I asked the secretary, “Can I leave my stroller in the lobby?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Where can I put it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Most people don’t bring ’em.”
“Well, I did.”
“I’m just saying most people don’t.”
Getting past the receptionist into the holding tank/waiting area was never pleasant. I shook the water out of the stroller in front of her. I didn’t care because she was only the secretary. She wasn’t the one giving me the money
Some guy with a black eye and fresh blood on his cheek said he could watch the stroller for me. Like I was born yesterday. To get into the bigger waiting area I had to follow one of three lines painted on the floor. Yellow, Red, or Blue. Which line you followed all depended on how long you had been on the dole. Following a colour is easier than following signs, for people who can’t read. The receptionist glanced at my wet appointment slip.
“Red line.”
“Thank you ever so much.”
I started off down the red line. The wheel on Dill’s stroller fell off. I stuffed it into my Safeway bag full of sidewalk muck and sand. I reminded myself, the main thing to remember when you walk into the waiting room is not to look at anybody. That’s only an invitation for boring conversations and hard-luck stories that can go on for two or three hours. The thing to do is just find a seat and sit and look tough. And also remember that these people aren’t necessarily as pathetic as they look. Or they’re far more pathetic than they look. Either way, don’t talk to anybody. I sat down holding Dill on my lap and shaking things in front of his face like keys and the stroller wheel. And I thought of Gore-Tex Guy beaming with delight in his cultural anthropology class at the wonder of it all. The old guy next to me appeared to be having some kind of asthma attack, he kept smacking his shiny lips together after every gasp and hack. A woman said “Hi baby” to Dill. She offered him a nickel.
I was trying hard to look tough. I didn’t stare at anybody or offer the old man assistance or coo at Dill or smile sympathetically at the crazy woman or take her dirty nickel. I sat and looked at the walls and ceiling and waited for my name to be called. Then I saw Terrapin. Oh great. She saw me and dragged her two little sullen girls over to me and Dill.
“Lucy! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here? We could have walked together. Isn’t the rain beautiful? This is your first time isn’t it?” Blah, blah, blah. She was wearing a t-shirt that read, “Extinct is Forever.”
I had wanted to give the impression that I had been on the dole all my life, that I had seen the world from every angle, that I didn’t need anybody, that I had been to hell and back and survived.
“Hi.”
“Hey Lucy, would you like to share our snack? I brought some veggies and raisins, and Sunshine” (her other daughter’s name was Rain) “brought a board game she made by herself out of odds and ends. We may as well enjoy ourselves while we wait.”
My cover was shot to hell. The other hard-cores had no respect for me. They were staring at Terrapin and me and I felt trapped. I don’t know why I wanted the respect of long-term dole recipients. Wherever I went I tried to fit in and the dole was no different. There was something terrible about being at the dole for the second time. I didn’t want them to pity me and I didn’t want to pity them. I just wanted to be anonymous. But I think they felt about me the same way I felt about Gore-Tex Guy.
A couple of women from Serenity Place came in, and Terrapin whispered in my ear that one of them was making over five thousand bucks a month as a prostitute as well as collecting the dole. I wondered if it would work for me. The women from Serenity Place sat way off in a corner next to a group of Indians who hadn’t said one word to each other the whole time.
I’m not sure, but I think someone who worked at the dole must have told my case worker to see me as soon as possible, because Dill kept crawling off into the blue and yellow line rooms, where we were not supposed to go, and I’d chase him, he’d laugh, I’d sigh, and the dole workers would clear their throats or look away. With the puke now on his pants and one boot missing he looked horrible, and I think seeing him depressed the dole staff. Anyway, they got me in and out of there pretty quickly. My worker asked me if I knew yet who Dill’s father was. As if since the last visit an angel had appeared in my kitchen and said “Psst, it was Tiffany’s brother, whatsisname.” Was I supposed to line up all the guys I’d had sex with over that period and check out their features and insist that they all go for blood tests and report back to me so I could then get the sheriff after them to give me child support and get off the dole? Actually it might have been a good thing I didn’t know.
A lot of women in Half-a-Life did know who the fathers were, and as soon as their dole workers knew they knew, they were expected to get money from them, which would be docked from the mothers’ welfare cheques. If the guy didn’t pay, too bad, you were still out the money. You could put them on maintenance enforcement if they were still in the province. Sometimes this worked. But sometimes, if the guy was an asshole, he could blackmail the woman and get her welfare cancelled. Like if a woman babysat or sewed stuff or did any little amount of work in her apartment for pay, it was supposed to be reported to the dole, so they could dock that amount from the cheque. Also, if you left your kids sleeping while you went downstairs to do the laundry or ran over to a friend’s for an egg, the guy could sue for custody, claiming you were an unfit mother. Some mothers simply didn’t want to anger their children’s fathers. They would rather tell the dole they were receiving a hundred bucks or fifty bucks a month from the father even when they weren’t and lose it from their cheque than risk the dole and the courts getting involved and going after the man. Most of them are far more afraid of these men than they are of poverty. For those with a lot of pride, it’s rough. When your case worker sits there punching information into a computer, and says, “Father’s name and address,” you can say, “I don’t know,” which for me is true and hard to admit, but even when it’s not true, a lot of women say it to save themselves the grief of trying to extract cash from fathers long gone.
It’s not hard to ask for money for new winter snowsuits, or a crib, even though it’s kind of degrading, but there’s something about saying you don’t know who the father of your child is when you do. And when that child was conceived you really loved the guy and he loved you, maybe, and the child was perfect, and you almost believed that you’d be together, a family, forever. That you had actually made a decision to have a relationship with a certain man and to become pregnant and give birth and become a mother and be responsible. Then to just toss that out the window and say you don’t know — for some of these women, that was the hardest thing. They hung on to their memories of perfect love, of perfect union, these were the beginnings of their children. Yeah, they were alone now, the guy had split. But their intentions had been grand and they’d be damned if anybody was going to take that away. These are the women who say Yes of course they know who the father is, and No they have no idea where he is and no way of finding out. That really surprises the workers. Their hands are tied. They have to issue the full amount on the cheque and they can’t go after the guy for maintenance. They hate it.
Anyway, I wasn’t one of those. I had to answer the question. I sighed and said, “No, I still don’t know who the father is. I should tell you right now, I probably never will.”
“Well, if it happens again,” the dole officer said, “we might not be so helpful.”