Shelter Skelter: Fiction About Annette

 

I was evicted from my apartment in the midst of a downpour. Me and my stuff were put out on the curb with nothing to protect us from the flooding that had already crept into the basement of the complex. I sat on top of the pile of stuff until the garbage truck had made its rounds, as I didn’t want them to think my stuff was junk and pick it up. Then I went to the phone booth (my phone had been cut off seven days before) and called every shelter on the list the landlord had unceremoniously taped to my door along with the eviction notice.

Every shelter was full.

I had to find somewhere, and was getting frantic. I couldn’t even afford a storage locker for my stuff, or I’d have slept in it with my stuff until I found a room somewhere.

Defeated, and freezing to my very bones from the freezing rain, I left my pile of stuff and found a Tim Hortons coffee shop.

I had no money to order anything, so I went on into the bathroom in the back and hid there just to warm up. Then I took stock of my situation and decided what I’d do next.

Fuck it; I’d get arrested if I had to, just to have my three hots and a cot. I’d squat on private or public property until the police hauled me away. What was I to do; die? I needed some place to live, and the whole damn world couldn’t be off limits to me.

“Hey!”

That “Hey!” sounded familiar. I looked up and saw the most disgusting sight; my old-hobo black-sheep-of-the-family cousin with hair matted into one piece, a beard down to his knees and last but not least, shit on the seat of his pants.

But I realized he might have an in with the mission or a shelter or something. Maybe he knew someone who could help me.

He sat down uninvited next to me, which was a relief, because I don’t know how I could have gotten him to sit with me after that incident where I put a pie in his face at that family reunion because he had eaten my daughter’s birthday cake, the whole thing, without knowing it was for her birthday. I understood back then that he was hungry and had come around hoping desperately for some food, but he should have known not to touch the cake. My daughter, who was turning sixteen at the time, was devastated, and as much of an entitled, presumptuous little bitch as she was (no thank you to her father and his family), I understood her pain on that day.

Now she’s off in college and refused to let me sleep on her dorm room floor. Something about regulations, but I know that’s bullshit because I saw her Facebook post a while back in which she offered her dorm room floor to someone coming from outside the city for a convention they were both going to.

And now here I was, sitting in Tim Hortons with my black-sheep cousin, shitty pants and all. The company you have to keep when you’re poor, and then you look even poorer than you are.

So thanks to this cousin I have, Billy, I have a roof over my head now, even though I’m sleeping in the cafeteria at an overcrowded shelter.

I sold my stuff in a garage sale so at least I have some cash saved for an apartment.

We’re sitting in a group therapy session now, and I’m telling my story to the guest facilitators, Hettie and Mike.

I don’t know where to go. Truth be told, I don’t know anything about what to do, but my family doesn’t seem to give a hoot about me.

I talk about maybe going up to Fort Mac to one of the work camps.

And that’s when Hettie pulls me aside and tells me about the commune.

Why not?

I say yes.

“We’re leaving in two days,”Hettie says. “You might want to wait for the next pickup date, in a year from now.”

“No, I want to go on Thursday,” I insist.

The trouble I’m getting into can’t be worse than the trouble I’m already in.

Impossible.