Erin Anderson

In this video, I read an excerpt from my Honours Thesis in Creative Writing at Western University. The project is a collection of linked short stories, titled Count Your Bruises.

Count Your Bruises (an excerpt)
By Erin Anderson

Toasted Tomatoes

Silas heard a light rap on the bedroom door.
           
“Hey, Silas. I’m just home for a quick lunch. Can I make you something to eat?” It was his neighbour, Jeremy’s mother Vivien. Jer was at school—where Silas should’ve been—but she didn’t mention it.
           
“Thanks, Mrs. B,” Silas said, opening the door a crack to let her in, Vivien’s smile filling the room. He followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen where she began unpacking tomatoes.
           
“Whatcha makin’?” asked Silas.
           
“Toasted tomatoes,” Vivien replied. Shit, I hate tomatoes, Silas thought but couldn’t bring himself to hurt her feelings. She was the closest thing to a mother he’d ever had. Sure, there was Marie, but as his foster mom, she wasn’t always the warmest. Silas watched his friend’s mom slice the seedy vegetable (or is it a fruit?), the juice seeping out from the confines of the red skin and onto the butcher’s block cutting board. Vivien had already loaded the stainless-steel toaster, the classic kind that looked straight out of the 1950s, with rye bread and pressed the button, imprisoning the slices in a metal cage. Vivien turned, humming, opened the fridge and took out a jar of mayonnaise.
           
The toaster popped, breaking Silas’s trance. Vivien presented Silas with the finished product, which he reluctantly accepted. He didn’t know how he would manage to choke it down, but he figured he didn’t have much of a choice. It was the least he could do for her after all she’d done for him. Silas took a bite, the texture of the tomato masked by the toast’s crunchiness and the creamy mayo between his teeth. The sandwich was delicious!
           
The two sat side by side, scarfing down their toasted tomatoes. As they ate, Vivien asked him about school, track, and his home life. She even asked about Zeke. She had a way of wording things so that nothing felt like an attack, something Silas wasn’t used to anywhere else. Silas lingered over his crumbs, attempting to prolong the moment.
           
“This was nice, but I should get back. Silas,” Vivien said, “I hope tomorrow you’re not here when I come home during my lunchbreak. I can make you a toasted tomato after school.”

Meanwhile, In Hell...

“Let me out, bitch!”
           
Silas looked up from his game of Wheel of Fortune on the Commodore 64 in the east common room, the one with the wood-paneled walls and orange shag carpet. From the sound of it, Zeke’s friend Josh had threatened that group home worker again and was now locked in the storage closet. Knowing the police would be there soon, Silas shut down the relic and escaped upstairs.

As he passed the bathroom, he saw the new kid Emily getting her long hair buzzed off into a mohawk by her roommate.

“Time’s up,” Silas told the girls.

Silas and Zeke always took their shower shifts at night, one after the other. Zeke would go first, leaving a half-smoked cigarette for his friend in the stash spot that had been dug into the soft drywall under the bathroom window. Zeke had taught Silas how to sneak in a lighter, and other contraband items, by creating a hole in the inner lining of his winter jacket pocket, and the two boys would share whatever resources they had managed to get  hold of that day. Zeke usually had smokes, given to him by his bio mom at their scheduled visits.

The girls left, leaving behind a sink full of mousy brown hair. Silas claimed the room by hanging his towel from the doorknob, raced to his room to grab the lighter from inside a rolled-up pair of socks in the drawer with his name on it, tucked it into the waistband of his boxer shorts, and slipped back in to enjoy his evening smoke.

Silas started the shower and flipped on the fan to muffle the smell of his delinquency. The workers would be busy filling out police reports for awhile anyway, but you could never be too careful. The door didn’t lock: another safety precaution, like locking up the residents’ shoes at night so they couldn’t try to go AWOL, but the towel-on-the-doorknob system worked well enough; it just meant opening the door a crack and reaching your hand out to grab the towel while you were standing on the grimy bath mat, ass naked, praying no one had taken it in an attempt to assert their dominance. That had happened to Zeke his first week there, but since he beat the shit out of the kid who did it, no one dared touch his towel again. Zeke was always doing that, surprising people. Most people took his size as weakness, but Silas had lived with him long enough to know what he was capable of.

Silas lay reading in bed, even though it was still more than an hour until the lights shut off and the nightly checks began. At the sound of expletives, he looked out the window to watch Josh being escorted out in handcuffs. His case worker had arrived and was now walking behind the cavalcade, Josh’s measly possessions in her arms, signalling he would not be returning this time.

The next thing Silas knew it was morning, though Zeke hadn’t woken him as usual. Instead, he found him downstairs at the breakfast table, swirling his prison-quality puffed wheat in small circles in his chipped bowl with the rationed amount of skim milk.

“My worker’s been here since 8. She’s in the front room with that cunt Mary and I just know they’re plotting to move me to Lakewood.”

“You don’t know that, man.”

“Well, what else could they be talking about—how much of a model resident I am?” Silas knew Zeke was right. It’s one thing to be getting out because they found you a foster home, but given Zeke’s track record at the group home, it wasn’t likely to be the reason for this surprise morning visit. The two boys lingered at the table longer than usual, despite the fact they would lose outing privileges if their chores weren’t finished by the time Mary returned. It seemed worth the risk if it meant they might overhear something of the hushed conversation taking place behind the French doors, the ones with the unbreakable glass.
           
“Shit, they’re coming!” The boys dove over the couch, but they had been seen.
           
“Zeke,” Mary said. “Danielle is here to get you. Your mother passed away.”
           
“How’d—” Zeke paused.
           
“Cardiac arrest.”
           
“Drugs?”

Mary nodded. Zeke mirrored her motion, his tight almost-grin pinched hard.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and pack some things? You’re going to stay in a temp house in the city at least until after the funeral.”

“Can’t I just stay with my dad?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Zeke,” said Danielle.

“This is complete bullshit!”

Silas watched from the couch as Zeke blew past the two women, their mouths twisted into expressions of discomfort. Clearly they wanted to help, but they didn’t have the first clue what to say. Not that Silas did either, he thought to himself, but didn’t they, like, go to school for this stuff?

Silas waited until Mary and Danielle went into the kitchen before slinking past quietly, then bounding up the stairs before someone noticed he hadn’t done his chores.

“Zeke, man, I’m really sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks, brother. Take this—I don’t know when I’ll be back here.” Silas fingered the pendant his best friend had laid in the palm of his hand, a St. Christopher’s medallion Zeke’s father had given him before he took off with one of the junkie girls he met at NA.

“I can’t take this. Besides, it’s supposed to protect travellers. You need it right now more than me.”

“I guess it’s sort of a family tradition that the one doin’ the travelling passes it on. I want you to have it, really.” Silas couldn’t say no to him, not right now.

Silas nodded. “Thanks, dude. Good luck.”

Half an hour later, as Silas had started his and Zeke’s chores, he lifted the brass pendant from under the neck of his Nirvana shirt by the chain, thinking about where Zeke might be at this moment. He looked over at Zeke’s empty bed and sighed. It wouldn’t be empty tomorrow.

Empty

The waxed paper cup in Zeke’s hand bobbed, slightly heavier now from the weight of pocket change. Zeke raised the cup he’d rescued from the trash in a gesture of gratitude to the woman in the wool trench coat, her belt flapping, rushing off to work or a mani-pedi appointment. He shook the contents out into his dirt-creased palm, counting the coins three separate times before he was sure he’d done it right. He’d had exactly 46 cents in the cup before, which meant Ms. Burberry Canada had given him two dollars, all in quarters. The pizza joint across the road sold monstrous slices for $2.75 but sometimes the owner’s pock-faced son took pity on him. There were no more “take a penny, leave a penny” jars since pennies had gone extinct. No one’s really too keen on giving up a nickel. Not like he was hungry anyway, and besides, he was already late.
           
Zeke darted across the intersection, barely avoiding the number six bus, whose screechy brakes woke up the girl who had dibs on this particular corner. She swung at Zeke, still drunk from the night before and halfway between REM sleep and wakefulness, but she missed, her head slumping back down in an awkward position. The pocket of her shirt was torn so her breast was partially exposed. The name on the pocket flap said “Chuck” and the Home Hardware logo was emblazoned on the opposite side. Zeke wondered if the shirt was supposed to be ironic, or if Izzy had stolen it from her latest fuckboy; he didn’t stop long enough to ask.

---

Zeke walked into the warmth of the downtown library. He removed his toque and smoothed his greasy hair against the sides of his temples, hoping to make himself look slightly more presentable. He passed by the bank of elevators, opting instead to walk up the grand staircase in the centre to the third floor.

Zeke headed into his weekly writing group—a collection of misfits who, like himself, had been in and out of shelters or on the street. As he walked in, he distracted a woman who was reading a story she’d written about her (presumably made-up) pet parakeet, and she lost her place. “Glad you could make it, Zeke,” the facilitator greeted him in a hushed voice. The parakeet mom looked over, annoyed, before continuing.

 When the woman had finished and returned to her seat, Joanne addressed Zeke again.

“Today, we’re sharing some of the stuff we’ve been working on outside of group. Do you have anything you’d feel comfortable reading?”

“I’ve been working on some poems, but they’re shit.”

“Maybe the group can offer you some feedback. It can be tough to step back from our own work.” Zeke thought about this for a moment, and instantly regretted his decision to come. A couple hours of warmth weren’t worth this bitch’s condescending tone. Besides, he knew his words would only come out wrong anyway. Only one person had ever been allowed inside his mind like that, and they hadn’t spoken in years.
           
“I gotta take a leak,” Zeke said and stood up, his chair making a loud scraping noise that drowned out the sounds of the next volunteer.

Zeke headed towards the corner, near the public washrooms (the cleanest in the city). He studied his reflection in the mirror. He hardly recognized himself. He was only twenty-seven but looked closer to forty. His eyes were two hollow slits of carnelian in a canvas darkened by grime and lack of sleep. He did a quick check under the stalls and entered the larger handicap vestibule. He pulled a mostly empty baggie out of his watch pocket and willed the crumbs into the old pill bottle he’d placed on top of the toilet paper dispenser. He pulled a syringe already filled with water from the breast pocket of his quilt-lined corduroy jacket. He removed the cap and thumbed the plunger, releasing the water into the pill bottle, the diluted mixture barely changing colour. He sucked the concoction back into the syringe, careful to eliminate any potentially lethal bubbles of air. Zeke bent down and unlaced his holey Converse, threading the blackened lace through the eyelets until the makeshift tourniquet was freed. He tied off and waited for the high that would never come.

Erin Anderson writes short fiction and creative nonfiction. She often writes about raw human experiences and how people are shaped by trauma. She is a tireless mental health advocate, who aims to demystify mental illness and reduce stigma through her writing and the work she does in the community. Her writing has been published in Iconoclast, Semicolon, Scholar's Showcase, and Western Mind. She lives in London, Ontario with her husband and their two children.