Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [9]
Magic … that was what she needed. If only she had magic, Theo would wish for a family.
3
She sat beside her mother on the bus. At least it had stopped raining. And as much as she hated panning, it wasn’t as bad as binning—patrolling the lanes and fishing returnable bottles and other objects out of garbage bins. Theo shivered, trying not to think of the rats they sometimes surprised.
As the bus whined over the bridge to downtown, she gazed at the mountains that rose behind the skyscrapers. They looked so close. What if the bus kept going to the North Shore and climbed right to the top of that mountain? They would get out in dazzling snow. Maybe a different kind of people lived there, who looked like trolls. Maybe they would ask Theo …
“Theo, stop daydreaming! This is our stop!” Rae pulled her off the bus.
The stores had just opened and only a few people were outside. Theo stuck close to Rae as they walked down Granville Street looking for the best spot. In some of the doorways sleeping bodies were rolled up in blankets.
Rae picked a place on the sunny side of the street, in front of a service door between two theatres. She spread out the grey blanket from Theo’s bed and set up a portable tape recorder on it. In front of it she placed a shallow cardboard box holding a few coins. Then she sat down on the blanket and lit a cigarette. She got out the sign saying “We Are Hungry” and leaned it against her knees.
“Take off your jacket,” she told Theo.
“Can’t I wait a while? There’s no one around, and it’s cold.”
“A bunch of people just got off that bus. Please, Theo … you’ll warm up after you start.”
Theo took off her jacket. Underneath was a short frilly dress that pulled under the armpits—she’d had it for three years. Her legs were wrapped in grubby white tights and she wore her only shoes, the cracked runners. She hugged her chest as she waited for Rae to switch on the tape recorder.
“Okay, kid. Go to it.”
As the familiar opening to the Nutcracker began, Theo started to dance. She jumped around awkwardly in a kind of jig.
More people began to fill up the sidewalk, but no one put any coins in the box.
“Smile!” said Rae, as the relentless tune continued. A woman and child came out of the fast-food restaurant on the corner. They stopped in front of them. Theo tried to smile and examine them at the same time. The girl was about her age, dressed in a red duffel coat and a bright blue beret. She gaped at Theo as if she were from another planet.
“Poor little thing,” said the girl’s mother. She opened her purse. “Here, Caitlin, give her this.”
The girl advanced gingerly, dropped a ten-dollar bill into the box, ran back to her mother and took her hand.
“Doesn’t she make you feel lucky?” said the woman as they walked away. Caitlin glanced back over her shoulder. She looked scared.
Theo wondered why she wasn’t in school at this time of day. Maybe she was on the way to the dentist’s and was having a treat first—kids did that in books. Theo hadn’t been to a dentist since the last time they were on welfare, two years ago.
“Ten dollars!” said Rae. “What a great start!” The tape had ended and she flipped it over.
“Can’t I rest?” asked Theo.
“After this side. We can’t stop while we’re having so much luck.”
The music on the second side was slower: selections from Swan Lake. Theo made vague, ballet-like movements with her arms and legs and tried to pretend she was Posy from Ballet Shoes. Several more passersby stopped and dropped some change into the box. They acted either mushy or embarrassed. No one else left any bills.
Theo hated the way they stared at her as if she were a performing animal. When she’d been four and five she hadn’t minded as much. She’d skipped around and they’d