The toddler stands barefoot in his nappy on the warm tarmac. Or in his diaper on warm asphalt, if I were to use the North Americanisms my husband does from growing up in this tumbleweed town in the Canadian Badlands. Over a decade in England now means words like bloke, cuppa, and aggro have osmosed into his daily vernacular, but his lack of chatter and his uncomplicatedness show where he’s really from. We are visiting his family, who’ve all stayed in Vauxhall, Alberta, and I’m nipping to the Co-op alone when I spot the toddler in the middle of the crossroads, finger in his mouth, watching a car turn off Highway 36, paused at a stop sign several blocks (not roads) away.
If I was back on British soil, I’d have bolted to the child, rushing him to the pavement, not only because of denser traffic, but because if I’d been mistaken and shouldn’t have picked up a stranger’s child, I would have the confidence to explain myself. Vauxhall, Alberta is home to Plattdeutsch-speaking Mennonites, farmers with digits lost to machinery, and mothers in snapback caps who dig trucks out of snowdrifts for the school run, teenagers in plaid shirts who gawp at my tea dresses, unsupervised children who throw rocks from their front porches, and baseball spectators who spit sunflower seed shells onto the bleachers so that they crunch when I take my seat.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because none of those people are here right now by the crossroads, just a man further up the street, walking with a cane from his truck into the Co-op, swaying with the effort and taking no notice of us.
The car is getting closer, so I pick up the toddler and go to the sidewalk (not a pavement). I keep my back to the driver, so they don’t see the face of the woman who plucked a child from the road. There are no twitching blinds from the surrounding houses, or anyone running up the street calling desperately for their baby. The little boy takes his finger out of his mouth and places his hand on my cradling arm, his spit in a string.
‘Where did you come from?’ I know he can’t speak yet. He leans down the street in the direction of the highway and houses, likely because he wants the stranger to put him down, rather than understanding my question. If I was back home, I’d call 999 on my mobile. There’d be witnesses, dashcam footage, CCTV from home security of me finding the stray child, but here, I’m uncertain how convincing my story of I just found him would be, especially as an out-of-towner. In this town’s population of twelve-hundred, people keep themselves to themselves, inconvenienced when the Canada Day Show n’ Shine brings a crowd that clogs up the single-row parking lot outside the only bar for an evening.
‘Let’s find where you belong.’ As I carry him down the street, I investigate the windows of the houses we pass beyond yards of crispy grass with hardworking sprinklers, chintzy curtains drawn again the midday heat. Despite my desperation, holding the little boy’s fair body, his soft hair tickling my cheek, is like slipping into a soothing bath while listening to a familiar song. His breath is raspy, and he smells a little cheesy. I wonder if I’m taking him back to a good home.
About twelve houses down, a side gate in a fence is open to a yard (garden). On the lawn is a plastic slide and one end of a wooden board resting on bricks for a ramp. The toddler wriggles so much that I put him down, and he totters to the slide. He climbs up the slope instead of using the steps, the bare skin of his tummy screeching as he slips down. He repeats this process over and over.
At a window of the house, a woman watches me, haube headscarve knotted on, dishtowel in her hand. She’s wearing large, owl-like spectacles. My mother-in-law used to be like her, staying home and making clothes for her six children before she moved here from rural Cuauhtémoc in Mexico, and discovering Target and paid overtime. Over the past fortnight, I’ve seen the local Mennonites going into the specialist store opposite the Co-op. My husband took me in there to buy foods from his childhood; Gansito bars, de la Rosa peanut marzipan, and packets of powder for creamy gravies. It’s set up in someone’s converted living room. There’s floral wallpaper, freestanding shelves, and the shopkeeper sits in a rocking chair with a cash tin and notepad.
I wait for the woman in the window to wave to me and dash out. You’ve returned my offspring. Thank you! Or would she talk in Plattdeutsch? Even if I didn’t understand, I’d sense her gratitude from hugs, looks of relief, and being pulled inside for homemade lemonade.
Tyres shriek behind me. A boy in a cowboy hat has pulled up on a push bike. He can’t be more than twelve. He looks beyond me into the yard at the toddler.
‘This yours?’ I point my thumb at the little ‘un.
Bike boy nods. Then he shakes his head at the toddler, who’s stopped sliding to look at the boy, presumably his older brother.
I look up at the woman in the window, unmoving, still clinging to her dishtowel. We stare like the other is in a zoo behind glass. Then the woman turns away from the window like I did from the road, and I understand why she isn’t coming out. The boy wheels his bike into the yard and closes the gate, and I carry on to the Co-op.
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