a rusty old stove outside that kids kept plastic toys inside.
That old stove made her think of Emilio and the first time he came to the trailer. It was only a few months ago, Easter Sunday, but it seemed longer. The groundhog had lied because there was enough snow on the ground to make an angel and more flakes coming down. Collette was mad because her new shoes were white sandals and she’d taken the time to paint her toenails with the Reckless Red polish her friend Krystal scoffed for her at the drugstore.
Collette washed her hair with fruity shampoo, painted stripes of pink on her cheeks, and drew blue on her eyelids. Sharla thought her mother looked like a clown but didn’t say so. She watched Collette pull on her soft purple sweater with the wide-open neck. Her mother said, “Fuck Fuck Fuck,” when she squeezed into the blue jeans she used to wear before she had Sharla.
Krystal Trochaud came over from across the road to see how Collette looked. Krystal liked to be the boss and acted more like Collette’s mother than her friend. She’d had a baby of her own last year but it died in the night. She called it “my crib death baby” and didn’t seem as sad as you might expect.
Krystal looked Collette up and down as she puffed a Kool. “Them jeans give you camel toe.”
Collette looked between her legs at the way the seam split her pussy lips like a cloven hoof and knew what Krystal meant. She went to change into a different pair, but put on her new sandals because they were just going to stay in the house all day anyway. Her heels went click-clickety-click on the linoleum.
Sharla was watching TV and eating chocolate malt balls shaped like Easter eggs. Krystal sat down beside her on the couch. She said, “Emilio’s got a good job. Got a van too. Wouldn’t that make a difference for getting groceries and whatever?”
Sharla pressed a malt ball to the roof of her mouth.
“You better be nice to him, Sharla. Your butt’s gonna be at Foster Care if Collette loses this trailer.”
Sharla didn’t want to be at Foster Care, so she sat up straight on the couch and stopped eating the malt balls, deciding she should give the rest to Collette’s new boyfriend with the van.
The inside part of the oven was on and that was unusual because Collette mostly used the burners. It made the trailer hot, and when Sharla complained, Collette set her teeth and said, “Go put your fucking shorts on then.”
Emilio was late. The trailer got hotter and hotter. Whatever was inside the oven was still pink. Sharla’d never seen it before but it smelled good, like something cooked in one of the red brick houses in Chatham. Sharla hoped they wouldn’t have to wait till dark to eat the meat because the only thing in her stomach were a few chocolate malt balls.
There was no knock at the door. It scared Sharla when Emilio just walked right in and stood on the mat looking at her like she shouldn’t be there. Emilio wasn’t short but neither did he have to duck to get in the door. His head was shiny black waves and his face was a good one with round dark eyes and a not-too-big nose and thick red lips you might see on a pretty girl. Sharla liked the look of him, but he didn’t like the look of her and she knew it.
Sharla made room for him on the sofa, and when he sat down, she gave him what was left of her malt balls, only four or five melty ones because she’d gotten so hungry waiting. Emilio looked in the bag and scratched his head, and he didn’t say thank you or wasn’t that thoughtful. He called, “Collette?! Hey, Collette, you know your kid’s out here dressed like an idiot? There’s snow on the ground and she’s in goddamned summer shorts!”
When Collette came down the hall, Emilio got up off the couch. There was a mean look on his face but Collette didn’t look scared. She kissed his mouth and said she was glad he was getting to know Sharla a little. Emilio and Collette kept on kissing, and when Emilio’s tongue wormed out between his lips, Sharla turned away.
All the sudden, after waiting all day, that pink meat was coming out of the oven and set on the table with nothing else. Sharla was hungry. “We gonna eat?”
Collette’s cheeks were red under the pink stripes. She hardly looked at her daughter. “Have a little ham to tide you over. We’ll be back in a bit.”
Sharla watched Emilio go down the long hall to Collette’s bedroom and waited till the door closed. She turned the channel on the television, wishing for cartoons but there was only sports and news. She sat down at the table and tore at the ham with her fingers, loving the sweet burnt taste of it.
SHARLA DIDN’T KNOW HOW long she’d been sitting there on Addy Shadd’s step when the metal door screeched open behind her. She held her breath. She couldn’t see any person in the trailer, but a voice came through the screen, deep as a man’s and like she’d just swallowed pudding.
“You Sharla Cody?” was all the voice said before it opened the screen door to let her in. Sharla rose, but her legs buckled because of sitting so still and quiet for so long. She felt queasy, but the feeling eased up when she stepped inside.
The trailer was dark, but warm and thick with some smell Sharla didn’t know. Sharla heard the sound of a match being struck and then there was a flame on a candle and a big shadow on the wall. The candle was set on the table and a chair dragged across the floor. The lady who sat down in the chair was not the one whose clothes she’d stolen from the line, and Sharla felt relieved.
Addy Shadd leaned her face toward the light and lit a long slim cigarette on the candle, saying, “You don’t look at all like your Mama.”
“I got a Dad. He just don’t live with us,” was all Sharla could think to respond.
The old lady crooked her finger at a chair across from her and said, “Sit down, Honey,” in that thick pudding voice.
Sharla took the chair and stared.
Addy Shadd’s skin was the colour of root beer, so wrinkled and stretched it looked like there was enough of it to cover two people. Her hair was sparkly white and unpinned to make a halo around her long face. On each side of that halo was the well of her ears, which were not just enormous but stuck out from her head like wings. Her eyes were hooded and rheumy. Her nose was broad, with round nostrils that made flute sounds when she breathed out. The lines around her lips puckered like a bum when she smoked her cigarette.
Sharla liked the looks of Addy Shadd and thought how no one ever called her Honey before. She felt like she’d like to pat down Addy Shadd’s sparkly white hair. She felt like she’d like to kiss Addy Shadd’s pucker bum mouth and to sit in her skinny lap and bury her nose in the folds of her neck.
Addy Shadd took a long puff and blew the words out with the smoke. “Where you been, Honey?”
Sharla was puzzled by the question because Addy Shadd had just seen her sitting on the top step of the porch. Maybe the question was a trick. Sharla knew about tricks and getting smacked for the wrong answer. “Out there on the porch?”
Addy Shadd couldn’t tell if Sharla was sassing but suspected she was, so she didn’t say Honey this time. “Where you been before that?”
Sharla recalled slowly. “The shed?”
“You suppose to come this afternoon.”
“I know.”
“I figured you’d be coming along tomorrow. I’d have called if I had a telephone.”
“We don’t got no telephone too.”
“That right?”
Sharla nodded. “We’re getting it back though.”
“Where’s your Mama?”
Sharla shrugged. “In Emilio’s van?”
“Who brung you here?”
“She said I could go by myself.”
“All by yourself?”
“I know my numbers.”
“That may be, but I never knew a Mama to send a child out in the middle of the night like that, did I?”
Sharla didn’t answer because she didn’t know what all Addy Shadd knew of mothers and their children. The old woman brought her cigarette to her mouth but a racking cough stopped her from sucking on it.
Sharla allowed her eyes to leave the candle glow on the face of Addy Shadd and roam around the trailer. The walls were panelled in grey barn board and there were pictures here and there but she couldn’t make them out in the dim light. There was a skinny hallway, not as long as Collette’s, that led to a bathroom and back bedroom. The living room was up front, the kitchen in the middle, and that was about it.
On the shelf that separated the kitchen from the living room, there was a collection of salt’n’pepper shakers—cornstalks and green apples and red lobsters and entwined dolphins and Mounted Police and dancing ladies and pairs of everything under the sun. Sharla noticed the pull-out couch with a big soft pillow and blue plaid blanket. She said out loud with a marvel Addy Shadd didn’t quite catch, “I’m gonna live here.”
“Did your Mama give you the envelope?”
Sharla thought of what Collette put inside the white plastic bag. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re suppose to have an envelope for me.”
“I don’t have no envelope.”
Addy Shadd suspected she was being played and didn’t care for that, especially not at half past midnight when she’d waited and worried and wondered all day. She was not at all sure she wanted this fat sassy child living in her home.
“Well, you was suppose to bring an envelope with money for your food and your whatnot.”
Sharla shrugged and tried to recall if Collette put a money envelope in that white plastic bag, and if she did, Fawn Trochaud was rich.
Addy Shadd coiled her lips around her cigarette. “Where’s your things, Child?”
“What things?”
Addy Shadd’s patience was used up. “Your things. Your things. Don’t you have no suitcase, Miss Sassafrass?”
Sharla felt sick again. It took a full minute for her to remember she left her suitcase outside. She stood up and started out the door but came right back because she had to know, “You gonna let me back in though?”
Addy Shadd truly did not know what to make of this child and decided she was either simple or strange. Then she supposed simple or strange was all right as long as she wasn’t sassy. She stood at the door and watched Sharla in the moonlight.
The child was school age, five or six. Addy couldn’t quite recall what that white trash mother told her when she came knocking on her door just a few days ago. Collette sat down in the chair, crossed her pretty legs, folded her arms under her substantial bosom, and told Addy Shadd all about herself and her foreigner boyfriend but little about the child she wished to lodge. She said her boyfriend had been busted up in a car accident and needed time to recover. She said, “I just can’t have Sharla around making noise all day when alls Emilio needs to do is sleep.”
Looking at the young woman sitting across from her, Addy had a sudden, staggering recollection of her own youth. She remembered her own pretty legs and ample bosom and the certain way she’d walk to show herself off. How long had it been, she wondered, since she’d been admired, or done the admiring herself? “I understand,” Addy’d said about Collette’s situation, though she was naturally suspicious of the woman and her intentions.
Collette said, “I can give you a hundred dollars for two summer months. That’s my baby bonus plus. Emilio’s got his rugby Sundays so I can take her then, but not overnight.”
“Rugby? How can your man play rugby if he’s all busted up?”
Collette fumbled, “Oh. Yeah. Well, he’s just scorekeeping now. Anyways, it’s just till Sharla starts school and I promise she won’t bother you. Give her a bag of chips and send her outside.”
All Addy Shadd could think is what kind of Mama asks a stranger to take care of her own baby girl? Collette knew what she was thinking, and she put her eyes on the floor. “I don’t have family to go to or I would. My Mum died when I was nine years old and last time I saw my Dad he got the hose out after me, so.”
“Why’d he get the hose out after you?”
“Him and Delia said I stole twenty dollars from the flour jar, which I did not.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Collette glanced at her watch and knew Emilio was waiting to go look for packing boxes. “I could probably find another fifteen dollars being there’s still a few days left in June. I was hoping to move her over just as soon as you say. I could probably find another twenty.”
Addy Shadd had already decided to take the child, and though it’s true she could use the money, mostly she saw the child as a gift. She was seventy years old and had been alone for decades. She liked the idea of having a sweet little thing running in and out of her trailer.
But, Addy Shadd thought looking at her now, Sharla Cody is no sweet little thing. She was tall for her age with a funny shape to her. Her fat legs touched at the top and splayed out at her feet. She had a big rolly stomach and shorter-than-usual arms that stuck out instead of hanging from her shoulders. Her heavy head was propped up by a short thick neck, and her small eyes hid in a cave of lid and cheek. There was no sign of sweetness whatever in her expression. The one thing you might say was cute on Sharla was her nose, a little round button set just right over her plush crooked lips.
Collette never mentioned to Addy Shadd what Sharla looked like and it never occurred to her to ask. Collette also never mentioned that Sharla was mixed, but there was no question her Daddy was coloured. Sharla’s caramel skin didn’t come from Collette, and neither did her tight coils of black hair. Addy Shadd knew firsthand about half-and-half children.
Sharla got her suitcase from where she parked it on the ground, and Addy Shadd watched her turn around in the moonlight and start back up the stairs. Sharla swayed on her legs. She had bubbles of sweat on her lip and was feeling all the hotter because she just came in from a breeze. She set
the suitcase down and it fell over on its side. “Shit.”
Addy Shadd felt her smacking hand itch. “Didn’t your Mama teach you not to cuss?”
Sharla shook her head but it made her feel dizzy and confused.
The old woman pointed at the suitcase. “Open it up, Child. Likely your Mama put my envelope in there.”
Sharla shook her head. “There ain’t no envelope in there.”
Addy Shadd got serious. “If you did something with that money and you are lying to me now, you’re going straight back to your Mama and that boyfriend of hers and I won’t never think of you again. You understand?”
Sharla said nothing, so Addy Shadd lifted the suitcase up to the table, unbuckled the strap, and opened it up. She looked at the red rubber boot and she looked at Sharla and back at the boot. Collette Cody was either simple or just dog mean.
“That’s all she sent you with? That’s all you brung? One dirty old red boot?”
Sharla was much too tired to explain about the white plastic bag and the clothesline and the smoking lady. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day and she could feel her kneecaps shifting on her leg bones. She looked at Addy Shadd’s foggy eyes in the candlelight and opened her mouth to speak, but she must have blown the candle out because everything went dark.
Addy Shadd didn’t have the quickness in her old body to catch the little girl before she fell unconscious and hit her head on the salt’n’pepper-shaker shelf. She cursed Collette for knocking on her door and cursed herself for thinking a stranger’s child could bring her anything but grief. She nearly cursed Sharla too, but when she saw the little girl’s head was bleeding, she winched herself up on her lean old legs.
It was just a habit that Addy Shadd flipped the switch in the tiny bathroom, but when the light came on she realized the power was back and it felt like a miracle. She grabbed a soft, embroidered hand towel from under the sink, then opened the medicine cabinet and found a box of bandages and the orange iodine.
Back in the kitchen the old woman turned on the light and saw that her Mountie pepper shaker, her wheat sheaf salt, and her dolphin pair were all broken on the ground near Sharla’s head. She got to her knees, took Sharla’s little brown hand, and was relieved to find a strong steady pulse.