Getting Somewhere

by Beth Neff

  “None of that was true.”

  Sarah is staring hard at Lauren as she checks the lock on the door. “Just don’t worry about it.”

  “But why did you say all that stuff? It was all a big lie.”

  “No, it wasn’t. They are all lesbians. Someone needs to tell the judge. They have no right to run a program like this for girls.”

  “You are not being sexually harassed.”

  “Who cares? I could be. And how do you know what’s going on with Grace and Jenna right now? I’m doing it for all of us. It’s my good deed.” And Lauren laughs with malevolent glee and slips out the door.

  CASSIE HAS BEEN so engaged with the process of making jam from the raspberries she and Donna picked this morning that she hasn’t even thought about the time. When Ellie comes into the kitchen asking if anybody wants to go swimming, Cassie glances up at the clock, sees that it’s nearly three. That’s an hour past the time they usually meet for the group session. And more than that since Grace and Jenna should have been back from the market.

  As if divining Cassie’s thoughts, Donna asks, “Is Grace here? Are they back?”

  Ellie shakes her head, quickly moves to examine the jars of jam cooling on the counter. “These look great, you guys. Have you been helping, too, Sarah?”

  Sarah shrugs from her seat at the kitchen table. “Not very much. I just couldn’t stand being up there by myself anymore.”

  Ellie pats her shoulder. “Feel well enough to walk back to the river with us?”

  Sarah glances at Cassie, nods. “Sure. I can walk back there.”

  “Well, I’m in no hurry. Whenever you guys are ready. Um, and Cassie? Would you mind coming by my room for a minute when you’re done here?”

  Cassie shakes her head, switches it to a nod. “No, I don’t mind. I think . . . Donna? Are we done?”

  Donna waves her off. “Sure. Go ahead. We’ll meet you on the porch.”

  Cassie follows Ellie to her room, nervous about what Ellie could possibly want with her. She’s never been all the way into this room, feels a little uncomfortable entering Ellie’s private space. Cassie moves one step forward, glances around with just her eyes, holding her head down.

  “Come on in,” Ellie says. “I have something for you. I hope you won’t be embarrassed but I couldn’t help but notice that all your clothes are just enormous on you now. I had to go to Goodwill anyway, so none of these clothes are new, but just pick out whatever you like and the rest I can take back, though you’re welcome to have them all. Just don’t feel that you have to choose anything you don’t like.”

  Ellie has motioned toward the bed so Cassie moves slowly over to it and lightly places her fingers on the top of the short stack of clothing. Ellie has moved up behind her and says, “Go ahead. Take a look and see what you think.”

  Cassie picks up the first top and unfolds it. Holding it by the shoulders, she lays it against her chest and smooths it over her stomach. It has no sleeves, just wide straps for the shoulders, and the color makes Cassie think of the back feathers of a male bluebird she sees almost every day.

  There are four tops, all of them sleeveless and basic: two blue ones, one light and one dark; a greenish one with thin white and yellow stripes; and another solid yellow. Cassie would like to sit down on the bed and hold them in her lap, feel the fabric against the tender skin of her wrists. The shorts are are all made of blue jean material, and Cassie thinks they look way too small, wonders if it will hurt Ellie’s feelings if they don’t fit. Somehow, she has become instantly more attached to the shirts though and is even more worried that they won’t fit over her breasts, which are still fairly large even after all the extra weight of them has been lost. Finally, Cassie turns to the swimsuit, almost afraid to touch it. It is black, lightly ribbed with a slanted band of glossy pink running from under one arm to the opposite hip. She picks it up, feels that the fabric is slippery, satiny, has never seen or felt such a thing, and cannot imagine herself wearing it, puts it back down.

  “Do you want to try anything on? Maybe the swimsuit first?”

  Cassie is swallowing hard, not moving, and Ellie is still standing beside her, waiting. Finally, Ellie reaches across in front of Cassie and lifts the suit into her hands, gently guides her out of the room to the bathroom in the hall. Before Cassie shuts the door, she looks behind her and sees that Ellie is waiting there, has given her an encouraging smile and nod.

  In the tiny room, Cassie slowly removes her clothes, folds them carefully and lays them on the toilet seat. She stands for some time in just her bra and underwear, wondering if she should take them off, decides that she should. She steps into the swimming suit and pulls it up, threads her arms through the straps, releases her hair from the elastic strap across the back. She hasn’t once looked in the small mirror over the sink, has kept her back to it, but now takes a deep breath and turns around. She can really only see herself from the waist up and that is when she is leaning over the sink and looking down. She can hardly feel the suit on her body, it is so light, needs to confirm that she is wearing anything at all before she opens the door. Her heart stutters with a sudden panic that Ellie will be gone when she steps out, that she will not only be wearing something that doesn’t yet belong to her, but that she will find herself totally alone in it.

  But when she opens the door, Ellie is waiting right there. Cassie doesn’t know what the look on Ellie’s face means, the wide eyes that are glistening just a bit, hardly hears Ellie when she says, “Looks like it fits you,” with an enthusiasm that doesn’t match her expression. Ellie motions to Cassie to follow her, leads her into the bedroom and shuts the door so Cassie can see herself in the full-length mirror mounted on the back. This is not what she saw in the bathroom mirror where, standing on her tiptoes with her head almost against the glass, she had seen her belly and hips widening below her, spreading to fill the width of the mirror. Now, there is an almost straight line from her shoulder to her hips, and her legs emerge from the black fabric to continue the sense of length. Cassie turns a bit and sees the end of her hair dangling just below her waist, the curve of her breasts, the gentle swell of her buttocks, the perfect flatness of her belly, and, again, the long, long legs. Her eyes grow wide, and her hands leap to her open mouth, her elbows closing around her chest and then slowly opening, her arms dropping to her sides.

  “I can’t believe that’s me.”

  Cassie can see Ellie’s reflection in the mirror, too, standing behind her, and her face looks different now, her expression pleased and satisfied. Ellie says, “You had no idea how beautiful you are, did you?”

  Cassie can’t look at herself anymore, turns to Ellie and hesitates, then Ellie has her arms around her, hugging her. Cassie feels the warmth of Ellie’s body, catches a faint whiff of her shampoo, and yet she feels far away, watching from a distance, sees the whole room, the clothes in a colorful spray on the bed, the two women, their sharp elbows bent in matching angles at their sides. Cassie doesn’t know if it’s the swimming suit itself or something else, but she is suddenly aware of her body in a way she has never before allowed. Standing here in Ellie’s nurturing clutch, Cassie has the feeling that something essential has just been recovered.

  THE WOMEN ARE far ahead on the path, their heads leaning in close to each other, their hands gesturing in a whole other language to accompany the words that Sarah can’t hear.

  She is walking slowly, still conserving her limited energy, but Cassie is walking beside her, wearing the new swimming suit with one of the blue tank tops over it. Sarah is sorry to see that up ahead, Lauren has stopped, is waiting for them.

  Sarah quickly says, before Lauren can hear, “She broke the rules for you.”

  Cassie stops and turns to her. Her face looks a little stricken.

  Sarah laughs. “No, it’s a good thing. She wanted you to have clothes that fit you and, you know,
be able to swim and stuff.”

  Cassie still isn’t walking. “Do you have a swimsuit?”

  Sarah is now shaking her head. “Cassie. Stop. This is a good thing. Has anyone ever given you a gift before? You’re supposed to be happy about it.”

  “I am but I feel bad if they didn’t get you anything.”

  “I’m sure they would if I needed it. I just don’t need anything right now. Did you know that you look like a fashion model or something? Even with the saggy butt on your brand-new Goodwill swimsuit.” Sarah is laughing gaily.

  “Like a what?”

  But, by now, Lauren has backtracked to join them, asks, “What are you guys laughing about?”

  Sarah starts to move around Lauren, shrugs. “Nothing.”

  Lauren looks at Cassie suspiciously. “Holy shit, girl. What happened to you? Where did you get that stuff, the new clothes?”

  Cassie has started forward, too, glances at Sarah with a pleading look in her eyes.

  Sarah jumps in. “They have a budget for this sort of thing, necessary items, you know. Cassie didn’t have appropriate clothes”—and Sarah enunciates the word with precise exaggeration—“so they got some for her. Why would you care anyway?”

  “That’s total bullshit. She’s just Ellie’s little pet. Better watch out, Cassie. You don’t know what she might want in return.”

  “Okay, Lauren,” Sarah hisses.

  “And you know,” Lauren continues, approaching Cassie and speaking barely inches from her face, “you’d have to give everything back if this got reported. They’re not allowed to buy special little gifts for their special little pets, and Ellie would be in big trouble if anybody found out about it and maybe so would you. If I were you, I’d make absolutely sure nobody was tempted to report anything about this, wouldn’t you?”

  Sarah can’t take it anymore. “Lauren, do you think you could shut up for once? It’s a beautiful day. We’re going swimming at the river. Why do you have to keep trying to hurt these people who care about us? Can’t you be happy about one fucking thing?”

  Lauren seems totally undaunted. “No, I can’t. I can’t be happy about being here for one stupid second. Maybe you can be a mindless slave and enjoy it but not me. And I don’t give a holy shit about these people. I don’t care about them, and you’ve got to be kidding if you actually think they care about us. Not in any way I’m interested in, that’s for sure. All I see when I look around here is work.”

  Sarah steps back toward Lauren, is surprising herself with her own furor. “You know what’s weird? You’re right. We are here to work. But the work we’re really supposed to be doing, you can’t see at all, you haven’t even started yet.”

  Sarah knows that, in some skewed way, her anger is misdirected. She is mostly angry at herself, for going along with Lauren, for taking her pills, for helping even slightly in her sabotage of the program. Ever since this morning, Sarah has been more jittery than ever, feels like her legs, her own mind, and certainly her actions, are beyond her control. She has to get away from Lauren, wishes she never had to see her again. She starts to march away, then realizes she has left Cassie behind, that she is still standing on the path looking stunned.

  Sarah yells, louder than necessary, “Hey, Cassie, want to race?”

  Cassie walks around Lauren with her head down, whispers to Sarah, “You’re still sick.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s go.” And they run, leaving Lauren walking slowly toward the bridge, shaking her head.

  Sarah is completely winded when they arrive at the creek, even wonders if she should try to get back to the house, lie down some more.

  Cassie peers at her out of the corner of her eye, knits her brow, and looks ahead to see if the women are still in view but they have turned into the woods.

  “Do you want to keep going?” she asks.

  Sarah nods, says, “Sure,” with a brightness she doesn’t feel. She’s pretty certain she can make it to the swimming hole, can sit down there.

  By the time they arrive, Ellie has already climbed the wooden ladder that leans against the giant cottonwood and is reaching for the rope with the special tool Grace’s grandpa designed for the purpose, a hook that looks like it has been made out of a garden rake. Sarah is ready to collapse by now and is just about to sit down on the log bench beside the river when Lauren walks up behind her.

  Neither of them says anything as Lauren spreads the towel she has brought along over the log, stretching her legs in front of her to catch the dappled sunlight filtering through the tree tops above them. Sarah changes her mind then about sitting down, wanders down to the river and steps into the water, wading in up to her knees, all while trying to recover her breath, slow her ragged heartbeat. She thinks about sitting down right here, in the water, but is afraid she wouldn’t be able to get back up, so she locks her hips and knees in a standing position and tries to ignore the weakness, the feeling that her bones are ready to bend under her weight like a green willow branch.

  Both Donna and Cassie are watching as Ellie grasps the rope, hangs the hook on a wire loop attached to the top of the ladder, and then places both hands on the rope, positioning the knot at the bottom to hang beside her feet so she can step on to it when she is ready to let go. There is a moment when her feet are leaping from the ladder and her hands are letting go that Sarah is sure she will fall, plunge into the river along the bank where the water is too shallow, lie in a crumpled heap that Sarah wishes she wasn’t imaging. She shuts her eyes tightly, and when she opens them again, Ellie is flying over the river, and then drops, her feet meeting the surface of the sparkling water and disappearing, her hair spreading behind her. Sarah watches, waiting, needs her to come up and it is taking too long, and then Ellie emerges, blinking the water out of her eyes.

  Sarah is telling herself that this is nothing like the High Street Bridge. The water here isn’t brown, and there won’t be something floating down that you don’t want to know what it is. The kid who called himself Fagin said they once found a dead body, that it got wedged on one of the concrete bridge supports, all bloated and faceless, but Sarah didn’t believe him. The High Street Bridge was where the old guys lived, the hard core homeless, most of them totally drugged out or completely crazy. The kids didn’t mix with them, were even a little frightened by them, though they pretended not to be. Ty warned them to stay away, always insisting that the men there thought of the girl prostitutes as free for the taking.

  Sarah doesn’t know why they were down there that night. Maybe because they could feel the first hints of spring and were a little giddy from it, had the feeling that nothing bad could happen once the nights were no longer so cold that you had to give it up just for a warm place to sleep. It was like the river, however dirty and poisonous, was a place you needed to go, a ritual you needed to perform like dancing around the maypole or hunting for Easter eggs.

  There were only about two or three guys under the bridge that night and there were more of them, the kids, maybe six or seven. They rarely hung out together in a group like that, because it attracted too much attention, lowered the chances of scoring, but they were daring and riding high that night.

  Sarah was the one he approached. He said he’d scored, had actual money to pay her with and a hit besides. Even though he was missing most of his teeth and hadn’t had a bath in like two hundred years, Sarah said yes.

  It was the first time she and Shannon had ever argued. Shannon had whispered to Sarah that Ty was on her case, that she needed the money bad for him, the hit even worse. Sarah didn’t want to go with him, knowing it would just be under a blanket since the guy had no room, but she didn’t want to let Shannon do it either. She was jealous of Ty and her, she realizes now, didn’t want Shannon to be the one to come back with the big score. So she’d said no. It turned out he didn’t pay her after all, though he did have a hit she made him give he
r first. He told her it was all a lie, and she’d had to wait until he was asleep before she could fish a couple of wrinkled bills out of his pocket.

  But that’s why, the next night, she had pushed Shannon forward, made the guy take her, because she was feeling guilty that she’d acted so selfish even if it wasn’t such a great deal after all. It wasn’t until late the next day that they found her, some homeless kid Sarah didn’t know running in and whispering to Ty that one of his girls had “got it” over by the warehouse on Seneca Boulevard. Ty didn’t want Sarah to go, but she did anyway, screamed at Ty when he said there was nothing they could do, that it was the cops’ business now. She rubs her arm, remembering how he had gripped it then, saying, “Leave it, Sarah. She’s gone. She’s not coming back,” not knowing that it was all Sarah’s fault, that leaving it was something she would never be able to do.

  Tyson didn’t understand. It now occurs to Sarah that maybe he didn’t even care. Shannon was expendable to him, a commodity. Does that mean that’s how he actually thought of Sarah, too? And the others—were they just following Ty’s lead or didn’t they care either? Sarah feels her teeth chattering, the skin puckering on her arms, though the air is warm. She kicks at the water with all her strength.

  The water gives her the creeps, makes her feel like something terrible is going to happen, and she has to prevent it. Sarah watches in terror and amazement as Cassie climbs the ladder like a monkey, repeats Ellie’s actions exactly, and, within moments, she, too, is sailing over the river, letting go, slipping under, and coming back to the surface unscathed.

  Sarah finally decides to sit down beside Lauren, unable to stand any longer, and Lauren just ignores her, for which she is grateful. She can tell that even Lauren is watching the swimmers, both of them amused as the antics become sillier, the jumps and screeches wilder, though Lauren is trying not to show it, her lips pinched together and her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses.