So she had three little eggs, their beige shells with dark freckles. Were they pretty or pretty ugly? She couldn’t decide. She saw a shape like a car. Another like a dog. She even saw a country, and on one clear side, the whole sky. Then she’d wanted to see inside so she’d poked an egg hard with a pencil and the snot oozed out on her fingers, white and yellow, like any egg. After that she chucked it away.
“I hope you washed your hands!” I said, when she came round to bring my quail egg.
She shrugged.
I didn’t always understand Shahnaaz. About the eggs, for example, where were these
investigations going? An egg was an egg. Thinking about eggs so much made no sense to me.
But still I was glad to have the present. It meant she’d thought of me.
I kept my quail’s egg a whole week, swaddled in cotton wool. Safe from the dangerous world of frying pans and table edges. And of course clumsy school children. Then, in front of my class, I blew it. It wasn’t easy. It was so small and I didn’t want to break it. I poked a hole in the top and bottom with a needle, grinding holes. Then I puffed up with all my eight year old might and slowly slowly blew out the liquid world inside.
I was careful not to suck, not after the Granny Tsu stories. But the slight smell made me think how it would taste, a quail when it wasn’t even born.
Also, I felt very grown up in front of the class, explaining every step like a teacher.
Confidently, I used a thin black marker to draw a mouth, two eyes, and long eyelashes. I soaked some cotton wool in red food colouring, and squeezed, and glued and teased. Soon, my egg lady had lovely red hair. My little quail’s egg had turned into a beautiful little egg- lady.
And she was certainly more beautiful than some of the other children’s projects. Brandon made a hopeless Christmas decoration thingie from cardboard toilet rolls, all coloured in and joined together. What was that? It was a bit disturbing, really.
For a start, I mean, he was probably sitting there on the cold seat, straining, wrapping too much toilet paper around his hand, when the inspiration hit him. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
I bet every time he went somewhere he checked the toilets to see if any rolls were near the end. All that collecting. Plus every colour he painted them took on a horrible shade of brown.
It’s not even a nice story, you know, for the class. When it’s finished, everybody looks bored.
They just want you to go away. Poor Brandon.
But my egg lady was so beautiful everybody wanted a chance to hold her. I wouldn’t let them. I put some pieces of cloth in a little TV Bar box I picked up outside the tuck shop, and I nestled her safe, using another piece of material for a blanket. So carefully I put the blanker over her. Her face. Her body. I couldn’t really tell.
I carried her close for the whole day, keeping her safe, letting only those who seemed genuinely interested have a sneak peek. Because I was saving my triumph for my family when I got home. I wanted to flourish the new addition.
I don’t have to tell you what happened. You can work that out for yourself.
The figure skating club held their lessons every Saturday morning, a few hours before the first public session. The girls all wore shimmering stockings and fitted red jackets. A uniform, I suppose, but it always looked very glamorous to me.
Just before ten o’ clock they dissolved one by one, all except a tiny little figure fairy who chatted to me while she waited for her mother. Even in her regulation red jacket, that girl stood out. Skin pale, almost white, a scattering of light freckles. Her lips very pink and frizzy red hair tied back as sleek and tight as possible. Her head looked so bare like that, but she never seemed to be shaken by the cold.
Sometimes she was chatting and laughing away, telling me about her grade five hockey tournament. The goal she scored. Other times she just hung around the front entrance with her backpack, waiting quietly for her mother. Even then, she still smiled politely though, opening the door for a few customers.
She was like that. Often, from my perch in the Cashbox I saw her being kind and polite, showing unfamiliar customers the way to the toilet as they clunked along the sodden rubber mats in shaky blades. You’ll get there, she seemed to be saying, offering subtle
encouragement.
Some Saturdays, when her mother remembered to give her spending money, she stayed after her class and skated during the first public session. Then, when she bought something from the milkbar she came over to me in the Cashbox, happy to share her chips and sweets.
Mostly, I couldn’t look out for her, cooped up as I was working, but I did wonder. Where was she when I couldn’t see her? Was she lost in the crowd? Helping others skate for the first time? Picking up falling public before their hands stuck to patches of dry ice? Did she show off her jumps and twirls, that little red jacket bright as a bulls-eye? I didn’t know.
Between the smiling and the sharing and the showing, the child’s mind always seemed to slip back to her mother and when I looked she’d be on her phone, punching the numbers over and over again, hoping for an answer.
I’d seen her mother at the roadside, waiting impatiently for the girl to come up the ramp after lessons. Next to her a man, tall, thin, big-eared. A few weeks after that, another man. Also tall, but a few shades darker, with awkward hair that grew past his shoulders and gave him a somewhat beastly appearance. Different cars all the time as well. Sometimes a Golf,
sometimes a Polo, once a black Toyota Run X waited while her mother came impatiently down the ramp to fetch her. Always tinted windows. Always.
On one particular Saturday the girl’s mother didn’t pick her up at all. Instead she was escorted to the car by a man with dark gold curls, a bit frizzy from the wind that day, and gold rings on all nine of his fingers. Well, also one thumb. I remember his hands more than anything. I thought about how I wore nothing on my own hands, preferring to remain anonymous. Then again maybe he did too, behind his dark Wayfarer glasses and all. I don’t know. I don’t know because his hands, even without all that screaming gold, still demanded so much attention.
The little figure skater didn’t turn around to wave goodbye that day. She just got into the car very carefully. Carefully she lifted her skates in their padded case, but still her thin legs looked as if they might break.