Free Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens Page B

three in the other pocket, and that was the end of the package.
    Sharla stepped off the chair, pressing the gritty bits of coconut to the roof of her mouth. She took up her soft pillow and blue plaid blanket and brought them to the couch that was pulled out like a bed. She wished she could watch a cartoon, but after having a good look around, she saw there was no television. Sharla kept reaching into her pockets until all those good cookies were gone and just a smear of chocolate left on her shorts to pick at and lick off her fingers.
    They weren’t toys, they were china things and she knew that, but Sharla thought how the dancing lady looked like something she could pretend was a toy. Sharla dragged the chair to the salt’n’pepper shelf, snatched the dancing lady, and held it like a doll.
    She checked down the skinny hallway then whispered to the doll, in Collette’s voice, “I’m gonna have a date, so the babysitter’s coming and that’s Greg what’s visiting his Aunt Krystal. You can have some chips but don’t be a brat.”
    Sharla acted mad and shook the doll. Pepper sprinkled out the holes in her head and fell on the bed. “See what you done now you little bugger? Spilt pepper all over the shittin’ place. Don’t make another mess or Emilio’s gonna take care of that.”
    Sharla didn’t like how Emilio came up and soured her play, so she decided that she would sing a song to the pepper-shaker doll instead. She tried to recall the words for the Elmer Safety Elephant Song, which was taught to her by Collette’s boyfriend from a while ago, Claude, who said criticizing things when Collette fed Sharla just cheezies for supper.
    Claude was the janitor at the school in Chatham where Sharla’d be going this fall. He had flat yellow hair and red spots on his chin, and Collette had said he was going to be Sharla’s new Daddy. Claude drove Sharla by the school in his blue truck and said it was a religion school so she’d have to get acquainted with God and Mary and Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins. Claude paid the tickets for the boat to Boblo Island, and he never took away Sharla’s corn dog when she was only half done.
    There was a smell about Claude: vinegar and Ajax bleach and Peter Jackson cigarettes. Collette had to have a talk with him about a bath and not so much VO5 grooming lotion in his hair. But Sharla liked the smell of Claude and thought she’d be proud to say that’s her Daddy and to eat her jam sandwich in his janitor room with the rusty buckets and tall grey mops. He taught Sharla a funny way to count. “One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, one hundred,” and he sang the Elmer Safety Elephant Song for her whenever she asked him to, even when you could tell he’d just rather smoke his Jacksons and watch the sky.
    Claude liked the looks of Collette, and he said she mustbe the devil herself the way she could lead a man to temptation. He came by the trailer after work most nights and Collette fed him supper from the cans in the cupboards. For a treat on Fridays he’d bring a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, promising the drumsticks to Sharla. He said his old Mum was moving out of her red brick house on the Thames River and it was time he found a wife to move in there with him. He never felt so strong about anyone as he did about Collette, and when she saw that house on the Thames River she never felt so strong about anyone either.
    On Collette’s birthday Claude showed up with his truck and two of the best things Sharla’d ever seen: a brand-new green velveteen La-Z-Boy that you could lay back in like a bed, and a curvy coffee table with not one scratch. Collette cried because they were beautiful things and she deserved them. After that, Claude came every night.
    When supper was done, Claude’d give Sharla her bath and teach her songs. Collette would roll her eyes when Claude said Sharla had