News

Jan's youngest son offers his own

account of life in The Hovel:

I am lying in bed at 10 a.m. on a school day. My throat hurts. Every time I swallow, it feels like I am ingesting rocks. I am skipping a day of school because I am sick. I go into the kitchen and see a note that my dad left me when he dropped in: "Phone me when you get up." He's also left me medicine on the counter.

I go to call him and then I realize that there is no phone. I'm not living in my real home, and it's all because of this project that my mom is doing.

One day, she asked abruptly if I wanted to go live in a basement apartment in Scarborough, on minimum wage, while she works as a maid and tries to support our family, in which my father had supposedly walked out on us.I thought it might be interesting. My mom is always trying to get me into these types of projects, and, as a journalist, she is very nosy and sometimes she even quotes me without my consent or even my knowing. Sometimes, I have to ask her if it's off the record or not.

I packed a foam soccer ball and mini-hockey sticks to amuse myself. I also brought three books, Moi Felix 10 ans sans papier, from the school library, Operation Yao Ming, a book on basketball in Communist China, and Eldest, a novel by Chris Paolini.

I expected our new home to be ratty: When I moved in, it was slightly better than I had imagined. It had linoleum floors in the kitchen and a small stove. There were shelves, but no drawers for cutlery. The washroom was tiny and could only fit one person. The dinner table was very small. Amazingly, the electric stove was hotter than at my real house, the Internet was faster, and unlike my life in Lawrence Park, I had a bed. My mom, you see, had given away my old bed to a refugee family from Iraq a year ago, and since then I've had to sleep on pillows in my room.

In the morning, she would get up before my brother and I did, and when she got home I would have to wash rags for her new “job” and make dinner for her because she was so tired. She was so exhausted I also had to help with chores such as opening jars and containers, lifting vacuums and her bucket of cleaning sprays. My family was very tired — especially since we were all getting up earlier than we normally did, because now I had to commute to school from Scarborough.

All in all, it's great to be home. And the best news is, my mom finally bought me a bed.