“That’s fine. Just so long as it goes from my hand to yours.”
Larry looked over at me again. After a moment, he smiled. It was a sad smile.
“You tell your mama she’s doing a fine job, you hear. You tell her she’s raising two good boys.”
I nodded, feeling my own smile coming on. I was doing a fine job raising us. A fine job.
Two
It was near daylight when Larry pulled into one of those all-night diners just outside of Owensboro, Kentucky. “You-all wait here,” he said. “I’ll get directions to the hospital.” He disappeared inside and I rolled down my window and took a look around. Owensboro looked bigger than a lot of other towns we’d been through. We’d passed lots of tobacco fields and what looked to be factories. I stared out at the silos and barns, near-black in the half-light of daytime, and at the remains of cornfields picked clean as skeletons. Then I sighed and leaned back against the seat.
Larry came out carrying a brown paper bag. “Brought y’all some sandwiches,” he whispered, climbing up into the truck and handing me the bag. “Ham and cheese. Y’all do eat ham, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Dion mumbled.
Larry smiled and started the truck up again. “Seems everybody’s not eating something these days—no meat, no dairy, no wheat. Seems like somebody’s just trying to keep farmers out of work, that’s all. Hospital’s only four miles down the road. Lady in there said you can’t miss it.”
Dion fell asleep again as we drove, her breath soft against my shoulder.
When Larry tried to pull his rig up to the hospital, a guard told him he’d have to park at the Trailways station across the street. Larry frowned as he backed up.
“See what I mean about anything could happen?”
I nodded. Dion woke up and looked around, all sleepy-eyed.
“We here already?”
Larry pulled to a stop. I climbed down from the truck and kicked my legs out a bit. Dion climbed down and did the same thing.
“You take this,” he said, getting out of the truck and pressing some bills in my hand. He took a look around the station. “I gotta get moving but you kids take care of yourselves.”
He gave us a look. “Don’t talk to no strangers.”
“We won’t,” me and Dion said at the same time.
Then Larry was climbing back into his truck and backing it out of the Trailways station. One day I’d get me a truck. Eat up a whole lot of road.
“He was nice.”
“Yeah,” Dion said. “I wish I was his kid. Wish I was going home to his house.”
“No you don’t. You wouldn’t be with me then. You want to be with me, don’t you?”
Dion looked away from me and nodded. “I have to pee,” she said, and went on inside the station.
I took my knapsack off my shoulder and hunkered down on it. There wasn’t a soul around and from the way the sky looked, all pink and new, I figured it wasn’t even six o’clock in the morning.
“It’s gonna be a pretty day,” I said softly when Dion came out a few minutes later. I rubbed my eyes, hard, making believe there was something in them. I missed Chauncey, missed going to Marie’s house on Saturday mornings. Her house was always clean and warm and there was always lots of good stuff to eat like somebody had just gone food shopping the day before. I wanted to pick up a pay phone and call, say, Hey, Marie, I’m sorry I left in such a hurry. Wasn’t nothing you did, you know. But I couldn’t. What if my daddy had police tapping the phones in Chauncey? What if Marie’s own daddy answered and took to asking me a million questions to find out where we were? Or even worse, what if Marie told him about my daddy and the foster care people were searching for us the way they did a long time ago—waiting to catch us and send Dion one place and me another? Foster care people don’t care about separating us. I rubbed my eyes harder, feeling the tears pushing through. No matter what, me and Dion had to stay together.
“You crying, Lena?” I felt Dion’s little hand on my shoulder.
“What would I be crying for?” I gave my eyes one more wipe and glared at her.
Dion shrugged. She took a step back from me, hunkered down on her own knapsack. We must of been a sight—two kids in flannel shirts and jeans and hiking boots at a Trailways station—Dion chewing on her collar, me with my head in my hands.
“Lena?”
She swallowed, like she was a little bit scared of what she was gonna say.
“Where we going, Lena? You tell me that and I won’t ask you anything else—ever again if you don’t want me to.”
People on the outside who didn’t understand would probably look at me and Dion and say, “Those kids are running away from home.” But I knew we was running to something. And to someplace far away from Daddy. Someplace safe. That’s where we were going.
“Mama’s house,” I whispered, my voice coming out hoarse and shaky. “We going to Mama’s house.”
Dion shook her head. “Not the lies we tell people—the true thing. Where we going for real?”
“Mama’s house,” I said again, looking away from her.
“Lena?” Dion said. “Mama’s . . . dead.”
I swallowed. Dion hadn’t used that word for Mama before. It sounded strange coming out of her mouth. Wrong somehow. I squinted at some cars, then up at the sky where the pink was starting to fade into blue. Beautiful days broke me up inside. They made me think of all the kids in the world who could just wake up in the morning and pull the curtain back from their windows and stare out at the day and smile. I wanted that kind of life for Dion. I was too old to be wishing that for myself.
“I know she’s dead. I didn’t say we was going to her. I said we was going to her house.”
“And what’s gonna happen when we get there?”
“You said you wasn’t gonna ask no more questions, Dion.”
Dion nodded and pulled her book out of her knapsack. I took a box of colored pencils out of mine and the brown paper bag our sandwiches had come in and started sketching. I sketched the field across the way from us and a blue car moving in front of it. I sketched the sky with the pink still in it and Dion sitting on her knapsack reading. Maybe we sat there an hour. Maybe two or three. We’d learned how to make ourselves invisible. Most people didn’t take a second look if they saw us—two boys sitting doing nothing. Sometimes we hung out at libraries. Dion loved those days ’cause she got to just read and read. And some days we went to a park if it was nice. But mostly we sat in hospital waiting rooms. Before I left Chauncey, I’d gone to the library and looked up all the hospitals I could find in Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio. People were always rushing around hospitals, thinking about their sick and their dying. They didn’t have time to stop and notice us sitting there—or if they did, I guess they figured we were waiting for some grown-up who was visiting. I’d usually let Dion sleep while I kept a lookout. If we found a car unlocked, it was good for sleeping in at night, but most times we slept in the woods. I’d learned to sleep real light and listen out.
I put a nurse in my drawing, then an old lady in a wheelchair. Soon a bus pulled in. Then another one. Some people got off. Some people got on. Me and Dion watched them. There was a skinny girl around Dion’s age carrying a suitcase. Dion narrowed her eyes at the girl, then went back to reading her book.
“How much money we got?”
Dion didn’t even look up from her book. “About ninety-eight dollars.”
When we left Chauncey, turned out Dion had seventy-two dollars stashed in this old yellow sock she had stuck way back in her drawer. That’s how smart she is—only eight and was already saving for some rainy day. All along, I’d been trying to save everything I could too. Some days, I’d go down to the Winn-Dixie and pack up groceries for people. After buying us knapsacks and some supplies, I had about thirty dollars left.
I counted the bills from Larry. “Another forty here. You hungry?”
“A little. We could eat the
sandwiches he bought us.”
“That’s lunch food. Lunch food’s for lunch.”
“A person can eat a ham and egg sandwich for breakfast,” Dion said. “Why can’t they eat a ham and cheese sandwich?”
“It’s got mayo and lettuce on it, that’s why. Mayo and lettuce ain’t for breakfast. Mess your day all up eating the wrong thing at the wrong time. Just ’cause we kind of in between homes now don’t mean we start acting like we don’t have home-training.”
I got up off my knapsack and looked around the station. “I bet you there’s a town to this place with a little diner or something where we could get us some breakfast food.”
Dion tore her eyes away from her book and squinted up at me. She didn’t look scared like a lot of little kids. Just small and—I don’t know—like she trusted me.
“Let’s head over that way and get us a ride.” I pointed out toward the fields. “Seems more cars heading left than right so we should hitch left.”
“They going west,” Dion said, putting her knapsack on her shoulders and stuffing that book in her back pocket. She’s smarter than me about things like east and west. Numbers too. And she knows a lot of big words. If you’re reading a book and you come across a word you don’t know, she could probably tell you what it means, save you a trip to the dictionary. Lot of people’d be embarrassed if their kid sister was smarter than them but I figure me and Dion more of a team than other people. She fixes my words and numbers and I save her from our daddy. I keep it so she can read in peace and not be scared to go to sleep at night.
“What you reading anyway?”
“Just some poems.”
“They rhyme?”
Dion shook her head. “I don’t like the rhyming kind anymore. Those are for babies.”
“You gonna read me one later?”
“If you want me to, I guess.” She slipped her little skinny arm around my waist and we started walking.
“It’s gonna get cold again soon,” she said, looking up at the sky. “It’s too warm for December.”
“I know.” But I didn’t want to think about it. It was December but for some reason it was warm again, like spring some days. At night it got real cold but in the daytime, I swear the temperature would climb to sixty degrees. I swallowed, remembering Chauncey, how right before it snowed there had been this Indian summer and me and Marie had walked around with our coats hanging from our heads. Besides our rain jackets, me and Dion only had flannel shirts and heavy sweaters now. It had been so warm when we left Chauncey, we left our coats behind because we didn’t want to look suspicious. Every day I held my breath, hoping this wouldn’t be the day it got real cold out.
“They call it the greenhouse effect,” Dion was saying. “It’s ’cause of chemicals or something.”
“What’s ’cause of chemicals?”
“The warm,” Dion said, sounding annoyed. “I bet you every year it’s going to get hotter and hotter and soon the earth’s gonna just catch on fire. Boom! The end.”
I looked at her and smiled. “You read too much.”
“Wait and see. When you know December to be warm like this?”
We got to the road and I stuck out my thumb. “We’re just lucky, Dion. Got weather on our side.”
“Got chemicals on our side. Cop car coming.”
I put my thumb down fast and me and Dion started walking again, my heart beating hard against my chest.
The cop car pulled up alongside of us and slowed down.
“Where you two headed so early in the morning?” The cop tried to smile but it was a small smile.
I looked him straight in the eye and tried to keep my voice steady. “School, sir.”
“Well, school’s in the other direction, isn’t it? You two taking the long way.”
“Figure we’d get some breakfast first. Our mama went into labor last night and our daddy still with her at the hospital. We don’t know how to cook yet.” I held out my hand and showed him a ten-dollar bill. “Mama left this money in case of emergency. Breakfast is kind of an emergency.”
The cop frowned down into my hand like he was trying to figure out what a ten-dollar bill was. Then he gave me and Dion another hard look.
“You two headed over to Berta’s?”
“Berta’s . . . diner?”
“What other Berta’s is there?”
“Yes sir,” Dion said real quick, then ducked her head again.
“Well then, get in the back. And use your change to take a car service back to school. No use you boys being late on account of a baby coming.”
Berta’s was at the end of a dusty-looking strip of stores. There was a Piggly Wiggly, a Coleen’s Beauty Parlor and a dance school that looked abandoned. I stared at the dingy pink ballet slippers painted across the front window. I used to want to be a dancer when I was real little. Mama’d always said the minute her ship came in she’d pay for me to take some lessons. I’m a good dancer when I set my mind to it. Once, me and Marie put bottle caps on our sneakers and danced out in front of the drugstore. Some people stopped and watched us and that made me feel real good. This old man handed us each a dollar. Me and Marie sure laughed hard about that one.
“Come on, Lena,” Dion said, pulling my hand. “Before that cop gets to sniffing around us again.”
I followed her inside the diner. It was quiet and warm. A couple of old men were sitting along the counter drinking coffee. We took a seat at one of the booths.
“Can I get pancakes?”
I nodded. “You better get some bacon or sausage or something. Fill yourself up so we can hold on to those sandwiches awhile. Don’t know where we’ll be come nighttime.”
Dion looked at me real quick but didn’t say anything.
The waitress came up to our table. She was pretty, with curly hair and a nose ring. Didn’t look much older than me.
“What can I get you early birds?” she said.
“A menu, please,” Dion said, sounding like she ate at restaurants all the time.
The waitress smiled, then disappeared and came back with two menus. We ordered the Breakfast Special—pancakes, sausage, two eggs, home fries and toast.
“You two kind of hungry this morning, huh?”
I nodded. “And orange juice too, please—for both of us.”
After she left, I pulled our toothbrushes out of my knapsack. Our tube of toothpaste was almost flat. “Here, Dion, you go wash up first.” I handed her her toothbrush underneath the table, all the while looking around to make sure nobody was watching. “Run your fingers through your hair and make sure you throw some water on your face.”
There was one of those tiny jukeboxes on the wall beside our table. After Dion left, I flipped through it, looking at all the songs. There was mostly country with one or two songs that if I wanted to waste the dollar, I’d actually consider playing. When I got to the end, I started flipping through it again. I was trying hard not to think about where we’d be come nighttime.
Dion used to be afraid about the night. A lot of trucks had these little beds in the back and if a truck driver was real nice, they’d tell us to climb back there for a couple of hours. Once, we hitched with this lady truck driver. She had the most comfortable bed I’d ever slept in.
I sat back in the booth and let my breath out real slow. With all the hitching and sleeping we’d done over the weeks, we could well be in California by now. But we were mainly traveling zigzag, trying to stay close to towns rather than getting way out there on the highway. We hitched in cars more than in trucks ’cause with cars you usually got a nice family type person. I frowned and flipped through the jukebox another time. I didn’t know where we’d sleep tonight.
When Dion slipped back in the booth, I took the toothpaste from her and stuffed it in my pocket beside my own toothbrush. Dion took her book out and started reading again.
In the bathroom, I peed, then gave myself a good long hard look. My cheekbones seemed to be sticking out more than usual. My whole face looked
different—older somehow. All the parts of my face together don’t add up to much but separate, if I wasn’t frowning, they looked fine. My shoulders made me look skinnier than I actually was, more like a boy than a girl, especially with my hair cut short. I took my flannel shirt off and tied it around my waist. Underneath, me and Dion were both wearing navy blue thermal shirts with T-shirts under them because Dion had read somewhere that layers are the best way to go if you’re traveling. After I brushed my teeth and threw some warm water on my face, I checked in the mirror again. I was doing a fine job. But I needed to get us somewhere before the cold settled in.
When I got back to the table, the waitress was setting down tall glasses of orange juice. She gave me a long look, then pulled her lips to the side of her mouth.
“You two on the road?”
I swallowed, looking away from her. As long as we kept ourselves halfway clean, most people couldn’t tell anything about us. But this waitress knew a whole lot of things. I could tell by the way she looked at me. Some people could look right through you and see everything you buried inside yourself.
“Yeah,” Dion said quickly. “We’re on the road to see our mama at Owensboro Hospital. She just had herself a baby boy.”
The waitress gave us another long look and I could tell she didn’t believe Dion.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was on the road to see my daddy. He’d had surgery. And my friend Hadley was going to see her sick grandma.” She smiled.
“It’s the truth,” Dion whispered, her eyes narrowing.
Lena Page 2