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Evie
I love dogs more than humans because they’re loyal and love you unconditionally. They’re not racist or transphobic or sexist or classist or ageist. They don’t talk politics or religion or steal your boyfriend or take your car without asking. Yes, they’re like having a small child in the house and they need exercise and attention and they poop a lot, but that’s a small price to pay.
I volunteer three days a week at the Radcliffe Animal Centre. It was where I adopted Poppy when she was eighteen months old. Someone had abandoned her at a motorway service area, dumping her in a rubbish bin. A driver heard her whimpering and rescued her before a waste truck emptied the bin into its compactor.
From the outside, the shelter looks like a small roadside restaurant, with a parking area and silhouettes of dogs and cats painted on the front wall. Cyrus wants me to get a paid job because I should be paying board, but every time I look for a job, I get asked a bunch of questions or told to fill out a form. Where was I born? Where did I go to school? My address? My next of kin? I don’t want people knowing that much about me.
Annie runs the place. She is one of those women who dress in dungarees and wellingtons, but also wears lipstick and eyeshadow. Some people think she’s a lesbian, but she’s married to Clive and has three children and six grandchildren. Clive delivers parcels for the post office and, according to Annie, he’s so boring his preferred pronouns are ho/hum.
The shelter has about forty mesh cages for the dogs, with each cage big enough for a bed and somewhere for them to poop and rest. There is also a cat area with cat trees and cubby holes and a separate straw-covered hutch for the rabbits.
When people come to the shelter looking for a rescue pet, we take them into an area with artificial grass and bench seats and a toy box. This is where they get introduced to the animals.
Whenever I’m working, Annie gives me the job of interviewing adoptive families, asking them questions about their house and garden and their experience with pets. She calls me the ‘dog whisperer’ because I can tell within moments if a family will be the right match for a particular shelter dog.
People often turn up with a checklist, wanting a particular breed of dog or a certain size or temperament, even if it’s entirely unsuitable for them. Some are allergic to dog hair, or have no garden, or ask what colour they can choose, as if they’re matching a pet with their curtains. Others want a fashion accessory that can fit into their handbag or a guard dog that will frighten away intruders or an exercise companion even though they spend more time walking to the fridge than in the park.
The rescues seem to know when someone is here to adopt, and they begin barking and whining and wagging tails, hoping it might be them. Some are desperate for love, while a few seem to have given up hope, curling up in their cages, ignoring the commotion. They’re the ones I most want to take home.
When I’m not interviewing clients, I clean out the cages and change the water and scoop dry biscuits into bowls. Cyrus finds it hilarious that I’ll go off to work and do all this stuff that I won’t do at home.
‘That’s because I’m appreciated,’ I say.
‘I should hope so. You’re an unpaid volunteer.’
He doesn’t really mind that I don’t get paid. And Annie says she’s going to see if she can find some money in the next budget and that no matter what she paid me it wouldn’t be enough because I’m ‘priceless’.
There are two more text messages on my phone, both from Dr Bennett. I keep ignoring her because I don’t want to know if there’s something wrong with me. Clearly, there is. I’m a freak. How else do you explain my history and the whole lie-detecting thing?
A class of preschool children is visiting the shelter today on an excursion. They are dressed in matching yellow bibs and holding hands, marching penguin-style across the parking area, being led by a teacher.
I remember my first day of school. The coloured wooden chairs, all in a circle, the cranky teacher, Mrs Martini, whose hair made her head look like a half-painted bowling ball. One of the boys wanted to use the toilet and she told him to wait. He wet his pants and cried. Mrs Martini told him to stop being such a girl.
‘Why does that make him a girl?’ I asked.
She marched me to the back of the classroom and locked me inside a cupboard, which stank of paint and turpentine and white spirits. Soon I discovered it had a name among the students: ‘dollap i qelbur’ (the stinky closet).
‘How was your first day at school?’ Papa asked me that afternoon.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t like the stinky closet.’
The next morning, Papa didn’t leave early for the butchery. Instead, he took us on the bus to school and walked me to my classroom. He made me wait outside, while he talked to Mrs Martini. It was difficult to hear everything my teacher said because she was inside the stinky closet and Papa was holding the door closed.
Later that morning, I was moved to the other kindergarten class where I met Mina, my best friend. She had a round face and frizzy black hair and crooked bottom teeth and she sat near the front because she had trouble seeing the blackboard.
When I sat down next to her, she smiled as though I’d given her a gift. Mina was a Roma and her family lived near the old railway sidings, where the trains used to sleep when they weren’t running. That was before they closed the line to Prrenjas. After that, the carriages and boxcars were left to rust and become overgrown with weeds. Some of them were used as houses, and others for storage, but most were empty and a playground for kids.
Mina and I were ‘joined at the hip’, according to Agnesa, who made it sound like it was unhealthy. I already knew what people whispered behind Mina’s back – stories about gypsies stealing babies and robbing houses and putting curses on people, but I didn’t believe any of that.
After school, we’d walk home through the village, pressing our faces against the window of the bakery, smearing fingerprints and foggy breath on the glass, until the owner, Mr Kabashi, gave us a warm biscuit and shooed us away. We played games – drawing numbered squares for hopscotch on the old train platform, or catching lizards and skinks that lived under the rocks between the sleepers, or tadpoles in the pond behind the timber yard.
Mina’s favourite game was brides and babies, but I didn’t understand the attraction of being married or pregnant. Neither had made Mama very happy. Her moods were like cycles of the moon. On her sad days, she would take herself off to bed, or spend hours staring into the mirror, asking us, ‘Am I pretty, girls?’ or ‘What happened to my face?’ On her sad days nobody could make her smile or laugh or convince her there was any beauty or warmth in the world. She could be careless and cruel, but Papa never stopped loving her.
She always cheered up when Aunt Polina came to stay, even though she complained constantly about the extra work. Polina was Papa’s younger sister and didn’t have any children, but had lots of boyfriends, none of whom ‘wanted to marry her’, according to Mama, because she ‘gave it away for free’, whatever that meant.
I thought she was glamorous and beautiful, with a suitcase full of cocktail dresses and high heels and handbags. She took a speedboat to Italy every summer and always came back with newer and nicer clothes and gifts for everyone. Swiss chocolates. Marzipan. Limoncello. CDs by Backstreet Boys and Beyoncé.
People whispered about her being a strawberry picker, but I don’t think she was picking strawberries in those dresses. And the men would look at her differently whenever she walked along the street. Aunt Polina didn’t seem to care, although her hips always swayed a little more when she passed them.
