Every Time We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa

Connie’s out tonight, so you can have one if you want.” She peered at Grace through the smoke. “Do you want to have a bath?”
    She didn’t want a bath; she wanted to get away from Mrs. Barr’s flickering eyes. She said, “All right. Yes.”
    Mrs. Barr opened the ledger and wrote,
March 15: Bath
.
    The morning before work was not as bad as the evening after work. The evening was bad because after she had washed out her underwear and sponged her coverall and brushed her teeth, there was only the dark tunnel of night and the deafening wind that roared through it. In the morning, she had breakfast at the table with Mrs. Barr and the other girls, which was unpleasant but not nearly as painful as the long, empty night. Grace said please and thank you; Connie and Noreen, who worked at the cereal factory, exclaimed at everything Mrs. Barr said. “You’re the bee’s knees, Mrs. B.,” they said. “You’re the cat’s pyjamas.” Mrs. Barr told them how she kept her hands so white and her skin so supple, and how all the fellas were stuck on her in her heyday, before she married Mr. Barr, god rest his soul. But her favourite topic was the horrible Ruth Ellis and her horrible boarding house. Ruth Ellis also rented out rooms, but she was an old maid who taught high school and had a very odd manner and went around in odd getups with her nose in the air; her boarders were hussies and floozies who went about in trousers and ran around with married men. Connie and Noreen had seen one of her boardersjust yesterday standing outside in a short little nightdress up to here, talking to some man over the fence! Grace pretended to listen, eating as much as she could and folding an extra slice of bread and jam into her pocket so that she wouldn’t have to buy lunch at the canteen. Every dollar she earned would go into the envelope under her mattress, and when she had enough to get a place of her own, she would go home and get her son.
    The walk to work was not as bad as breakfast, especially if she walked fast. At work, she waited in the courtyard with the others, listening to their cheery calls and bird-like shrieks. One would start singing “My Melancholy Baby” or “Don’t Cry, Baby” or some other song with a baby and a goodbye in it, and the others would join in, layering their voices in harmony. When the door opened for them, everyone groaned except Grace, who exhaled in relief. She hung her coat in the cloakroom and hurried to her place. Her mind was blank now, a long white field like the garden under snow, and her hands became eyes. She made clocks. Fit, snap, adjust, press. Snap, press, snap. At lunch, when the others rushed to the canteen to buy tea and ham rolls, she went to the cloakroom to eat the bread and jam she’d wrapped up at breakfast. She drank water cupped in her hand from the sink. Once or twice a day, Mr. Vanderburgh came through and nodded at them. “Good, good,” he said in his chocolate voice.
    The walk home was bad, because every step brought her closer to Mrs. Barr’s dinner table. The dinner table was bad because Mrs. Barr wouldn’t let her be: “What do you think, Grace? Are you listening, Grace? You know, when you knocked at the door, I thought you were a boy with that haircut. That must be the style in Sault Ste. Marie. Is that the style up there, Grace? Oh, I think Grace must be thinking of a fella—are you thinking of a fella, Grace?” Mrs. Barr flashed her eyes at Connie and Noreen, and they dabbed at their smiles with their napkins.
    Most of all, dinner was bad because it ended with night.
    Night was the worst. In the dark, panic came over her, pinning her to the bed until she lurched upright, struggling to draw in a complete breath over the galloping of her heart.
He is fine
, she told herself.
He’s safe, he’s warm, he’s fed. He is asleep right now
. In her head, she walked down the stairs from her attic room to Danny’s bedroom and sat by his crib. She saw the moonlight on his