The Wire Hanger

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

            It was a cold March, and I kept having to wear my wool tights under my school uniform. Then when I got there, the heat would be cranked up and I would have to sit there sweating. Esau had it a little easier, since he didn’t have the headscarf and could take off his wool hat and keep it in his locker, but none of us were very comfortable. In the halls you saw girls’ red faces and the damp backs of boys’ necks.

            In the middle of the month, the rumor running through the school like a virus in the blood was that the wife of the boys’ math teacher, Adah Vantland, had been caught outdoors after curfew. Josh had told Dinah, who told Esau, who told me. Supposedly, Josh had overheard Mr. Vantland talking to someone else in the bathroom: the Protectors had been by his house that morning to assure him that she was safe, but in custody.

            “For her own protection,” said Esau, which was the same line being parroted down the hall. Josh was a notorious gossip. The story was backed up later that day by a spontaneous assembly, which were only called when the teachers needed to import some sort of moral lesson without coming right out and telling us what was going long. The vice-principal stood at the front of the cafeteria and droned on about the need to be home by curfew; the second she stepped away, whispers broke out at every table.

            It wasn’t new information for any of us – we’d grown up knowing how important it was to be home when the streetlights went out. My father had explained to Esau and I over and over again that after dark, the Bears and Tigers roamed the streets, and although the Protectors did their best, we had to take some responsibility for our own safety. That was why it was illegal to be out after nine – if we weren’t helping the Protectors, how could they keep us safe?

            It was strange that Adah would have been out, though. She and Jeremiah lived nearby, so I often saw her walking to and from the store, her arms weighed down by groceries, but I almost never saw her out in the early evening – she was in her home by then, the door securely shut.

            “Things come up,” said my mother, sounding unconcerned. Esau and I had carried the story home that afternoon, bubbling over with the barely-disguised thrill of it. “Trains, delays, a change of plans. You never know.”

            “I guess,” said Esau, spooning tinned peas onto his plate. “Dad, did you hear about it?”

            “You know I can’t comment on active cases,” said our father, frowning down at the greyish meat before him.

            Esau dropped his spoon with a clatter. “It’s a case?”

            “Esau,” said our mother in a warning tone.

            “Fine,” he grumbled, and launched back into his plans for our birthday party.

            The next day at school, everyone had lost interest in the story. Mr. Vantland looked a little more tired than usual, but I wasn’t in his class, so I couldn’t say for sure.

            Later that week Esau and my father went out to get our week’s rations. It took two to carry everything home, and lately Esau had been getting awfully pumped up about how much stronger he was than me, now that he’d been putting on some muscle from lifting weights in gym class. He was still one of the smallest guys there but that didn’t seem to matter. I hated going to get rations anyway, so I didn’t fight about it the way I might have when I was younger, just on principle. It was a twenty-minute walk to the store, which was a gray cinderblock building, decorated only by the bright green PharmaSaves banner. It used to be a community centre, decades ago, and had been built and rebuilt so many times that it barely bore any resemblance to what it used to be, aside from the ghostly remnants of basketball hoops, nets long since rotted away.

            Once you got there you had to line up with all your neighbours. This was the part I didn’t mind as a kid, since they didn’t really care if we ran off and played; we were out of their hair, then, at least. Then once you were inside you had to shove your way through next to all your neighbours, and the good stuff was gone barely a minute after the store opens, and there’s sawdust all over the floor and it smells like rotting vegetables and you had to gather everything up in your bags really fast or the person behind you got annoyed. And then you had to carry everything home, which makes the twenty minutes seem even longer. My dad used to joke that his one arm got longer over the walk, whichever arm was carrying the cans of milk, and he would show Esau and me with his shoulder popped out to make it really seem longer, and we should shriek and carry on. But we’re too old for that now, too old for most of the things that delighted us as children, and it doesn’t seem, yet, like anything has sprung up to replace them.

            “What’s eating you, Cobes?” asked my mom, clearing whatever was left on the shelves to the side, in order to make room for what they would bring home. It would be an hour yet and I was slumped in a kitchen chair.

            “Nothing,” I said.

            “Mmhmm,” she said. She didn’t look at me but I knew she didn’t believe me.
            “I miss my childhood,” I said then, with a dramatic sigh.

            She laughed out loud. “Coby, you’re fifteen.”

            “Almost sixteen.”

            “Okay, almost sixteen. Your childhood isn’t over.”

            But even as she said it, I could tell she didn’t really believe it.

            “How did you know you wanted to be a teacher?” I asked suddenly.

            “Well,” said my mother, “I had always liked my science classes. And so it seemed like a natural fit. I was good at it, and I enjoyed it, so it wasn’t a difficult decision.” Something in her voice sounded strange and faraway. I think she must have always sounded like that, but it’s only now that I’ve gotten older that I can hear it. I don’t know if Esau can. I haven’t liked to mention it, and it’s joined the small but growing pile of things that he and I don’t talk about.

            “Looks like we have a few chips to use up before the boys get back,” she said, pulling out a bag from the back of the cupboard, and grinning at me. She held out the bag to me, but as I reached for it we heard a pounding on the door. And then a sudden silence.

            We looked at each other, my heart hammering. Nobody went visiting this late – too big a risk of missing curfew.

            My mother walked quickly to the front door, with me skittering nervously behind. I wished my father were there. She peeked behind the windows at the side, then opened up the door so quickly she nearly hit me.

            There was a woman lying on the porch in a widening pool of blood.