Hit the Ground Running

by Alison Hughes

  Water. I forgot water on my four-thing list. My god, pack lots and lots of water…

  “Dee?” Eddie said as she rummaged in a cupboard for their school water bottles.

  “Still here,” she said.

  “If we have the car, how will Dad get there? Up to Canada.”

  She closed her eyes, gripping the cupboard door. Then she opened them, turned and said mock seriously, “Well, Eddie, there are these amazing things called buses. Also trains and airplanes, in which many—”

  “Shut up,” he said, starting to laugh.

  She smiled back.

  “Don’t worry, okay?” she said. “He’ll find us.”

  She turned back to the sink and rinsed out the bowls.

  “He’ll find us,” she repeated, watching the sodden remains slip down the drain.

  Dee figured they should leave as soon as they could and get right out of the state that day, if it was possible. It would have to be possible. The urgency to leave was settling somewhere around the base of Dee’s throat, making it hard to swallow.

  “C’mon, Eddie, we have a couple of things to do before we go.”

  She and Eddie drove to the gas station on the highway. She owed Mr. and Mrs. S. that much, to quit in person. Mr. S. was on his knees, stocking shelves, but looked around as the door jingled.

  “Uh-oh. Here’s coming the trouble,” he said, smiling and getting stiffly to his feet. He was a stout old man who wore undershirts under his collared shirts and pasted three strands of shiny black hair over his otherwise bald head. His English (“Angleesh,” as he said) was not so good. His last name was unpronounceable, with baffling, repeated s/z combinations. Dee had seen it on the mail and had recoiled from the lack of vowels. They were just Mr. and Mrs. S. to everyone in town. Mrs. S.—similarly stout, accented and dyed—helped run the store and the station. Dee didn’t know where they lived; they always seemed to be here.

  “Hey, Mr. S.!” called Eddie. “All down this aisle only on the right foot, all back on the left! Time me!”

  Mr. S. grinned, glancing at his watch. “Okay, so… GO!” Eddie took off at a furious hop. They watched the tousled head bob around the map section, then around back to junk foods.

  “Annnd…tventy-two! Not bad. Better from yesterday.”

  Mr. S. frowned, really looking at the time.

  “Dee, it’s early for working now.” She wasn’t supposed to be there until eleven.

  “Actually, I came for some gas. I, uh, have to quit my job here—just these last few weeks before school starts up. I’m so sorry I couldn’t give you more notice.” She really was. She liked Mr. and Mrs. S. They were good people. The job was a breeze, sitting in air-conditioning, flipping through the magazines and ringing through the occasional car that turned off the highway. Most of them drove through. There wasn’t much to stop for.

  It was a huge step up from last summer’s wretched job with A+ Landscaping, hosing down parched perennials and worrying about skin cancer in the blazing heat.

  “We, Eddie and me…and Dad…are going away for a while. Family vacation! It was a surprise!” She tried to smile like a normal girl in a normal family looking forward to a normal family trip. She had a feeling she wasn’t doing it well. There was a little silence. Mr. S. wasn’t much of a talker. Neither was Dee, but somebody had to fill the conversational space.

  “Sorry for the short notice, but the trip is kind of spur-of-the-moment. Dad just let us know last night.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. S., nodding. “S’okay, s’A-okay. We manage.”

  He glanced at her, then away. “Well, lemme fill ’er up.” It was a phrase he was proud of, a gas-station phrase, a common American phrase. Except Mr. S. pronounced it “feel ’er up.”

  He stumped out to the car, conferring briefly with Mrs. S. on her way into the shop. Now she was a talker, completely undaunted by her limited English.

  “Dee-Dee, no! Say no to go way! Whaddaya wanna be leavin’ quality places like thees? Sun shine so many days, blue sky, so. We mees you, Dee-Dee, and the boy, so talking and so…” She finished with a big wave of her arms. Dee smiled. Full of life, she meant.

  “We’ll miss you too, Mrs. S.,” Dee said, feeling awkward and ashamed. Dad, this is all your fault. It’s not me, Mrs. S., it’s my hopeless dad.

  “You be callink when coming back, yes?”

  “Oh, yeah, yes, Mrs. S. You bet.” Dee smiled. You miserable liar, Dee.

  Mr. S. gave the car a good inspection, filling it up, showing her how to top up the water in the radiator. He checked the tires, making sure the spare in the trunk had air too. When he straightened up, he turned to her, mechanic to customer, gesturing at the rusty, eighteen-year-old Toyota.

  “Goink far in this car is no goot. This not goot car to go so far. This you tellink your dad.” He poked a dirty, thick finger at her and repeated, “You tellink your dad. He needs taking care of such goot kids.”

  They were the most words she’d ever heard Mr. S. say in a row. The air between them thrummed with the hug they’d never give each other. But it was there, shimmering in the heat. A ghost hug.

  “Thanks, Mr. S.” She turned away, blinking quickly.

  He wouldn’t allow her to pay for the service or the gas, saying they still owed her for two shifts. He rummaged in his pocket, licked a finger and selected three twenties from an old-fashioned money clip. He held them out gruffly, studying the gas pump.

  “There. So, Monday, Chusday.”

  Dee was appalled. Her pay had always been something private, always cash, always left in a sealed envelope with her name printed on it in square capital letters, discreetly half-tucked under the aged telephone behind the counter.

  “Oh, no, no, Mr. S.,” said Dee. “I’m letting you down, and you just filled up the car…”

  “No. You take. You, or I geev Eddie.” He looked around for Eddie, waving the twenties.

  Dee took the money.

  “Thanks, Mr. S.” She smiled. “You looked like a big spender there, waving cash around.” Mr. S. beamed. Dee knew from Mrs. S. how he had grown up “dirt poor. Poor like withouting even the shoes,” and how proud he was to have succeeded in America.

  “C’mon, Eddie, we better get going.”

  “Chust a minute, chust a minute,” cried Mrs. S. She went into the store and ran out a minute later with a plastic bag of “nice thinks” for the trip, crunching Dee in a powerful hug with the bag in the middle. A non-ghost hug, a real clench, a tight, we’ll-miss-you kind of hug. She smelled of makeup and sweat and perfume, and her head came up to Dee’s shoulder.

  Dee drove off, blinking back tears. Eddie waved his whole arm out the window.

  “They’re so nice,” he said from the backseat. “I wish they were our relatives.”

  Dee nodded, knowing what he meant. Relatives were people you were bound to and who were bound to you, no matter what happened, no matter where you were. People you didn’t lose. Lifelong people. She doubted if she would ever see Mr. and Mrs. S. again.

  “Soda, chips, Skittles, Twinkies, jerky, nuts…” Eddie was already burrowing into the bag and itemizing the loot.

  Dee looked in the rearview mirror and saw a tiny Mr. and Mrs. S. silhouetted against the pumps, waving goodbye from their paradise, their dusty little piece of America.

  Dee jumped out at the pay phone at the end of their block and gave Auntie Pat one last call. She was running out of quarters.

  “Norman and Patricia are unavailable to take your call at this time…”

  Not even Jake was home. Dee slammed down the receiver so hard that Eddie jumped and swung around, startled in the act of hanging over the front seat, fiddling with the controls. He scuttled back into his seat as he saw her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Because it seems like something—”

  “It’s nothing, Eddie,” she snapped, annoyed by how living with Dad had made both her and Eddie alert to the slightest mood change.
She forced another smile.

  “Nothing, really. Thanks. Now, we’re going to make just a really quick stop at Theresa’s, then go back home to pack up the car.” She couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Theresa.

  They drove into the nicer part of town, the air-conditioned, landscaped part. Dee slid to a stop under a tree. She had learned early on how important even a little shade was—it could mean the difference between merely sliding into a stifling-hot car or scorching the backs of your thighs.

  “I’m not going in. Just going to say bye, okay? No touching stuff up here, Eddie.” She gestured at the dashboard and looked him in the eye. “I mean it.” He looked back innocently. He was always fiddling with the knobs and buttons, and the last thing Dee needed right at this moment was to start the car to blaring music and windshield wipers going full tilt.

  “I know, I know.” Eddie settled into the backseat, ripping into some fruit gummies and opening one of his books.

  Dee ran up the walk and rang the bell. There was an immediate deafening chorus of shrill barking. Hercules and Atlas, Theresa’s family’s Chihuahuas, lived for the excitement of people coming to the door. It never got old.

  Theresa opened the door, yelling at the dogs to be quiet, her dark, straight hair swinging. Dee envied Theresa’s hair. Even in the heat it grew thick and straight. Dee’s was brown and curly, the split ends trimmed occasionally with nail scissors in the bathroom, and usually scraped back into a ponytail.

  “Herc, Atlas, DOWN! No, shh…” The dogs barked joyfully, rushing out onto the step and reaching up to scratch Dee’s knees.

  “These dogs, these DOGS!” Theresa said, shooing them back inside. “Come in, if you dare.” She laughed as she flung the door open, holding back the dogs with one leg.

  Dee smiled. Theresa always made her smile. Theresa, with her loud laugh and too-tight clothes, was relentlessly social without being cool. She was happy. She was unafraid.

  “Actually, I can’t. Eddie’s in the car.”

  “Hey, Eddie!” yelled Theresa. Eddie looked up and waved.

  “So I just wanted to say ’bye. Dad’s taking us up to visit relatives in Canada.” She couldn’t trust anyone with her plans. Theresa’s mom worked at Eddie’s school.

  Theresa slipped on flip-flops, came out and closed the door behind her.

  “Wow, shut up! Canada,” Theresa said, her eyes wide.

  “North,” supplied Dee. “Up past Montana, that way.”

  “I knew it was north, you idiot.” Theresa laughed. “I just meant that, wow, that’s quite a trip.”

  They didn’t do much geography in school. Much of the US, especially the parts that didn’t border Arizona, was still a mystery to Dee. All those cramped, tiny, northeastern states. Too many states. Too many Washingtons. Mexico, just an hour’s drive south, was in her mind one enormous, undivided, different-colored land mass, the tail end of North America.

  “So are you flying out of Phoenix?” Theresa asked.

  “Actually, we’re driving,” Dee said.

  “Man, long drive!”

  “Yeah, long and hot.”

  “You’ll still be coming to Nadine’s party tomorrow night, right?” Theresa was in the midst of a campaign to, as she put it, “party up” their social lives. She’d dragged Dee to a disastrous party several months back. They’d spent an hour and a half getting ready at Theresa’s, and then Dad and Eddie had dropped them off down the block from Shawn’s friend’s house. Shawn—who’d said, “You guys should come!”—wasn’t even there. None of Shawn’s friends were either; it seemed to be an out-of-towners party. Dee and Theresa didn’t know anybody except a few popular girls who didn’t acknowledge them. They spent half an hour yelling at each other over the music, then gave up and walked home, stopping to kick off their sandals and swing at the playground.

  “Sorry, Theresa, but we’re leaving soon. Like, today, I think. It was a surprise.”

  “Shoot.” Theresa’s wide smile fell. Unsmiling, she was a plain, short, plump girl with great hair. Tall, slim, quiet Dee trailed along after her, her big hazel eyes wary and uncertain. Dee was always being told she looked older than sixteen, that she could pass for eighteen, even twenty. Mrs. S. once said, “Dee-Dee, you have the face like a saint! So serious. Like the blessed martyrs in the old paintinks.” Great, Dee had thought, just what I’d been hoping for. The totally hot look of a blessed martyr. She’d made a point of smiling more after that, but it didn’t come naturally, and it didn’t last.

  Theresa launched into a complicated story about what Chad had said to Kent, and what Kent had told Nadine about Theresa. Theresa had been reeling Chad in for several months now. Dee had been embarrassed at how open she was about it, how she flirted so obviously with him. She watched her friend’s animated face.

  Good luck, Theresa. Good luck with Chad. Nadine’s nice—you’ll still have Nadine. Sorry we won’t be going into Phoenix for our prom dresses like we planned. Sorry I’m lying to you. Sorry.

  “He’s so into you, Theresa. Look, got to go here,” Dee said when Theresa finished the story. She reached out and hugged her friend awkwardly. “Take care of yourself.”

  “Hey,” Theresa protested, bear-hugging her back, “it’s not like you’re never coming back!” Oh, that’s exactly what it is like, my friend. Dee looked at the ground. “When are you back, anyway?”

  “I don’t really know. Dad’s calling the shots. Well, ’bye!”

  “Bye, Dee! Bring me an igloo! Or a snowball! At least bring me back a little snow! Or some sexy French guy!”

  As she pulled away, Dee waved. Theresa waved back quickly before opening the door, crouching to shoo the dogs back into the house.

  We’ll keep in touch, Dee thought. Of course we will. We’ll email. Facebook…we’ll Facebook. But secretly she was a little afraid. Would she just be remembered as Theresa’s friend, that tall girl with a name like a letter? Would she be remembered at all? Karen Mulhauser had moved away in ninth grade, and a year later Dee had wondered aloud to a group of friends what had happened to her. Blank faces. “You know, Karen Mulhauser. Blond, with the teeth”—pointing to her front teeth; Karen’s had been prominent—“yearbook committee, with the camera?”

  “Oh yeah, Karen,” some of them said. But some of them, Dee knew, were only pretending to remember her.

  That was how it sometimes went with people who weren’t there anymore. People sometimes just vanished, evaporated, like spilled water on the hot pavement.

  Dee was relieved that there was no child-removal van waiting outside the house when they got back. She imagined it as a sort of pastel dog-pound truck, with unnaturally silent, anxious children lined up on seats inside, barred back doors snapping shut before they were locked with an oversized padlock.

  Anyway, it wasn’t there. The coast was clear. I’m thinking like a criminal and I haven’t even done anything wrong. I’m the good guy here. Just think practically, Dee. Essentials. Water, food, money, passports. She repeated the four words to herself like a mantra. Water, food, money, passports. Their passports were still valid, expiring in a few weeks. August 17. She didn’t have to check the date—it was burned into her mind from the last time she’d looked at them. One of the only definite, solid things left.

  August 17 had loomed as the days rolled on with still no sign of her father. If Dad isn’t home by Friday, she’d think, we’ll leave for Canada. And when Friday rolled around, she’d give it till the Monday, convincing herself that maybe after the weekend sales he’d head home. And now here they were, with a social worker on their trail. They had to leave for Canada now, today, period.

  Months earlier she’d read an article in Time magazine at the gas station about Arizona’s crackdown on its hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. Her palms had started to sweat as she read about detentions, deportations, families torn apart. Oh god, are we illegal? she’d wondered in secret panic. Me and Eddie? Are we aliens? Just what the hell are we?

  She knew her father was
half American. His mom was Canadian, but his dad was from Montana. Her dad was born there. Did that make her and Eddie each a quarter legal American? What about the other three-quarters? She had to know.

  She’d gone straight to her father after work that day. “So me and Eddie—what, technically, are we? Nationality-wise.”

  “Canadian,” he said, not looking up from the footstool he was repairing. “I’m American too, right? The old man was good for something. Other than killing innocent animals and expecting us to call him sir. ‘Yes, sir!’ God. My brother and me, kids, treated like we were in the frigging military.”

  “Yeah, but me and Eddie—do we have any official American ID? Anything?”

  “Birth certificates. They’re here somewhere, right?”

  “We were born in Canada, Dad.”

  “There you go.” His voice muffled, from under the stool.

  “Dad!”

  He looked at her for the first time.

  “Okay, okay, let me think.” He stared off into space. “Passports! Had to get you guys passports before we left Canada, which was a huge hassle—”

  “Those would be Canadian.” She raised her voice. “Are we American too because you are? Well, half? Or at least are we permanent residents or something?”

  He screwed up his eyes, trying to remember. “We’re something. I’m sure I filled out some forms years ago...Why are you worrying about all this? I’ll look into it, okay?” He brushed the hair out of his eyes, waving a screwdriver at her. “But ultimately, Dee, all this nationalist stuff is crap. We’re all citizens of the world. Remember that.”

  Yeah, I’ll remember that supremely useless thing, Dad. Yes, sir, I’ll store that one away to shout at an immigration official. It was exactly the sort of crap Charlie Rivera, the antique dealer, would have called him on (“Pull your head out of your ass, Donnelley. There’s something called a Real World out here.”)

  But Dee wasn’t like Charlie. She’d said nothing, turned away and walked straight down the hall. She’d dug out the only official documents in their house from the dusty shoe box at the back of the closet. Three birth certificates, three passports. Her dad’s passport: American. She didn’t even open it. Hers and Eddie’s: Canadian. She opened them to look at the five-years-younger versions of her and Eddie, Eddie only two, herself a startled, serious eleven. We had no clue that we were going anywhere. No clue about any of it. Nationality: Canadian. Just about to slap the passports shut, she’d noticed the expiry date. August 17 of that year. This summer. One of their only pieces of identification, and if she hadn’t happened to look in that box on that day, she wouldn’t have known that August 17 was the day. The day she and Eddie would be officially—what? Stateless? She stored the date away, circling it in red on a mental calendar.