Getting Somewhere

by Beth Neff

  AFTER GRACE CLOSES her door, the yard is almost completely dark. Jenna can hardly imagine going back into the house. She knows she couldn’t possibly sleep. She stands in the dewy grass and allows her head to loll on her neck, holds the book to her chest, and shuts her eyes. The air, when the breeze lifts, is just chilly enough to raise light goose bumps on the skin of her arms, and she breathes in deeply. In her mind, Jenna hears a tune from long, long ago, and a few words, Little black bull come down from the mountain. She sees the little tape player, which she almost hated because it was pink but couldn’t resist because of the tape she could put in all by herself and the songs she could listen to again and again until she knew all the words by heart.

  How could the woman who gave her that tape player, sang those songs with her, be the same person who ratted her out? There is nothing, nothing, nothing that will ever erase that, and Jenna knows for an absolute fact that she will be angry about it forever. She can instantly feel the terror of those cops busting through the door, see the guns drawn, feel the handcuffs snapping shut around her wrists.

  Just a runner, he’d said. Eddie. Her mom and Eddie. Why would a young guy like that be interested in her mom? It was only the second time she’d been there. Eddie said they were happy with the first run. Everything was in good shape, all the money was there, she was fast. Nobody’d be following her, wouldn’t suspect her, even if they saw her going in. It felt good to be relied on, to make a little money. She’d save it, wouldn’t tell her mom about it, and when she had enough, she’d take off, never have to see her again. It was Eddie they were after, at the house and at the bust. The PD told her about her mom’s statement, said she wanted them to catch Eddie to protect Jenna, but that was bullshit. She was just trying to protect herself, her habit, get rid of Jenna when she realized she’d made a mistake getting her back. How could she have known Eddie wasn’t just some lowlife punk dealer? Nobody is what they seem. That’s the lesson in this, the thing she has to always, always remember.

  Jenna lowers her head. The night around her seems darker than ever, but she is sure she has heard something out there, and slowly sweeps her eyes around her. She takes one step forward and blinks with surprise. “Cassie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Where did I come from?”

  “I mean, were you out in the garden or something?”

  “Yes. I . . . I was just walking.”

  Jenna can see that Cassie is even more startled than she is, wants to soften the interrogation but can’t think how, just tries to smile, and says, “Wow.”

  Cassie’s look of fright changes to confusion so Jenna says, “I mean, ‘wow,’ that’s cool.”

  “Oh.”

  Cassie looks away, toward the house, as if seeking a path for escape.

  Jenna clears her throat, hesitates. “Guess I’ll go on up to bed.”

  “Okay.”

  “See ya.”

  When Jenna looks back, Cassie is still standing where she left her.

  Jenna opens the front screen as quietly as she can, eases it closed behind her. As she crosses the front hall, she can see the light from Ellie’s room, the door open a crack, believes she can feel the heat of Ellie’s eyes as she climbs the stairs to bed.

  MONDAY, JUNE 11

  SARAH IS FINISHING UP THE LUNCH DISHES WITH DONNA in the kitchen when they send her out, saying they have something to discuss. She knows the birthdays are what Ellie and Donna plan to talk about, mostly because they are using that singsong voice that adults reserve for things like birthdays and Christmas, surprises you’re supposed to be happy they are conspiring about. Ellie gives her a little squeeze on the shoulder as Sarah dries her hands on the towel and hangs it from the stove handle, says, “We’ll be out in a minute.”

  She’s not at all sure how she feels about the birthday. They hardly ever celebrated birthdays on the street. Sarah never really thought too much about it, just let her own and the birthdays of others, if she even knew about them, pass unacknowledged. She does remember the first year though. She hadn’t known the unspoken rules yet. She had told Ty it was her birthday, probably thought he might smile or even say, “Happy Birthday,” but he hadn’t. He had barely nodded, didn’t ask her how old she was or anything. Sarah had never mentioned it again. Now it dawns on her why the idea of birthdays might not have been so popular, at least with Ty. Nobody ever knew how old he was either.

  Sarah is cutting through the front garden, headed back to the field across the creek where the others are setting out the last of the young tomato plants when she notices the patch of carrots Grace has had on her “urgent weeding” list for a week. She bends to take a closer look, pulls a few weeds just to see how it will go, and decides to stay. She’s found that she likes this kind of task, marvels at how the tedium itself is both restful and stimulating. It is also kind of a test. Sarah wants to reassure herself that the shakes are really better, that she can trust her fingers to reach in and grasp the weed she is actually aiming for, leaving untouched the tiny carrot plants, their roots showing just a tinge of orange, no thicker than stout needles. Even a week ago, she felt too clumsy for the delicate weeding, volunteered instead for the bigger stuff, hoeing around cabbage plants or pulling grass out in the strawberries where the plants are tough and won’t die if she yanks off a leaf or two.

  Sarah realizes pretty quickly that today is not a good day for this. She’s too rattled to concentrate, as if she has just woken from a bad dream. It started after breakfast when she came out of the upstairs bathroom and Lauren was standing right outside waiting for her. She hadn’t even pretended like she needed to use the bathroom herself or that she was doing anything but setting a trap for Sarah.

  Lauren had just started right in, saying, “You know, this is the perfect opportunity.”

  Sarah had to say something so she asked, “The perfect opportunity for what?”

  “To show them we’re a united force, that we’re not going to cooperate.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Our birthdays, you ninny. They’re going to try to plan something for our birthdays.”

  “Oh. How do you know?”

  Lauren frowned, shook her head a little, apparently wondering how Sarah could be so clueless.

  “I know they’re thinking that if they do something nice for us, that we’ll have to, you know, like, be nice in return. They’ll expect to get even more out of us, break our backs to run their stupid farm. We can’t get out right now to tell anybody who these people really are, how sick this whole program is, but we can at least undermine it from the inside. You know, like, just refuse. It won’t work if just one person does it. If they try to throw some kind of idiotic birthday party, we just refuse to participate. We walk out or say, ‘No thank you,’ when they try to give us our gifts. We can’t let them think we want anything from them.”

  Sarah had just stared at Lauren, finally said, “I don’t think they’re planning to give us any gifts.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  Sarah had shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “Didn’t you hear all that stuff about family, how they’re trying to make us like them? If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that you like it here, that you actually want to be one of them, down on your knees all day in the dirt growing food for people we don’t even know. I just can’t believe that you, of all people, a street rat, would want to be someone’s slave.”

  “Lauren . . .” But Sarah couldn’t come up with a response. She knew there were probably five thousand arguments against everything Lauren was saying, but her words made Sarah feel like she was swimming in ice cold water with all her clothes on, her pockets filled with rocks. Her mouth was open but instead of her own voice coming out, it just made her feel even more like she was drowning. Lauren stood there looking at
her like she was totally disgusting and, for just that moment, Sarah agreed with her.

  But Lauren wasn’t done. “You guys make me sick. All of you. You’re just going to lie down and take it. What makes these perverts think they can tell us what to do? We shouldn’t have to be around them at all and we certainly don’t deserve to be punished like this. It’s the four of us against them. They would be up shit creek if we stuck together, if we let them know we weren’t going to go along with it.”

  Sarah really couldn’t dispute that. The women would be in trouble if they all just refused to work. But somehow, Sarah had known, even with Lauren huffing and puffing right in her face, that Lauren was completely missing the point, and Sarah was still just curious enough to want to know what the point was. The women themselves had done nothing to hurt her, and though she might prefer to be somewhere else, she was starting to lose any clarity she may have had about where that might be.

  Finally, Lauren had shaken her head and breathed a huge sigh of disappointment, just like Sarah’s mother used to do, and turned away. It looked like she was going to head down the hall to her room, but just when Sarah thought she was safe, Lauren glanced back haughtily over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes.

  “You know,” she hissed, “I don’t actually care what you do. I can take them down by myself and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. But just don’t come to me begging when it all gets too much for you.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Come begging to you for what?”

  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know,” Lauren jeered, her tone both teasing and patronizing.

  They’d stood in the hallway, neither speaking, eyes sparking, waiting to see who would break the standoff first. Finally, Lauren spoke casually, as if the conversation were just beginning.

  “Well, let’s just say that someone around here just might have a sweet, innocent little Advil bottle and somewhere near the bottom of that bottle, there might just be something else that isn’t Advil, that maybe doesn’t have the kick addicts like you are used to but might be better than nothing.”

  “Like what?”

  Lauren started to laugh knowingly.

  “Aha. Got your interest now. Well, let’s just continue to speculate, then, that maybe someone has a friend whose little brother is ADHD and whose mother wouldn’t notice a bit of pilfering by those of us who appreciate a little appetite suppression once in a while or a bit of increased energy for certain kinds of activities. Got the picture now?” And Lauren had swept away like the princess at a ball, leaving Sarah standing in the hallway, feeling like she’d already done something wrong just by listening.

  Sarah has to stop working for a minute to catch her breath. Lauren’s words have smudged her perception of herself as a freethinker and a subversive with the far more uncomfortable picture of herself as a pathetic drug addict. If there is something here, at this farm, among these women that she needs, or even wants, will that make all her time on the street pointless and phony, her friendships there meaningless? Is Lauren just a spoiled rich girl who hates getting her hands dirty, not to mention a bigot and a thief, or is Sarah the one with dirty hands if she cooperates?

  She won’t tell anyone. Partly because she’s way too embarrassed for anyone to know that Lauren might consider her a potential collaborator, and partly because she feels polluted and complicit even when she’s not. Besides, Ellie already realizes that Lauren is unhappy. Sarah’s seen them talking and knows that Ellie offered for Lauren to talk to her caseworker again, even though it’s only been a week since all the caseworkers were here.

  Sarah can kind of see why Lauren might not want to talk again to Tracy Hughes, who is also Sarah’s caseworker; Tracy Hughes is not the kind of person who is likely to be sympathetic to Lauren’s attitude. Sarah was originally kind of afraid of her. She is enormous, for one thing, over six feet tall though not really that fat, and Sarah imagines that she’s been dealing with crafty teenagers for so many years that nothing can fool her.

  Sarah doesn’t know what Lauren told Tracy Hughes when she was here. She just knows that they sat in the office for quite a while and that, when Lauren came out, she slammed the office door shut behind her and thundered up the stairs to her room, slamming that door as well. After that, Ellie had gone into the office, and Sarah didn’t hear Tracy Hughes’s car leave until she was setting the table for supper. Lauren didn’t talk for the rest of the evening and has seemed even madder ever since.

  Still, Sarah is starting to feel a little better. She looks back to admire the tiny area that is now free of weeds, glances up to see Donna and Ellie coming out of the house and heading for the garden. They are talking animatedly and laughing, and Sarah surprises herself with the thought that Ellie looks happier, more relaxed, when she’s not with Grace. As they come closer, the women stop for a moment in the path and then Ellie keeps going, waves at Sarah, who waves back, and Donna begins walking in her direction.

  “Is it okay if I help you or would you rather be alone?”

  “No. I mean yes. Please help. I don’t think I’m doing a very good job. I’m really bad at this.”

  Donna glances at the area Sarah has been weeding then kneels a few feet down from Sarah and says, “It looks great to me. If you’re worried about pulling out a few carrots, that’s actually a good thing. They need to be thinned so there’s room for each one to grow. We always seed these too thick anyway because the germination is unreliable.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know what germination is, right?”

  “Um, not exactly. Like sprouting?”

  “Yep. It’s just a fancy way for saying that. At the center of each seed is a little pocket of growth energy called the germ. When it’s stimulated, usually by temperature and moisture, it’s called germination.”

  “Cool. Do humans have a germ?” Sarah giggles, thinking of the other meaning, like disease.

  Donna smiles. “Not literally anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, people say you have the germ of potential, which would be kind of the same, like your drive to grow either physically or to become, I don’t know, maybe a better person or something.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “So, are you excited about turning seventeen?”

  Sarah knew this was coming, and yet she is disappointed that the conversation has turned so quickly. “I guess I don’t think it will be that different.”

  “Maybe not at first. I bet by the end of seventeen, things will be a lot different.”

  “Maybe.” Sarah can tell that her voice doesn’t sound convinced. She doesn’t want to hurt Donna’s feelings, but she’d rather not talk about this.

  As if Donna can hear her thoughts, she says, “Does it bother you that we’re talking about it? Would you rather we didn’t do anything to celebrate?”

  Sarah’s not sure what she wants to happen. Even before the conversation with Lauren, she was struggling with this whole birthday idea, with what feels like a violation of loyalty to her former life, the kids that made up her family. She’s not sure why she should get to celebrate a birthday when they don’t. Now, on top of that, she’s afraid of what Lauren might do, wonders if Lauren can make it look like Sarah is part of disrupting whatever the women are planning. Part of her wants to tell Donna that it might be better to just ignore her birthday and yet, something stops her, a curiosity about how it might feel to celebrate . . . her.

  Sarah is glad that Donna isn’t looking right at her. It seems to her that Donna’s hands are magically waving over the carrots, instantly transforming the patch from a mass of green to neat, distinct little rows. At this point, she can’t quite remember the original question, so she asks, “Do you like birthdays?”

  Donna glances over at Sarah and then back to her work. “I suppose I have mixed feelings about them
.”

  “How so?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that there’s so much tied up in it. Like you have these high expectations that are inevitably disappointed. And birthdays sometimes end up being a measure of so many things it would be better if we didn’t measure at all.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like if you’ve accomplished your goals by a certain age or if you look old for your age or act too young for your age or all those millions of ways we figure out how to judge ourselves. It feels like that part of it has been going on forever for me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Donna chuckles. “Okay, this is kind of a story. Is that okay?”

  Sarah nods, realizes Donna’s not looking at her. “Sure. Yeah. That’s great.”

  “Okay. Well. When I turned six years old, I had this birthday party. Everybody in my grade had been having these elaborate birthday parties, and so I had to have one, too. . . .”

  Sarah is listening, trying to concentrate, but Donna’s voice quickly becomes a receding hum, vaguely echoing on the periphery of her mind. Something about balloons and Barbie doll wigs, pink cake frosting that Sarah suddenly envisions splattered on a wall, Lauren’s angry face, Ellie’s shoulders slumped in shock and disappointment. Sarah shakes her head hard to dislodge the image, tries to listen to Donna’s story, but her mind is like a cracked plate, too damaged to hold the contents.

  She is remembering, instead, a birthday of her own, nothing about a party or gifts or any guests but something going wrong, she’s not sure what, and Lauren’s defiant face evolves into that of her mother’s, misshapen with rage, blaming Sarah for something with her arms flying wildly as if to demonstrate all that Sarah has destroyed. Sarah is straining to remember what she might have done, finds the memory is all confused with other scenes, other times when she has been sure everything is her fault but doesn’t know what she’s done.

  But the worst times of all, the ones she tries to forget, are those when she knows exactly what she’s done. He told her it was her fault—that he couldn’t resist, and didn’t she like the special attention? Wasn’t she glad he gave it to her and not her mother? Surely she doesn’t want to hurt her mother, ruin it all by telling. Surely it’s best if the secret is kept between them, private, something just the two of them can share. He’d given her something, too, she remembers it now, not at first but later when she began to resist. She did resist. She clings to that, believes in it with religious fervor. Just one little pill. Okay, maybe two. What is it Lauren has? Sounds like Adderall. Study drugs, amps for students who want to stay awake, for girls who want to eat less. She’s got to forget about it. Lauren is just leading her on, looking for a flunky to do her dirty work. Well, she’ll have to find somebody else. Sarah’s tough, no matter what Lauren says. She ran away, didn’t she? She doesn’t stand for shit from anybody. Still, what would it hurt . . . ?