The Two-Slice Toaster Move

Mom’s pink cow­boy boots clat­tered across the café to the booth where I was rest­ing my head on the table­top and lur­ing an ant out from behind the nap­kin holder with crumbs of my apple pie. She wig­gled around on the ripped vinyl seat and unfolded a map of Alberta and B.C. The man at the next booth stopped pick­ing his teeth with his match­book and put down his Western Producer just to stare at her. She had me blow on her cupped hands for luck. She said that’s what they did in Vegas. The sugar cube rolled across the map and came to rest over a town called Smithers in north­ern British Columbia. I told her the province of B.C. looked like a shoeprint left in dog poo at the city park but she chose to wave her arms in the air and jan­gle her bracelets to Billy Joel singing on the café radio. Men turned to watch her and women squinted at her like they were look­ing across the fields for a chicken-eating coy­ote. On our way out I stole the waitress’s tip off a messy table and pushed the coins deep in my pocket among the sugar pack­ets and lit­tle plas­tic con­tain­ers of jam. I wished I had stolen some of the peanut but­ter but I didn’t know that we were going to move that afternoon.

Mom drove around Calgary, yelling good­bye to places and strangers. I yelled too. Goodbye garbage can, good­bye girl on her way to school, good­bye lonely man walk­ing tiny dog, good­bye high-rise, good­bye city bus stop, good­bye over­pass, good­bye home.

All the stuff from our one-bedroom was piled neatly on the big back seat of our sta­tion wagon. The clothes from our closet were still on their wire hang­ers, all tied together with my Ghost Busters pajama pants. This time she even remem­bered the light bulbs and the toi­let paper holder. In the very back of the car were three pil­low­cases stuffed with my books and toys, boxes of stuff from our kitchen cup­boards, and the new sil­ver two-slice toaster. My draw­ings, coloured pen­cils and Archie comics were packed in a milk crate by my feet.

I found her Expo 86 lighter wedged in the seat and she said it was a sign from our guardian angels. We were meant to move to B.C. We stopped in Jasper, counted coins from her pur­ple Crown Royal bag and bought gas, cig­a­rettes, a box of milk, a bag of chips and some licorice pipes. I climbed over our stuff to retrieve the sil­ver toaster. I held that toaster on my lap until dark and made faces into it, watch­ing the way my face grew and shrank, and won­dered what would hap­pen next. I remem­ber every move in a dif­fer­ent way. That move, from Calgary to Smithers, was our two-slice toaster move.