Finding Georgina

by Colleen Faulkner

I close the door and lean against it. My heart is fluttering. Where can she be? Where can she be? She couldn’t have been kidnapped. I know that. I know the odds are infinitesimal. I close my eyes, thinking. Has someone taken her against her will, or has she gone somewhere she doesn’t want us to know about?

  My gut instinct, my mother’s instinct, tells me it’s the latter. I go back down to the kitchen. “You think she ran away?” I ask him. “Or, is just AWOL? Like when she went to her old house?”

  He’s holding his phone. Now he looks worried, too. “I don’t know,” he says. “The place where they were living has been rented out. The landlord contacted me about some stuff they found in the attic. I asked Lilla about it and she said it wasn’t theirs. That it had been left from the previous renters. So she knows it’s been rented. That she can’t go inside anymore.” He glances up at me. “It’s not like Lilla to not respond to me. We text all the time; she always answers.”

  I start to pace. Where would she go? I think. Where would she go? Em’s? I don’t have her number. To see my dad, maybe? She’s been asking to go alone.

  “Do you think we should call the police?” Remy asks.

  In other circumstances, I might have laughed because that’s usually my line. I phone our daughter again, this time speaking sharply. “Georgina, call me back now. Your dad and I are seriously concerned.”

  When she doesn’t call me back, I text her again.

  Your dad wants to call the police. Where are you?

  I stare at the screen. No response. I look up at Remy, wondering if he’s right. I wonder how long we should wait before we call the police.

  Remy’s watching me. “Where would she go?” he asks.

  My phone lights up and I grab it off the counter.

  I’m fine, our daughter has texted back.

  My fingers fly over the keyboard. Where are you?

  I wait a long, agonizing minute before she responds.

  I’ll tell you when I’m on my way home. It will be a few hours.

  “A few hours?” I demand. I hand the phone to Remy so he can see her text. “Now what do we do?”

  Jojo walks into the kitchen. She’s wearing yoga pants and a sweatshirt and her blond hair is piled on top of her head. She looks as if she’s been awake less than five minutes. She opens the fridge and peers in. “What’s up?”

  “Lilla’s gone somewhere,” Remy says.

  I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, refusing to allow myself to panic. Telling myself that’s the old Harper. That’s the woman I don’t want to be anymore. “We don’t know where.”

  Jojo frowns as she pulls the orange juice from the refrigerator. “You don’t know where?”

  I take my phone back from Remy. “I dropped her off at the bakery and did my errands. She was supposed to take the streetcar home. She texted me she was headed home and never arrived. She just texted to say she’s okay, but she won’t tell us where she is.”

  Jojo sets the jug of orange juice on the counter and reaches for a glass. She seems to be thinking.

  “What do you think?” I ask Remy.

  Before he can respond, Jojo says, “Don’t you think she’ll just come home when she’s done whatever she’s doing? I mean . . . where else is she going to go?”

  “We can’t just let her leave whenever she feels like it and not tell us where she’s going. I’d never leave the house without telling you where I was going.”

  Jojo pours her juice, watching it glug into the glass. “I guess you could use the location thingy.” She lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “But where would she go? I bet she’s just riding the streetcar line from one end to the other. She used to do that all the time before she moved here.”

  I look at Jojo, confused. “What location thingy?”

  My daughter sighs as if I ask the most ridiculous questions. “On your phone, Mom. I know you turned it on on mine. So you could spy on me.”

  I have to think for a moment to realize what she’s talking about. Then I remember that I was chatting with the cell phone guy the last time I took Jojo’s phone in to have the screen fixed. While I waited, I was telling him about how the phone had been lost for three days, so having it turn up with just a cracked screen didn’t seem so bad. He turned something on on my phone and Jojo’s. He said if she lost her phone we could find it. He also told me, when Jojo wandered away to look at new phones, that it was also a way for parents to inconspicuously keep track of their teens. I want to ask Jojo how she knew I had the location thingy on, but I’d save that for another conversation. One to take place when my other daughter isn’t missing.

  The important information in this conversation is that the same guy sold me Georgina’s phone. And he remembered me.

  I look at Jojo. “I think it is turned on.”

  “That’s really not cool, Mom.” She makes a face and then takes a sip of juice. “Spying on your kids.”

  I hand Jojo my cell phone. “How does it work? How do I find her?”

  She makes an event of setting down her glass and taking my phone from me. There’s a long sigh, obviously meant to demonstrate boredom. She taps my phone. Swipes. After a long minute, she says, “I-10.”

  My heart drops to my feet, ready to be kicked. “What?”

  Jojo holds up the phone so I can see the screen. I grab my spare readers off the counter and slide them on. I’m staring at a map, a portion of New Orleans. There’s a pulsing red dot. If Georgina still has her phone, she’s on the interstate, headed west, out of the city.

  39

  Lilla

  I wipe my snotty nose on the sleeve of my new North Face jacket because I don’t have a tissue. I’m trying not to cry. I hate crying. It makes me feel as if I have no control of my life. Which I suppose I don’t.

  They wouldn’t let me in at the prison. I made it all the way here without being hit by a car while walking all the way to an I-10 on-ramp or murdered by a psychopath on the highway, and then they wouldn’t let me see my mom.

  Because I’m under eighteen.

  Under eighteen, you have to have a parent or a guardian, the lady at the window told me after I waited in line for, like, twenty minutes. She said she was sorry, but she didn’t act like it. I tried to tell her I only needed to see my mom for a minute. She asked me how I got there and I just mumbled “Thank you” and walked away. I was afraid she would call the police if she figured out I came on my own. I don’t think they can arrest me for coming here without permission from my parents, but I didn’t want to wait to find out.

  Now I’m standing outside the prison, near the sign, crying like an idiot. Because I was an idiot to think this would work. That I could just come here by myself, see my mom, and get on with my life. My new life.

  And now it’s starting to rain.... What happened to warm, sunny New Orleans? It seems as if all it does here is rain.

  I shift my backpack. I went to the bakery, but I didn’t get English muffin bread. I got these café au lait donuts my mom likes. I was going to see if they would let me take one in to her. I have flavored bubbly water, too. We were supposed to get to sit in a room and talk. It’s not like you see in movies, where you have to talk on a phone and only see each other through a glass wall.

  I look at the country road I’ll have to take back to the on-ramp. I know it was dangerous to hitchhike here. But I was so excited about coming that I wasn’t really scared. Two women picked me up near the I-10 ramp. Evy and Jerilene. They were headed to Baton Rouge. They talked about Jesus all the way to the exit to the road to St. Gabriel, where the prison is. I didn’t tell them where I was going, but I think they figured it out. They were nice enough, but the Jesus talk was a little overwhelming. I told them I’d think about visiting the First African Baptist Church of New Orleans. I doubt Harper Mom will let me, but I didn’t tell them that. I’ve never been to a Baptist church, or to an African American one. I wouldn’t mind checking it out. So I wasn’t lying to Evy and Jerilene. And they didn’t hurt me. Or even scare m
e.

  But now I’m here and I didn’t even get to see Sharon Mom and now I’m scared to hitchhike home.

  I look back in the direction of the prison. Maybe I should try to get a ride back to New Orleans with someone here visiting a prisoner. There were a lot of people in the line waiting to get in, a lot of people with kids. No one would kidnap a teenager with their kids in the car, would they?

  I almost laugh out loud. I’ve already been kidnapped once in my life. What are the chances it could happen again? Dad’s been telling Harper Mom that for two months now.

  It starts to rain harder and I pull up my hood. The rain is cold and my jeans are getting wet. And tears are running down my cheeks. I need to do something, but I don’t know what.

  Call a cab?

  If someone would take me all the way to New Orleans, Harper Mom or Dad would pay for it. They’d give someone a hundred-dollar tip for bringing me home.

  Or do I just call them and ask them to come get me?

  I texted Harper Mom that I was okay and that I’d be home in a few hours, but I know she’s got to be going crazy, worrying about me.

  I should just call her. At least tell her I’m safe.

  Maybe she’ll call a cab for me and give her credit card number or something. Or maybe there’s some way for her to order me an Uber and pay for it with her card.

  I look up at the sign that says Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. The place doesn’t look like what I thought it would. Not like the creepy brick buildings at Sing Sing or Alcatraz that I saw in documentaries on TV. A lot of these buildings look like pole sheds to me.

  I watch a car go by on its way out; there are kids in the backseat. I wonder if I should try and flag them down. Then one of the kids sticks her tongue out at me and I decide I wouldn’t want to ride for an hour in the car with them, anyway.

  I wonder if Sharon Mom has realized I’m not coming. Maybe she even found out they wouldn’t let me in because I didn’t have an adult with me. Would someone tell her, or is she just sitting there waiting?

  I pull my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans, thinking it would be funny, not ha-ha funny, but ironic funny, if I couldn’t get a signal. Then I can’t call home. But I’ve got three bars.

  I want to talk to Dad. But for some reason, my thumb finds Harper Mom’s number and I touch it. I call before I chicken out and walk out to the highway to hitchhike and possibly beat the odds and get kidnapped again.

  40

  Harper

  When my phone rings, I look at the caller ID on the dash of my car. I see Georgina’s name and my first response is surprise . . . no, shock. Then I wonder if someone has taken her phone from her, or is using it to make a ransom call.

  I hit the “receive” button on the dash. “Georgina?” I try not to sound as afraid for her as I am.

  “Harper . . . Mom?”

  “Oh, Georgina.” I exhale in a long breath, gripping the steering wheel. “Are you all right?” The windshield wipers make a rhythmic sound and it seems as if it takes forever for her to respond.

  “I’m all right.” Her voice breaks.

  And tears immediately spring to my eyes. “Georgina, thank you for calling me. Thank you for letting us know you’re okay.” My anger that she’s taken off is gone. I’m just so relieved, so thankful to hear her voice. “Did you already talk to your dad?”

  “No.” She sniffs.

  I can tell she’s trying not to cry, so I try, too.

  “I just called you,” she says in the smallest voice.

  And my heart is breaking as only a mother’s heart can break for her child in pain.

  “Where are you, honey?”

  “Could you . . . could Dad . . . could someone come get me? I’m really sorry. I just want to . . .” Her voice trembles. “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course I’ll come get you. Where are you?” I repeat. I already know, if the location thingy on my phone is correct. I’ve got my phone mounted on my dash so I could watch her little pulsing dot. It’s been in the same place for the last ten minutes. I just took the exit off I-10 to the town of St. Gabriel where the Louisiana women’s state prison is located.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I came to see . . . I wanted to see her. My mom. Sharon. But they wouldn’t let me in.” She’s making no attempt to hold back her tears now. “I couldn’t go in by myself. Because I’m underage. I need a . . . I have to have a parent to see her.”

  “Where at the prison?” I ask, thinking she must be in some waiting room. Surely the prison guards wouldn’t have let a minor just walk out of the building.

  “I’m outside. Sharon doesn’t know I’m not coming. She’s waiting for me.”

  Several things pass through my head. None of them charitable, all along the lines of Sharon Kohen can continue to wait to see my daughter until hell freezes over. I also wonder how it is that Sharon thinks my daughter, who she kidnapped, is coming to see her. Were they writing letters to each other? I know e-mails aren’t allowed. Were they talking? Did Sharon somehow get Georgina’s cell phone number? Our house number?

  “Can you text without hanging up?” I ask her.

  “Um . . . yeah.” She sniffs. “I don’t have a tissue.”

  “I have tissues in my car. I’ll be there in five minutes, Georgina.” Four, if I don’t obey the speed limit signs, which I’m not. “Honey, I need you to text your dad and let him know you’re okay and that I’m almost there. I’ll stay on the line.”

  “How did you know where I was?” My daughter who usually seems to have her shit together better than I do sounds lost. She sounds like a little girl. A lost little girl. “Dad’s not with you?”

  “He stayed home in case you showed up there.” I came because I had to. Because sitting at the house, waiting, wasn’t an option for me. “So go ahead and text him. I’ll be right here. I won’t hang up.”

  “Okay,” she says in her little voice.

  A series of beeps come out of the speakers of my car. There’s a pause, then Georgina’s voice. “I texted him.”

  “Good. Now where are you?” I turn my windshield wipers up.

  “Um . . . I’m walking out to the road.”

  Relief floods every fiber of my being as I spot her up ahead in her gray jacket, her blue backpack on her back.

  I pull onto the entrance road to the prison and throw my car in park, and jump out. I’m wearing my Saturday clean-the-house-and-go-to-the-market flannel shirt and no jacket. Rain hits my face. I reach out and grab Georgina, determined to get a hug, even if she fights me.

  She doesn’t fight me.

  She stands there, arms at her sides, letting me hug her. Hug her and her backpack still on her back. Both of us stand there in the rain and I silently thank God for her. I thank the Holy Mother. I thank her Son. For just the briefest moment, Georgina lays her head on my shoulder.

  I feel a flood of overwhelming warmth. How long have I waited for her touch?

  “I love you, Georgina,” I whisper in her ear, basking in the feel of her in my arms, remembering the smell of her hair when she was a baby. “And it’s okay if you don’t love me back. I have enough for both of us.”

  She sniffs and takes a step away from me, and I let go of her. I smile at her. “Let’s go home,” I say.

  She throws her backpack into the backseat and gets in the passenger side. I get in, buckle up, turn up the heat, and make a U-turn, headed for the interstate. But not five hundred feet down the road, I slow up.

  I’m thinking about Sharon. I don’t want to, but I can’t stop thinking about her. I’m imagining her sitting in her prison uniform waiting for the girl she thinks . . . thought was her child. Against my will, I imagine what it would be like to be her. Wanting so desperately to see her daughter. Realizing it isn’t going to happen.

  And then I think of Georgina. The desperation it took for her to come here. The determination. The bravery.

  I hit my brakes and swing onto some sort of gravel access road.
/>
  “Where are we going?” Georgina presses her hand to the dash to steady herself.

  I back onto the road, drive in the direction we just came from, and turn into the prison lot. “When are visiting hours over?” I ask my runaway.

  “Two,” she says, staring at me. “But you have to check in by one fifteen. Why?”

  I look at the clock on the dash. We have eight minutes.

  41

  Lilla

  I stand beside Harper Mom and listen to her give sass right back to the lady at the window who wasn’t very nice to me.

  “Two minutes,” Harper Mom keeps saying. “The handbook says we have until one fifteen to check in and we have two more minutes.” She shoves my driver’s license and hers across the counter to the woman. “We’re here to see Sharon Kohen. She’s expecting us.”

  I’ve never seen my mother like this before, all authoritative and confident. Dad told me she’s a really good veterinarian, that she’s really amazing at her job. I wonder if this woman standing here now, refusing to take no for an answer from a prison guard with blue sparkly fingernails like claws, is the woman people in her office see. Is this the woman Dad fell in love with when he was in college?

  I stand there holding my breath. I can’t believe Harper Mom is going to let me see Sharon. She turned the car around so I could see her. I can’t believe it.

  “Background check?” my mother says. She has this look of indignation on her face. “Well, if you have my daughter’s, obviously mine has to be there. I certainly wouldn’t submit my daughter’s without mine. Check again, please.”

  Background check? I didn’t send in information for a background check. Sharon Mom must have done it. I think that costs money. How she paid for it, I have no idea. But there’s no way Sharon Mom submitted a background check on Harper.

  The two of them are still arguing. I’m not going to get in. We’re going to have to go home and I’m not going to see my mother. And I don’t know if I can come back again. I don’t know if I can keep living like this, one thread attached to Sharon, trying to loop another around Harper.