“I know,” the waitress said. “It’s always the truth, isn’t it? How old are y’all anyway? Look to me about nine and eleven.”
“I won’t see nine again,” Dion said. “Until it’s a hundred and nine. And my brother probably old as you.”
The waitress smiled. I could tell she liked Dion. “A mouth like that’ll get you anywhere you want to go. Thing about being on the road is, people who figure out your secret are the ones you can trust. Those people probably got a closet full of skeletons same as yours. The ones who can’t figure it out are the ones you worry about.”
Dion didn’t say anything.
“How long you been on your way?”
We didn’t say anything. Dion took a long drink of orange juice and glared at the waitress.
“You keeping to back roads, staying away from truckers?”
I looked down at my hands. “Yeah.”
“Look,” the waitress whispered. “I wouldn’t turn y’all in if somebody paid me. It’s not like that. I was on the road a long time and I learned some things. You two might be fooling a lot of people trying to look like boys but I had the same costume so I know. You look young, so stay near young-looking places—schools and libraries and such. Don’t stay any one place too long either. Keep moving.”
“We’re going to see our mama,” Dion said. “She . . . had . . . herself . . . a . . . baby . . . boy! It’s called plain English.”
The waitress smiled and shook her head. “Well then, you send your mama my best,” she said. “And I’ll be back in a bit with your breakfasts, which are on me. You-all keep your money. Be needing it.”
After she left, Dion glared at me. “You better learn how to hold on to your lies, Lee,” she said through her teeth. “I don’t care if you don’t know where the hell we’re going or what’s gonna happen when we get there. I ain’t about to spend time in anybody’s orphan house or jail.”
“She’s not gonna tell nobody, Dion. You heard her. She been on the road same like us. And look at her. She made it to the other side. Got herself a job and everything.”
I turned the saltshaker around and around in my hand, trying not to smile. It felt good to have someone know. Somebody who’d taken the same trip and ended up in a small diner in a little town—all right.
Three
Maybe twice in my life I’ve broken somebody’s heart. The night we left Chauncey, I broke Marie’s. I guess next to Dion, Marie’s the person I love most in the world. Before Marie came along, I hadn’t had me a best friend in a long time. Seemed with all our moving and all, it just didn’t happen. When we lived over Che Che’s I had me a friend. We was real tight for a while but then Daddy said he didn’t care much for me hanging around black people. We moved soon after that. Then I just had me, Dion and Mama but nobody on the outside.
Back in Chauncey, there wasn’t a whole lot of white people and the black people who lived there, well, most of them didn’t care too much for white people. The white people living there were like my daddy—he don’t like black people and he’ll say it right out. I don’t know what’s worse—not liking somebody because of their race or saying it right out. Both things tear a person up inside. At Chauncey Middle School, black kids sat on one side of the cafeteria, the white kids sat on the other. Same in the classroom—you’d see the two or three white kids all huddled together. My daddy used to always say united we stand, divided we fall, and I truly think all the kids at Chauncey had daddies at home saying the same thing.
Marie had this group of black girls she hung with. They were voted Most Popular and Best Dressed and all. They just floated through the school—white kids and black kids stepping out of their way.
When I first got to the Chauncey school, my teacher, Ms. Cory, made Marie show me around. You could tell Marie didn’t like me, the way her face was all frowned up whenever she had to take me to a classroom or something. Anyway, this one day, we was in the bathroom. Marie was kind of crying ’cause her friends had been making fun of her and when I came in, she was washing her face, trying to make believe she wasn’t crying. Thing about Marie, sometimes, when it was just the two of us, she’d get sweet. I knew that sweet side was her true self so it made me feel real bad to see her crying.
Marie’s daddy was a professor at the university and since she was the only child, he bought her anything she wanted. Sometimes I’d see her sitting in a classroom dressed nice with her hair done up and I’d wish it was me that had all those nice things. Then Marie would look up at me and smile and I’d feel bad for being jealous. Her mama left them and it was just Marie and her dad so she deserved every single nice thing she had. Her mama hadn’t even told her where she went—just sent these post-cards from all over the place with no return address on them. I guess her mama was the first one in the world to break her heart, then I came along and broke it again.
I think the main reason we became friends is ’cause we didn’t have mamas. We used to talk about all kinds of things but mostly about what it was like not to have one.
That day in the bathroom, we still weren’t friends yet but we got to talking and I asked her about her father. I always want to know about other people’s daddies ’cause my own was so messed up. Marie told me a little bit about her daddy, that he didn’t really like white people and all. I told Marie that my own daddy didn’t like black people—that he was always calling them the n word—and her face sort of fell apart. That word is like a punch—every time I hear it I think about the way Marie’s face looked when I said it. I would never say that word again. Anyway, we kind of started to become friends after that. Marie had this way of laughing that would make her whole face light up. And when you talked to her, she’d look right at you like what you had to say was the most interesting thing in the world. Some people, when you talk to them, they start looking in a hundred and two different directions, even at their watches like they can’t wait for you to shut up and listen to them. Marie wasn’t like that.
I think I’d rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. When you break somebody’s heart you don’t only have their sadness to carry around but you got your own guilty feelings too. That night I called Marie to tell her me and Dion was leaving, she cried and told me not to go. We could tell somebody. Please don’t go. And you know something? If Dion wasn’t standing beside me with her knapsack, if I hadn’t already left that house and made up my mind to get us as far away from my daddy as I could, if I didn’t feel like I would fly apart if I didn’t leave when I did, then maybe I would have stayed.
Four
You ever want to see something sad you take a good look at a crying kid running toward somebody. You see all this hurt and scared in their faces. The night we left, Dion ran out of the house after me saying, “Don’t go without taking me, Lena. I know you ain’t coming back.”
I didn’t have the first desire to leave without Dion. She was the whole reason I was getting us out of there. When Mama died and Daddy got to touching on me, I started making plans. But those were stupid and didn’t work out like I wanted them to. Now I had another plan. And this one would work, sure as I was born.
Every morning, I’d go out behind the house and check on the supplies I kept hidden beneath somebody’s junked car. It seemed like forever I had been putting stuff together—an old tarp I’d found by a campsite, a water bottle I’d taken from Winn-Dixie, socks and long underwear, sweaters, me and Dion’s blue plastic rain slickers, a flashlight, high-energy bars and blankets. I needed us to be ready for any kind of weather. Ready for anything. I’d had my number of nights sleeping outside and I knew how cold could settle right down into your bones and kill you if you weren’t careful. Some nights I’d just go out there and pack and unpack the stuff to make sure it fit good in the knapsacks. We couldn’t take a whole lot of stuff ’cause I wanted us to look like two kids on their way to school. I’d learned how to roll the blankets up real tight, make them the size of a sweater.
I was out behind the house packing up our stuff
for the last time the night Dion came running toward me. I had just come from riding around with our daddy trying to talk to him, trying to convince him that it wasn’t right him touching on Dion. But he’d just made believe I was crazy, that he wasn’t doing anything out of place. It was bad enough my daddy was touching me but touching Dion was another story. I was already too old to have big dreams of being somebody but Dion was just a little kid.
When I turned around and saw Dion, I shoved the stuff back under the car real fast and leaned against it, scared.
“You can’t leave without me, Lena,” Dion said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. What if Dion froze to death? People would say it would have been better to keep her with our daddy than having her freeze. Me, if I froze, even that would be better than living the way we lived. But maybe not for Dion. I mean, what if she didn’t have the strength to be on the road?
“What makes you think I’m going someplace, girl?”
Dion nodded toward the car. “All this time you’ve been packing stuff under that car. You even packed my little blue pillow—the one somebody sewed for me.”
“Mama sewed that pillow for you.”
Dion stared at me without saying anything.
I looked at the ground, remembering something I had tried to forget. Right after Mama died, this woman came from the child welfare department. When I told her about our daddy making me sleep in the same bed with him, she took me and Dion away. Then she sent Dion one way and me the other. It was the first time we’d ever been separated. And it was gonna be the last time too.
“You remember when you was still in Nelsonville and they’d sent me down near Kentucky?”
Dion nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You remember how I ran away and come to get you and then we found our daddy again?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember how cold it was?”
Dion shook her head. “No. I don’t remember being cold.”
“You remember being scared?”
“Uh-uh,” Dion said. “You just came and got me and then we found him and then it was the three of us together again.”
“It took us four days to get back to him. It was cold and you was scared, Dion!” I swallowed, wanting her to remember, remember and be ready. “You was real cold and real scared.”
Dion glared at me. “Maybe it was you the one scared. Like you scared now.”
“I ain’t scared,” I said quietly.
I frowned and looked up at the sky. It was almost nightfall. Somebody was playing music in one of the houses near ours, a country song about a man loving his woman forever and ever amen. Dion wrapped her arms around herself and watched me.
“You know he made me drive with him to town tonight?” I started chewing on my pinky finger. Somebody’s dog was barking.
When I looked at Dion, her eyes seemed to disappear, like the whole inside of her was taking off somewhere.
“Later he’s gonna call to you, you know. The way he does some nights.”
Dion shrugged but her bottom lip was starting to tremble. She was wearing an old pair of summer pajamas and two buttons were missing on the top. She held it closed with one hand and wiped her eyes with the other. I took my jacket off and put it around her shoulders.
“It’s not like this with everybody, Dion. It don’t have to be this way with us. But it’ll mean never seeing him again.”
“Never?” Dion whispered.
I shook my head. Dion loved our daddy in a way I didn’t anymore.
“Not for birthdays or nothing.”
“Like if he’s dead, Lena?” Dion asked.
“Yeah. Like that.” I felt my heart getting tight in my chest. “You coming?”
Dion pulled my jacket tighter around her shoulders, her eyes getting teary.
I closed my eyes, hoping to hear Dion say no. If she said no, it would mean I tried and that she’d made a decision to stay here. If she said no, I’d have to stay ’cause I couldn’t leave her. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as the road. Maybe—
“I’m going with you, Lena.”
I opened my eyes and smiled, the fear draining out of me. Me and Dion, we needed each other.
“He’s gonna be back home around eight. We need to be gone before he gets here. First thing you gotta do is go get the scissors so I can cut our hair.”
Dion’s hand flew up to her ponytail. It wasn’t a long one but she was pretty proud of it. “I’m not cutting my hair off.”
“I’m cutting our hair off,” I said. “We need people to think we’re boys. It’s safer that way.”
Dion frowned, still holding on to her ponytail. I ran my fingers through my own hair. It wasn’t that long ’cause I’d just cut it a few months back. But it needed to be shorter than it was.
“People think we boys, they’ll leave us alone. You coming with me or not?”
Dion didn’t say anything, just turned toward the house. I stood there with my arms folded, my heart beating fast again.
After a moment, Dion came back out carrying the scissors far away from her like they were disgusting. She had wet her head down and water was dripping onto my jacket. She handed me the scissors and turned around. We didn’t say anything as I clipped and the hair landed in chunks around our feet.
“Don’t make me look like a fool,” she said. “Make it have a little style to it.”
“Girl, I know what I’m doing.” I pulled her ear down and cut the hair above it in a straight line. Her hair didn’t have the slightest bit of curl to it.
“People ask,” I said. “Your name is Ed. Be easy ’cause it’s short for Edion.”
“How come they can’t just call me Dion—that’s almost a boy’s name.”
“ ’Cause Ed’s better.”
“Well, I like Dion.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t worth fighting over. “Okay, then Dion. My name’s Lee, though. Say it.”
“Lee,” Dion said softly. “Ain’t like it’s the hardest thing to remember.”
“Just remember we boys, okay? Don’t slip up and go into the ladies’ bathroom by accident—”
“I ain’t using no men’s room! You crazy?”
“What’ll happen if somebody says ‘young man—that’s the ladies’ room.’ ”
“Then I’ll tell them I ain’t a young man. I could get snatched right up in the men’s room!”
I thought about this for a moment. It was true—we didn’t need to be taking no chances going into the men’s bathroom.
“Okay,” I said. “If we have to hitchhike with men, then we say we boys. Everyplace else we can be girls. But try to be a boy as much as possible.”
Dion nodded. I finished cutting her hair and turned her this way and that. From the right angle, she looked like a soft little boy.
“Clean up all that hair and throw it away,” I said.
“You don’t want me to cut yours?”
“No. I’ll do it.” I took the scissors into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. My face was pale and drawn like Mama’s was when she was sick. I stuck my head under the faucet to wet my hair, then started cutting. After a moment, Dion came in and looked at herself in the mirror. She reached back where her ponytail used to be and our eyes met. It was real. Her hair was gone and we were leaving.
“It’s just hair,” she said. She ran her fingers through it, looked at me again and left me to my business.
I didn’t waste a whole lot of time. When I was finished, my hair was shorter than it’d ever been. I narrowed my eyes and sneered, trying to look tough, like a boy.
Dion came back in while I was flushing the hair down the toilet.
“It looks nice.”
“You like yours?” I asked.
Dion shrugged. “When we get to where we going, I’m gonna grow it all the way down my back.”
I swallowed, not wanting to think about where we were going right yet.
“We got to get moving,” I said. �
�He’ll be home soon and we got to be on our way.”
Dion followed me back outside without saying anything. I pulled the stuff out from beneath the car. If I didn’t want us to spend one more night in the same house with him, I couldn’t be scared. Not for Dion. Not for me. Not for anybody.
“He’ll be worrying for us, Lena.”
I made out like I didn’t hear her. “We’ll be sleeping in boxes in dark alleys. Probably have to spend a night in a garbage can or two.” I pulled Dion’s blue pillow out and gave it to her.
“Box’ll keep the wind away,” she said softly, pressing her head into the pillow.
“Won’t be no hot chocolate and warm baths like we get at Marie’s house, Dion.”
“You gone, I reckon I wouldn’t spend much time with Marie anyways. Seeing as she’s really your friend and all. And wasn’t no warm baths last time we were on the road.”
“I thought you didn’t remember.”
“Said I didn’t remember being cold and scared. That’s all.”
“Go inside and get those wool socks I bought us—and some books you want but not a whole lot. Put on your boots and a pair of thick socks, two pairs—and a T-shirt under your clothes.”
“Layers keep us warmer than just regular clothes.”
“Then put two T-shirts on, girl—and something warm. Go!”
Dion turned and ran back into the house. I looked through the pile, trying to decide if there was anything we wouldn’t need. We were gonna be free soon. Free.
Dion came back outside and threw me the socks, then ran back in again.
Lena Page 3