My skirt brushes a stack of papers. It jiggles. I hold my breath. The pile doesn’t fall, but I’ve left a distinct brown streak across the page on top. Oh dear. I pick it up. “Levellers, Ranters and Diggers.” I read the first few lines beneath the title, but the print is tiny and by now my head spins with hunger. I put it under the next one in the pile. I have the feeling that, even in all this chaos, Judith will notice.

  I lumber back down the stairs. There’s something intense about that room, like it’s alive. As intense as, well, Judith.

  As I pass the little bathroom in the front hall, I glance in, catch my reflection. My hair. What a mess. Something a mouse could nest in, a whole family of mice. How long has it been since I brushed it, anyway? Can’t remember. Before I think, I’m standing at the vanity. I pull mismatched hairpins out of the tangle, yank out a rotten old elastic, and grab Judith’s brush. It does feel good, and then I panic. Judith’s brush is full of long, greasy, grey hairs.

  I pull my mop back into the elastic and pin it up fast as I can, rake my fingers through the brush. Where to put the hairs? There’s a little garbage pail under the sink, but it’s perfectly empty and clean. I try to stuff them into my pocket, but they keep popping back out, caught on the rough skin of my fingers, dropping all over the white-tiled floor.

  When I think I’ve captured them all, I put the brush back carefully, exactly where it was. I’m breathing hard by now. On the way back through the kitchen, I feel like I’m shedding dirt and hairs. I look behind me, but with my glasses so scratched and dirty, I don’t know how I’d see bits of me on the floors anyway. I hold hard to the railing, lumber back down the basement stairs.

  The Bible. I came here to look for Nicolás’s Bible, but I’m rattled, can’t think clearly. I’m also hungry. Maybe I’ll go to the drop-in for a sandwich and then come back.

  ***

  All the way down Gottingen, Brunswick, I worry about the brush. So many hairs, so clearly not Judith’s shiny brown ponytail. Wonder if she dyes it? She’s a decade younger than I am, but that still puts her into her fifties, old enough to be turning at least a little bit grey.

  I’m sure I left a trail everywhere I went. When I go back, dare I go upstairs and check again? Or will I leave more evidence than I remove? Funny, if I’d been this dirty in my old life, it would have driven me crazy until I could get to a shower. Now, I barely notice. Except now I’m thinking about the bathtub at Fresh Start.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At St. Marks, breakfast is over, but there’s a nice pile of fresh sandwiches wrapped in plastic film. I take one and pour myself a cup of coffee. Three old guys sit a couple of tables over, two talking, one asleep with his head on the table, stringy, white hair fanned out around his shiny, bald head.

  Bara appears in the doorway. “Lucy! Where did you go? Are you okay?” She is wearing a red-and-white, woolly toque with a big pompom on top and “CANADA” knitted around it. She sees me looking, pulls it off to show me, her hair flying around with static electricity. “I found it in the clothing depot.”

  I spare her a lecture about identifying with humanity, life and the land rather than nation-states. “Looks warm.”

  “It is.” She holds it out. “Would you like it?”

  “I’ve got my own.” I hope it’s still in my jacket pocket, where I put it when I arrived in Judith’s basement. It is. Mitts too. I offer them. “Do you need these?”

  “Got my own.” Bara pulls a pair out of her pocket. That’s good. Mine are filthy with a hole in the tip of the right hand. She sets her toque and mitts down on the table, slings her jacket around the back of a chair and goes for a sandwich and coffee for herself.

  I watch her consume the sandwich in seconds. “Shouldn’t you be going to school?”

  She shrugs. “I’ve missed most of fall term now. I could start again in January. Besides, I have to take care of you.”

  I harrumph.

  “You’re, like, going to argue that you don’t need someone to keep you out of trouble?”

  I check my coffee. Gone cold. Take a sip anyway.

  “Lucy? When you went to Guatemala, is that where you got so … political?”

  “There’s no such thing as not being political. Everything we do is political.”

  There is a short silence, then: “Should have known you’d say something I don’t understand.”

  I cringe, remembering my resolution to recover my patience for teaching. “Sorry.”

  She looks up, surprised.

  “Yes, Guatemala is where I came to see that everything we do, no matter how small, changes the world for better or worse. We have that power, whether we want it or not, especially us in the rich countries. And having, using power, is what political means.”

  “Oh. Are you a communist?”

  I smile at her. “People have said so.”

  “But, do you say so?”

  “I prefer the word socialist, but both are critical of capitalism.”

  “Can you, like, explain capitalism to me?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “And we’re in a hurry to go where?”

  I sigh. “I’ll try.”

  “Go straight for the heart of it.”

  “Okay, the heart. That would be private property.”

  “Like my knapsack, clothes?”

  “No, that’s personal property, just the things you need to live. Private property means land or money — things you could use to make or grow or extract other things. Ever heard of ‘the means of production’?”

  “Karl Marx. We studied him in my economics course in high school. The teacher thought he was, like, pretty bad.”

  I laugh. “I’m sure he did. Marx was the first to … I was going to say, ‘see all this,’ but lots of people saw it. He was just the first to write it in a book with his name on it. Anyway, the point is, in capitalism, the means of production — also called wealth, also called capital — can be owned by private individuals who can hire others to do the work, but they keep the profit.”

  “So, like, that saying, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,’ that’s about capitalism?”

  “Well, the point’s for the rich to get richer all right. Money makes money. The poor getting poorer is more like a side effect.”

  “In economics class, the idea was if the rich get richer, so will everyone else.”

  “You really listened in that class, didn’t you?”

  She shrugs. “It was interesting.”

  “That’s what a capitalist would say. A socialist would say when the rich get richer, it’s because they’ve taken what should belong to all of us.”

  She thinks a while, the crease still there between her eyes. When she gets older, it will be permanent.

  “So how did you get from saving souls to being a com — socialist?”

  “That’s a long story but, short version, a friend. A very dear friend. He even thought Jesus was a socialist. You know ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’?”

  “Another way of saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?”

  “Exactly. Jesus was born in the second or third generation after the Romans brought the idea of private property to Palestine, and my friend thought he saw, even then, how the rich were getting richer and the poor, poorer. And many at the time would have seen that as sinful. Do you know about the Year of Jubilee?”

  She shakes her head.

  “It’s in Leviticus. ‘The land cannot be sold outright because the land is mine.’ Crops could be sold, but not land. If a family was so poor they had to sell their land, the new owner could only have it until the Year of Jubilee, every forty-ninth year, when all land reverted to the original family that farmed it. It was a system that made it hard for the rich to get richer and, therefore, the poor, poorer.”

  “Your friend, was he a missionary too?”

  “No. He’s Guatemalan. I guess you could say he is one of the people whose souls I was supposed to save.”

  “So did you give up on saving souls?”

  “After a while, I didn’t know what that meant any longer. I had changed so much I didn’t even recognize myself, and there was no way back home.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “You come from the same kind of home I did. So after that … no, not after that. It had happened long before I even came home. I had … I guess you’d call it a breakdown. I was depressed for a long time. Only came out of it after I moved here and got involved in community organizing.”

  “And then you broke down again.”

  “Yeah. Only, maybe, worse. More out of control.”

  “So what happened? You had all these great things going and then ended up on probation.”

  “I found myself in a situation that looked a lot like the other one … though, not on the outside.… It’s hard to explain.”

  I am turning my empty coffee cup around and around, my sadness closing in on me again.

  “John said you’re supposed to be seeing a psychiatrist.”

  “When you were listening through the door.”

  “Sorry about that. But you are, aren’t you? Like, supposed to be seeing a psychiatrist?”

  “He’s just a drug pusher. Not to mention a voyeur. ‘Tell me all about it. You can’t heal unless you talk.’”

  “And isn’t that, like, true?”

  “Well.” I pause. “Maybe. But not for his entertainment.”

  “You could tell me.”

  I look at her, startled.

  She sighs. “Okay, okay. I know. ‘It’s a long story and not your business.’”

  God, she does sound just like me.

  “But, you have to see him to stay out of jail, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when’s your next appointment? I’m going to make sure you get there.”

  “Now Bara, you can’t be following me everywhere, all the time.”

  “I promised John I’d keep you out of trouble.”

  “I’ll tell John to get you back in school.”

  “I’m learning a lot more from you than I ever have in school.” She gets to her feet, holds her hand out to me. “Come on. Let’s go back to Fresh Start. Didn’t you say something about wanting a bath?”

  I groan but reach up to take the hand she offers. She pulls and pushes me to my feet, then clamps my arm under hers as we begin our slow journey up the hill.

  ***

  Water thundering out of the tap. What a lovely sound. Steam. I peel off my sweater and turtleneck, step out of the baggy, brown tweed skirt. Everything looks ragged and filthy on the white tiles of Fresh Start’s bathroom floor. Oh dear. I knew I had started to stink from the little puffs that seeped out from under the layers, but the bathroom fills right up, choking.

  When I put my poor, rotten feet into the hot water, they hurt like crazy. I have to hold my breath, trying to stand it. Eventually I get out again, run some cold water. Thank goodness there is a bar to hang on to.

  As soon as I lower myself into the water, the clean bubbles are beaten back by a grey, greasy film spreading over the surface. I lie there for a while like a beached whale, one from very deep in the ocean, pale from lack of sun. There’s a big bar of industrial-strength soap. I use lots of it, and it feels good, until my skin starts to peel, ribbons of it coming right off and floating around.

  There is a timid knock at the door. “Go away,” I tell whoever it is.

  Later, another knock. “Go away,” I repeat.

  A few minutes later, another knock. A firmer one. “Lucy, you okay in there?” Bara.

  “I am.”

  “Okay, but it’s been a while and other people want to use the bathroom.”

  I don’t respond.

  “If you need help, you call. Okay?”

  I ignore her. Her footsteps eventually move away from the door.

  ***

  I stay longer than I want to, the water getting miserable and cold, just because I dread struggling to my feet. Finally, there is no choice. I use the bar to heave myself up, the side of the tub to balance while I dry myself. Then, I’m faced with a raw, naked, hurting body, a pile of filthy clothes topped with an equally filthy towel and a bathtub that looks like someone put it under a car to drain the oil. I scrub the tub as best I can, given the difficulty of bending over that far, with scouring powder I find under the sink. Smear it around, more like.

  Fortunately, I thought to bring my nightgown with me — not clean, but passable. There’s a basket for dirty towels. I gather up my clothes and clutch them to my chest as I walk out.

  Bara glances up from the paperback novel she’s reading. “Feel good?”

  I’m too tired to answer. I toss the dirty clothes under the cot and sit down.

  “Oh Lucy.”

  “What?”

  “Your feet. What’s wrong with them? They look sore.”

  I look down. They do look pretty bad. “Althea wants me to go to the Community Clinic.”

  “They have a clinic in a van that comes here once a month.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “People talk. I’ll find out when it comes. Got to get you something for that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My inner alarm clock wakes me early. I haven’t encountered the day staff at Fresh Start yet, but I avoid them on principle. Day staff in shelters do more than just keep an eye on things. They ask questions, push programs, check up on appointments. Not to mention I’d like to shake Bara and head for Judith’s basement to find Nicolás’s Bible. And some clean clothes. The ones in my suitcase are for the warm end of fall. I find a clean turtleneck, but have to pull the brown sweater and skirt from under the bed.

  Damn. The cot beside me creaks as Bara sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  ***

  After breakfast at St. Marks, I suggest the library. The North Branch Library. Bara doesn’t object. There, the sun pours in through the big glass windows onto the warm, scarred wood of the shelves and tables. It’s blessedly warm, quiet and almost empty, just us and a young woman hunched over a large book spread open on a table, toddler asleep in a stroller beside her.

  The catalogue cabinet takes up most of a wall, rows of little wooden drawers hiding ranks of file cards. “Find me something to read, Lucy,” Bara whispers. “Something political.”

  “What about poverty in Nova Scotia? Homelessness?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  The catalogue drawers give off a comforting smell of varnish and old paper when I slide them out. I try “homelessness” and “poverty.” Bara leans on the cabinet, watching me. Then an inspiration, a book I’ve used in classes. A little out of date in its specifics, maybe, but it explains the process of political analysis, step by step, and has a chapter on housing. I scrawl the call number on a paper square and hand it to Bara. She goes to find it.

  I think of Judith’s study, brown streak on a white page. No entries for Levellers, Ranters or Diggers. I go to the desk and register for the public computer, get one right away. Levellers, Ranters, Diggers. Resistance movement. 1600s. Also, Fifth Monarchists, Baptists, Quakers, Muggletonians, Seekers, Anabaptists, Familists. Good at names, these guys. What were they resisting? The “extinguishment of the rights of common.” Of course, the beginnings of private property.

  I have a sudden, vivid image of Judith the first time I saw her, younger, even thinner than she is now, sitting on the end of one of the benches near the law school, slightly hunched over, face as pale as typing paper.

  I was working at Walford College, developing the community education program. It was a nice day and I had walked across to the benches with my lunch. “Like to share my sandwich?” I held half of it out to her.

  “Ooooh, no,” she said, turning away so she didn’t even have to look at it. “I mean, thanks, but …”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Not really.” She did look wretched.

  That’s honest, I thought, and gave her my full attention.

  “I’m a law student,” she said and glanced at me.

  I hadn’t taken her for a student, but no surprise. Lots of people study law after another degree and some life experience.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  Funny she said that. Who’s crazy now?

  “Probably not,” I said.

  She studied me for another moment and, for some reason, decided to confide in me. At the time, I had no idea how rare that was. I’ve never asked why she did it, although once, much later, she did mention how desperately isolated she felt in law school. Until her last year, when she did her placement at Legal Aid. “One of this year’s courses is property law. The professor keeps going on about private property, how wonderful it is, how much prosperity it has brought us, how it has allowed us to develop Western civilization beyond any other human culture that’s ever existed …” She paused, looking to see if I did think she was crazy. I nodded to show I certainly did not, so she went on. “And I keep thinking, this is where we went wrong. Today I got so tied in knots about it, I got sick, had to run to the bathroom.” She gave me a bleak look.

  “I think I’d do exactly the same thing.”

  “Really?” She studied me with new eyes.

  By now, Bara is slouched in a reading chair with Getting Started on Social Analysis in Canada. I move to the table where the day’s papers are spread out and begin to flip through them, searching for any information I can find on the Guatemalan Peace Accords.

  Once, Nicolás and I came upon a ruined police station in a village destroyed by the paramilitaries, concrete walls shattered, despite being thick enough to hide screams. Nicolás showed me the torture room, the wires hanging from the walls. He started to tell me, but I couldn’t listen. As we walked away, he said, “Jesus is crucified every day.”