by Sara Hosey
I don’t usually drink coffee, but I was suddenly ravenously hungry and it smelled good and I loaded it up with milk and sugar. It still seemed bitter to me, but it was a treat and I drank it. I also got myself a chocolate doughnut out of the bag. I kind of wanted to save it, to eat it in private so I could eat it real slow and not be distracted and truly enjoy it, but I also wanted to eat it up, scarf it down right there. So, that’s pretty much what I did. I couldn’t remember eating anything so delicious. It didn’t escape me that there were still two other doughnuts in the bag. At first I thought it might be nice to bring one back to Corinne; then I remembered that Corinne had left and my stomach flipped over. I thought for a moment I might be sick again.
I passed the doughnuts to Ann and she fished one out of the bag. “So, how have things been?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. I sipped on my coffee, but then put it down and to the side. I knew I’d throw up if I drank any more.
“You know, I think about you and Angel a lot, especially at night. When it’s chilly or rainy, I think of you two, sleeping out here.”
“We’re okay. We usually keep warm, and mostly dry.”
“That’s good.” And we kind of just sat there in silence for a minute. “Well, we really worry,” she said lamely.
“We? You and … your husband?”
“No,” she said. She smiled, kind of tight though, so I could tell she was embarrassed. “I have a roommate. She was the one who let Lola … who left her outside. Our Lola, that was our dog who looks like your Angel. Jeannie, my roommate, she put her out in the yard and forgot about her.” Ann frowned. “Lola didn’t have her collar on. Jeannie never had dogs growing up. I don’t know.” She continued to pet Angel, frowning into the distance. She caught me looking at her and said, “I was so mad. I’m sure you can understand. Jeannie felt terrible.” Ann looked off into the distance.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Ann continued. “But you know, animals have much more acute senses than humans. They say they know when a big storm, like a tsunami is coming, they just know and they head for higher ground. So, maybe our dog, maybe it was time for her to go. Maybe she knew she was needed elsewhere.” She looked meaningfully at Angel.
I thought she was being a little heavy-handed, but I appreciated what she was trying to do. I gave a short, vague smile and then looked back down, stared at my knuckles.
We sat in silence again and she sipped her coffee.
What she was saying, it made me feel sort of indebted. Like she had just actually given me her dog. Plus, she had given me so much other stuff: the food and the money. I don’t know, I figured I owed her at least a conversation or something. I took a breath. “So, what do you do? I mean, when you’re not harassing homeless kids.”
She laughed. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“No, I was just kidding.”
She looked at me with half a smile. “I teach gym at a high school,” she said. “All girls. Catholic.”
“You Catholic?” My mother had been Catholic. So had my dad, although he hadn’t taken us to church since I was really little.
She didn’t answer right away, but again sort of looked up at the tree line. “I am,” she said, and I braced myself for a lecture, but she surprised me by adding, “I have my problems with the church, but I am.”
I didn’t say anything for a while and then I muttered, “Cool.”
She nodded. I waited. I have given her enough, I thought. That was enough. I thought, Can I go now? I shifted how I was sitting. The first preparations for leaving.
“Well, what do you want to do?” she said quickly, obviously stalling. “I mean, as a profession?” She looked abashed, like she immediately regretted the question.
“Um, I dunno?” I thought about Anthony, about swimming in the ocean and talking about our future. Again, my stomach did flip-flops, but these were good, Anthony ones. I wanted to talk about him, but not with her. So, I said, “I kind of want to be a lawyer. That would be cool.”
“Sure,” she said, looking relieved.
“I also like animals,” I said. “But no, I think I would want to be a lawyer. They make a lot of money, right?”
“Depends on what kind of lawyer you are.”
“Well, I’d want to be the kind that makes a lot of money,” I said and Ann laughed. “I guess you have to do a lot of school for that.”
“You do,” she agreed.
“Maybe not that then.” I was aware that I was acting younger, dumber than I was. That I was playing up the whole, sweet, naive kid thing, maybe. Was I trying to get her to feel sorry for me? I wasn’t sure.
Ann didn’t say anything for a minute. “Well, you could get back in school at some point,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.” I wondered if she was going to try to make me go to her all-girls Catholic school. Ha. “Maybe a GED, you know? My boyfriend and I were just talking about this.”
She frowned, maybe a little startled by the word boyfriend.
“But maybe I wouldn’t be one of those lawyers who makes a lot of money. Maybe I’d be a lawyer who helps kids.”
“I think that would be wonderful,” Ann said, recovering.
“Are there any lawyers who help animals?” I knew it was a stupid question as I was saying it, but I said it anyway. I knew that it would make her sad for me to say that, and I wanted her to feel sad for me. It was messed up, I knew, but I didn’t care. It felt good to have someone feel sad for me.
Ann kind of sniffed a laugh. “Well, I guess,” she said. “There are environmental lawyers and lawyers for the humane society and stuff. They have animal cops, why not animal lawyers?”
So, then we sat there awkwardly again, having finished that topic too. I figured I’d done enough—she could go home and tell her roommate Jeannie about the homeless kid she was helping, how she gave her money and food, and how the kid opened up to her about her career aspirations. How it was all so tragic, ’cause it was so obvious the kid was never even gonna get that GED, not living in the park she wasn’t.
I picked up my coffee. I was about to get up, brush myself off and go, when Ann said, “Okay, Brenda …” She took a breath. “Let me give you this and you can throw it out as soon as I’m gone, if you want. Let me just give it to you,” and she took a bunch of papers out of the tote. There were cards and brochures and notebook paper with handwriting on it. She held out the brochures and printed-up papers. “This is information about Covenant House. It’s a safe place for kids who are runaways. They’ll take care of you, no questions asked. The address and phone number are there. It’s in Manhattan, but if you can get to a phone and call them, they will pick you up.” She put the pages between us. “The only thing is, of course, they won’t take Angel. But,” she took a deep breath and continued her speech, something she had obviously rehearsed, “of course Jeannie and I would, if you ever needed us to. Here is our address and phone number.” This was the notebook paper. “I’m not trying to take your dog away. I’m just trying to tell you that if you want to go somewhere, if you need to get out of the cold, you can leave Angel with us. We will take care of her for you and I promise we will give her back to you when you are ready to take her back. I want to encourage you to really think about it,” she said, trying to meet my eye. “You need to really think about getting yourself in somewhere …” Here she trailed off, furrowing her brow, as though she had lost her place in the script and wanted to start over again.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. Instead, I stared at the papers on the log, my hands curled around the coffee cup. “And Brenda,” she said, tapping the paper with her address on it, jarring me for a moment, “our house is only about a half a mile from the park. Walk out the Doughboy entrance and take Myrtle. You know, if you need anything? You know, if you’re in a pinch? Or even if you’re not. You are welcome to stay with us. We have
a guest room. We can help you get a plan together. Get you what you need.”
I bit my lip and kept looking at the papers. I ran my fingers through my hair. Even though I had rinsed off at the beach, I was still sandy, my hair now stiff. The sand made me think of Anthony, made me think of Corinne.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “This is just really nice of you and all. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna show up at your house.”
“I’m not worried. You can show up at my house.”
“No, it’s okay,” I told her. “I’m okay. I really am.”
She looked into the trees. “You kids …” I wondered who she was talking about. “You know, you’re not okay,” she said, almost angrily. “It shouldn’t have to be like this. You shouldn’t be living all by yourself in a park.”
“I’m not all by myself.”
“This boyfriend …” she said. She looked at me, and I could imagine how she was as a teacher. “Is he why you’re in the park? Is he … manipulating you?”
I actually laughed. “No!”
She didn’t laugh, though. And I felt myself shrinking a little bit under her gaze.
A bird called out and then another bird called back. I looked up into the trees but I couldn’t see them.
And then I swallowed, hard, and the next thing I knew words were coming out of my mouth and I didn’t even know they were there, didn’t even plan on saying them. And even more surprising, it didn’t hurt.
“I think I might be pregnant. Not my boyfriend. Not Anthony. My stepbrother.”
Her gasp was almost inaudible. I stared straight ahead and thought about what I had said.
“Well,” she said. “You’ll get an abortion. I’ll take you.”
It was my turn to stifle a gasp. I did look at her then. “Isn’t that, you know, a sin?”
She looked at me too, hard, in the eye. “You don’t have to have your rapist’s child. And you can’t have a baby living in the park.”
I almost started crying right there, but I didn’t. I stuck the tip of my thumb in my mouth and kind of nibbled.
“I don’t know for sure,” I mumbled. “I might not even be.”
“Well, let’s go to a doctor and find out.”
I waited a minute. “Yeah,” I said. I took my thumb out of my mouth. “I guess I should do that.”
“Do you want to go right now?”
“I can’t now,” I said, nervous and awake suddenly. “I’ve got to go.” I stood up a little too fast. “I’ve got to get back.” Angel stood too, but Ann held out a hand, trying to get us to stay, to sit.
“This isn’t something you can postpone, Brenda,” she said.
I was thrown for a moment by the fake name but refocused. “Can’t I, like, get a test at the drugstore?”
“Probably. This isn’t really my area of expertise. But let’s think of it this way. If you aren’t pregnant, fine, you got a checkup. If you are, well, you’re going to need to see a doctor, so you can get proper care or so you can … well, figure things out.”
When I didn’t respond, she went on. “Do you have any idea how far along this might be?”
I shook my head, no. “I mean, not long. Two months? Maybe a little more.”
“This is important,” she said. She lowered her voice. “It could be unhealthy, dangerous for you to wait longer. Please let me bring you to a doctor.”
I wanted to run, just dart away. But I stood, in limbo, before picking up the tote and grabbing Angel’s leash. “I will,” I said, holding Ann’s gaze. “I promise you, I will. Just not today.”
“When? I can meet you here again. When?”
“How about, a couple of days? I need some … time.”
“Tomorrow?”
I was regretting having told her, already knowing that if I left with her, even if it was just to go to the doctor, I wouldn’t be coming back to the park. That it might have all been for nothing. “I’ll let you know. I’ll leave you a note. Here,” I nodded toward the rock where she left things. “I just … I can’t go right now.”
“You don’t have to get an abortion or do anything you don’t want to do.” She was pleading. “But you need to talk to a doctor.”
“I know,” I relented. “I promise I’ll go with you soon. I need a few more days.”
I met her eye and offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “A couple more days. It won’t really make that much of a difference.”
She frowned, as though to say, it could, but instead she said, “Oh, Brenda, the world shouldn’t be like this.”
I needed to get out of there, now, and started to move off with Angel and the tote and my coffee. No kidding, I thought. Tell me about it. But I swallowed my bubbling outrage. I knew she meant well. And I knew it wasn’t her fault that my father was a loser and my stepmother was a bitch and my stepbrother was, like, a sociopath.
“Brenda,” she called after me. “Don’t forget to leave me a note. If you don’t, I’ll have a squad of nuns from the Catholic school out looking for you. And you don’t want to mess with those sisters.”
I kind of laughed in spite of it all.
“Okay? Brenda?”
“Okay,” I yelled back, turning. “And Ann?”
She was standing, watching us. “Yeah?”
“My real name is Iphigenia. But everyone calls me Iffy.”
“Wow,” she called back. “That’s some name. Quite a history there.”
“You’re telling me.”
Chapter 33
I left the park.
Now that I had said it, out loud, to someone, I couldn’t not think about it.
I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know how far along it could be. But maybe two months? That was almost how long I’d been in the park. But it could have been more. Maybe more like three months? I really didn’t know.
There was a lump in my throat, like I’d bitten off too much of the doughnut and it hadn’t gone down right, although I knew that wasn’t possible. But it was there, a mass, and I felt like it was choking me. I chugged some water as we walked, but it was still there.
I went to the pay phone and called my stepbrother. He had his own phone in his room. I knew the number.
It rang and my breath got faster and shallower. It was weird how calling a phone number could make me feel like I was gonna have a stroke. How did I think I could face him if I could barely even call him on the phone? I considered hanging up. I almost did.
But then I heard his voice on the answering machine. And I thought of him bothering Lizette.
So, I swallowed hard and said, my voice almost a whisper, “I heard you were looking for me. Yeah, it was me that got you in trouble with Oscar. And the cops. And I’m not even finished yet. You know, what you did to me was wrong. And if you want to find me, you come to Forest Park. I’ll be waiting for you.”
I hung up.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the slippery inside of the phone booth. It was gross, but my knees were weak and I needed to collect myself.
I wanted to stay there, like that, not thinking for a moment, but Angel was tugging at the cord, trying to sniff something just out of reach of her nose. So, I moved. In a daze, I went on.
What had I done?
And what was I going to do next?
We headed to the southern part of the park, to a spot where I had some stuff buried. It was my most secret site. I had carved a moon into a tree stump and from there I would take ten big steps to the right. Under a pile of leaves there was a flat stone; under the flat stone was a hole I had lined with plastic bags to keep my things dry and safe.
I memorized Ann’s address, just in case, and then put it and the other papers in a plastic bag and then buried it with some of my other gear.
Then I took out the gun that I had found all th
ose weeks before.
Corinne was right to ream me out, because the truth was I didn’t know a thing about guns. I couldn’t even tell if the safety was on, so, like a total dork, I put the gun in a bag and held it way out in front of me, so that if the gun accidentally went off it wouldn’t shoot me.
I carried it like that all the way to the bridge. I passed some hikers and we all nodded our heads at each other. I felt a little paranoid, but I reasoned that they probably thought I was carrying some dog poop or something.
When I got to the bridge, Anthony wasn’t there yet, so I made a pile of leaves in a spot where the sun broke through the trees, covered it with a towel, and called Angel over to snuggle down. Even though I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, I did; the next thing I knew, both Angel and I were stirring, sensing someone approaching, and it was him.
He didn’t look happy.
“Iffy,” he said, coming to me, getting down on the ground and taking me in his arms. “You okay?”
“Of course,” I said. “What’s up? Is something wrong?” I craned my neck to look at his face. He was stricken.
“Yeah,” he said. “It sucks.”
“What? What’s going on?” I had to push his arms away so that I could sit, but once I was up, he encircled me again.
Anthony kissed my head, took a deep breath, and blew out. “More trouble, of course. When I brought the car back, which, was like a whole other scene, my brother told me that my parents got arrested again.” He leaned his head and rested it against mine.
“Arrested?” I had to pull away, to look at him. “For what?”
“Drugs. Of course. They had people over at their place and there was a fight and the cops came and then they all got busted. I’m sure they’re claiming the stuff wasn’t theirs, but it probably was. They’re both already on probation. So, now I have to go back upstate. My little brother, Vince. He’s already in care. But if I head up now, maybe I can get him back.”