Catboy - Eric Walters [8]
I hurried down the hall. The carpet was worn and patched and faded. It had probably been fancy when it was first installed, twenty or thirty years ago.
As I passed each door, a rush of sounds—voices, tv, music—and smells came at me. The smells were stronger than the sounds. I didn’t recognize most of them, just like I didn’t understand most of the languages either. My mother had explained to me that different cultures have different foods and use different spices.
We were basically salt-and-pepper people with an occasional gust of garlic when my mother made spaghetti or lasagna or something like that. Funny, I knew those foods were from Italy, or had I read someplace that noodles were originally from China? Either way, spaghetti and lasagna seemed more Canadian than anything except for maple syrup, back bacon and beaver tails.
I pulled the key around my neck out from beneath my shirt. I fumbled with it in the lock. I always felt vulnerable, hunched at the door until the lock opened. When it clicked, I pushed open the door, stepped inside and closed the door behind me. For a second, I thought about putting the chain on the lock but decided against it. I was going out soon anyway.
“I’m home!” I called out to the empty apartment.
I knew nobody was there, but it still felt strange. When I was little, my grandfather or grandmother would be home to greet me. When I was really little, they’d walk or drive me to and from school. My grandmother always had a snack waiting for me. She’d give me a hug and ask, How was school today?
“School was fine,” I said to myself. School had been fine today. I liked the kids in my class. I liked my teacher.
“And how was your day?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, of course, because she was five hundred kilometers away. My mother didn’t answer either, because she was halfway across the city, working at the bank. Not the branch where she worked in our town, but a bigger branch here in the city.
“I’ll set the table now,” I said to myself.
I hated the silence of the apartment, so I often talked to myself or turned on the tv. The tv—that was a good idea.
I went into the living room and grabbed the channel changer off the coffee table. I clicked it on. It didn’t matter what was on. I just wanted background noise. I liked having company, even if it was electronic company. Even having Blinky to come home to would have made it better.
I chuckled to myself about what Mr. Singh had said. Of course I had owned Blinky. Well, in the same way Blinky had owned me.
I hurried back to the kitchen and grabbed the plates, utensils and glasses. The placemats were already on the table. I put everything out quickly. I remembered to put the fork on the left side. With only two of us, it didn’t take long to set the table.
Next I grabbed a big bowl and the potato peeler from the drawer, and I opened the cupboard under the sink. That’s where we kept the potatoes. I picked up the bag, and it was more than half full. We had plenty of potatoes. That was good.
Before we had moved to the city, I’d never peeled a potato or worried that we had enough potatoes or carrots or milk or bananas. It was as if they all just magically appeared on our shelves or in our fridge. Now I knew exactly what we had in the apartment and how much it cost and how much it weighed when we carried it home. I also knew when my mother got paid so we could buy more groceries. We always seemed to have everything we needed but not much more. I guess we got by.
Back home my grandparents had helped out. I knew all we had to do was ask and they’d help us now too, but Mom didn’t want that. I understood.
I was looking forward to seeing them again. We planned to go back for a week at Christmas, but that seemed like a million years away.
I plopped the bowl and the bag of potatoes on the coffee table.