so.
Selfish , I remind myself, and pinch the side of my leg. And instead I dredge up everything I know ’bout Corner.
Corner met Atticus, Corner of the bloodtouch hands, in the Whitecoats’ house on the hill. The ghosts loved it for its weeping, loved it for the way its hands touched through walls, clothes, flesh.
Atticus stood before Corner like a shield, and Corner took that protection gladly.
After that there aren’t really Tales about Corner. Corner founded Safe with Atticus, and Corner took care and gave Sanctuary with Atticus up until the year I was seven years old and they found Jonah struck dead in the tunnels, and then Atticus didn’t give Sanctuary to Corner and called Corner Killer instead of its right name. My pa hid me behind his pant leg when they closed the big door against it. And then nobody told Tales about Corner.
(And here I catch the sign that says Queen Street West and mark the corner; turn.)
There’s nothing in that little Tale to help me; nothing that’ll tell me why Corner would come with swoops and waves of shadows and speak sweet and sad to Atticus, and then put a knife square center in his throat. Keeping histories is as much about knowing what needs forgetting as what ought to be remembered, and Corner’s been forgot.
Maybe that shouldn’t have been so.
The shelter at Queen and Bathurst is huge: swooping brown brick with an iron gate, and I don’t know if it’s a gate to keep bad things out or the kind to keep you locked in. A couple men are spread out on the steps, wrapped in layers of dirty shirts and the four-day beard I can’t even grow in twenty. They watch everyone passing with bright rat eyes, eyes that go bite or run away? I keep good and wide of them as I go up the steps to the door.
You can’t just walk into a shelter. They got rules about in and out Above, and a frowning someone behind a desk to enforce them. This someone’s a wrinkle-faced man who sits crooked on a dim orange rolling chair, making faces at the papers on his desk like they hurt him. The walls are grey, but they’re hung all over color; blankets and weavings like Doctor Marybeth has in her house. I wonder, quick, if it was her who found this place for Safe. If I stayed long enough, patient and quiet and Normal, would she come to fetch me back?
“Can I help you?” says the man behind the desk in a voice rough like first-cut carving.
“I’m looking for someone,” I say; stumble, more like. “My cousin.” Cousin’s good. Cousin could be girl or boy, young or old.
He peers down at me through thick glasses. The scratches on them glint in the sharp, flickering, Salvation Army lights. “I’m sorry, son. You can’t just wander in here.” He don’t sound sorry in the least.
I remember the metal of that gate, and the lock.
“You don’t understand,” I say, trying to sound young and small. I’ve got to Pass good. Mack could be in here, or Scar; Violet or Hide or Chrys, scared and waiting to be found — “They’re Sick.”
That ain’t no good argument here. Here Sick’s a thing to fear, to avoid and lock away. That’s an argument for Safe, and I’m botching this up, and then I have to turn my head away so this Whitecoat man doesn’t see my throat go all thick with failure.
He stands. I take a step back, brace my leg unthinking to give a punch or take one or run, but the look on his face ain’t punching, and it ain’t rats. He drags his own leg a little, limping ’round the desk. “Come on, now. No need for that,” he says oddly, and while my mouth’s still hanging open, he opens a stained brown door and lets me inside.
The shelter for homeless people is two dirty tile steps down into a big room set with folding chairs, spindly tables, and couches in different colors along the corners. There are posters on the walls, not pictures like in Bea’s place but cramped writing: warnings and signs and rules. A slow fan turns lazy on the ceiling, making a breeze that’s only
Selfish , I remind myself, and pinch the side of my leg. And instead I dredge up everything I know ’bout Corner.
Corner met Atticus, Corner of the bloodtouch hands, in the Whitecoats’ house on the hill. The ghosts loved it for its weeping, loved it for the way its hands touched through walls, clothes, flesh.
Atticus stood before Corner like a shield, and Corner took that protection gladly.
After that there aren’t really Tales about Corner. Corner founded Safe with Atticus, and Corner took care and gave Sanctuary with Atticus up until the year I was seven years old and they found Jonah struck dead in the tunnels, and then Atticus didn’t give Sanctuary to Corner and called Corner Killer instead of its right name. My pa hid me behind his pant leg when they closed the big door against it. And then nobody told Tales about Corner.
(And here I catch the sign that says Queen Street West and mark the corner; turn.)
There’s nothing in that little Tale to help me; nothing that’ll tell me why Corner would come with swoops and waves of shadows and speak sweet and sad to Atticus, and then put a knife square center in his throat. Keeping histories is as much about knowing what needs forgetting as what ought to be remembered, and Corner’s been forgot.
Maybe that shouldn’t have been so.
The shelter at Queen and Bathurst is huge: swooping brown brick with an iron gate, and I don’t know if it’s a gate to keep bad things out or the kind to keep you locked in. A couple men are spread out on the steps, wrapped in layers of dirty shirts and the four-day beard I can’t even grow in twenty. They watch everyone passing with bright rat eyes, eyes that go bite or run away? I keep good and wide of them as I go up the steps to the door.
You can’t just walk into a shelter. They got rules about in and out Above, and a frowning someone behind a desk to enforce them. This someone’s a wrinkle-faced man who sits crooked on a dim orange rolling chair, making faces at the papers on his desk like they hurt him. The walls are grey, but they’re hung all over color; blankets and weavings like Doctor Marybeth has in her house. I wonder, quick, if it was her who found this place for Safe. If I stayed long enough, patient and quiet and Normal, would she come to fetch me back?
“Can I help you?” says the man behind the desk in a voice rough like first-cut carving.
“I’m looking for someone,” I say; stumble, more like. “My cousin.” Cousin’s good. Cousin could be girl or boy, young or old.
He peers down at me through thick glasses. The scratches on them glint in the sharp, flickering, Salvation Army lights. “I’m sorry, son. You can’t just wander in here.” He don’t sound sorry in the least.
I remember the metal of that gate, and the lock.
“You don’t understand,” I say, trying to sound young and small. I’ve got to Pass good. Mack could be in here, or Scar; Violet or Hide or Chrys, scared and waiting to be found — “They’re Sick.”
That ain’t no good argument here. Here Sick’s a thing to fear, to avoid and lock away. That’s an argument for Safe, and I’m botching this up, and then I have to turn my head away so this Whitecoat man doesn’t see my throat go all thick with failure.
He stands. I take a step back, brace my leg unthinking to give a punch or take one or run, but the look on his face ain’t punching, and it ain’t rats. He drags his own leg a little, limping ’round the desk. “Come on, now. No need for that,” he says oddly, and while my mouth’s still hanging open, he opens a stained brown door and lets me inside.
The shelter for homeless people is two dirty tile steps down into a big room set with folding chairs, spindly tables, and couches in different colors along the corners. There are posters on the walls, not pictures like in Bea’s place but cramped writing: warnings and signs and rules. A slow fan turns lazy on the ceiling, making a breeze that’s only
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