I was kind of relieved, because I hadn’t eaten for a really long time and I hated for anything to ruin it. It had never occurred to me that anything could ruin a pizza until she started joking about those weird little salty fish.
I pulled up a slice and the cheese stretched out like crazy and I tried to get it all onto the napkin but I got cheese and sauce on her desk and had to try to get it up with another napkin, but no matter how much I scrubbed I could see a little grease there.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
I waited for her to take a piece for herself but she never did. She just watched me take a bite, and my eyes sort of rolled back in my head almost, because it was so good. But also I had to remember to go slow with it, because my stomach was all tight and weird from going so long without eating.
“When did you eat last?” she asked me. Like she read minds or something.
“I had a banana right before I found that baby, but also before that I hadn’t eaten all day.”
“I see. So when you said you were starving, you were speaking literally.”
“I guess,” I said, because for some reason I was feeling uncomfortable again and like I wanted to run away.
“So the baby had nothing for that whole twenty-four hours?”
“No, she did. She had a bottle of apple juice and a whole box of goldfish crackers. My friend Bodhi got them for us and he found us that hiding place and he went off to call the police and tell them how I found the baby. But then he never came back, so I was thinking he got arrested.”
“And you didn’t eat a single one of the crackers in all that time?”
“No, ma’am. I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough for the baby.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. She just had this look on her face that I couldn’t quite figure out, but I wasn’t afraid of it, so that was a good sign. Mostly I’m afraid of what people are thinking, especially about me. So I just ate my pizza and waited for her to have more questions.
“Why do you think your friend got arrested?” she asked me after a time.
I had finished my piece of pizza, because I wasn’t going slow like I was supposed to at all. I was just staring at the box because I wasn’t sure if it was okay to take another piece, because maybe the rest was for her.
“He takes things sometimes,” I said, and hoped she wouldn’t ask me any more about him. I felt bad telling the police things about Bodhi behind his back.
She was staring at her computer and clicking around a little on there, but I could only see the back of the lid of her laptop, not what she was looking at.
“What’s your friend’s name?” she asked me after a little clicking.
“Well, see, that’s the problem right there, ma’am. I don’t really know. He calls himself Bodhi but I don’t figure that’s his real name, more like a street name you give yourself. But as far as, like, his real name that he would have to give to the police, well, I never knew it. When people are on the street like that there are a bunch of things you don’t ask them, because not everybody wants to talk about the way it was before.”
She frowned, but didn’t stop clicking. I was surprised, because I figured she would just close the laptop lid and tell me she couldn’t help me if I didn’t know the simplest things like my friend’s name.
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen, I think.”
I sat quiet for a minute and then made myself get brave again and I asked her, “Can I have another piece?”
She seemed surprised that I asked that. She said, “Of course. Have all you want. I got it for you.”
I could feel my eyes get big.
“The whole thing?”
“Well, I didn’t figure you could eat that much, but I figured you’d eat all you could and then I’d see if one of the guys wanted the leftovers.”
I grabbed for the box and pulled it closer and took another piece. But then, before I took a bite, I realized I was not saying what I should be saying—you know, to be a good person and all.
“Thank you,” I said. “That was really nice of you.”
She just nodded and kept clicking, so I started on the second piece.
“Is this your friend?”
She turned the computer around and showed me a mug shot of a boy about Bodhi’s age, a stranger, looking really mad and down, like his life was crap in that minute. Which I guess it was, since he was arrested.
“No, ma’am.”
She turned the computer back around and looked and clicked some more.
“What was with that lady?” I asked.
I’d been wanting to ask it but also thinking I shouldn’t, like it was none of my business or something. Like I really thought she should’ve been nicer to me, but on the other hand I didn’t figure I had a right to feel that way, and any adult would tell me so.
“Which lady is that?” she asked.
It seemed like a weird question, because who else could I be talking about? I guess her mind was just into what she was doing, looking for nineteen-year-old boys who got arrested the night before. In this town there must’ve been quite a few.
“That lady who’s the baby’s mother.”
“Oh, that,” she said. She stopped looking at her computer and looked up at me, which felt uncomfortable and made me wish I’d left well enough alone. “Right. I know you were expecting a little more gratitude than you got.”
“How do you know that?”
“Partly I saw it on your face. Partly I just know you felt that way because anybody would’ve in your situation.”
That was an interesting thing for her to say, because it sounded like she meant I was just like everybody else, which I didn’t hear a lot or even think was true.
“This has been a very difficult time for her,” she said. “Her emotions are all over the map.”
“Right, I know, but I was expecting her to be emotional in sort of a different way.”
I didn’t say I expected her to hug me and kiss me and tell me what a hero I was to her, because it would’ve sounded stupid. But it was mostly true.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, still staring right at me, which still made me nervous. “The twenty-four hours she didn’t know where her daughter was, they were just torture for her. So I think she’s concerned about why you didn’t call sooner. So I figure when you’re done eating, you can straighten all that out for me. Tell me the story of why connecting her back to the police took you so long.”
“Yes, ma’am. I can do that.”
She turned the computer around toward me again and showed me another mug shot of another nineteen-year-old stranger. I shook my head again. She turned it back around toward her and kept clicking.
“And then we can tell her your story,” she said, “and by then she will have had a little time to process everything she’s feeling, and if it makes sense why you didn’t call sooner, I think you’ll see a different side of her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and I tried to take another bite of pizza but my stomach was feeling rocky. Maybe because of what we were talking about. It felt like it went with what we were talking about.
She turned her computer to face me again, and there was a picture of Bodhi. Holding up a number under his chin, and looking sort of like he was embarrassed but also like he thought it was a little bit funny at the same time, which was a very Bodhi thing to do.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s him.”
She turned it back to her and read me a little of whatever she was seeing there, other than the obvious picture.
“Denver Patterson.”
I just stared at her and blinked too much under those terrible lights because I had no idea what those two words meant. It sounded like maybe a place they’d sent him, except I don’t think the county jail ships people anywhere, and besides, other than maybe Ann Arbor or something, most places only have one name.
“Denver Patterson,” I parroted back to her, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She looked up at me and blinked, like I’d just been doing, and for a second I thought she hated those glary lights, too. But then I decided she was just stunned by how dumb I was being, even though I didn’t know why yet.
“That’s your friend’s name,” she said.
Then we both just sat a minute without saying anything. I was thinking how it was weird that I hadn’t thought to look at his name or anything else when she had the computer turned my way. I guess I’d just been staring at his picture in shock, because even though I’d been thinking and saying that I knew he got arrested, it was still surprising to see how right I was.
“That’s weird,” I said. “You feel like you know somebody so well, but then it turns out you sort of don’t know them at all.”
“Truer words were never spoken.” Then, while I was trying to get into what that meant in my head she said, “Petty theft.”
“Probably food,” I said. “Sometimes he takes food when we really need it.”
“Might be. Says grocery items in the amount of seven dollars, fifty-two cents. He was arraigned early this morning. Pled guilty. Sentenced to ninety days.”
I felt my eyes go wide again, and I put down my slice of pizza because I would need all of this to settle before I could eat any more.
“Ninety days for seven-fifty worth of food? That seems harsh.”
“It wasn’t his first offense.”
Which I knew.
Then I looked up and that lady was standing in the open doorway, still holding the baby, who said my name when she saw me.
“Molly, Molly, Molly.”
And there was another lady with her, a great big heavy lady with a frown that looked like it was carved into her face and could never go away. I figured maybe it was the lady’s mother, but that was just a guess.
“We’re going to go home now,” the baby’s mom said, but I couldn’t tell if she was talking to the lady cop or me, because she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at either one of us. More like down at the linoleum floor. “But I just want to say . . .” Then she just stood there for a long time, like she had no idea what she wanted to say. “I’m just so happy to have her back, so . . .” Her eyes turned to me for just a flash of a second and then she looked away again. “Thank you.”
She turned to go, and I thought, Well, there goes my second time meeting this lady and it still wasn’t good.
I know it sounded like a step in the right direction, but it was something about the way she said it, like she wished she didn’t have to. Like one of the cops told her she had to say it, or maybe her mother, or like she forced herself to do it because she couldn’t not do it. But I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.
“Wait,” I said, and she stopped. All three of them stopped. Well, the baby was in her mom’s arms, so what choice did she have? “I still don’t know her name. I couldn’t get her to tell me.”
I watched the lady’s face get a little softer.
“Etta,” she said.
“Etta?”
But I really messed up in the way I said it, because I said it like that was the weirdest name for a baby in the world. Which I sort of really did think, so the screwup was just in my not keeping that thought to myself.
I should have said something more like “Oh, that’s an interesting name for a baby, I never heard it before. Is there a story behind that?”
I tried to do that, but it came out even wronger.
I said, “What kind of a name is Etta?”
I swear I really meant it to be more like that polite way, but it just came out all messed up because when I’m nervous around people I make stupid mistakes.
“It’s a perfectly nice name,” she said, and she was bristly again by then but I guess I didn’t blame her. “You know. Like Etta James.”
“I have no idea who that is,” I said.
I was actually trying to start a conversation that would get better as it went along, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have known it to hear me.
She just shook her head and they all walked away.
It was just me and the lady cop again. I looked at her and she looked at me.
“Boy, I really messed that up,” I said, “didn’t I?”
“Well,” she said, “if it helps any to know, so did she.”
And it did help—in fact, it helped a lot. I don’t think she ever really knew how much it meant to me when she told me how other people, even fully grown people, mess things up, too.
Chapter Eleven
Brooke: Given Time
I slept a little that night. But only a little. I had Etta in the bed with me. Of course. She was spooned into my chest and belly, and I had an arm over her.
No way was I letting her go again.
Then I woke up and it was dark.
The glowing clock by the bed said it was a little after three. And I just stayed awake, because I wanted to look at her. I had been holding her close in my sleep, but I wanted to know I was holding her close.
It struck me that when morning came I would have to call in sick to work at the department store again. Tell them I was not coming in. Because I wasn’t letting Etta go to day care so soon. I wasn’t letting her go, period. They would ask how long. I had no idea what to tell them. Maybe I would never let her go again.
Maybe I would quit that damn job. Get a better one when Etta and I were over this. If we ever were. My mother would understand that for a time I wouldn’t be saving money to move out. She would have to understand.
Etta started talking in her sleep.
She said, “Brave girl, quiet girl.”
Which struck me as an odd thing for her to say. She never had before.
She didn’t really pronounce the qu sound in quiet, because she hadn’t gotten that sound down yet. But I knew what she meant. I was her mother and I understood everything she said.
I lay still for a time to see if she would say more.
She didn’t.
After a while I reached over her and took my cell phone off the bedside table. Dialed Grace Beatty’s direct line by heart. I knew if I waited too long she would go off shift. And then what I needed to say to her would have to go unsaid for another day. I felt like I couldn’t carry one more thing inside me. I was so emotionally exhausted. Everything felt impossible.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Beatty,” she said.
I said, “It’s me.” And in the silence that followed, I realized it was a strangely intimate thing to say. Almost embarrassingly so.
“Everything okay over there?”
“Yeah. Fine. I just realized that I left without really saying thank you to you. Without telling you how much I appreciate all you did.”
“With all due respect, Brooke . . . ,” she began, and her voice sounded firm. Like she was about to school me in something. It chilled me all through my gut. My emotionally exhausted gut. “. . . I’m not the one you need to be thanking, and I think you know it. I do this for a living. I got paid for helping you.”
“I did say thank you to her,” I said. I sounded like a petulant child. It embarrassed me to hear myself.
“Look,” she said. “I’m not the voice of your conscience, Brooke. I can’t tell you who to appreciate. But I took a full statement from Molly, and I want you to see it. I want you to read it. But in the morning, after you get some sleep. I can’t tell you for a fact that the danger she thought was keeping her from coming out of hiding was everything she thought it was. But I can tell you she thought it was. She had a hellish night protecting your little girl. So take a couple of days to read her story and rest up and get it all sorted out in your head. We’re placing her in a foster home today, and we’ll give her a little time to settle in, and then if you feel you have more to say to her, you give me a call and I’ll work it out so you can see her.”
“Okay,” I said.
A silence fell. And
in the silence, Etta said, “Brave girl, quiet girl.” But she was still asleep.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I didn’t say anything. That was Etta. Talking in her sleep.”
“Oh. What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Brave girl, quiet girl.’”
“That’s interesting. Any idea why she said that?”
“No idea at all.”
But it was not entirely true. Simple common sense dictated that she must have heard the phrase while we were apart. And there was really only one person she could have heard it from.
I made a mental note to find someone who could evaluate her condition in a less physical sense. Someone who could help us sort through the trauma I knew she must be carrying.
The sooner I found such a person, the better.
I woke up again because a tone on my new cell phone announced a text. It was light. Etta was still fast asleep.
The clock said it was after nine.
I picked up the phone carefully, without waking her.
It was a number I didn’t recognize. No message, just an attachment. When I opened it, I realized it was from Grace Beatty.
It was the police report she had spent most of the night taking from Molly.
It was long. Pages and pages long. That girl could really talk. That girl described just about every minute of the night she spent with my little Etta.
My heart sank lower and lower as I read. It burned over every detail that made it clear how wrong I had been.
When she gave Etta the whole box of goldfish crackers and ate nothing.
When she gave her all the apple juice and went thirsty.
When she tried to stand in front of trucks and cars and flag them down and they wouldn’t stop for her.
When she thought one of those boys was coming up the hill to find them but it turned out they were looking on the hill across the street.
When she made it clear how scared she was.
I remembered something Grace had said to me on the phone. She had a hellish night protecting your little girl.
It sounded like hell, what she was describing. For her. For Etta, well . . . Molly spoke of singing to her, and chanting with her, and playing clapping games to keep her busy and as happy as possible. Of holding her tightly as she slept.
Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel Page 11