Ten Thousand Truths Read online

  Susan White

  The Acorn Press

  Charlottetown

  2012

  Text © 2012 by Susan White

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  P.O. Box 22024

  Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

  C1A 9J2

  acornpresscanada.com

  All rights reserved

  eBook design by Joseph Muise

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  White, Susan, 1956-

  Ten thousand truths / Susan White.

  ISBN 978-1-894838-88-7

  I. Title.

  PS8645.H5467T45 2012 jC813’.6 C2012-904339-7

  The publisher acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage for our publishing activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

  To the courage and resilience of Jason Verner, Jodie McCluskey, and Travis Boyer. I consider myself privileged to have been a small part of your lives.

  There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like little birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

  —Henry Ward Beecher

  Chapter 1

  If Not for a Pack of Gum

  Rachel had just intended to grab a pack of Juicy Fruit and head down to the ball field. Margaret had told her she could have half an hour to hang out before she had to be back home.

  A new foster kid was coming today and Mrs. Thompson would be bringing her at six o’clock. Rachel was supposed to be back in time to peel the potatoes and help set the stage for the performance—the one that would see Margaret Harriet and her husband, Bob, play-acting the roles of loving and caring foster parents. The props would all be set in their places: the chore charts would be on the fridge, the smiley face name tags would be stuck over the coat hooks at the back door, the place would be spotless, and Margaret would make sure that Bob was sober.

  This new kid would make five foster children for the Harriets. Five little darlings that nobody wanted. Five little projects for Margaret to gush over when anyone from Social Services was around. Five little incomes. Rachel would have to share her room with this new girl, for a while anyway. Rachel had seen many kids come and go. This one would be no different—just a little hitch in the smooth running of the Harriet household. And Rachel had that down pat. She knew if she played the good little foster daughter when necessary, the Harriets would leave her free to do what she wanted. Knowing all the Harriets’ best-kept secrets didn’t hurt, either. Best kept, or their foster kids would be taken away from them, their monthly paycheques would stop coming, and Bob might actually have to get off his butt and get a job.

  It had been a whole month since Rachel had been allowed out anywhere except to go to school. When Mrs. Thompson had brought Rachel home from the police station four weeks ago, after the breaking-and-entering incident, she’d suggested that Margaret ground her, and then gradually allow her more freedom until she could prove that she understood the consequences of her actions. Up until that incident, most of the trouble Rachel had caused was at school and it hadn’t really bothered Margaret that much, except for the nuisance of having to put on a good show for the principal and pretend she had real concern for Rachel.

  It hadn’t been hard to break into the house. Once Rachel noticed that the window by the back door had been left open a bit, it had been easy to squeeze her arm through and unlock the door. She was never planning on stealing anything. She’d just wanted to stay there for the night. She knew that the family wouldn’t be home for a few days. She’d watched as they’d packed their van and chatted excitedly about their trip to Prince Edward Island.

  Rachel had actually been watching the family for a long time. There was a mom, a dad, a girl about her age, and a boy a couple of years younger. They had moved into that yellow house about six months after she had arrived at the Harriets’. Watching them had become an obsession to her. She walked by that house every day on her way to and from school, and sometimes she’d sit on the fence across the street, just watching them. She didn’t know their last name, but she knew the girl was Emma and the boy was Daniel. She loved hearing the mother calling their names when she came to the door to call them in from the yard. She had seen the dad sitting on the front step one day, drinking a bottle of Alpine beer. The little girl had been drawing on the paved driveway with a rainbow of coloured chalk. The chalk had faded out over the next couple of days, and when she’d walked by three days later, the colours had washed away completely.

  It was just a little pack of gum. No big deal. She had pulled off much bigger victories than that. Like the time she went into the store four times in a row to lift something, just to prove to herself that she could. Four times in a row and four different items, ranging from a tiny box of Tic Tacs to a can of apple juice. The store owners, Mr. Goodinsky and his half-deaf wife, never suspected a thing. She went into that store at least a couple of times every day and she always managed to get a bonus item or two.

  But somehow she got caught this time. Mr. Goodinsky stopped her as she headed out the door and totally freaked out when he found the gum in her pocket. He started screaming at her and telling her he’d had enough of punk kids coming into the store and stealing from him. Rachel tried to make a run for it but he grabbed her and pulled her back inside. His wife had had to stop him from totally losing it. Apparently that little pack of gum was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

  By the time the cops had come and picked her up, it happened that Rachel and the two police officers arrived at the Harriets’ house just as Mrs. Thompson and the new foster kid were walking up to the front door.

  “I can’t believe it!” Margaret screamed when she opened the door and saw Rachel, her uniformed escorts, the new foster child, and Sarah Thompson all squeezed into her small front porch. “In trouble again, and after all we have done for her? I really thought after the police were involved last time that we had gotten through to her on the importance of making good decisions. Today was her first day out since her arrest and here she is in custody again. I can’t take any more of it!”

  To add to the drama of the moment Margaret started gushing over the new kid, hugging her to her massive bosom while hollering to Bob to come out and get the suitcase Mrs. Thompson was holding. He was, of course, sitting in front of the TV, too caught up in “Wheel of Fortune” to be the least bit aware of what was going on at the front door.

  “You have to take Rachel out of here now!” Margaret screeched at Mrs. Thompson. Her body blocked the door as if she were afraid Rachel would force her way in and her very presence in the house would contaminate them all. “I refuse to have her in my home for one more minute.”

  Rachel knew that a trade was being made: a new, good kid for her, an old one that was cursed and evil. She was sure that if Margaret could twitch her nose and spout some secret chant she would use her powers to make her disappear into thin air, instantly eliminating the problem and every memory of Rachel Garnham ever having been in her home. If only it were that easy to wipe away the memories of living in this house for the last three years, Rachel thought to herself.

  Rachel sat on the garbage bin, still guarded by
the two officers as if she was a threat to the very security of the whole street. Margaret let Mrs. Thompson squeeze by her so she could go upstairs and pack a few things in Rachel’s backpack. While they waited for her to return, Margaret stood in the doorway, keeping her eyes and ears on Rachel as if afraid that at any time she would start spouting stories that would make the authorities think twice about leaving small animals, let alone children, with her and Bob.

  The ringing of the phone startled Amelia. The fact that the phone rarely rang along with the early hour made the shrill sound even more jarring to the quietness of her kitchen, where she stood in the dim light ready to strike the match to get the day’s fire going in the wood cookstove. Chelsea had had a bad dream last night and her screams had woken Amelia at about 3:00. It took over an hour to settle her and get her calmed down enough so that she could fall back to sleep. The kids were all still sleeping and Amelia rushed to the phone, hoping it hadn’t woken them up.

  Sarah Thompson was on the line and by the sound of her voice and the time of day Amelia knew she was calling to tell her that she was bringing her another child. She listened while Mrs. Thompson listed off the information about the girl she was bringing: Rachel Garnham, thirteen years old, five years in the system after losing her mother and brother in a motor vehicle accident. No father in the picture and no family except an estranged grandmother. Some behaviour problems, a recent break-and-enter charge, and a shoplifting incident.

  Amelia liked Mrs. Thompson, certainly better than some of the social workers she had dealt with over the last thirty years. Some of them had treated her like she was a feature in a circus sideshow. Come see the crazy, deformed woman who never leaves her tent! They were happy to leave their problem children with her but they never took the time or effort to understand who she was or what she worked so hard to provide in this “last resort” place where they had been dropping kids off for all those years.

  Mrs. Thompson came more often than some of the others to follow up on the kids she had brought to Amelia. It had been her who had brought Chelsea and Crystal to Amelia’s four years ago, when the only sounds that came from them were the frantic cries they made if anyone came near as they clung desperately to each other. Mrs. Thompson had come regularly enough to see their language develop and their security issues improve to the point where they were able to go to school and be apart from each other for short periods of time. She hadn’t been there, of course, for the day-to-day work that had been done to get them where they were now, but she always offered any support she could give.

  Rachel had never seen or been on a ferry. She didn’t even know there was such a thing around here. Haven’t these people ever heard of bridges? she wondered to herself as a fat guy with a huge fluorescent vest waved them up the middle aisle of the maroon-and-white barge and Mrs. Thompson stopped the car up against an orange pylon. That pylon wouldn’t stop anything, thought Rachel. If Mrs. Thompson hit the gas instead of the brake, the car would hit the ramp and drive off into the water ahead. Now that would maybe make this stupid day something to remember.

  “Do you want to get out and look at the scenery?” Mrs. Thompson asked, as if the two of them were out for a Sunday drive.

  Rachel’s grunt and her slouched body answered loud and clear that she wasn’t the least bit interested in looking at the trees, the blue water, or the high hills framing the river. One thing she knew was that wherever she was going, it was out in the middle of nowhere. No convenience stores in sight. She figured that was one of the main reasons they were making her come here; the philosophy like the one that would recommend keeping a drunk away from a bar or a fat guy away from KFC. Lakes, rivers, trees. Just what she wanted: the excitement of nothing in the middle of nowhere.

  They turned left after getting off the ferry and drove up a curving road with a steep cliff wall on the passenger’s side. Rachel watched a rush of water gushing down the side of the rock face. The river wound as far as she could see out the driver’s side window. She stared at it until they came to the top of a hill and the road turned away from the blue expanse of water.

  A brown church sat off to the left, surrounded on two sides by a fenced-in graveyard. For a second Rachel thought of that other graveyard, the one where her mother and brother were buried. Even though she had only been back there that one time, when her so-called grandmother took her there a week after the funeral, she remembered it clearly. She remembered standing there staring at the ground where just days before her mother and brother’s caskets had been lowered in holes under those two mounds of dirt. How could two small mounds of dirt be the only sign of the deep holes where she knew her mom and brother were now? She hadn’t really even been able to say goodbye that day because her grandmother had hurried her back to the car.

  Mrs. Thompson turned at a sign that read Walton Lake Road. She slowed right down to 20 kph as the narrow road was dirt and very rough, which just seemed to make the drive more painful and foreboding. Rachel had no idea what to expect. Her mind kept telling her she was going to a place from which she would never return—she would spend her life trapped in this forsaken place and no one would hear from her again.

  As they drove down the winding road, Rachel noticed a house with a green roof up on the hill to their left. Maybe I could go there for help if I’m able to escape, she thought to herself as they passed the mailbox. She wasn’t able to make out the faded name on the old, rusted metal.

  They continued through thick stands of trees until they came to the openness of a large lake. They drove the length of the lake and turned onto a long, even rougher driveway that was barely wide enough for the car to get through without hitting the bushes lining both sides. At the end of the driveway there was an open field with a house on one side. Most of the paint had chipped off of the once-white house, leaving it a dull grey with only a few small flakes of the white paint remaining. Several sheds with the same mottled look stood beside the house. The hill a ways over to the right of the house sloped down toward the lake they had passed on the way in. In the other directions all Rachel could see were trees.

  After the car came to a stop, Rachel opened her door, slowly put her right foot on the hard-packed ground, and reluctantly stepped out. She saw a woman come out the screen door and step onto the veranda of the old house. The first thing Rachel noticed about the woman was her face—it was like the surface of the moon. Warts, moles, or bumps of some kind stuck out from her chin, her nose, and her forehead. As the woman walked toward the car, Rachel saw nothing else but the warts and she didn’t hear the woman’s first name when Mrs. Thompson introduced them.

  Rachel heard the wart-face saying something about the history of sneakers: first produced in the year 1800; called sneakers because the soles were smooth and made no sound on the ground. Rachel looked down at her feet. The day after her eviction, when Mrs. Thompson got back from picking up the rest of her stuff, Rachel had been relieved to see her orange High-Top Converse sneakers sticking out of the box. Her lucky sneakers were the only thing she cared about in that box of crap. Maybe if she had been wearing them on the day she got caught shoplifting she would have had better luck. She had worn them the night she had broken into that house, and even though she had gotten caught she had been lucky enough to get away with staying there all one night and part of the next day. Long enough to form a clear picture of every room in the house so that she could put herself back there in her mind any time she wanted to and pretend it was her house and her family. If she conjured up a pretend family she wouldn’t have to remember the family she lost and all the fake families she had been forced to live with ever since.

  “You are about a size 6, I would guess.” The warty woman’s voice broke through Rachel’s thoughts. “Did you know that in 1324 the King of England decreed that barleycorn would be used as a unit of measurement for shoe size? Three barleycorns—which is just a grain of barley, I don’t know where the corn part comes from—laid end to end i
s about 1 inch. An average man’s shoe size is 33 barleycorns, or size 11. A size 6 would be 18 barleycorns. Are those beautiful orange sneakers 18 barleycorns?”

  Rachel didn’t know what to say to this grotesque woman, who was obviously certifiably insane—so she just shot her a dirty look and reached into the car to pull out her stuff. Warty, Rachel thought. They are dumping me here in the middle of nowhere with Crazy Warty Walton.

  After Mrs. Thompson drove away, Rachel picked up her backpack, a garbage bag full of clothes, and one large Rubbermaid container containing the rest of her worldly possessions and followed Amelia into the house. The first room they came to was the kitchen and it looked to Rachel like something off the set of the Little House on the Prairie movies she had watched non-stop when she was a kid. The main feature in the room was a big woodstove covered in steaming pots. The heat of the kitchen felt suffocating. It’s August, for God’s sake, Rachel thought to herself. Why do they need a fire in the middle of summer?

  The look on their faces is always the same when they first arrive, Amelia Walton thought as she moved a large boiling pot toward the back of the stove. Everyone always looked for a second or two too long at her face. She sometimes forgot herself, what her face looked like until an accidental glimpse in the small rectangular mirror hanging over the bathroom sink would remind her. She usually felt like she was still her twenty-year-old self when the only things on her face were a couple of light brown marks.

  Rachel shifted her backpack, set the garbage bag on top of the container, and followed Amelia through a wooden door beside the kitchen sink and up a steep staircase to a landing where an old sewing machine sat under a small window. From the window Rachel could see some bushes behind the house. Three heads were sticking up out of the greenery.

  “This is your room,” Amelia said as she opened the door at the top of the stairs and led Rachel into a bedroom. “You get your own staircase right to the kitchen and the biggest and warmest bedroom in the house. This was my bedroom when I was a little girl. Believe you me, you will be glad for this room in January. This old house is not insulated very well and it can get pretty cold in the wintertime. The stove you saw downstairs and the old wood furnace in the basement are how we heat this house. The chimney comes up through here as you can see and you’ll be surprised at how much heat will come off of those bricks when the fire is going well. It will be your job to keep the fire going on cold nights since you have the back stairs outside your door. Don’t worry—I look after the furnace. It is old and temperamental and likes to be loaded just so or it won’t give a bit of heat. Zac keeps telling me I am going to have to break down and put in a new one. He says a new model would give out more BTUs. That stands for British Thermal Units which is a unit of energy needed to heat one pound of water, one degree Fahrenheit. That old thing has been warming this house for as long as I can remember and I can’t see any reason why it won’t keep doing it for as many winters as I have left. I just tell Zac he has to be more selective in the wood he cuts me. The old thing has a preference for maple and a bit of hemlock and if you give him that he gives back plenty of BTUs.”