The Trust

Chapter 29: December 23, 1989

I watch my mom pace back and forth, smoking one cigarette after another. She doesn't usually smoke, she doesn't like it very much. Aunt Eva says everyone who smokes gets addicted, but Ma doesn't. "I can have one cigarette about once a year or so," she says proudly and my other relatives can't believe it. Nearly everyone smokes a couple of packs a day, including the taxi drivers who take us to Town on cheque day each month It's really gross, especially in the winter when you can't roll down the windows. I imagine the cigarette smoke like ugly green mist, growing and spreading, going down my throat like choking vines. Just the tiniest smell of it turns my stomach and makes me want to barf. 

I think that when bad people go to hell, the air must be like cigarette smoke all the time. At least that would be hell for me.

Julie plays  with her Barbies, not the good kind — the ones they sell at the dollar store with crappy clothes that rip and fall apart. The good Barbies have fine, elegant dresses that don't rip and hair that you can comb and style. These cheapie Barbies have wiry hair that sticks out all over and they're sad and broken, not beautiful. Julie doesn't take care of her dollies so they're all naked and some of them are missing their heads. She tries to draw clothes on them with markers but it just looks like black and red squiggles. Half of her markers are missing their tops and have all dried out.

She moves the headless Barbies around a cardboard dollhouse I made for her. It's just an old box turned upside down with windows and doors cut out of it. Inside, I glued pictures from the Sears catalogue of a fridge and stove, curtains and furniture. For beds, the cheapie dolls have matchbooks to lay down in.

It's a crappy dollhouse but Julie seems to like it, she spends lots of time playing with it muttering away to herself in the voices of her imaginary family. Julie wants a real dollhouse from Santa this year, a Cabbage Patch doll and the best Barbie of them all — the special Holiday Barbie she saw on TV, with the beautiful white silk gown and fur stole. She huffs and pouts about it — "I want that one," she yells pointing to the small black and white TV  every time the commercial comes on before crossing her arms and stamping her tiny foot. "The real one. No cheapies!" She's only little but she minds being poor even more than me. 

"We'll see," Mom always says, looking worried. I don't know why Santa can't just bring us everything that's on our list, why Ma has to "see." Julie and me are good girls, we do everything Ma says and do good in school and we're not saucy. At least, not all the time. Doesn't Santa reward good girls with presents and toys? Then why do we never get what we really want?

I asked Ma one time but she said something about parents having to pay Santa. That doesn't make any sense to me. They never say that in the cartoons and movies. But then again, the girl next door, Angie, is a snotty brat and she always gets loads of toys at Christmastime. Her father works at the bank and I don't have a dad, so maybe Ma is right. Maybe you have to pay Santa and for that you need a Dad with a good job or a Ma that doesn't get a tiny cheque from the government she has to stretch all month long.

It's a mysterious puzzle. I like to figure things out but I can't understand that one. 

I want to ask Ma again why we have to pay Santa for presents, but I see the look on her face and forget it. If  it is true, we are in bad shape. Ma gets a special cheque from the government once a month because my Dad left us. It's called Mother's Allowance and it is not very much. On cheque day, she takes us out for a meal at the Woolworth's counter and buys us treats and surprises and we get a big grocery order. But by the end of the month, everything is running out. The last few days before cheque day are always grim. Nothing to do, nowhere to go and nothing good left to eat, just soup and canned spaghetti. I hate canned spaghetti.