A Big Dose of Lucky

Marthe Jocelyn

Description

Malou has just turned sixteen—hardly old enough to be out in the world on her own—and all she knows for sure is that she’s of mixed race and that she was left at an orphanage as a newborn. When the orphanage burns to the ground, she finds out that she may have been born in a small town in Ontario’s cottage country. Much to her surprise, Parry Sound turns out to have quite a few young brown faces, but Malou can’t believe they might be related to her. After she finds work as a cleaner in the local hospital, an Aboriginal boy named Jimmy helps her find answers to her questions about her parents. The answers are as stunning—and life-changing—as anything Malou could have imagined back at the orphanage.


Part of the SECRETS—a series of seven linked novels that can be read in any order.

Sujets

• Foster Homes
• Orphans
• Young Adult Fiction
• Orphan
• Family

Informations

• Publié par: Orca Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781459806702
• Langue: English

Extrait

IN EARLY JUNE 1964, the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls burns to the ground, and its vulnerable residents are thrust out into the world. The orphans, who know no other home, find their lives changed in an instant. Arrangements are made for the youngest residents, but the seven oldest girls are sent on their way with little more than a clue or two to their pasts and the hope of learning about the families they have never known. On their own for the first time in their lives, they are about to experience the world in ways they never imagined…
For more Secrets:
ReadtheSecrets.com
A BIG DOSE OF LUCKY
MARTHE JOCELYN
O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S
For all the donor offspring who might be curious to find their birth families.
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
IT BEGINS WITH THE FIRE
Or maybe a few hours earlier, when I walk into town on a Saturday afternoon to buy, you know, girl products.
I don't go shopping by myself too often. Usually I'm with one of the other girls from the Home—Toni or Betty or my roommate, Cady, or Sara sometimes. I follow along and they don't mind, even if I'm the one people notice. I'm the dark one or the little darkie or the colored girl . I’m not saying there’s anything especially special to know about me, but still. I have a name.
People in town don’t give a hoot about our names or who our parents might have been other than dead. They feel sorry for us—because of the dead part—but otherwise we’re part of who they are. Like at Greene’s Bakery when Mrs. Greene puts an extra cookie in the bag and says real loud, And here’s another treat for good luck , so everyone in the store knows how generous she is. Or at the newsstand when Mr. Arnold saves last month’s issues of Teen Screen magazine and tells other shoppers he keeps them ’specially for the orphans . (We’re not complaining. We like free cookies, and we love getting new pinups of the Beatles or Hayley Mills or Elvis Presley.) Sometimes when we go to town we play a game called Poor Little Me. Whoever gets the most free stuff from shopkeepers wins. Then we divvy it all up and share everything. Which works in my favor, because the darkie doesn’t win too often.
I decided on my birthday two weeks ago, when I turned sixteen, that I’d be braver about things like going to town alone. Today is the test, since the other Sevens are all busy. That’s us, the oldest ones, with Sara oldest of all. We’re the Seven. We’ve been here pretty much since we were born and grown up together like sisters.
Today, while I’ve got the money, I want to stock up on girl stuff from Pitt’s Drugs and Sundries. I don’t like to request it from the matron, because then she keeps asking—sometimes right in front of other people— Everything all right with your monthly? Better to be prepared.
So I’m in line holding the box, plus Noxema for my face, but there are two boys in front of me, nudging each other. Waiting to buy boy things, as it turns out, because they ask Mr. Pitt to get something from behind the counter and that’s what’s making them red-faced and shifty-eyed. One of the boys, I know who he is. He’s the one Sara goes with. Cute, maybe, but mean. I take a quick look at the box Mr. Pitt gives him, wondering. I don’t know exactly how those things work, but I know boys use them when they plan to touch girls all over and shoot minnows. Are those to use with Sara ? Does she do that with him?
And suddenly he’s knocking my arm. “What’re you staring at, blackie?” he says.
“Nothing.” Face hot as heck. “I’m not.”
Why do I say anything when he calls me that?
Because they teach us at the Home that it’s rude not to answer when you’re spoken to.
“We’ll have no rough talk in here,” says Mr. Pitt, giving the boys their change. “Off you go now.”
The boys leave and now it’s my turn to avoid the druggist’s eye. He slides my box and the blue Noxema jar into a brown paper bag so no one but him has to know that it’s nearly my time of the month.
Outside, though, the boys are waiting, and now it’s four of them instead of two. Sara’s boy leans against the telephone pole, smirking at me, smoking a cigarette.
“Get what you needed, blackie?” he says.
“Aw, Luke,” says one of his buddies. “Leave her alone.”
But Luke snatches the bag right out of my hand and tears it open.
“What have we here?” He yanks out the box, drops the bag, and I hear a crack as the glass Noxema jar hits the cement.
“Blackie’s got the curse!” Luke waves the box likes it’s a trophy he just ran a race for, and the other boys cheer. He tosses the box to one of his pals while I want to die nine deaths right there on the sidewalk.
Mr. Pitt opens the door and steps out, jabbing a broom into the air. “You scram, kids! I’ve told you before, no loitering on my premises.”
The boys laugh, but the game is over anyway. My box is dropped, and Luke moves in to step on it with his big shoe.
“Oops,” he says.
I wait till they’re gone to pick up the squished box and the bag with the broken glass and white cream soaking through.
Mr. Pitt shakes his head. “I’ll take that,” he says. “Straight into the bin. Come get yourself replacements, half price.”
If I skip the Noxema, I’ll have nearly enough. Mr. Pitt lets me promise the extra fourteen cents next time I come to his store.
Which turns out to be never.
LAST YEAR
The president of the United States was shot with a rifle, like a rabbit, and killed. With hundreds of people watching. Miss Webster told us the news, crying her eyes out. Then Mrs. Hazelton, also teary, gathered us Sevens in the common room and told us again, in a cracking voice. I don’t think any of us understood why it mattered so much. None of us ever met him, and we’re not even Americans except for Jumpin’ Joe, the cook. They turned on the television right then, in the middle of the day, for us to watch the news. History unfolding , said Mrs. H. It made my insides feel like Jell-O, watching grownups holding on to each other, wiping tears off their cheeks. Men, even, with ties on, weeping. We could see he was a man who had given people hope, and now that hope had been blown up with a gunshot.
Later on, Joe told me that John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior was the first president to get in trouble for suggesting that coloreds should be treated equal to anybody else. He’d asked a question in one of his speeches, a question that Joe was pretty sure no white person answered. Who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
In the Home, it doesn’t matter what color I am. I’m just Malou. Maybe I’m Blackie in the town, but that’s just rude white boys like Luke calling me names. Who knows what happens anyplace else? I’ve only been here.
THE BENEVOLENT HOME FOR NECESSITOUS GIRLS
That’s where we live. Fancy words for something very simple: a place for girls with nowhere else to be.
BEDTIME
Getting the Littles ready for bed is the Seven’s evening chore, which might sound easy, because what’s so hard about watching a kid brush her teeth? Except there are seventeen Littles, and not all of them are friendly. They make me think of chipmunks—cute and chattery until you make them mad and then boom , you’re surrounded by rabid rodents who want to bite off your fingers.
There used to be way more than seventeen, but the Home is closing. The way Mrs. Hazelton explains it, the government is shutting us down because of a new philosophy that children should be raised in families, not in institutions. Maybe they should ask the children. I’m guessing most of us would say not just any family. To me, the Seven are my sisters. Better than any family, except maybe the one that really belongs to me. And what are the chances of finding that?
Luckily, tonight is not a bath night, so we only have to get the Littles’ faces washed, their nails scrubbed and their teeth more or less rinsed.
Miss Webster, our home ec teacher, stays in the house at night, on the first floor with the smallest girls. And Joe the cook, who nearly never stops humming, is in his room off the kitchen, of course.
The routine is that after we’ve done the Littles and possibly some math or school reading, most of us land in Toni and Betty’s room. We complain about the teachers, Toni shows us dance moves, Sara moans about Luke. If Tess has sneaked out, we look through her magazines, that kind of thing.
If Miss Webster forgets about us or can’t be bothered to climb the stairs, we might play a game, like Truth or Dare? Answer a question truthfully or else accept a dare. Some of us find it harder to tell the truth than we do to perform weird or silly feats of daring. Living in a house with a lot of girls, you learn to protect yourself by not always saying what’s in your heart. It comes out often enough by accident. Especially if we skip Truth or Dare? and go straight to our favorite pastime: Who Am I?
ALL ORPHANS WONDER WHO THEIR PARENTS MIGHT BE
It’s somethi