Hot dogs and baked beans again. Lola pronged one of the shriveled wieners with her fork. Probably stale, the thawed result of a year’s preservation in the freezer. Oh well, she shrugged, even a hot dog can taste real when you’re starving. She jammed one end into her mouth and started the chew, hoping that nobody was staring at her. What a loathsome, boring place, this renovated rooming house turned women’s shelter. Hardly anybody to talk to except victims and sympathy mongers.

Boring. Even the renovations seemed frayed one way or another. The freshly scraped and varnished floor was already scuffed, you could see through the rose-colored curtains on the half-washed windows, and the runway of indoor-outdoor carpeting on the stripped oak stairway was starting to curl up at the edges. The living room, or gathering place as it was called, was a menagerie of stuffy, floral-printed sofas and jungle animal portraits that looked like Dollar Store rejects. Lola chose to skip the nightly gatherings because they made her edgy, especially when one of the women veered onto the topic of suicide. And there was always someone who veered onto that treacherous road, most recently Sherri, a LaSalle housewife who had attempted to end her life with a bottle of Drano and two hundred aspirins. The scarecrow with orange-dyed hair seemed to glory in endless descriptions of her tear-faced husband, rambunctious kids and the permanently ragged texture of her pumped digestive tract. Stories like that, Lola didn’t need to hear.

Lola lifted the paper napkin from her lap to her lips. The hot dog tasted even worse, more plastic and diesel-clogged than she had expected. Lucky, a stray Irish setter and the shelter’s mascot, was roaming under the table for scraps. Tonight’s your lucky night, thought Lola, scanning the contents of the others’ plates. Either they had all finished their hot dogs, or Lucky had cleared a small fortune in stale by-products.

As she felt the furry twitching of his tail against her knees Lola couldn’t help cracking a careful grin. Maybe Maudie would switch her maudlin, sympathetic kowtowing and entertain them with one of her needling, don’t-feed-junk to-the-dog lectures. Maudie Chamberstone was the sort of woman one would expect to see running a place like this with her parrot-coiffed hair, her I-completely-understand sea-green eyes and fund-raising platitudes. “Call me Maudie,” she would announce to each newcomer, followed by: “I know just how you feel. I’ve been there myself, you know.”

Lola wasn’t the least bit impressed with this tidy rubber stamped speech. Sure, Maudie had been abused by her ex-husband, a prominent and respected physician. However, unlike most of the women who arrived at the shelter and as she proudly pointed out at every opportunity, she had divorced the tyrant, successfully securing the house along with a chunky, monthly alimony check.

“Once a month,” grumbled Lola, “sure beats welfare.” She mashed a baked bean into her plate and stared at the pulp oozing between the prongs of her fork. Four days left in the month and she didn’t have a cent. Not even the twenty-dollar stash she had zealously put aside for emergencies. She had spent the last coin on a cigarette three days ago. “What I wouldn’t give for a smoke, just one puff,” she moaned. She could still feel Lucky’s tail flickering against her leg under the table. She pinched off half a hot dog, slid it carefully over her lap and flipped it lightly in the dog’s direction. It bounced energetically off her leg and Lucky snapped it up.

“Girls, girls. What did I say about feeding scraps to the dog?” Lola snickered silently at Maudie’s well-fed bark. “Now, I will only ask this once. Who is feeding scraps to Lucky?” There was a chorus of muffled giggles around the table, followed by a nervous hush. The only sound was Lucky’s exuberant gobbling at Lola’s feet.

“Lola,” Maudie sailed into her schoolmarm tone. “Please remember to refrain from giving your food to the dog. It is not good for Lucky and besides, you of all people must certainly appreciate the value of precious sustenance.” Her voice gelled its way into Lola’s brain, yanking her attention away from the squashed bean on her plate. Her worst fear was realized as she lifted her flushed face for the first time that evening. Everybody was staring at her. Eyes pierced through the rags of her confidence, staring in that goggly, imbecilic way that inevitably forced her to choose between two extremes. Either to take off out the front door, to disappear before anyone could actually touch her. Or else allow her corked anger and acid tongue to break out of solitary confinement with hurricane force, tearing apart everything in their path.

Precious food? Maudie’s judgment gnawed into her starving perception, poking holes in her shield of silence. It was too late to run. She had been touched. No, prodded. “Precious food?” Before she could control herself, her rage came lashing to the surface. The sight of Maudie’s instantly downcast chin gave her such an unexpectedly bizarre sense of power, even pleasure, she felt compelled to burst out laughing. Instead of laughter, however, Lola transported every ounce of vocal power from her lungs and let out all of her angst in one cackling, volcanic heave, her smoker’s cough rattling in tandem with the sarcasm underpinning her upheaval.

“You call this crap ‘precious food’? Hot dogs! If I wasn’t so desperately hungry, I never would have crawled all the way over to this dump.”

“That is the idea,” relayed Maudie with an icy precision that only further triggered Lola’s rage, “reaching out to the hungry.”

“I’d probably have been better off downing a bottle of Drano!” snarled Lola as she tossed a caustic glance down the table at Sherri. The anxious, red bandana-necked woman continued to stare down at her own barely-eaten hot dog sprawled alongside a smattering of beans. But it was Maudie Lola intended to destroy, even if it meant making a spectacle of herself.

“Lola!” Maudie’s hand, crowned with an antique turquoise-and-opal ring, thumped down on the table. “I insist, right this minute, that you sit back down and put an end to this unfortunate outburst.”

“I will not sit down,” Lola slammed her grimy fist down on the table next to her plate. “Not until I tell you what I really think of this precious food, and your precious suicide meetings and your phony attitude—”

“Lola, that is enough!”

“You are not one of us,” proclaimed Lola. “And everybody here knows it. Can’t you get it through your high-priced head?” She looks around at the circle of faces whose eyes were bulging. All of the other women had put down their forks.

“Lola!” Maudie’s mouth was beginning to bulge, her lips pressed more tightly together than any of the residents had ever seen.

“You’re a big, bored rich hag who gets off on lording it over society’s dregs. You think you can blow away your guilt by coming here and handing us garbage and talking us into spitting out our lousy life stories.” Lola’s arms jounced in awkward unison as she spoke, occasionally pausing to point an index finger in Maudie’s direction. “For all we know, you probably host special evenings to tell all your little rich friends about us pathetic bums.” Her voice climbed to a hysterical falsetto as she pursed her lips. “Tea, my dears? And just wait until I tell you the latest. Especially the one who got raped six times in a row and lived to tell the tale.”

“Lola!” Maudie’s face had lost almost every iota of empathy as she fought to maintain a semblance of authority. “I am going to have to ask you to leave this shelter.”

“Oh, what a surprise,” roared Lola. “I thought I was the main attraction around here.” She glared at the faces circling the table, her focus narrowing in on Sherri, that month’s undisputed victim. “No, I suppose you’re the center of attention now. I mean it’s pretty hard to compete with two hundred aspirins and a stomach full of Drano.” Sherri, trembling, pushed herself away from the table, stood up and tottered out of the dining room, closely followed by Maudie.

“Well?” shouted Lola. “Isn’t anyone around here going to stand up for me? Or is everyone going to let herself be conned by that fat phony?”

“Where else can we go?” piped up Marie, an alcoholic who like Lola, had run out of welfare.

“Go? Why should we go? I’m talking about Maudie.” Lola plopped herself back down on her scarred green chair.

“Oh come on, there’s no way Maudie will leave. Are you crazy?” Marie’s off-key intonation sputtered an octave higher. “Besides, she’s not all that bad. Sure, she’s got more than any of us will ever have and her lectures drive me crazy but… none of us really has anywhere else we can go.”

“I wish I had a home,” sighed Gina as she chewed furtively at the remainder of her hot dog.

“I never really had a home,” murmured Angie, whose plate was scraped clean.

Lola shook her head and stared down at the cold mashed bean on her plate. Home. What was home? That cramped, unheated box on Saint Marc she used solely for the purpose of having an address in order to qualify for welfare? Ha. She couldn’t believe that none of the others could see the truth. Maudie was a phony, plain and simple—a rich woman, first and foremost. Anyone with half a brain could pick up on her condescending attitude. Why should she want to change the status quo when her very status, her plenitude, depended on the existence of a lower class? She looked around at the table of faces again. Was there nobody willing to take her side, to stand up with her against the hypocrisy that, when you really got right down to it, was responsible for poverty, homelessness and addiction?

The wind screamed through the cracks in the dining room window. Lola unconsciously twisted her knees tighter as reality began to sink back in. Would she find herself tossed back out into the cold again? Maudie was certainly intent on that. Maybe she could apologize? No. It was too late. That woman’s eyes were full of disgust when Lola had launched into her tirade, tearing down Maudie’s long-nurtured charitable pillars in front of the other women.

Too late. What blind idiocy had driven her to unleashed her resentment on Sherri, the most vulnerable resident and the least deserving of such a vicious attack? Lola tried to force back the tears of disgust and rage to no avail. Because of her aggression, Sherri, already grappling on the brink of suicide, would probably make another attempt—sooner than she might have, had the altercation not taken place. Simple words spiked with anger and spite. And laughter. Laughter was the worst component. Laughter in the face of tragedy, the most unforgivable action, no matter how painful its cause.

The other women lapsed back into their own conversations, leaving her alone again. It was true, nobody really seemed to care about her. Not even here. Maybe what Ralphie had told her was true. Perhaps she was only an excess particle from somebody else’s nightmare, destined to float through eternity until she discovered a dream of her own.

Ralphie the Dreamer. Why did she continue to endure his multi-level abuse? It had been three years since their first meeting in a park, when he had looked into her eyes and promised to take care of her forever. Not long after they had moved in together, he had started picking on her physical appearance. Hair too short, hair too long, hair the wrong colour. Eyes too close together. Too much makeup. Not enough mascara. Too fat, too skinny… Followed gradually but surely by slapping around that soon progressed to punches and kicks.

I’ve become as addicted to Ralphie as Marie to her daily bottle of Caribou, realized Lola as the tears burst from the corners of her eyes. What kind of a sucker was she to put up with his verbal and physical bashings, followed by gushing apologies and promises never to hurt her again, tightly holding her and swearing that he idolized her?

The utter illogic of it all closed in on her as she sat there in her battered dining room chair, waiting for Maudie’s return and the inevitable dreaded eviction.

 No such thing as home, she started chanting to herself only semi-sarcastically, her cold fingers biting into her elbows.

The women’s conversation faded as Maudie returned with a sobbing Sherri, the older woman’s arms draped protectively around her emaciated shoulders. “Lola,” her voice cut through the gentle whispers being exchanged across the table, “Before you leave, I think it is only fitting that you apologize to Sherri for your cutting and cruel remarks.”

I don’t want to leave! Please don’t make me! The words tumble out of Lola’s brain, blocking her ability to stand up and leave them all behind. But I can’t leave…

“Lola, I am speaking to you.” Maudie’s voice was a faraway hammer, tapping its message through to Lola who remained frozen in her chair, ice fingers still biting into her elbows. A stiff gauze of empathy shifted over her eyes. The faces around her, even Maudie’s, had blended into a mass of pale mauve jigsaw pieces. They all seemed to be talking at once and yet there were no discernable words. Only soft roiling sounds emerged from their lips, tinting the air with a dreamy, druglike naïveté that coated Lola’s perception. Her fingers loosened their hold on her elbows and drifted uncertainly toward her face. Her eyes drifted through the jigsaw of faces until their faces eventually revealed themselves through the dissipating haze, reaching out to her. Even Maudie was extending her hand, its opulent engagement ring mysteriously vanished. Lola was smiling her first smile, her tears falling like flawless petals on those who touched her.

© 1987 Sonja A. Skarstedt
[Originally appeared as "Sarah" in Passions and Poisons: New Canadian Prose, Poetry & Plays;
Nu-Age Editions, Montreal]

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