Lucia and Tiffany are watching me. I wave to them, and they wave back. There’s a lot of little bugs flying in the air between us. I guess they came up to see the headlights. Now I have to start walking toward where the gas station was. I press a button on the phone so it’ll light up again and I can see the signal.
Now that I’m getting far away from the car, everything is super dark. I shine the phone like a flashlight to see where I’m going. There’s a white thing in front of me. What is it? It’s just trash. I keep walking. I turn around and wave at Lucia, but I don’t know if she can still see me. I can’t really see her anymore.
I have to keep walking, even though it’s dark. I don’t want to, but I’m the only one who can do it.
I’m really far now. The car looks like a house, real far away.
The phone light blinks off, and everything turns black around me.
There’s a noise behind me, in the trees. I want to go back now. I want to run.
I can’t. I have to keep going. Lucia and them are waiting for me. If I don’t call Mom, what’s going to happen to us?
The phone lights up. It rings, real loud. It scares me, and I jump, like in a monster movie. I look at the screen. It says Robbie.
“Hello?”
“Who’s this?” It’s not a man’s voice. It’s a lady.
I say, “This is Alex. Who’s this?”
She says, “This is Cristina. Are you with my mother?”
It’s Cristina. Miss Buena’s daughter. I say, “Miss Buena—your mother—drove us out here to visit you and your baby. But we got lost, and she’s sick now. She can’t drive the car anymore. I’m trying to call my mom to come get us.”
She says, “What? Where are y’all?”
I say, “I don’t know. We’re out by some trees, where it’s dark. I think we went too far past your street.”
She says, “Where’s my mother?”
I say, “She’s sitting by the car. She can’t talk. I had to walk far away from them, so the phone could get a signal and I can call my mom.”
She says, “Shit. Damn it. Stay where you are…What’s your name?”
I say, “I’m Alex. My sister is Lucia, and Tiffany’s with us, too.”
She says, “Tiffany? Shit. Stay where you are. Me and Robbie are coming to find you. No…Is my mom okay? Can you call 911? No, I’ll call. Oh, but I don’t know where you are. Can you call 911, so they can find you? And tell them to send an ambulance for my mother? I’ll call them, too, but you have to call from where you are so they can find you. Please.”
I say okay, and we hang up. I dial 9-1-1. There’s another noise in the trees, but I’m going to ignore it. I can’t get scared right now. Miss Buena needs me to call.
“This is 911. What is your emergency?” a lady says on the phone.
“Hi. We need help. We ran our car off the road, and now Miss Buena—my baby-sitter—is sick and needs an ambulance to come get her.”
“Hold on. Who is this? How old are you, son?”
“This is Alex. I’m eight.”
“Alex, can you tell me where you are, son?”
“No, we’re lost.”
“Stay on the line, please. Don’t hang up.” I don’t. I hear the lady talking to someone else. Then she says, “Alex, are you in Red Oak?”
I say, “I don’t know. Maybe.” That sounds familiar. Maybe that’s what Miss Buena said earlier.
The lady says, “Are you with Geronima Buenaventura? Is she your baby-sitter?”
I say, “Yes. That’s Miss Buena’s name. Do you know her? Do you know where we are?”
She says, “Her daughter just called. Stay on the line. Don’t hang up. We’re going to find you right now.”
I say, “Okay.” I hear other people talking in the room with her.
Then she says, “Okay, we have you now. We’re coming to get you, Alex. Hold tight. You can stay on the phone with me until the ambulance gets there.”
I say, “Thank you. But I have to call my mom now.”
She says, “What? Okay. But stay where you are. Wait for the ambulance.”
I say okay and hang up. Then, real fast, before the signal can go away, I call Mom.
I hear her voice. She says, “Geronima? Where are you?”
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Alex!” She sounds like she’s crying. “Alex, where are you, baby?” I hear someone else with her. He says, “Where are they?” It’s Dad, I think.
I say, “I’m in Red Oak with Miss Buena and Lucia and Tiffany. Are you coming to get us?”
She says, “I’m trying to, baby. Where are you? Where’s Miss Buena?”
“We ran out of gas, and then a deer came and we went off the road. Miss Buena’s sick. She’s in the grass. I had to leave everybody in the car and walk far away so I could get a signal to call you.”
“Oh, God,” says Mom. “Alex, we’re coming to find you. Your dad is here with me. But you have to help us. Do you know what street you’re on?”
“No,” I say. “I told you, we’re lost.” I feel like crying now. It’s stupid, because now Mom and the ambulance are coming to get us. I don’t have to cry anymore, but I still feel like I’m going to. I say, “I called 911. They said they know where we are and they’re going to send an ambulance to get Miss Buena.”
“That’s good, Alex,” Mom says. “You did a good job. Now tell me what you can see, baby.”
I can’t see anything. There’s nothing here but me, the trees, and Miss Buena’s car, far away. I look all around. “I see trees and the street. One of the trees doesn’t have leaves. Wait—there’s a sign next to it.”
“That’s good!” Mom says. “What does the sign say?”
“It says…‘No dumping. Sub…subject to five-hundred-dollar fine.’”
“Oh,” Mom says. I guess she still can’t figure out where we are. I hear Dad talking to her. He’s saying, “Ask him what he can see around him.”
I look around some more, in case there’s anything else.
“There’s another sign,” I tell Mom. “But I can’t see what it says. It’s kind of far, and it’s turned the wrong way.” And it’s dark. The sign’s across the street.
“Baby, can you go look at it and tell me what it says?”
I don’t want to. I’m afraid to move. But I want Mom to find us.
“Alex, are you still there?”
“I’m here. I’m going to look at the sign,” I say. “Don’t hang up, okay?”
She says, “I won’t.”
I look both ways, and then I run across the street. I get up to the sign. “It says ‘FM two-three-seven-seven,’” I tell Mom.
“Farm to Market Road twenty-three seventy-seven,” she says. I hear Dad say okay. Then he says, “We just crossed it. Go back.” My mom says okay, and then she tells me, “That was good, baby. We’re not far from you.”
“Which direction on 2377?” my dad says.
“Alex, I need you to think hard now,” my mom says. “I know there’s nothing but trees where you are now, but can you remember anything you passed before you got there? A house, a store, another street sign?”
I think about it as I look both ways and run back across the street. “There was a gas station. We passed it a little while ago.”
“Good!” says Mom. “Good job, Alex!” She tells my dad about the gas station, and he says, “I’m looking it up.”
I hear my dad saying something to my mom. Then Mom tells me, “Alex, I need you to do one last thing. I need you to tell me what kind of gas station it was. Do you remember what the sign said? What it looked like? There are a lot of gas stations around here, and we need to find the right one.”
I try to remember.
“What color was the sign? Was it called Red Oak Gas Station?” she says. “Did it say R-E-D O-A-K?”
“No,” I tell her. “I can’t remember what it said. I just remember it had a picture of man on it.”
“What kind of man?” Mom says. “Like a man
with blue overalls, like Mario?”
“No. It was one of those…the men that live under rainbows on the cartoons.”
Mom says, “A leprechaun. Mike, it’s an old Diamond Shamrock!” I hear Dad say, “Got it. Ten miles,” and then Mom says, “We’re coming right now for y’all, baby.”
“Okay.” I don’t want to hang up on her, but I have to go back to Lucia and them now, so they won’t be scared. “Mom, I have to go back to the car with Lucia. But when I go, the phone’s going to lose the signal and hang up on us.”
She says, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay on the phone, baby?”
I want to, but I can’t. I say, “I have to go back. Lucia’s scared.” She says okay, and I say, “Hurry and find us. Hurry, okay?”
She says, “I am, baby. I’m coming to get y’all right now.”
I start to run. If I run real fast, I won’t have time to think about the noises in the trees or the things in the grass. I hear Mom saying, “I’m almost there. I’m almost there,” over and over, until the phone loses signal again and I can’t hear her anymore. I keep running, all the way to the car. Lucia and Tiffany are watching me through the window. Miss Buena’s still sitting in the grass.
“They’re on the way,” I tell Miss Buena. Then I open Lucia’s door and tell them, “They’re coming to get us.”
The ambulance is coming. I hear it, far away. And now I see its lights, red and blue, coming down the street.
Lucia starts to cry again.
I say, “What’s wrong with you? They’re coming to get us right now.”
She says, “I was scared they were never coming!”
She’s so dumb sometimes. I always knew that Mom would find us. Especially with my help.
Sara
So everybody was back at Geronima’s apartment again. Her daughter, Cristina, and Cristina’s boyfriend, Robbie, were there, too, with their new baby. I figured out why Oscar was pissed about their daughter taking off with Robbie. It’s because he was black. But I could tell that he felt stupid about that, after Robbie showed up and turned out to be a good guy. And the baby was cute as hell, too. Plus, Oscar was so glad that they found Gero and that she turned out okay, you know. All she needed was a shot or an IV or whatever, and she was totally back to normal by the time they got her home. So they were all in the living room, talking about everything that’d gone down and how Robbie was going to start a new job in Louisiana and all that. Geronima was happy because she got to see the baby before they left and because Cristina gave her their address in Louisiana and said they could bring Tiffany to visit. Natasha was happy because her kids were okay. The kids were happy to be hanging out together, and they were running all over the apartment.
So I went into the kitchen to get Geronima some more water, and there was Natasha’s ex. He was walking back and forth, beating on the backs of Geronima’s chairs like they were a drum set. I had already gotten a good, long look at him earlier, and I knew exactly who he was. And I thought, What’s he doing hiding in here when everybody else is out there talking to the old lady and the kids, making sure they’re okay? I know he hates Natasha’s guts because she dumped him, but that’s his kids’ mom, you know? He should’ve been out there with her, telling the kids everything’s gonna be all right. Something. What kind of man hides in the kitchen like that?
It pissed me off, and I guess that’s why I decided to do what I did. But I didn’t want to let him know that I was pissed off. It was like Natasha says—getting loud and violent with people doesn’t do any good. They just call the cops on you.
So instead I walked up to him and said, “Hey, how’s it going?”
He stopped moving around and sort of smiled, nervous like, and said, “Okay. It’s okay, now that we’ve found them.” He looked at me some more, and then he noticed who I was. I saw it on his face: Him thinking, That’s the stripper. The prostitute. That chick I narked on so her own friends wouldn’t want to hang out with her anymore.
But I just smiled at him, real cool, and then I went back to the living room.
After a while Mike took off. He came out and told Natasha he had to get back home and he’d call the kids the next day. She said okay, and he left.
I waited a few minutes, and then I told Geronima I had to run to my apartment to check on something and that I’d be right back. But I didn’t go to my apartment. I ran down all the stairs to the first floor, and I got there right when Mike was coming out of the elevator.
I said, “Hey, Mike.” He turned around and saw me, but he just nodded and started walking to the parking garage. So I said, “Hey, wait up a second,” and I followed him out. I was glad it worked out that way, with the two of us in the parking garage where it was kind of dark.
I said, real cool, “So I haven’t seen you around lately.”
He said, “What do you mean? You don’t…Have we met before?”
I said, “No, we never met, but I’ve seen you where I used to work, at the Cabaret.”
He looked around real fast then, like he was worried somebody would walk out and see us there together. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I took a step closer to him, close enough to freak him out. But I stayed real sweet, kept smiling, and said, “Sure you do. You used to go to the Cabaret some nights after work. You’d have a few drinks and watch the girls dance. You took one of the dancers to your apartment one night. Remember?”
Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. As soon as I saw him that night, I knew who he was. He used to go to the Cabaret and get totally trashed after work, and one time he hired one of the girls for a night. But when he got her home, he was too drunk to get it up. And she came back and told everybody about it.
I’d never met Natasha’s ex before that night. But as soon as I met him, I recognized him.
So I told him that, and he took a step back and hit the wall. He said, “All right, look. I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but—”
And I was like, “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just wondering if Natasha knows that you like to hang out at strip clubs and pick up hookers. Because you seem to know a lot about what she does—who her friends are and where they work. You were real interested in my job, and you didn’t mind telling people about it or using it to scare Natasha.”
He told me, “Now, look here,” all loud. But he couldn’t think of anything to say after that. I could tell he was freaking out at that point. Not scared of me, because he’s a big guy, but he didn’t want me to run back to Natasha and tell her what I knew.
But the thing was, I wanted him to be afraid for real. Afraid of me and what I could do to him.
Why? Well, because. Look at everything he’d done to Natasha. Not just to her, but to me and Haley, too. He made us scared. He made us feel like shit.
I mean, none of us are perfect, right? We’re just normal chicks, doing what we have to for our kids and trying not to go crazy while we’re at it. Right? And here comes this fool with his lawyer and his detective and who knows what all else, writing all these papers talking about what’s wrong with us. Why, so he can show them to some fat-ass judge who’s probably just as messed up as everybody else? You know, we have lawyers come into the Dollhouse all the time. Probably judges, too. Who the hell knows? My point is, who the hell cares? I don’t care what people do in their private lives, and I try to mind my own business. But then here comes this asshole Mike, all pissed off because his wife got sick of his shit and left him, and he decides he’s going to make life hard for her and mess with her friends. And it just pissed me off, you know? And I was like, hell, no. I’m putting a stop to this shit right now.
So I went off on him. I went all ghetto on him, right there in the parking garage. I told him, “All I’m saying, Mike, is that you should think about what you’ve been doing to Natasha and how it makes her feel. And then think about how you’d feel if I talked about you the way you’ve been talking about me. What if I told everybody how you hired a he
roin-addict hooker from our club and the only reason you don’t have AIDS right now is ’cause you couldn’t even get your dick up?”
He was looking at me with real big eyes then. Like a dog about to get beat. He said, “You’re just bullshitting me. You don’t work at the Cabaret. I’ve never seen you there.”
I said, “I’ve worked at a lot of places. I’ll work anywhere, as long as I can make enough money to take care of my kids. Did you know that the owner of your favorite strip club is my cousin? Did you know that he has surveillance cameras running in there all the time? Hey, Mike, how would your new girlfriend—what’s her name? Pissy? Missy?—how would she feel if she knew how much you liked my cousin’s Cabaret?”
He didn’t say a damn thing then. He just looked at me. I could smell the sweat coming off of him.
I told him, “You better drop this stupid-ass lawsuit, if you don’t want me to say anything. You better leave Natasha alone.”
He wouldn’t look me in the face anymore after that. He just said, “Why are you doing this?”
I snapped my fingers in front of his face so he’d look back at me, so he’d be sure to understand what I was going to say. I told him, “Because Natasha doesn’t deserve the shit you’ve been putting her through. She’s been a real good friend to me and my kids, even though I’m what I am. You don’t want your kids around a stripper? Fine. I don’t have to be around them anymore. But you know Natasha’s a damned good mother to those kids, and the only reason you’re trying to take them away is so you can hurt her.”
He didn’t say anything to that, but I felt like I got my point across.
I told him one last time, “I swear to God, if you so much as fuck with Natasha one more time, I’ll give her the video of you leaving the club with that hooker. Don’t think I won’t.” And then I took off.
No, I went back upstairs to Geronima’s apartment, to get my kids and put them to bed.
Yeah, Natasha was still there. She came up to me before I left and started trying to thank me for being there and whatever. I just told her it was no big deal, and we left.
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