Girl Gone Missing

by Marcie Rendon

  Cash thought about what Mo had said, about women being sold on the white slave market. Some of these women were white and some were black. These women looked like girls, looked like they should still be in high school, not walking the streets dressed in short skirts and fake fur jackets. And it didn’t seem to Cash as if they were being forced to be out here. She looked up and down trying to see if some menacing guy was watching them, making them stand out here, making them get into the cars with strange men. Cash couldn’t see anyone.

  At that moment there was a rap on the Ranchero’s passenger window. A white man was leaning down, face pressed against the car window. A leer on his face. Cash heard the passenger door handle click. That was all it took for her to throw the Ranchero into first and get the hell out of there. She ran a red light. Thank god no cars were crossing the street at that second. The adrenaline rush left her shaking.

  In two blocks she pulled over to the curb again, reached and pulled the passenger door shut tight and locked it. She lit a cigarette and watched in the rear view mirror just in case the creep had decided to chase her down the street.

  Up ahead she saw a small white castle. It had all its lights on and there were people inside. It was called White Castle, a burger joint, it looked like. Still shaking, she pulled in and decided to get a cup of coffee. Something hot to drink might help calm her nerves.

  Lone men sat on round stools at a short counter. Five teens huddled around a cigarette machine, three nervously looking around while the other two fed coins into the machine and pulled the knob to get a pack of Camels. A guy behind the counter, wearing a white pointed hat, looked at Cash and asked, “What can I get for you, doll?”

  Cash had never been called doll before. This was a night of firsts. “Coffee.”

  “Black?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’ll be a dime.”

  No one at the counter paid any attention to Cash. In Fargo-Moorhead, everyone, everywhere you went, looked you over. To see if they knew you. To see if they went to high school with you. To see if you were from the neighboring farm. Here, no one looked up from their coffee or burger or newspaper.

  Cash took the foam cup from the guy behind the counter and went back out to the Ranchero. She sat there, looking at the men through the car and the White Castle window, all still hunched over the counter. Three white men. Two black men. Each wearing some kind of dark fall coat. Sitting like crows on a barbwire fence.

  When the coffee was half gone and lukewarm, Cash remembered Mrs. Kills Horses saying something about the AIM office being in downtown St. Paul in some church. She headed out onto University Avenue.

  She continued east on University where she could see the state capitol up ahead. Even in the dark, it glowed white. She got to the capitol and drove around the building. It didn’t impress her nearly as much as the Grain Exchange building.

  She drove by a Sears building on her way into the main downtown district. As soon as she read the street signs, she remembered a 10 had been written on the note Mrs. Kills Horses had given her. She drove through the downtown streets until she found 10th. Red street lights caught her at almost every corner, she was driving so slowly. Just when she was ready to give it up, she saw a church a block ahead.

  A stoplight caught her at the cross street before the church. As she waited for the light to change, a group of Indians came out of a side door. She could hear their laughter even with her windows rolled up. They split up into pairs and groups of three or four, hopping into beat-up cars that were parked in the church parking lot.

  One of the men who had walked out of the church, his arm draped across a short woman’s shoulders, was Longbraids. Cash sat through the light again.

  Cash had slept with Longbraids a couple of times up north when she was going back and forth between Fargo-Moorhead, Red Lake Reservation and Bemidji, helping catch two guys who had killed a Red Lake man. On his last night in Fargo, Longbraids had spent the night at her apartment. A first. Cash never let anyone spend the entire night in her bed. Never.

  That night, they drank beer, slowly, not getting drunk, just drinking. Smoking cigarettes. They laughed and talked until almost five in the morning when both of them finally fell asleep. Three hours later, Longbraids woke, stretched, and stepped out of bed naked to go wash up in the bathroom while Cash made coffee, wrapped in the sheet she had pulled off the bed. From the kitchen she watched him walk back to the bed, pick his clothes up off the floor and get dressed.

  He came back to the kitchen table and sat down. They barely talked. Drank their coffee. Looked at each other. Smiled a bit. Finally, when his coffee cup was empty, he stood up. “I gotta go.”

  Cash hadn’t answered. Just stood still, wrapped in the bed sheet.

  He’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Softly on the lips. Then softly on her forehead. “You’ll be my main snag? Okay?” he’d said.

  “Okay,” she’d replied into his jean jacket.

  And he left, neither of them saying goodbye or waving. Cash locked the door and crawled back into bed. It was the first time in years that she remembered feeling like crying. Instead she went back to sleep.

  Now here in St. Paul, at what must surely be the AIM office, she sat through another red light as she watched him climb into a rusted-out Ford. The woman whose shoulders he had his arm across climbed into the front seat first and another woman got in after her. All three in the front seat. Cash watched the car pull out of the parking lot and head up toward the area of the capitol.

  Cash threw the Ranchero into drive and turned in the opposite direction. She sped through downtown at least three blocks before she hit the brakes and slowed back down. She lit a cigarette, rolled down the car window, inhaled deeply then blew the smoke out into the night air. She drove around aimlessly for a couple of more cigarettes, radio tuned to a country station. Conway Twitty came on to sing “It’s Only Make Believe.” When he sang, “…myself I can’t deceive,” she flipped the radio off and gunned the engine. She looked around the streets and saw the cathedral standing guard on a hill over the downtown. She had never seen a building so big, a combination of a medieval castle and some ancient Roman structure. At least she’d know where to come find LeRoy in the morning.

  Another streetlight caught her on the cross streets of Western and Selby. As she sat there waiting for the light, the cab of the Ranchero filled with frigid air. Canuck winter winds surrounded Cash. The radio turned itself off. A chill ran up the back of her neck. Cash looked behind her, first in the rear view mirror. Nothing. She turned around and looked into the bed of the Ranchero. Nothing there. As fast as the cold had filled the cab, it dissipated. The radio came back on. Conway sang, “You mean more to me than any other girl.”

  Cash turned the radio off again. She sped through the intersection as soon as the light changed. She shook a bit, a fast shiver, and turned the heat up in the cab.

  The next light she got caught was at the intersection of Selby and Dale. This corner was hopping. Groups of women, dressed like the ones up on Dale and University, congregated on each corner by the streetlights. There were men in long coats and fedora type hats also strutting around, a certain gait to their walk that said, “This street belongs to me.” There were also more cars with a single white male in the driver’s seat, slouched low, the body language saying, “Don’t look at me,” all the while their eyes darted hungrily at the women on the sidewalk. Cash looked to see if the unmarked police car was anywhere around and didn’t see one.

  When the light changed, she moved forward slowly, taking in as much of the night action as she could. This time she had the presence of mind to check the faces of the white girls to see if any of them looked like the pictures she had seen of the Tweed girl or the girl from Milan.

  Through the intersection, she pressed her back against the seat and stretched her arms out in front, bracing against the steering wheel. She’d been gripping the steering with her fingers clenched and arm muscles tightened. She wiggled
her shoulders and kept driving west.

  About a mile down the street, she started to recognize street names that she had seen around the Macalester campus. She turned down one. In a few blocks she saw the tree-lined streets she remembered. She drove around until she passed the Minority House, with still a few lights on.

  She parked far away from the house and from the main doorway. She would never be able to sleep there, in a strange bed with strange people in the same house, but she had to sleep somewhere. She turned the heat on high and rummaged around behind the seat until she found the wool blanket she knew was back there. She hated wool. It was scratchy. It reminded her of jailhouses and lost mothers. But tonight she pulled the blanket out and wrapped it around the length of her body. When the cab was too hot for comfort, she turned the engine off and lay down on the seat. It took her a few tries, but eventually she got comfortable with her arms under her head and fell into a deep sleep.

  When Cash woke up, her breath was steamy and matched the grey morning sky. With the blanket wrapped as tightly around her as she could manage, she sat up and started the Ranchero.

  She lit a cigarette. The smoke swirled heavy in the truck but she was too cold to roll the window down. After a couple of drags, she cracked the window a quarter of an inch and blew the smoke out as best she could. There was no one else in the parking lot, on the sidewalks or driving on the street. The sun wasn’t really up. The half-naked trees foretold winter coming.

  Cash needed to pee. She sat in the cab smoking and jiggling her legs. When she finished the cigarette, she shut off the truck and, with the blanket still wrapped tightly around her, jumped out of the cab and walked quickly into the Minority House. She opened the door as quietly as she could, peering around in the interior darkness as she moved towards the stairs that led to her bedroom.

  As she passed the carpeted living room where she had first met Frances, she could see a couple of students wrapped in each other’s arms lying on the brocade couch, one blue-jeaned leg thrown over another. Neither stirred as she snuck past.

  Upstairs, she used the bathroom, another round of shivers overtaking her body as her bare butt hit the porcelain toilet seat. She cupped a handful of water to her mouth, swishing it between her teeth, pulling the blanket back around her. Another handful of water quenched her thirst. She leaned against the hot water radiator until its heat seeped through the blanket.

  She went to the room she was supposed to have slept in. She grabbed both feather pillows off the bed and moved to the four-foot-long iron radiator against the wall, arranging the pillows so she could lie across the radiator, slightly curled up, her blanket hanging over her.

  She didn’t have a watch or clock, but she knew it was somewhere between 6:30 and 7. If she were on a farm, the roosters would be crowing. The heat from the radiator seeped up through the feather pillows and warmed her right side. Careful, so as not to roll off, she turned over to warm up her left.

  She was facing the embossed, wallpapered wall. She traced the soft fuzz of the fleur-de-lis design. She thought back over the drive to the Cities the day before. Her trip to the Grain Exchange. She knew she would never forget the picture of men working inside the glass windows late at night, strange numbers written on the walls. The dinner she wouldn’t try to hold on to, though she would tuck the award certificate in her top drawer under her socks for safekeeping. Some part of her knew it was important but with no one to share the good news or its importance, there was an emptiness to the recognition.

  The two guys from the college had talked about showing their mom and dad their awards, the pride evident on their faces. Maybe she would show Wheaton. He was the one who told her to go to college, so maybe it would matter to him that she had accomplished something.

  Cash rolled over on the pillows so her back could get some warmth. She relived her trip by the AIM office. When her daydream took her to the two women getting into the car with Longbraids, she sat up. Her feet, still in cowboy boots, hit the floor. She caught sight of herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. Her hair, which she had braided the day before in one long braid, now had strands sticking out over her ears and from the part down the middle of her head. She stayed on the radiator while she unbraided it, combed it with her fingers and braided it neat and smooth, while her butt got toasty warm.

  She went back to the bathroom and ran steaming hot water. She washed her face and armpits and called it a done deal. She snuck back downstairs to get a clean pair of undies from the bag in the truck. She stuffed them in her pants pocket. She threw the wool blanket behind the car seat, hit the door lock and returned to the house.

  The couple were still entwined on the couch. Neither had moved an inch. She crept back upstairs and changed underwear, stuffing the ones from the day before into her pocket. Feeling dressed, she went back downstairs to the kitchen, found a small electric coffee pot and some Folgers. The clock over the stove said 7:30. Everything in the building was silent except the occasional clang of the radiators and the hum of the refrigerator. There was an ashtray on the kitchen counter. Cash lit a Marlboro and drank her coffee when it was brewed.

  In foster homes, she had learned the skill of rummaging silently through other people’s belongings. She dug through the cupboards until she found some Corn Flakes to go with the milk and sugar she’d found. After she ate, she dug around some more until she found a stash of foam cups. She filled two of them with hot coffee and carried them out to the Ranchero. She sat in the cab with the engine running, drinking coffee, until the cab was warm. Then she backed out of the parking lot. At the first stop sign, she remembered to pull her panties from her back pocket and stuff them into the paper bag.

  She retraced her drive from the night before until she found University Avenue. The streets were empty. The White Castle was still open with a lone counter worker visible through the windows. On Dale and University the XXX theater sign wasn’t blinking and there was no evidence of streetwalkers or unmarked cars. Occasionally she would see a station wagon full of a family, the man wearing a Sunday go-to-church hat and his wife a Jackie Kennedy pillbox. There was no movement at all in downtown St. Paul. The church parking lot of the AIM office was now filled with newer station wagons, in much better shape than the Indian cars from the night before. Cash cruised downtown and up the hill to the cathedral.

  She found a parking spot on the street named Selby. She took off her cowboy boots and put on her tennis shoes, her feet tired of being encased in leather. With the motor running, the heat on full blast and the window cracked an inch, Cash smoked Marlboros and listened to a church station that was playing some good gospel music while she waited for LeRoy to come out of the cathedral.

  Cash thought about her brother back in her apartment in Fargo, about school and how she really didn’t fit in there, about the Indian Students’ Association and how they were going to bring AIM to the campus.

  A soft tap on the window pulled her out of her reverie. LeRoy, wearing a tweed coat, neck scarf and a felt church hat, stood on the street with two steaming cups in leather-gloved hands. Cash rolled down the window. He handed her one of the cups. “Here, courtesy of the nuns.” Cash blew and took a small sip. It tasted like Folgers that had sat a few too many hours but it was hot and in the chill October air it hit the spot.

  He opened the Ranchero door. “Come on. It’s right up the street. We can almost see the professor’s house from here. I’m parked three cars ahead of you. Come on, I’ll drive and bring you right back here.”

  Without the time to think or object, Cash got out of the cab and rolled up the truck’s window. She locked the door. Professor LeRoy grabbed her elbow with his free hand as if to steer her to the sedan. Cash pulled her elbow close to her body and took a step away from him. She followed him as he walked briskly to the sedan. He got there first and opened the door for her. She slid into the car. It smelled new, some combination of leather and plastic. She took another sip of her coffee. It was still too hot to gulp, but the warmth felt good
going down her throat.

  LeRoy started the engine and fiddled with the heat. He sat sipping his coffee as the car warmed up. “You should see inside the cathedral. Beautiful stained glass windows and there are large marble statues of all the saints. Maybe when we get back from the professor’s, we can peek in the door and you can see the inside. People come from all over the country to see it.”

  Cash turned to look at the cathedral with its wide marble steps leading up to arched oak doors with angels and cherubs carved into dark wood. One of the angels flapped her wings and winked at Cash. And then the world turned from fall grey to the fuzz of a TV screen when the antenna needs fixing. And then everything went black.

  Cash heard voices far off in the distance. Mostly female voices. And then a man’s voice. He sounded angry. She tried to sit up, but the room began to spin and she flopped back down. There were no coherent thoughts in her brain. Every time she opened her eyes, the room whirled again and she couldn’t make out how many other bodies were in the room. People continued to talk. Some in soft hushed voices, some louder. And the angry man.

  She stretched out her leg, trying to find the edge of whatever she was lying on. If she could get a foot on the floor, the world would stop spinning and the TV antenna in her brain would fix itself. A door slammed in a faraway world and the world she was in became quiet though she sensed there were still people very close.

  After an eternity, her foot hit solid ground. She heard a soft laugh that sounded like it came through a cardboard tube, long and fat and slippery. She kept her foot on the ground. After what seemed like an hour of trying, she got her hands up to either side of her head and kept them there. She was able to stop some of the spinning that way. But, when she forced her eyes open, the world moved in waves. After awhile, though, she was able to determine that she was on a bed in a room with a few other people. And then the world went black again.

  The next time Cash came to, she was lying on the same bed. Her head was pounding, but her thoughts and eyesight were finally clear. She looked toward the window to figure out the time of day. The sky was nighttime black. She turned her focus to the other people in the room. There were five of them, three sitting on oak chairs and the other two sharing a vanity bench. All blonde. They looked like a team of heavily made-up cheerleaders. Instead of wool letterman sweaters and pleated skirts, they were wearing sequined mini-dresses. The two on the bench were wearing white go-go boots and the others extremely high platform shoes. Their blonde hair was piled high on their heads, heavily ratted and hairsprayed into ridiculous looking updo’s. They didn’t look any older than fifteen, the lot of them.