by Beth Neff
Okay, so, yeah. This is a little glitch in her plans. But she’s not going to stay. Absolutely no way. She’ll just tell them she’s not happy, that it isn’t working out for her. The room where they put her is ridiculous. Tiny. No television, no phone. Geez, they even had those at detention. Well, not in the rooms, but still. She can tell already that this Ellie is a pushover. Hell, if she has to, she’ll just walk out. Nothing to stop her. Find a phone, call Jason. It will be fine. It always is.
LAUREN’S NOT ALONE in pushing her food around. Jenna notices that the only one eating with any enthusiasm is Grace, who has laid the book she was reading on her lap, the corner of a paper napkin peeking out of the top as a bookmark.
Grace seems to be in a hurry to finish, doesn’t look around the table or meet anyone else’s eyes. Jenna feels both miffed and intrigued, her highly developed radar system for once coming up a bit scrambled. She is picturing the scene at the bus, trying to square that with what is happening now. Is Grace even a part of this thing, this program? They seemed pissed that she wasn’t right there to greet the bus. Ellie calls herself the “director” and yet Grace has some aura, something Jenna can’t put her finger on, that actually makes her seem like the one in charge.
Ellie and Donna can simply be placed into the category of do-gooders, a type with which Jenna is quite familiar and for which she has no patience, and that includes therapists, nosy teachers, and the always-naive foster parents. Grace, on the other hand, will require further attention. Jenna’s instinct is to be wary, but she suspects that the woman is ignoring them because she would just rather not have them here at all. Jenna has plenty of experience with that as well.
Jenna is jolted from her thoughts when she hears her name from the other end of the table. Ellie is smiling at her, her eyebrows raised with a hopeful though somewhat surprised look on her face, as if she is just as startled as Jenna by the sound of her own voice.
“I was just asking how you like your room,” Ellie says.
Jenna frowns, shrugs. What difference does it make?
“Was that your room, Grace? Isn’t the one Jenna’s in where you slept as a child?”
Jenna can almost feel Grace stiffen beside her. When she steals a glance, Grace’s lips are struggling toward a strained smile but her eyes are hard. She stares at Ellie for a second or two and then turns to Jenna. “Are you in the one closest to the bathroom? First on the right?”
Jenna nods.
Grace looks back to Ellie. “Yep. That’s the one.”
For some reason, Ellie appears inordinately relieved, then seems to realize that she still has everyone’s attention and clears her voice as if preparing to address an important gathering. “You know,” Ellie says, sounding almost apologetic, “this is a hard time.”
Jenna feels like she can hear the tiny breaths taken around the table, notices she is holding her own.
Ellie continues. “None of us knows each other yet, we don’t have any idea what to expect, especially you guys.” She glances around the table.
“It might be pretty uncomfortable for awhile. We value you as guests in our home and everything that suggests in the way of mutual sharing and respect. This is our story—the food we eat, the care we take in growing it and preparing it, and the sharing of it—and we want to welcome you to tell your stories, to help us understand who you really are.”
She pauses, looks down at the fork resting on a small pile of white rice on her plate.
“Maybe the formality of this meal doesn’t seem like it helps us relax, but the reasons we choose to do it this way say a lot about what we’re hoping you might get out of being here.”
Jenna has to admit that she’s never heard this one before. Everybody is always trying to get her to spill her guts, and maybe this is just another way, a sneakier way, of making that happen. She is a little curious in spite of herself. She actually wants to know the reason why everything is so formal, so nice, how they decided to use china dishes and put ice in the water glasses and serve what she imagines is gourmet food when what she expects, what she is used to, is having to microwave hotdogs for herself and the younger kids, steal cookies from the foster’s private stash when she’s hungry, feeling like any bite she puts in her mouth is held against her. But Ellie is still talking, saying something more about stories, going on and on.
Jenna is watching her now out of the corner of her eye. She needs to see what Ellie’s face looks like when she says these words. Jenna hears something about home and family, some stuff about how important each girl is and how they each have something to contribute, how valuable they are as people even if society has already labeled them, how it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s completely overwhelming, and to Jenna, Ellie’s voice sounds almost desperate as if she has these elaborate plans, these big ideas, yet secretly knows that none of this is actually going to work.
And then her mind is wandering back to the bus ride, groping for the exact moment when she last held her book—a worn, tattered copy of The Bean Trees, stolen from the paltry cookbook shelf of a family who probably thought the book was about coffee or chocolate. She retrieves the motions and replays them in her mind—carefully dog-earing the page, pressing the curling cover flat, slipping the book between her clothes and the zippered edge of her backpack. She imagines the book now, nestled under her clothes in the drawer, hidden, as if to ensure that when she travels to the places the book takes her, she can’t be followed. The thought relaxes her a bit.
Once again, Jenna is startled from her thoughts, this time by sudden silence. She looks up to see Ellie, her mouth still open, squinting down the length of the table. Grace is staring right back at her and on her face is an expression of mixed boredom, maybe even disdain. Jenna isn’t sure if Ellie has said something she missed or if Grace is just letting her know that she has gone on way too long, but immediately Ellie’s face begins to flush, a reddening heat that starts at the base of her throat and turns her ears crimson.
“I-i-it’s late,” she finally stutters. “I know you must all be very tired after your long day. I’m thinking . . . maybe . . . we should just save everything else for tomorrow, start fresh.” Ellie is nodding, seeking some acknowledgement from the stony faces before her but no one stirs or comments. “I think . . . um . . . after we’re all done here, I’ll go sit in the living room”—she motions behind her—“and if anyone wants to talk yet tonight, you are welcome to come and see me?” There is still no response.
“Okay.” Ellie takes a deep breath. “We’ll wake you up about eight for breakfast—no bells or whistles or alarms here.” She laughs a little, looks back down at her lap. “I guess we’ll see you all then, unless . . .”
Her palms are still open to the room, though the backs of her hands are now resting on the table, as if whatever she expected to fill them has failed to arrive.
“Okay. If you would carry your plates into the kitchen when you’re done, we’ll take care of dishwashing duty for tonight.”
As if on cue, chairs are pushed back, various attempts at balance are achieved, glasses and napkins clutched carefully, bony hips scraping chairs back into place along the table. The room is full and then they are gone. They are a group and then they’re not.
THE STAIRS ARE very steep and would creak like crazy if anyone tried to sneak out. The tree outside Sarah’s window is also too far away to reach and probably too big to shimmy down anyway. She knows there is a front door and a back door to the house but hasn’t had time or energy to really scope everything out. She has no reason to yet, though what little she has seen of the house and grounds is already mapped out in her head, like the light blue lines of an architectural drawing.
But Sarah is looking forward to a bed, a real bed in a room without other bodies in it, people going in and out, snoring, crying out in their sleep. Not like at the detention center and not like Tyson’s place where she never
knew when she would be woken up, who would be there ready to climb into the bed with her. She can’t believe it’s only a little after nine, barely dark. She would have been waking up about now, taking her first hits of the night, just thinking about heading out to find Saucy and them. It’s warm enough now maybe they would have been crashing in the park, hitting that Dumpster behind the Dunkin’ Donuts on 58th before heading up to Conroy.
Sarah laughs to herself that it’s easier to get off the junk than it is to miss sugar this much. She has always loved sugar, summons her early childhood with images of Christmas candy, marshmallows in her hot chocolate, Halloween, and those little Valentine candy hearts—BE MINE and LOVE YOU. She can almost feel the chalky sweetness between her back teeth, like a craving, and realizes with a jolt that her reverie is probably just a symptom of withdrawal. Or maybe hunger. But when the food was right in front of her, she couldn’t even eat it.
They never had enough food but always plenty of junk. Tyson kept her supplied and she knows she’s been lucky that way. He likes to keep her primed, he says, maintain a little “li-bi-do” for the work. Stupid. An excuse. She doesn’t have to want it to do it, and he knows that as well as anyone. In fact, he’d be pissed as hell if he thought she had something for another guy. But he likes to pretend that she has some desire for him, that she doesn’t do it just because she has to. Weird how a guy like Tyson who acts so tough, so street, can pretend a girl cares about him, has to believe it to keep feeling like the world is turning just for him. Maybe she does love him, just a little. Maybe him wanting her to is enough, makes it real. Sarah herself isn’t all that attached to reality anyway. It’s no revolution on the street. It’s all just a made-up world—there, here, probably everywhere.
The bed is real though. She presses her body down, tries to feel her weight sinking in, as if wanting to be absorbed. She imagines dirty imprints on the sheets from the bottom of her feet and stretches her legs out so that just her heels are resting on the mattress. It was just last night that she took a shower at the detention center, she realizes. She only feels dirty because that’s what it feels like to be her in a place like this.
She can hear little sounds on the other side of the walls, house sounds, or maybe the other girls moving around, getting into their own beds. Strange to feel lonely, wonder what is going on in the other rooms, if that Jenna ever smiles, if Cassie ever talks, how Lauren is going to feel when her makeup runs out and the roots of her natural hair color start to show. Now, she’s like an antenna or one of those dishes, rotating to pick up all the signals all across the universe, messages from distant planets. She’d probably just pick up commercials, advertisements for Coke or Nike or a Ford Expedition that she could never buy. That would be just her luck; satellite junk food.
Sarah starts to giggle and snuggles down deeper in the bed, pulls the blanket high under her chin. Her internal clock is all messed up. Now she’s all jittery when she was ready to relax just a minute ago. It’s too dark. She thinks about getting up to turn the light back on. She opens her eyes wide to help them get used to the dark faster. She used to do that to Shannon, scare the shit out of her by pretending to stare off into space, acting like she could see shit there that nobody else could see. The thought of Shannon makes her shake harder.
He was looking at both of them but picked Shannon. How many times has she gone over that scene in her head? That girl just never had the sense to scoot if things got too rough. That’s what everybody said, and Sarah wants to believe it, has to believe it had to be Shannon and couldn’t have been anyone else. Sarah can’t always remember the face, and yet for some reason, right now she can see her perfectly, but only after, not before. She can see exactly how her skull looked, bashed in on one side, the blood. Sarah had never seen her naked before, didn’t realize how tiny she was under her layers of clothes. Shannon was always cold, shivered a lot even in the summer, any little breeze or the shadow of the dark side of the street.
Sarah doesn’t know why she’s thinking about Shannon, is mad at herself because of it. Shannon is the side of things she doesn’t look at. It made her reckless, after, on the street at all hours by herself, desperate to end the thought of it however she could. Moving, moving to protect the secret place in her mind that she’d always pretended wasn’t there, a thought stash that made her see a kitchen table with a bright light above it, hear the humming of the refrigerator, the running of water in the sink, the television talking to nobody in another room. She had to get away, got away, and now she’s away but she doesn’t know where away is.
She sees Ty now with Shannon, that day the two of them came up the stairs with his arm draped over her shoulder, a big grin on his face, saying, “Look what I found huddled by the dryer vents over on Cleveland,” like a little kid with a new kitten. Shannon, with her eyes all big and watery, shimmering out from under her hood, her ridiculous bright red coat, shivering. When Saucy first saw Shannon, she shook her head, clucked her tongue like an old lady. “Ty always likes ’em small,” she said. “The younger the better.” Sarah told the people at the Center she didn’t have a pimp, that they just pimped each other, scored whatever and whenever they could. She wasn’t sure when she said it if it was true or not. She thought it was wise or loyal or necessary to protect him. She’d never thought about Ty as a pimp. He just seemed like one of them, maybe a little older, more experienced. Thinking about Ty that way made her scared, made her wonder if there were other things about him, about all of it, that weren’t how they appeared.
But she’s not going to worry about that. She’s got to stay sharp. Ty will be mad she got caught, but he’ll forgive her when he knows for sure she didn’t say anything, didn’t give anybody else away. She’s no snitch. It’s okay if, just for now, she lets them feed her, give her a warm bed. And it does feel good, so good. Why not? It’s just for now. . . .
MONDAY, MAY 14
CASSIE DOESN’T KNOW HOW IT HAS HAPPENED, BUT THE other girls are all on the opposite side of the row and she is standing on this side with the adults. There is something that attracts them to each other, something she doesn’t have. They seem to even be able to communicate without talking, looks and gestures making a secret language that Cassie doesn’t know. All day, she has felt them drawing together, moving like a school of fish, pulling away from her. She wants to throw a net around them and rein them in before they get away.
Cassie is wondering how someone, a girl, goes about making friends with other girls. Not that she should expect that. She has tried to punch the longing away like a helium-filled balloon, but it just keeps bouncing back. She is sure she is doing something terribly wrong, can’t figure out how she’ll determine what it is. Cassie can hardly stand to look at herself now, her own awful clothes, the prints garish, the styles square and baggy. It didn’t matter to her before that she was wearing clothes Gram wore thirty or more years ago or pants and blouses that Gordon picked out for her at Discount World without knowing her size or anything about what she might like. She flinches with humiliation to think how thrilled she had been when he brought them to her, how much she loved the colors, how childish her response to their newness, and how ridiculous they look in comparison to what she has now seen other girls her age wearing. But there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, she can do about it now.
She’d told Lauren that she liked her sweater. It had taken her all morning to get the courage to speak and, when she did, her voice came out thin and croaking. Lauren had raised her eyebrows, hadn’t answered for a second too long, finally said, “Oh yeah?” Cassie had nodded. Then Lauren told her she’d stolen it. “Two hundred and sixty bucks, the tag said.” Lauren was smiling like it was something Cassie would know all about, complicit with that sort of thing. Lauren had leaned close, acting like she was sharing a secret, said, “I just buy something else and then take a whole bunch of clothes into the dressing room and stuff whatever I want in my store bag. Easy. You have to avoid the places with t
hose screaming tags though, know what I mean?”
Cassie had no idea, thought the word “tags” might be some kind of slang for store police or for someone who tells on you if they see you stealing. Cassie doesn’t understand about the $260, either. Gram’s whole Social Security check for the month was $538. How would anyone eat and pay rent and keep the electricity on if they spent nearly half their money on just one sweater?
Grace is talking about the soil now, and Cassie tries to listen. A marsh, Grace is saying, thousands of years ago, and Cassie closes her eyes, imagines it. She has already noticed the tiny spiraled shells scattered over the ground, used her toes to dislodge a few, furtively placed them in her pocket. She can feel them in there now, mostly white or grayish but a couple with streaks or spots of pink and brown. She sees herself walking down the hall from her room to the bathroom, rinsing the shells under a stream of water, then shivers with the thought that someone could catch her, ask her what she is doing, and she wouldn’t know what to say.
She can’t decide which is worse, being up there, alone in that room, or out here, alone in the group. She likes the garden, the rows of growing things, the colors and textures, greens and lighter greens and burgundies in constrast with the black, black soil. She has no trouble remembering everything Grace has shown them. Absorbing information is something she does well. In fact, she now realizes, it’s the only thing she does at all, her brain crammed with facts and statistics, data and information all gleaned from the odd assortment of reading material found in Gram’s house and the books she begged Gordon to bring her from the library. That was her whole world, and now she suspects that none of it means anything. It’s like realizing that the language you’ve learned is the wrong one for the country you’re visiting, that not only will no one understand you but they will immediately recognize you as foreign, see right away that you are nothing at all but a girl dressed in someone else’s clothes.
