Neighbourhood Watch

She didn’t wake her up. Again.
It’s dark outside. It’s dark inside.
Roxane gets up, blanket over her shoulders. Opens the door. Drags her feet to the cold living room.
Beer bottles all over the place; her mother too.
Roxane approaches her, hand over her mouth, close. Waits a moment. She’s alive.
Pulls the sheet over her and goes back to bed.
* * *
The hems of the skirts tickle her face. Mélissa is sitting in the closet surrounded by fabric. Takes a deep breath.
Smells leave too.
Mélissa slips her feet into the black shoes. Women’s shoes. Meg wore them on big nights. Her birthday, Christmas. Or sometimes she liked putting them on to have a coffee at Sandy’s, or just to do groceries. That meant she was in a good mood and that you should go with her because it would be fun. When Meg put her black shoes on, it meant they would stop at the park and run after pigeons and hurl insults at them, they would share a pudding chômeur with one spoon at Clo’s and drink coffee even though she’s not old enough, they would laugh at people and the crazy lives they invented for them, then they would race to the grocery store. Mélissa would be faster than her mother because with the black shoes you run pretty, not fast. At the grocery store, Meg would hang off the back of the cart, and Mélissa would run and push. She would want to go fast so her mother would laugh louder, so Mélissa would get winded on the way to the frozen-food aisle, where they would concentrate for a minute to find pizza pockets and pogos for the boys, then they would start rolling again. If her mother were in a really good mood, they would buy a box of Fudgsicles, and the four of them would eat them in silence on the balcony, fast so they didn’t melt all over the place. But they would melt anyway.
Mélissa emerges from the closet, the shoes on her feet. Just a while longer and they’ll fit perfectly. Looks in the mirror. Takes a few steps. Crosses the bedroom once, then again, sashaying.‘Hello, yes, a pudding chômeur a spoon a coffee please!’ Meg reborn on her lips for a moment, Meg, light and feminine. Meg laughing and wearing black shoes.
‘MEEEEL!’
The boys’ voices in the kitchen.
‘MEEEEL! I’m hungry!’
Mélissa emerges, shoes on her feet. She makes porridge for the boys. Each clack of a shoe between the fridge and the stove, between the stove and the table, each clack is like a balm to her heart.
* * *
The schoolyard.
Leaning against a wall, eyes staring off into space, Roxane talks, half mumbling, in an invented language.
Children hurl words and pebbles at her.
‘She says she’s Russian.’
‘So why aren’t you there?’
‘Because I moved here?’
‘You’re mental.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you’re mental.’
‘Go back to where you came from, you fucking headcase!’
‘Okay.’
* * *
Mélissa is in running shoes and wears a scarf tied carefully around her neck.
She walks along the prostitutes’ street. Slows down once she’s across the street from them. Catches her mother’s eye.
The cars go by between them, as if to remind them of the space that separates them. The fifty metres that tears them apart. When a car passes, Mélissa squints and focuses her eyes to catch all the little bits of her mother that can still be caught. Through the windows, over the shoulder of the driver, a shoulder – a hip. Behind the rolling wheels, blurry, a shin – an ankle.
When there’s a break in the cars, she looks at all of her mother.
Today she has something for her.
She places an envelope in the gap between the gutter and a tire at rest.
* * *
Meg waits for her daughter to move on. Her eyes glued to the white of the paper against the grey of the street, she crosses. She holds the envelope in her hand. A piece of her daughter. She holds the envelope awhile longer before opening it. Then, with her fingertips, she opens it. She hangs on through her pink nails. She is trembling.
Cursive letters. Pretty. She has good penmanship.
‘Your boyfriend left. We’re all alone at home.’
She holds the letter in her hand. He left. They’re alone. Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
They’re going to get picked up, for sure. They’re going to get placed in some shitty conditions far away, fuck FUCK!
* * *
The white library under the school’s fluorescent lights. In the middle, the ‘World’ aisle.
Roxane searches. Her long fingers brush the spines of the books. Frrrrrrrrrrrr.
Alone in the middle of the World, Roxane is searching for herself.
Alone in the middle of the aisle, Roxane collapses.
* * *
Ms. Bilodeau is bent over her. She stopped reading just as James was leaning toward Mia’s lips, on page 42, when Roxane collapsed in the middle of the aisle with a dull thud. Her face is hovering over Roxane, eyes worried. Hands under her head, she gently lifts her. Roxane feels good, like this, lying in her aisle with Ms. Bilodeau.
‘Are you okay, Roxane?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Better.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was dizzy.’
‘You fainted?’
‘It’s seasickness.’
‘To be seasick, you have to be on water, Roxane.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I have all the water in the world inside me. Didn’t you know?’
In the middle of the enormous library, between a thousand warehoused stories, two castaways. A fleeting moment in the aisle of the World.
* * *
Steve is walking along Ontario, facing into the cold.
It’s a cold that gets inside you as if you were its home. There’s nothing you can do about it – you can be wearing fifteen layers and it blasts right through them.
Steve goes into a french-fry joint. Heads to the counter.
‘Coffee, please.’
The waitress serves him a black coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
‘Thanks.’
He adds sugar.
To the waitress: ‘Don’t suppose you’re looking for someone for deliveries?’
She shakes her head.
Steve drinks his coffee, pays, and leaves.
* * *
Incredulous, Roxane holds a violin in her hands as if it were a redhot ember.
‘Happy?’
‘Yes.’
‘My son doesn’t play anymore. He never really played. I