by Beth Neff
Sarah is thinking what it might feel like to be high again, to maybe even get rid of the horrible flashbacks, when she realizes Donna is addressing her. “Sarah?”
Sarah is momentarily panicked. She has no idea what Donna was saying. “Oh. I guess I was just thinking of you as a little girl . . . and everything.”
Donna nods, smiles. “Yeah. Times have changed I guess, huh? Still, there are good things, too.”
Again, Sarah has no idea what she’s talking about but smiles and nods encouragingly, assuming Donna will just go on, which she does.
“I mean, everybody likes a party. I just hate that we can’t really do that for you guys. You know, throw you a real party, invite friends or give gifts. It just kind of sucks.”
Sarah wonders if she’s missed something or if this is a new topic, discovers that she suddenly wants to know what Donna has been saying. “Now, what sucks?”
“Oh, I just mean we can’t break the rules. And there are plenty of them, believe me. You can’t imagine all the stuff we have to abide by.”
“Like what? Where do the rules come from?”
Donna sighs and sits back on her feet, watches the sun disappear behind a passing puffy cloud and emerge again on the other side.
“Well, the rules are called ‘conditions of confinement’ and they’re mandated by the state. When Ellie started this program, she had to fulfill lots of requirements, but one of them was to agree to abide by the conditions of confinement as they apply to juvenile detention facilities. Basically, that means that, if you can’t do it there, you can’t do it here.”
“So, like what?”
“Like outside contact. Juveniles can have no outside contact for sixty days in a detention center and then, after that, it’s limited to a list of approved family members. So we have to do that, too. Of course, you can contact your caseworkers, but communication with everyone else has to be through them, through Social Services.”
Sarah is feeling a jittery sensation in her stomach. “Have you ever had problems with it, like having to enforce the rules?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a problem. You probably already know that Lauren’s extremely pissed off that she can’t call her parents or her boyfriend. Ellie had to start locking the office because Lauren kept hovering around there, I suppose thinking she could use the phone to call someone or the computer to send an e-mail. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you that.”
“It’s okay. I won’t say anything. What other rules do you have to follow?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that so many of the studies say that a prison setting isn’t a great place for kids, even if they have broken the law, but the system makes it so hard to do anything different. Nobody seems to care much about why the kids got in trouble in the first place, which we do. So I’m not sure what the point is of making alternative programs follow the same rules.”
Donna glances at Sarah, shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I guess I get pretty riled up talking about this, but it’s the reason I wanted to be here. You know, they almost didn’t get to have this program.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I guess there were all kinds of hurdles but, just when Ellie thought it was in the bag, a neighbor said the area was zoned for agriculture and not for a detention facility. And it wasn’t even someone close by. But anyway, it worked out and I’m glad it did.”
“Are you a psychologist?”
“No. But you know that Ellie is?”
Sarah nods. “Why did you come, then?”
“I found out about it when I saw the zoning stuff in the newspaper. I just came out here without even thinking twice about it and asked Ellie and Grace if they needed any help. I said I could do garden work or cook or do laundry or whatever they needed, but I really wanted to be a part of it, hopefully get to know the girls who participated in the program.” Donna grins broadly at Sarah. “And now here I am.”
“What about Grace?” Sarah glances over to see that Donna’s breakneck weeding pace has screeched to a halt. She takes some time shifting her position, adjusting her bucket to a more convenient location just under her elbow.
Finally, she says, “I think Grace feels strongly about these issues, too. She just tends to be a little more . . . what’s the right word . . . maybe private about how she does things. The farm is important to her, and she feels some kind of obligation I guess, to keep it going because of her family and everything. She’ll never tell you, but she really looked up to her grandfather even though, from what I can figure out, he was a difficult man.”
Sarah realizes immediately that Donna hasn’t really said anything about what Grace thinks of the program and wonders why whenever anybody talks about Grace, the subject of her grandfather seems to come up. She is just ready to ask when she feels the minute cooling of a shadow behind her. She looks up to see Jenna standing there, and then Donna sees her, too.
“Oh my gosh. Is Cassie with you?”
Jenna furrows her brow, shakes her head. “No. She went up a long time ago.”
“Oh my gosh, I was supposed to meet Cassie in the kitchen at two! I bet it’s way after that now.” Donna jumps up and wipes her filthy hands on her shorts, leaving two long streaks of brown down the sides. She begins trotting toward the barn to dump her compost, turns with a little wave, and calls, “Have fun, ladies!”
Jenna and Sarah are left standing, a bit uncomfortably, beside each other in the row. To break the tension of the moment, Sarah shades her eyes with her hand, scans the garden for the others, asks Jenna, “So, did you get everything done back there?”
Jenna shrugs. “I guess, for now.” She pauses, shifts her body to face Sarah directly, almost aggressively. “Were you guys talking about Grace?”
Sarah doesn’t answer right away. She’s taken aback by Jenna’s intense interest. Okay, so Grace has some kind of weird little grandfather complex, but why is Jenna suddenly being so nosy? Why does she think it has anything to do with her? Finally, Sarah tells Jenna, “Well, just a little there at the end. Nothing important.”
Sarah waits, but Jenna doesn’t question her any further, seems to be hesitating a bit herself and then just takes a deep breath and walks away.
Now this is making Sarah curious. Jenna’s tough, a loner, the kind who doesn’t give a holy shit about anybody else. Isn’t she? Maybe though, Jenna isn’t really like that at all. What if she is really more like Sarah, trying to figure out which of her selves to be, whom to ally herself with, maybe even cares if people like her? And more to the point, would Jenna agree with Lauren that the women are just using them; might she even be trying to figure a way out of here herself?
Sarah doesn’t know, but she is going to find out. A minute ago, she was all about getting along with whoever has the power, avoiding any blame. Now she’s determined to be certain that, whatever happens, she doesn’t get left behind.
CASSIE HAS BEEN waiting quite a while, but she doesn’t care. She has kept herself occupied reading the tractor manual someone left lying on the kitchen table and then just sitting here, her chin in her palm, occasionally wondering if she should get up and do something, find somewhere useful to be, but surprisingly satisfied with watching the finches and the song sparrows squabbling around the feeder outside the window.
Mostly, she realizes, it is just a huge relief to be alone. Even though the outdoor spaces are large, the actual bodies often spread out, Cassie is obsessively aware of what everyone else is doing, is made mentally claustrophobic by the constant sound of voices, the startling agitation and shifting from one activity to the next. She can’t catch on to the dynamics of the conversations, can’t determine when or if anybody might be talking to her, has no idea when something is funny or, most of the time, what people are even talking about. Even as the garden becomes more familiar to her, the people become more mysterious, herself an ali
en species observing a world she can never be part of.
Cassie is most curious about Jenna. Even if Jenna seems to Cassie completely unapproachable, she finds she is less afraid of her than she is of the others, Jenna’s disinterest and detachment an almost welcome relief from the keen eyes and ears of everyone else. They’ve never actually had a conversation, but Cassie finds herself looking up to the other girl, wanting to imitate her smooth movements and her confident air.
Cassie doesn’t ever hope to have another conversation with Lauren. If she was a bit more savvy, she might even try to avoid her. But Cassie notices that no one is particularly successful at that.
And though Sarah is nice and friendly to everyone, Cassie doesn’t want to talk to her either. Something about Sarah makes her tensely vigilant, reminds her of the shapeshifter tales Gram liked to tell when Cassie was still very small. She can’t think about Sarah without imagining all that the girl has been through, can’t fathom how she can appear so frivolous and cheerful when she has so recently sold her body to men for sex and taken drugs that are illegal and sold them to other people as well.
Yet even with all that, it is Sarah’s homelessness that shocks and frightens Cassie the most. Without Cassie really meaning for it to happen, Sarah has come to represent that terror, the whole idea of no place to go, no bed to sleep in or people that she knows, nothing to protect her.
This has become Cassie’s primary realization. She has nowhere to go. The people she has met here are the only people she knows in the world. Gram is gone from her life, as she actually has been for some time. And Gordon is, of course, still out there somewhere, which magnifies her fear just that much more. Even if he could track her down, she has managed to convince herself that she would be safe here. But what about out there? Could he find her? Could he make her go with him? Who would there be to stop him? Hard as this farm is, tired as she feels and overwhelmed by the mystery of the people around her, she’d be fine if it just lasted forever.
Unless, of course, they won’t let her stay. Ever since that group session when Lauren complained about having to work to stay here, Cassie has been worried. She hadn’t even thought until then that her performance might be being graded, that if she doesn’t meet their expectations, she could get sent back to detention or, worse, wind up on the street as Sarah had, relying on other teenagers or manipulative adults to stay alive.
ENOUGH TIME HAS elapsed that Cassie has become nervous just sitting here. She wants badly to lay her head down on the table just for just a few minutes to alleviate this exhaustion but she’s too afraid of getting caught. And she is so very tired, wonders if the others feel the strain of arm muscles stretched to the limit, stiff backs that make it painful to stand. They put out 318 tomato plants today. That is 79.5 plants for each of them except that Lauren didn’t plant nearly that many and Ellie came out about halfway through so she figures she can count the two of them for one person. Cassie doesn’t think she planted her share either and is suddenly nervous about that, wonders if Grace was keeping count. Her relative calm has now disappeared like cake at a birthday party—Gram used to say that—and she is frantically searching the kitchen for something she could be doing.
The sound of the front door screen slamming catapults Cassie up from her chair, and then Donna is racing through the house, talking before she even appears in the kitchen doorway.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I’m late. Sarah and I got talking . . . I really apologize. I hope you didn’t think I forgot about you. I just lost track of the time—”
Donna is gasping a little. Cassie can tell she really is sorry, wishes Donna’s lateness didn’t bother Donna so much since it doesn’t really bother Cassie at all. In fact, she’s not really used to guiding her day by the clock, has never paid that much attention to time, though Gordon often showed up for dinner at six o’clock sharp. That’s what he called it. Sharp. Cassie still thinks that’s a strange way to refer to time but imagines it must be something people say since she’s sure Gordon didn’t think of it. Donna is still looking at her with kind of a pathetic smile, so Cassie tries to think of something soothing or reassuring to say but comes up blank. She simply says, “That’s okay.”
Donna is looking at her a little strangely, and it occurs to Cassie that maybe it’s her clothes. She knows they have begun to look even more ridiculous than they did at first, like someone thought he was dressing a chubby straw-filled scarecrow and it has turned out to be just a broomstick. Cassie has considered more than once asking if there might be access to a sewing machine or even just needle and thread so she could try to make them fit better. She has the fleeting thought that maybe Donna feels sorry for her, cringes a little at the idea, and decides to concentrate on whatever they are going to do here and try to do it well. Donna has sat down at the table and reaches toward Cassie, gently laying her hand on Cassie’s wrist for just a second to draw her down beside her. Cassie sits and Donna pushes a cookbook into the space between them.
“I’m thinking chocolate cake. How does that sound?”
“Good.” Cassie nods.
“This is a recipe I’ve always liked. You can substitute whole wheat flour and honey for some of the white flour and sugar, and it still turns out really good.”
“Okay.”
“Have you baked a cake from scratch before?”
“Oh yes.”
“Good. Then I’ll start getting the ingredients, since I know where everything is that we need, and you can start sifting the flour. Is that okay?”
“Yes.” Cassie hates that she can never think of anything much to say in response. She is so unused to sharing conversation with other people except to chatter at Gram who, for the last couple of years, probably didn’t even know what Cassie was saying. She wonders if people just say whatever comes into their heads or if they run through the way it’s going to sound first and, if they do that, how they do it so fast. She decides to try out the former since it’s the only way she can imagine it working. She is concentrating on the idea of it so hard that she can’t even think what subject she might want to talk about. Then it dawns on her that maybe the way she talked to Gram is really just the same as how everybody else does it. They just get an answer.
“Gram liked yellow cake.”
“Oh, would you rather we made that?”
“No. I . . . I was just thinking of that.”
“So, you did a lot of cooking, huh?”
“Yes.” Cassie pauses, grasps for something more to say about cooking. “I did all of it after Gram got too sick.”
Donna looks surprised and stops riffling in the utensil drawer for a moment to pay attention, asks, “How old were you when that happened?”
Donna’s sudden focus has rattled Cassie. “Um, I’m not sure. I just got tired of peanut butter. I suppose I was about ten when I first tried to fix something. It was meatloaf.”
Donna smiles. “Why did you choose that?”
Cassie is trying to remember. She hasn’t thought about this in a long time, maybe ever. She remembers the food but not the why. She is sure now it was mostly because of Gordon. He complained, said she had to figure out how she was going to pull her weight or he’d have to find someplace else for her to go. At first, he even blamed her for Gram, said Cassie was doing a bad job caring for her. She was terrified. She thought if she had food ready when he came, it would make him want her to stay. Six o’clock sharp. Of course, that wasn’t enough and very shortly after that, he come up with his own idea for why he wanted her to stay.
“Cassie?”
“Oh. Meatloaf. Um, I guess because I thought . . . I thought my uncle Gordon would like it.”
“I see. Did he?”
Cassie shakes her head, smiles sadly. “I don’t know. He never said much about the food.”
“Well, what do you like best?”
“Um, everything. I
mean, everything you make.”
Donna laughs. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I wondered what’s your favorite food?”
“Oh. Maybe chocolate cake?”
Donna laughs again. “Well, then I guess we’re on the right track.”
Cassie isn’t sure what Donna means by fishing or trains, but she thinks the conversation is going well.
THE BACK DOOR opens and Grace is stepping in, has stopped on the little rug they’ve placed there for pulling off their boots without tracking in. She stands for a moment watching Donna wipe the last remnants of cake batter into the pan with a rubber spatula. Cassie is mixing confectionary sugar with cocoa powder, softened butter sitting on the table beside her ready to be added for the icing.
“Hey,” Grace says, still glued to her little rug, not wanting to remove her shoes to come in any farther. “Did you find that tiller manual or figure out what might be causing the noise? I’m going to town, and I thought I could buy parts or oil or whatever you think it is.”
Donna is spreading the batter evenly over the pan, her back to Grace. “Did you check the parts number on the gearbox? I remember that there was more than one possibility for this tiller. I can’t figure out which parts you need until I know that.”
