In From the Cold (4 page)

Hazel didn’t reply.

Now
she decides to keep quiet, Rose thought. “I don’t know what you think you saw.”

“What I
saw
,” said Hazel.

“I’m sorry that you saw anything.”

It had been a bad night. No worse than other nights, except at the end.

He had been drinking, of course, and he was angry about something. He was always angry about something, and Rose couldn’t remember now what had set him off on that last night. Was it something she’d said? Was it something she’d failed to say? Something wrong with the food at supper?

He had a talent for finding things wrong. And she never did anything as simple as make a mistake. Shoes not lined up meant she was not respecting him. Agreeing with the prime minister when her husband disagreed meant she was being disloyal. Not laughing at something her husband thought was funny meant she was cold. Laughing at a male comedian’s joke meant she wanted to sleep with that comic. Laughing at a female comedian’s joke meant she was a man-hating bitch. She needed to have the attitude beaten out of her.

There was no way to win. Silence was safest. Silence and agreement. She’d learned to watch his face for clues and to listen hard to his tone of voice. Sometimes she was able to head off his anger. But if he was in a hitting sort of mood, nothing would stop him.

The beating wasn’t the worst part. The beating came at the end, the final burst of bad energy at the end of a bad night. He’d hit, he’d kick, he’d throw things, he’d slam her head against the wall. Bad. Bad.

But then it would be over. She’d see it in his face. The tension would leave his eyes. He’d mutter something like, “You shouldn’t push me like that,” then he’d sit on the sofa and turn on the television.

Or, if he was really drunk, he’d just flop into bed and fall asleep. That was the best, those hours of silence. She could ice down her sore spots, put the house back together, and make sure Hazel was all right.

Worse than the beating was what led up to it. On and on, he’d go on and on with his criticisms, accusing her of some crime or other. If she tried to defend herself, he’d twist
her words around, so that everything she said somehow made it worse. If she tried to stay silent, hoping that would make it all go away, he would go after her for her silence.

“You think you’re so pure,” he’d yell, right into her face. “You think you’re such a victim.”

Hazel was supposed to stay in her room whenever she heard her father’s voice getting loud.

“You go into your room, you close the door, and you keep it closed,” Rose told her. “Whatever is happening below is none of your business.”

“What if I need to pee?” she asked one time.

Rose gave her large, plastic ice-cream tubs to keep in her closet in case of such emergencies. She also kept a cookie tin full of snacks under her daughter’s bed, and bottles of water for Hazel to drink. Sometimes the yelling went on for a long time. She didn’t want her little girl to be hungry.

That last night was an ordinary night.

The same ranting. The same screaming. The same spitting. Rose remembered Hazel taking her plate of macaroni and cheese out of the dining room and up the stairs to her bedroom.

Rose had heard of husbands like hers going after their children. Her own husband, thankfully, ignored Hazel. As long as Hazel was silent, to her father she was invisible.

No, that’s not fair, Rose corrected herself. There were times when he was a good father, before the drinking got so bad. He’d read to her, play with her, and put her up on his shoulders when they walked down the street. He could be pleasant sometimes. Rose just had to watch for when he’d had enough, and get Hazel quietly — and safely — out of the way.

Hazel had gone upstairs on that last night. Rose was listening hard to her husband, straining for clues that would tell her how to act. But his temper flared up quickly. She wasn’t ready for it.

She couldn’t remember now what he said. All she remembered was the screaming, her husband’s face large and ugly right in front of her, his spit landing on the skin of her cheeks and forehead. She remembered how loud he was. And she remembered feeling very, very tired, as she tried to retreat into that secret part of her brain to wait out the storm.

She remembered taking her plate into the kitchen. She had the ketchup bottle in her hand when he came at her. Did she squeeze the bottle of ketchup, or did it get squeezed when he hit her?

She didn’t know. But somehow ketchup ended up squirting out all over her husband’s face.

And then she did the worst thing she could do. She did the thing she knew absolutely that she must never do.

She laughed.

There were blows. There were kicks. There were slaps and punches.

And then there was a knife in her hand.

The knife went into her husband.

And her husband fell to the floor.

It’s only pain, Rose told herself. You can’t die from pain.

The trip to the latrine was almost unbearable. She’d had to lean on Hazel all the way. Rose was determined not to scream. She’d given Hazel a bad enough day as it was.

She remembered there were a few Tylenol left. Hazel got them for her, and got her a drink of water to swallow them with. The pills wouldn’t take away the pain in her back, but they would make it feel less severe. She got back on the bed, and Hazel covered her up again.

“Get yourself something to eat, honey,” Rose told her.

“I’m not hungry,” Hazel said. A moment later, Rose heard her daughter open a box of crackers and twist the lid off the peanut butter jar. Crackers and peanut butter had been Hazel’s favourite snack ever since she was a toddler.

“You’re not being punished, Hazel,” Rose said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Well, you did something very wrong today, but you know what I mean. Living here isn’t a punishment.”

“It feels like a punishment.”

“You used to think it was an adventure.”

“It was. It used to be.”

“It still is,” Rose said. “Don’t you like going into the city at night, when everyone else is asleep? Don’t you enjoy going treasure hunting with me?”

“I want to get food from a grocery store,” Hazel said. “I want to watch television in the evening and sleep in my own room at night. I want to use my library card again. And I want to go back to school.”

“One day, honey,” Rose said.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“But when?”

“Don’t pester me.”

“We could go back to our house today,” Hazel said. “Daddy won’t be there. Someone would have cleaned him up.”

“Hazel!”

“I saw it in the newspapers. Someone found his body and took it away.”

“You’re not supposed to read newspapers! All that bad news gives you nightmares.”

“You can’t forbid me to read newspapers,” Hazel said. “I’m a citizen. My teacher said it’s everybody’s job to keep up on current events.”

Rose wanted silence. She wanted to keep her eyes closed, huddle under the blanket, and wait for the Tylenol to work. She wanted to have only herself to worry about. She wanted another life.

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “We can’t go back.”

“But why can’t we?”

“Do you want me to be arrested?” Rose asked. “Because that’s what would happen. And you would end up in foster care. Do you want to live with strangers?”

“You said it was an accident.”

“It was. But people won’t believe me.”

Hazel didn’t say anything, and Rose started to drift off. The Tylenol was taking the sharp edge off the pain in her back. Maybe this time it wouldn’t last too long. After all, she could rest, here in this shack. She didn’t have to get up and look after her husband. She could rest and heal and be all right again.

She was almost asleep when Hazel spoke again.

“We could tell people that I did it.”

Rose opened her eyes. “What?”

“We could say I killed Daddy. They won’t put me in prison. I’m too young.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

Hazel shuffled over to the bed on her knees and leaned in close to her mother. Rose could smell the peanut butter on her daughter’s breath.

“I’ll say it was an accident,” Hazel said. “They’ll believe me. I’ll say I wanted to get him to stop hitting you, and I grabbed the knife to protect myself, and it went into Daddy by mistake.”

“Stop,” Rose said, even while she was thinking. She’d thrown the knife into the river. Was there anything, really, that could prove she killed her husband?

Hazel leaned in even closer. Her face was excited, like it used to be when she retold the plot of a movie she really liked.

“I was in the kitchen,” Hazel said. “I was putting my plate in the sink. You and Daddy came in. He was yelling and hitting you. I picked up the knife to get him to stop, and I accidentally killed him. Then I got scared and ran out of the house. You came after me to protect me.”

Rose was impressed by the detail in her daughter’s story.

“How long have you been thinking about this?” she asked.

“I just thought of it now,” Hazel said, taking another bite of cracker. “But maybe it’s been in my head for a while, waiting to come out. My teacher last year said our brains work like that sometimes. We’ll try and try to do something in math, and we can’t do it, and then one day it all makes sense.”

“You have a good brain,” Rose told her, “but your plan won’t work. I’ll still be in trouble for keeping you out of school, and for other things, too, I’m sure.”

“But you won’t be in prison,” Hazel said. “Please, Mom, can’t we go back?”

It’s so wrong, Rose thought, but she began, in spite of herself, to feel something like hope. Maybe there was a way out of this.

But no. It was wrong. “I can’t let you take the blame,” Rose said. “It would be a lie, and I can’t let you do it.”

Hazel slumped back to the floor. She sat again with her back to her mother.

“I’m going to grow old in this shack, aren’t I?” Hazel said. “I’m going to be thirty years old and still living here.”

Rose had no comforting words. She had no plans, no ideas, and no thought for anything except to get through another day.

Hazel kept quiet then, and Rose finally fell asleep.

She woke up in the middle of the night, freezing in spite of the blanket. She had to pee, but Hazel was asleep and Rose couldn’t make it to the latrine without her.

She was stuck with a full bladder, in the dark and the cold, with nothing to distract her from the slow passing of the minutes.

It was a long, long night.

Rose finally drifted off to sleep at some point. And when the sounds of morning entered her brain — the dawn birds, the first wave of traffic into the city — she shut her eyes tighter. She wanted to avoid waking up. Yesterday had been awful. Today would probably not be any better.

After that last fight had ended, and her husband’s body lay in a lake of blood and ketchup on the kitchen floor, Rose stopped. She stopped thinking. She stopped feeling. She stopped being able to stand. Her legs gave way and she slid to the floor, away from the blood, and just sat.

She had no clue how long she sat like that. Even now, months later, she didn’t know. And she didn’t know what had prompted her to get up.

It must have been a noise, she thought. It must have been a noise made by Hazel. Her daughter must have come down to see what all the silence was about.

Always, before, at the end of a fight, Rose would go up and check on Hazel. They’d empty the pee-pot, if necessary. She’d give Hazel a quiet bath, then they’d go back into Hazel’s bedroom to play or read as if nothing had happened.

On the last night, Rose hadn’t gone upstairs.

Hazel must have been very scared, Rose realized. Maybe she thought we had gone away and left her all alone. Maybe she thought we were both dead.

I must ask her about it, Rose thought. She should get Hazel into counselling. Children could be damaged forever from seeing such things.

But how could she get Hazel to a counsellor? It would be too dangerous. There would be questions — but didn’t a doctor have to keep secrets? Maybe there was a way.

Rose gently tried to stretch out her legs to see if her back was still in trouble. It hurt, but she didn’t think it was as bad as it was yesterday.