“And if I live to be two thousand years old, I’ll never understand girls.”
“There’s a lot you wouldn’t understand in two thousand years.”
“Dad!” cried Jacob.
But the father didn’t hear because he was burrowing into another pile of laundry in search of a sweater he could actually wear.
“Mom, Abigail’s being mean to me again!”
But the mother didn’t hear because this morning she was in the bathroom looking in the mirror, trying to figure out how much she had aged in the last week.
“Listen, remember those giant jars the forty thieves hid in?” asked Abigail.
“They all got killed,” said Jacob.
“That wouldn’t happen to us. We live in Toronto and we don’t even hang out with criminals,” Abigail assured her brothers.
“The criminals could keep it secret,” said Ernest.
“Keep what secret?” asked Abigail.
“That they are criminals,” said Ernest.
“Forget the criminals. We’re talking about laundry,” said Abigail.
“Besides which, we can hardly even cross the street without Mommy and Daddy, so I don’t know where we’d meet people dangerous enough or diabolical enough to do us in like the forty thieves,” rationalized Jacob.
“As to the issue at hand,” Abigail began, “we could put laundry instead of treasure in some giant jars. Not only would things be a little better organized, but we’d have a place to hide. Children with closets have places to hide. I’ve done it at other people’s houses and it’s really fun.”
“I want to hide, I really want to hide,” said Ernest, as he jumped up and down on a pile of laundry not containing his father.
“I don’t know where we’re going to get the jars. As far as I know, there are no magic caves around here,” complained Jacob.
“High Park is sure to have some magic caves,” suggested Ernest.
“I’ve never seen them,” said Jacob.
“If we can’t get jars, then we need giant somethingorothers,” insisted Abigail.
“Bachas,” their father gasped, as he surfaced from his dive, a navy blue extra large sweater clutched in one hand.
“Huh?” the children said in unison.
“Baskets. I knew I’d come up with a solution. We’ll go down to Spadina on Saturday and buy as many baskets as we can fit in the car. The Lawrence family will not be defeated by laundry. We will have order in our lives!”
The children were late for school that day, but they had hope in their hearts: their lives were going to change somehow.
The following Saturday, the family drove down to Spadina Avenue to buy baskets. The parents were a little dazed as to where to begin; the mother (who did all the driving) had refused to go into a parkade and had driven up and down the streets of Kensington Market for forty minutes looking for a parking spot. Jacob finally found one tucked between crates of pigeons on one end and dried cod on the other. The mother miraculously managed to parallel park without flattening anything or anybody.
“Now stay together! I don’t want to lose anybody,” ordered their father as they all piled out of the car. “Ernest, stay with me!”
But Ernest was nowhere to be seen.
“Ernest? Ernest!” and then finally, “ERNEST!” screamed their mother, who had long ago lost any self-consciousness about yelling in public.
It seemed as if every creature within a six-block radius turned to stare at the family, and Saturday morning at Kensington Market included a lot of creatures: humans (of course) and dogs and cats and chickens and every other kind of fowl and rabbits and rodents and seafood with great buggy eyes and even a few monkeys. Abigail and Jacob had the feeling that some of the fruits and vegetables were also looking at the family curiously after their mother yelled for Ernest.
As it turned out, Ernest had simply spotted a monkey and followed it down a dark alley. He knew, absolutely, this was something he shouldn’t do, but he couldn’t help himself. The monkey chattered at him, and as Ernest listened, it seemed as if the monkey was speaking a language Ernest could understand. Ernest’s concentration was abruptly fractured by his mother’s hullabaloo, and he followed its echo back to his family.
“Ernest, sweetie!” cried his mother as she scooped him up in her arms.
“Don’t you ever . . .” began his father.
After the reprimand, Ernest told his family that he’d found a shop selling baskets—they just had to follow the monkey. Sure enough, when they looked over to where Ernest pointed, a tiny grey and black monkey with a long tail (the kind of monkey organ grinders used to use) stood waiting for them. Ernest and the monkey led the way and the parents followed. Abigail and Jacob brought up the rear.
“Do you ever think sometimes they’re not quite sure what they’re doing?” asked Abigail.
“You mean Mommy and Daddy?” asked Jacob.
“Yeah,” said Abigail.
“Yeah, I do,” said Jacob.
The two were quiet for a moment.
“Maybe it’s just being a grown-up,” Jacob said, wanting to believe the best.
“No. It’s them,” asserted Abigail with conviction. “They seem so nervous and frightened all the time.”
“Daddy’s not that nervous,” said Jacob.
“He’s nervous about us,” said Abigail. “They both are. They’re scared that something’s going to happen. I mean, don’t you think it’s peculiar that kids always want something to happen, and parents are scared that something actually will?”
And there the conversation ended because the family found themselves in an unnaturally darkened alley in front of a door hung with layers of beaded curtains.
“This certainly is exotic,” said the mother.
“I’m not even sure it’s a store,” said the father.
“It is,” said Ernest as he and the monkey separated the lines of beads and passed through. The other members of the family simply followed.
The interior was completely dark except for Christmas lights draped in waves across the ceiling. It took a few minutes for everyone to accustom themselves to the room. As their eyes travelled from the ceiling down, the family saw richly embroidered kimonos and shawls hung along the walls, shelves crowded with buddhas in all sizes and colours, teapots and woks and mysterious cooking utensils all jammed together in a corner and baskets of every size and shape and colour ajumble in one section of the room.
Only after they had a clear sense of the merchandise did they spot the shopkeeper, a plump little old woman with hair the colour of strawberries and very blue eyelids. Later the children noticed that her eyes were green, but then the red hair and blue makeup were so bright, even in the semi-darkness, that everyone was shocked they hadn’t seen the woman right away.
“You met my monkey,” said the woman in a smoky, old-fashioned movie star kind of voice.
“Yes, we need some laundry baskets,” explained the mother.
“I have just the thing,” the woman said and moved over to the baskets to help the mother and