“To stay.”
I know she only wants to stay because she’s curious. I turn away to get her coffee and in a single quick motion unclip my ANNETTE name tag and stick it in my apron pocket.
“Cream or sugar?” I ask, setting her cup on the counter.
“No, thank you. Black is fine,” she says with a big false smile.
I tell her the price and watch as she fumbles with her wallet.
When I hand her the change for her five-dollar bill, I say with a deadpan face, “It was so nice to see you, Gloria.” And then I look past her to the next person in line.
For the next ten minutes, I watch her out of the corner of my eye and she watches me.
Eventually she leaves, waving in my direction, which I ignore.
Unfortunately, just after Gloria came in, so did Danny, and Julie waited on him. I’m sorry I missed him. Something about his silly persistence in trying to flirt with me feels like a safe way to practice. Kind of like third grade.
“He left a note,” Julie whispers in my ear, and I whirl around.
“Who?”
“That guy. The cute guy.”
“Danny? You think he’s cute?”
“He’s a doll. Since you started working here, I see him all the time, and don’t think I don’t notice him flirting with you. Here,” she says, handing me one of our Big Dipper napkins. Under the logo he’s written, “Annette. Is there a friendship in the stars? Call me.” And there was a number.
Of course I wasn’t going to call him! The idea that I would just call him up—or that he’d think I would—knocks the breath out of me. And then I realize it probably shouldn’t, probably wouldn’t, if I were any normal girl.
Danny’s handwriting is cramped and small, which makes me smile. I like that he associated the Big Dipper with space despite the doughnut logo. The fact that he mentions stars makes me wish it wasn’t addressed to Annette.
I can’t help but wonder if he’d like my real name.
As I continue trying to get Piper to do a few things around the house, I notice how much I nag or scold. I sound just like Inez used to. It alarms me enough that I search for a better tactic to get Piper to cooperate. It turns out she’s highly susceptible to bribery.
Gum works. Cookies work. Money works miracles.
One night I offer her twenty-five cents to help me do the dishes, and I can tell she thinks she’s struck it rich. Actually, I kind of like washing dishes by hand. I enjoy the warm soapy water and the basic idea of washing something clean. You don’t get that from piling dirty dishes in a machine.
While I wash and rinse, Piper stands on a stool and dries. As the two of us work at the sink, we can see our reflections in the window as clear as if it were a mirror. Piper looks so much better since I took her in for a real haircut.
“Stop staring at me!” she says.
“I’m not staring, Piper. I’m just looking. Because you’re a pretty little girl.”
“Don’t look,” she says, shaking her head and flicking some bubbles at my face in the window.
“Okay, I’ll stop looking,” I say, laughing. “But I was wondering if I can ask about your front tooth.”
“What about it?” she says defensively, automatically lifting a soapy finger to the gap.
“What happened to the tooth?”
“Why do you want to know?” she asks my reflection in the window.
“Just curious. It must have happened after you were six or seven, right?”
She considers. “Yeah. I was seven.”
“Did you fall off your bike?”
“No.”
“Did you bite a rock?”
She giggles. “No.”
“Did you trip and fall face-first on the sidewalk?”
“No.”
“I give up,” I tell her.
“I broke it in an accident,” she says. “When I was in a car.”
Oh my God. I’m such an idiot! Why didn’t I think of the accident? I couldn’t decide whether to pretend I didn’t know about her parents or just admit that Mike told me about the accident.
“I’m sorry, Piper,” I say, looking down at the sink and the pan I’m washing.
“You didn’t do anything.” The way she says it makes me wonder if she thinks it was somehow her fault.
After that, we wash and dry in silence for a while. The mood has dampened. The kitchen radio, on KJR, is playing Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” so I decide to get us out of our funk. I turn it up loud and begin to sing along, botching most of the lyrics.
Piper smiles at me and I can tell she likes it when I act silly.
“Annette?”
“Yeah, Piper.”
“How much longer do you think it will take before my tooth grows back in?”
Oh my God. She doesn’t know it won’t. Why hasn’t someone explained to her the difference between losing baby teeth and losing adult teeth?
Never is such a terrible word. And because I’m a coward, I tell her, “I bet it will grow back soon.”
I immediately regret the lie and add, “I really hope it never grows back, because having that gap makes you special. You look way prettier without a tooth there. It makes you unique.”
She looks doubtful.
* * *
—
AFTER DINNER, MIKE usually settles in front of the TV in the rattier of the two recliners. But he watches news or a sports show that bores Piper, making me the prime bait. Tonight I decide to take her for a walk, even though it’s pretty cold out.
“A walk?”
“Yeah. Let’s go for a walk.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t you ever just gone on a walk?”
Her blank expression tells me that she hasn’t.
We put on our coats and set out heading south. Piper is quiet.
“So tell me about your friend Penny. The one you said likes you but moved too far away.”
“She was nice,” says Piper. “We went together because of our Ps. Piper and Penny.”
“I get it.”
She suddenly turns around and walks backward. “Tell me if I’m going to hit something.”
I’m jolted by memory. Jackie and I used to do this. We’d see who could take the most steps backward before they freaked out. Once, I purposely steered her into a bush. It didn’t hurt her, but she got so mad. “You should have known I’d do something like that,” I told her, laughing.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Piper asks. She is walking forward again.
“Have you seen one?” I ask. This is the kind of sarcastic answer she’s always giving me.
She smiles. “Nope. But you must have before. How old are you again?”
“I’m nineteen,” I tell her.
“Oh,” she says. “So you have to have had a boyfriend.”
“Oh, a few,” I lie. “But each one is a secret. You have to do something special to get me to tell you.”
“Like what?”
“Let me think about it.”
We cross Broadway and turn toward the Sound.
“Annette!” a male voice calls from behind us. But I still don’t automatically respond to that name. Then I hear again, “Annette,” right behind us. I turn. It’s Danny from the coffee shop, on a bike.
“Hey,” he says, grinning as he sidles up to us. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I keep walking, but faster. I take Piper’s hand. “I have not been looking for you.”
He gets off his bike and walks it to keep pace with us. “Who’s your little friend?”
“None of your business.”
“Piper!” Piper volunteers. She’s working hard to keep up with our new pace, trying to look across me at this guy.
“So, Pip
er, Annette. Where are you headed in such a hurry?”
I slow the pace a bit, for Piper’s sake.
“We’re on a walk,” says Piper. “Haven’t you ever just gone on a walk before?”
“Oh, a walk. Of course I have. And it’s a beautiful evening for a walk.”
“What’s your name?” asks Piper.
“Danny,” he says. “And what a pretty lady you are.”
“Watch out, Piper,” I say. “You know how your uncle Mike taught you not to talk to strangers? He was thinking of this guy.”
“How about an ice cream? Let me buy you each a cone.”
“Yes!” says Piper.
“No thanks!” I say.
Piper ignores me. “The answer is yes!”
“The answer is no,” I tell him. “Besides, it’s too cold for ice cream.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute but keeps pace. “Can I just ask you one last thing and then I’ll leave you alone?”
I jerk to a stop.
“Yes. Ask us one last thing,” says Piper. She is smiling up at him with her single front tooth.
“Do you like chocolate ice cream or strawberry?”
“Chocolate!” says Piper.
I shake my head. I’m trying hard not to smile. “Strawberry.”
In a booth at Dairy Queen, I learn that Danny is twenty-four, older than I thought. And, given his occupation, the last person in the world I would date, if I knew how to date: Halfway through with our cones he tells me he’s in narcotics.
“What are narcotics?” Piper asks.
“Drugs,” he says.
“But drugs are bad!” she practically yells. “You shouldn’t take drugs.”
“No, silly. I help catch the guys who are selling bad drugs.”
“You mean you’re a cop,” I state. I can’t believe it. What are the odds? Plus, he doesn’t seem like a cop. I expected him to work in construction or something.
“You say ‘cop’ like it’s something terrible. You don’t like police?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Police are great.”
Piper’s big green eyes grow large. “You’re the police?” You’d think he said he was the president.
“Yes, but a special kind.”
“Like you arrest people and put them in jail?”
“Sometimes,” he tells her. “But only really bad people.”
That’s me, I think. A really bad person. “You’re dripping ice cream on your shirt, Piper.”
She looks down at her Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Mickey’s left ear has been hit. She lifts up her shirt and puts that part in her mouth to lick it off. “Use a napkin, sweetie,” I say, a little embarrassed.
A moment later, Piper is dabbing at her shirt with the napkin when she quietly announces, “I went to a police place once.”
I’m surprised. “Like on a field trip?” I offer.
“No,” she says. She looks back and forth at us. “I don’t want to say.”
Danny and I exchange a glance. “That’s okay,” I tell her. “No problem.
“I just met Piper a few months ago,” I explain to Danny. “I rent a room from her uncle Mike.”
“Well, lucky you, Piper!” says Danny with enthusiasm. “I’m jealous.”
“Jealous of what?”
I redden. “Oh, nothing, kiddo,” he says, smiling at me.
I don’t want a boyfriend. I am not interested in men. I am especially not interested in a man who is a cop. After five more minutes of chitchat and cone-licking, I wrap things up as quickly as possible. I stand. Tell him thanks. Tell him I need to get Piper home; it’s a school night.
“Will I see you again?” he asks.
“I have no idea,” I say, tossing the rest of my soggy cone into the trash. “You know where I work.”
“Ouch,” he says, and I immediately regret the brush-off.
After we say goodbye, Piper scolds me all the way home. “I don’t think he thinks you like him now. He looked sad when we said goodbye.”
“Don’t worry, Piper. I’ll see him again.” I grab her hand and start to swing it between us, forcing myself to seem happy.
When I guide Piper toward bed at nine o’clock, she still has chocolate smears around her lips. “Go wash your face,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve got chocolate on it.”
“So?”
“So. You don’t want to get chocolate on your sheets.”
She hesitates. She is wearing the same pink nightgown for the umpteenth night in a row now, and I realize it must be only one of two she owns.
“Fine,” I say. “Go to bed with ice cream on your face.”
She wipes her arm on her mouth and climbs in bed. I shut off her light on my way out. “Good night,” I say.
“Good night, John-Boy,” she says. She does this every night and for some reason thinks it’s funny. Clearly she’s seen too many reruns of The Waltons.
She begs me to answer, “Good night, Mary Ellen,” but I won’t.
“You’re a weird little girl,” I tell her. And I shut the door.
Once I climb into bed, I can’t sleep, because I keep thinking about cops, about being arrested, about people knowing who I am. I remember the distinct feeling of metal around my wrists. The way I split myself off from myself. How I started orbiting my life instead of living it.
* * *
—
I’M TIRED OF seeing Piper in rags, so I ask Mike if she ever got new school clothes. Clearly he doesn’t understand the concept, but he offers to give me twenty-five dollars to take her shopping. On Sunday, I tell Piper our plan. But I don’t quite know how to tell her that twenty-five dollars won’t go far.
Then genius strikes. “Would you rather shop at used-clothes stores and get lots of cool stuff,” I ask her, “or would you like to shop for new clothes at regular stores like Sears but get a lot less—and everyone will be wearing the same thing?”
Piper thinks about this. “What do you think?”
“Well…” I hesitate. “I like thrift-store clothes a lot. You can be more creative. Here’s what I would do,” I explain. “I know where there’s a pretty decent Goodwill store we can walk to. If we don’t like what we find, we can take a bus to the mall.”
She nods. “Okay.” Today she has put her hair in pigtails using green rubber bands—an idea of mine that I now regret. She looks silly. Her face is too serious for pigtails. The hair pulled tight makes her chin look sharp.
We spend the afternoon in the same Goodwill I visited on my first day of freedom. Piper is not exactly a picky shopper. In fact, she doesn’t seem to know where to start or to have a clue about what she likes. I flip through the racks, growing uneasy. Fourth grade. Doesn’t it start to get important right about then, what you wear? I rack my brain. I have no idea what is in style these days. I randomly flip through the racks in her size. She says she’s a girls’ size 12. I find a couple pairs of stone-washed jeans that are the right size. Piper nods approval. Slowly I begin to fill my right arm with clothes. Among them, a plaid shirt that has pink and green. A blue crew-neck sweater. A green V-neck sweater vest. A pair of brown corduroy pants. We also find her a couple of pairs of shoes, one of them suede Hush Puppies that don’t seem practical but Piper loves. I steer her away from the neon colors she repeatedly gravitates toward. After an hour of looking, Piper steps into a curtained dressing room and tries everything on.
Most of it fits. Piper is too tall for all the pants besides the jeans. They look cute on her. All the shirts fit, and a couple of jumpers I grabbed last minute also work. As we head to the counter, I spot a bin of bandannas, barrettes, and hair scrunchies. I remember how I was going to buy a bandanna back when I was even more paranoid about being recognized.
I spot a bright-gre
en one with white and black. “Try this on, Piper,” I tell her, shaking it open.
“How?”
“Let me do it.” I fold it into a triangle shape and turn her around. I lay the longest straight side over her forehead and tie the two ends behind her neck beneath the pigtails.
“Turn around,” I tell her.
She wheels around. “What do you think?”
The green in the bandanna brings out the green of her eyes. “It’s perfect, Piper!”
But she’s skeptical. “Do you think other girls will have bandannas?”
“Well, if they don’t, I bet once they see you, everyone will want one.”
“Okay,” she says.
“If you decide you don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you,” I say with a wink.
I add up the purchases in my mind before we get to the counter. We’re spending more than twenty-five dollars. I have the envelope of money from Mike. When the cashier starts to ring up our stuff, I tell Piper, “Honey, go out front of the store and see if there’s a newspaper machine, okay?”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” After she’s gone I take the extra money we’ll need from my wallet. It’s only ten bucks, I reason. Maybe Mike will let me take it off this month’s rent. Then I also remember that Piper’s birthday is coming right up. I already know what I want to get her, but I need to talk to Mike.
Piper comes up as the cashier is putting the receipt in the bag. “There’s no paper box,” she says.
“I’ll take that,” I say, and put the receipt in my wallet. Piper looks at me suspiciously. When we get outside she says, “We spent too much, didn’t we?”
“No, we didn’t. We spent just enough.”
* * *
—
WHEN PIPER AND I get home from shopping, Mike and Curtis are in the middle of a romantic steak dinner. They even have a candle going. Piper and I say hurried hellos, grab peanut butter sandwiches and some potato chips, and disappear upstairs.
“Do you like Curtis?” she asks me after we’re done eating. I think we were both starved from shopping.
“He seems nice enough,” I say. Curtis looks Japanese to me, though I can’t be sure. “Mike told me he’s a pharmacist.”
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