Getting Somewhere

by Beth Neff

  Grace is looking at her, must have said something that Sarah didn’t hear. Sarah tries to look attentive, smiles.

  Grace nods toward Sarah’s bag, asks, “Are you tired of that? Would you rather do something else?”

  Sarah looks down at her hands, wonders if she’s been completely distracted, lost her focus, if she’s held this same bag long enough to attract Grace’s attention.

  “No,” Sarah answers, “I like it, unless, you know, you want me to do something else or I’m not doing it right or something.”

  Grace chuckles. “No, you’re fine. Just checking. If you’re okay, we’re going to head out.”

  Sarah looks toward the door, sees Lauren standing there, her back to Sarah and her hands on her hips, face raised to the sun. Grace says, “And you remember about the onions when you’re done with that?”

  Sarah nods. “Oh yeah, no problem. I’m almost done here.”

  Sarah doesn’t want to admit how disappointed she is about not getting to pick the watercress. Grace had shown them that first day on their garden tour where it grows, a spring-fed pool a few yards up from where the creek water joins the river. She’d shown them the path where you have to wade in, keeping your feet on the sandy spots where the current makes firmer footing, and then how you reach into the mound of green and use scissors to cut off the branching, leafy tops. Grace had even picked a couple of leaves, had them taste it, the radishy bite sharp on Sarah’s tongue. The spot was shady, idyllic, as if the scene belonged in some book about the English countryside. Sarah could see herself sitting there, dangling her legs off the bank.

  However much Sarah wanted to help, she didn’t think she should ask, expects that they frown on that sort of thing. When Grace told Lauren earlier that she’d be the one going along today, Sarah had to almost laugh trying to imagine Lauren wading in the creek water, getting her hands muddy. The girl can’t even play a simple game of Wiffle ball without getting hurt. Sarah still can’t figure out what that was all about. Maybe Lauren has some issues with physical contact, the way she’d yelled, “Don’t touch me!” when all Grace was trying to do was help.

  And Lauren sure didn’t seem too happy about going with Grace either. It kind of makes Sarah mad the way Lauren gets the best job by being the worst worker and doesn’t even seem to realize it. But that’s the way it always is, the squeaky wheel thing, girls like Lauren just assuming that privilege belongs to them. What the hell is she even doing here?

  Sarah starts back to the cooler to get the onions. Maybe she’s being too hard on Lauren. Maybe it’s just taking her a while to adjust. She’s probably unhappy, and maybe Sarah hasn’t tried hard enough to be friendly, though she has to admit that any gestures she’s made in Lauren’s direction so far have been rebuffed.

  Standing at the wash basin scrubbing the dirt out of the hairs of the funny little onion people, Sarah’s hands are so cold she can hardly feel them. She stares at the mottled red skin as if trying to remember where she’s seen those hands before and then tucks them into her armpits, allowing herself a short break to admire the scene in front of her: Jenna and Cassie out in the garden, Ellie a little distance away, their bent backs to Sarah, the greens and golds and browns merging together like the watercolor strokes of some French painting she once spent almost a whole afternoon staring at. Cold hands, just like that day, so cold that her fingers felt frozen solid right through the gloves she’d found, separately, lying on the sidewalk in two different places. The museum day.

  “Remember the museum day?” Shannon would say. They’d washed their hands and faces again and again in the hot water in the bathroom, stood in front of the steamed mirrors and made faces at themselves. Shannon had laughed out loud. Sarah will never forget Shannon’s laugh, so deep and rough for such a small body. Then they’d wandered through the galleries, so stoned that Sarah found she could hardly pull herself from one canvas to the next. They’d gotten kicked out, of course, threatened with calling the police and so never dared to go back.

  And here she is again, another day both like that one and not—the confusion of excitement mixed with terror, the sense that the images in front of her are unreal, too good to be true, as if, at any moment she’ll be caught and sent away.

  Here come Lauren and Grace, returning, but Sarah has to turn away, fight the flooding disorientation that paralyzes her, erase that picture of Shannon she thought she’d already banished: all the blood, the misshapen skull, the sirens and cops crawling everywhere afterward, picking people up for questioning and Sarah wondering what she would say, whether she would tell them that she saw him, knew what he looked like, wanting it and running from it at the same time. And now why isn’t Lauren even headed this way? She is walking, instead, to the house, and Grace is staring after her, the crate mounded with green resting on her hip, her head shaking, her mouth forming words that Sarah can’t hear and Lauren is ignoring. Sarah is clutching her chest for breath, her temples thudding, a line of sweat breaking out above her lip, but, even through the swirling trance that threatens to overtake her, Sarah notices that Lauren’s borrowed boots aren’t even wet.

  Grace nearly sweeps past Sarah, slowing to squint at her face. Sarah tries to plant a smile there, to peel her hands away from the side of the tub she’s been gripping to remain upright and casually drop them back into the water where the remaining onions still float. “Cold,” she says, and Grace nods briefly and moves on into the shed to place the crate of cress in the shade until Sarah has finished the onions, drained the tub, and refilled it with fresh water.

  Grace goes out to pick a few more radishes while Sarah washes the cress and hurries to package it so that Grace won’t notice how clumsy she is with the small bags. It would be better if she could keep her thoughts fully at this farm, stop tumbling back into that former life every other second, but her mind refuses to let her. She hears her stomach growling, and suddenly she is back on Western Avenue, hungrier than she has ever been, and so tired, too, ready to crawl into any old doorway and get some sleep.

  She’d left early the previous day, had gotten up for school like always, pretended to eat her breakfast, wishing later she really had. She’d made the decision days, maybe even weeks, before but never could get the gumption to go. Learning her mom had gone to working nights at the hospital full-time had finally clinched it. She couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t stand the waiting, the dreading, the pure nausea and humiliation when she heard his steps in the hallway, saw the knob turn on the door, felt his weight on the edge of the bed as he bent to remove his shoes. She’d almost told her mom, had formed the words a dozen times, tasted them on her tongue, knowing, always knowing it would do no good, that she’d take his side, refuse to believe it.

  Even with the hunger, the fear, the cold, all the men she’d been with since just for a place to sleep or a meal, a couple of joints or a few dollars, she’d never considered going back. She knew it was a different Sarah they’d known, a girl that wasn’t even her. The others, they never asked Sarah to be different from who she was. She’d seen them, that first day, moving through the streets and alleys like ghosts in a cemetery, before, she’d thought, they even noticed her. But she was wrong. They knew she was there almost before she knew it herself, had expanded their circle to include her before she’d known she needed it, that her life depended on it. Sarah instantly became a part of something, a world that, as different as it was, she understood perfectly. She’s not sure how she’ll survive if she can’t find that here.

  It’s always all about survival. Sarah’s never been asked to define love but she knows without a doubt that survival is figuring out who you can depend on. She’d probably say they are the same thing.

  WHEN SARAH ARRIVES in the living room, Lauren is already sitting there, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, legs crossed, too, a distinctly peevish look on her face. She doesn’t acknowledge or make eye contact with Sarah so Sarah sits at t
he other end of the couch, as far away as she can get without seeming totally rude.

  All four girls are seated by the time Ellie enters. She smiles at each of them, but Sarah imagines that she is also evaluating the scene, making little notes in her head about where they have chosen to sit, how they’ve distributed themselves, how tense or relaxed they appear. Ellie scans once and then returns her gaze to Lauren, frowns a bit, probably without even realizing it. Sarah sees it, too, how Lauren’s demeanor has transformed today from her usual snootiness and superiority to something much darker, sullen and contemptuous. Sarah wonders if something happened between Grace and Lauren back at the creek today or if this is just a natural progression for when the evil queen realizes she’s not nearly as powerful as she thought. Sarah thinks Ellie had better watch out for poisoned apples.

  Sarah leans back into the couch. She scans the walls of the room, notices that all the available wall space is covered with shelves crammed with books, and wonders, with all the work they have to do on the farm, how anybody has time to read.

  “You know, I’m not going to do any of this.” Sarah is startled out of her reverie by the tone and force of Lauren’s voice. She sees that Lauren is glaring directly at Ellie and that Ellie is, incongruously, smiling back.

  “Not going to do what, Lauren?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost kindly.

  “This.” Lauren waves randomly around her. “All of it. Any of it. There is no fucking way I’m going to go wading in that filthy water or dig in that dirt or handle other people’s food. And, to be honest, I’m not really interested in talking to any of you about it either.”

  Jenna has scooted into a more upright position and is staring directly at Lauren, so intently that Lauren finally turns to her, feeling her gaze. Jenna’s voice is low but not threatening, matter-of-fact. “When they said ‘farm,’ what exactly did you think they were talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Lauren whines. “Like, horses or something?”

  Jenna’s face has a look of total incredulity on it, and Ellie looks at her and then quickly away. She seems to be searching for some way to respond, until Sarah realizes she is trying as hard as she can not to laugh. Unfortunately, Ellie then looks directly at Sarah, who is grinning broadly, and Ellie can’t hold it in any longer. She begins to chuckle, and within seconds has lost control. She is laughing out loud and the girls are all staring at her, and then everyone, except Lauren, is laughing, too. Lauren is almost shouting to be heard. “What? What are you laughing about? This isn’t funny.”

  It is the kind of hysteria with no good explanation that refuses to give up. Ellie is wiping tears, and then Donna is at the side door, drying her hands on a towel with a questioning look on her face.

  “What in the world is going on? Is everything okay in here?” Nobody can answer in any kind of a satisfactory way and then Sarah says, “I guess you kinda had to be here,” and they are all set off again. Ellie motions Donna into the room and she hesitantly sits beside Cassie on the hard piano bench.

  “So what’s going on?” Donna asks again.

  Finally, Ellie catches her breath and says, “Lauren was saying that she’s not very happy with what she’s found here. It’s not what she expected and when she said that she expected horses instead, for some reason that just cracked us up. Lauren, honey, you know we’re not laughing at you, don’t you? It was just funny the way it all came out.”

  Lauren looks completely unconvinced, has her arms folded across her chest again, her jaw clenched, her crossed foot tapping an angry rhythm against the side of the couch. Ellie has sobered now and is leaning toward Lauren, her elbows on her knees.

  “I’m sorry, Lauren. I don’t think any of us meant to hurt your feelings. We were laughing with genuine amusement not intended to be at your expense. To address your comments though, what I’m understanding you to say is that none of what you’ve seen so far here is work you can imagine yourself doing. Is that correct?”

  Lauren nods her head pathetically.

  “Well, I am truly sorry to hear that. At the same time, while we’re not interested in making anyone miserable or forcing you to do things you can’t stand, your presence here is not optional, and so I strongly encourage each of you to make the best of it. We’ve made something available that we think can help you, but it’s up to you to make use of it. Do you understand that?”

  Ellie has not once taken her gaze from Lauren, addressed anyone besides her, but it is Cassie and Sarah who are nodding. Jenna’s face is completely blank though she is looking right at Ellie, and Cassie is staring down at her own lap. Sarah finds herself exchanging a glance with Donna, a kind of telepathic high-five, acknowledging, it seems to Sarah, both that Ellie has said the right words and that Lauren may have done them all a huge favor by creating an absolute how-low-can-you-go standard that no one else wants to beat.

  Before Ellie has a chance to begin again, Donna gives everyone a little wave and heads back to the kitchen. Ellie smiles a little bleakly and focuses momentarily on the clipboard lying in her lap. Finally, she looks up and scans the faces in the room again.

  “I think we should start today by each of us saying why we are here.”

  Everyone remains silent. Ellie waits a moment and then continues. “I don’t mean what you did to get here, unless you want to talk about that right now. I mean, why you chose the farm, what you thought it would be like, what you might be hoping to get out of it.”

  Still, no one speaks.

  Ellie turns to Cassie who is now fairly close beside her and asks, “Cassie, can you tell us why you picked the farm?”

  Cassie looks alarmed.

  “There’s no right or wrong answer,” Ellie says. “I’m just thinking we need to start somewhere, get us talking, and this might be a way for us to understand what each of us brings to this experience.”

  Cassie is breathing hard and twisting the ends of her ponytail, trying to decide where to look. Her voice is stronger, louder than Sarah imagined it would be.

  “I didn’t want to go to jail. Gram . . . Gram would have been very upset if she knew I was in jail.” Cassie’s mouth is still open, poised for words, but nothing comes out. She holds her head perfectly still, studying a spot just in front of her feet on the floor, looking exactly like a rabbit who believes it can’t be seen if it just doesn’t move.

  “Who’s Gram?”

  Everyone turns to Jenna. Sarah wonders the same thing. Cassie looks at Ellie, hesitates, her face blushing a deep pink clear up to her hairline.

  Ellie asks, “Do you want to tell us who Gram is?”

  “Well, she’s my grandmother. I lived with her before I came here. She’s, well, she’s not quite right.” Cassie glances briefly at Ellie, drops her eyes, assumes the rabbit stance again though, this time, her gaze is trained onto her lap where her fingers nervously twine and untwine so forcefully that Sarah has to look away.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell us right now?”

  Cassie’s no comes out in a whisper.

  “Okay, thanks. Sarah?”

  “I told this all at the Center before, but I don’t mind telling it again. I’m Sarah. I’m seventeen or I will be soon, in June. I left home when I was fourteen because my mother’s boyfriend was sexually molesting me. I’ve been living on the street since then with my friends and we sold drugs for money, usually, and I got arrested for prostitution and because I was, I am, a drug addict.”

  Sarah thinks she knows how this is done, what Ellie wants to hear, not only because of the sessions at detention but because she saw it in a movie. She’s not sure though how much she should say. She wants Ellie to like her, but she doesn’t want the other girls to think she’s kissing up or anything. She decides it’s safest just to tell about the movie.

  “They showed us this movie at the Center, a documentary, you know? It was made by
some people who filmed homeless kids in Seattle, and it was pretty good, like, I think it was real and stuff. They said, ‘My name is’ and told their ages and everything and what kinds of trouble they’d gotten into. I thought it was pretty interesting. I think we were supposed to see ourselves in it, you know, like, feel sorry or sad or something, but I didn’t really get that out of it.”

  “What did you get out of it?”

  Sarah instantly wishes she could take those last words back. They didn’t talk about what other kids might get out of the movie in the movie.

  “Ummm, well, I just saw it as, you know, like, another way for people to be. I mean, I know it’s not good for you to take drugs and stuff and I know that little girls, like me”—Sarah puts her thumbs under pretend suspenders and grins coquettishly—“are not supposed to have to sell their bodies for food and shelter and stuff but, you know, I don’t think it’s any worse than all the things people in the ‘real world’ do”—and she makes air quotations with her fingers—“to get money, you know?”

  Ellie is frowning a bit so Sarah scoots up to the edge of the couch. “I’m not saying I resent being here or anything. I feel pretty lucky, I really do. It’s just, you know, my friends are still out there, and it’s not helping them at all.”

  Ellie nods, studies Sarah for a moment. “I bet you miss your friends, huh?”

  Sarah hesitates, coughs a couple of times to dislodge the lump that has formed in her throat. “I don’t think you could understand it even if I tried to explain it to you.”

  Ellie doesn’t blink, keeps her face expressionless. “No,” she says, “I’m absolutely sure you’re right about that. Do you want to tell us any more right now?”