“Mom?”
“Hmmm?”
“Did you always think Dad did it, that he stole from his company?”
She stopped unpacking for a second. Her expression softened for the first time since she’d told me we were leaving home.
“I suspected something funny was going on, but no, it never occurred to me it was that.”
“MaryBeth said it was called embezzling. She said I probably knew the whole time.”
Mom ruffled my hair, then turned back to the business of unpacking. “You know, sweetie, what Dad did wasn’t your fault or my fault. It was his fault. So let’s just move forward and not think about it, okay?”
I scanned the woods outside again, looking for some sign of the dog, and wondering how I was supposed to “just move forward.” How was I supposed to not think about my own father being in jail?
I wrote my first real poem that night. At least, I think it was real. If nothing else, it was a string of words I’d put together that expressed what I was feeling inside. That was my best understanding of how poetry worked.
Mom and I were in bed before dark. It was the first time I’d ever ended a day hungry, but neither of us wanted to go to the dining hall with all the other “families in transition.” Instead, we split a package of graham crackers and two fruit cups we’d brought from home, drank tap water out of tiny paper cups we found in the bathroom, and crawled into our bunk beds under scratchy blankets and sheets so thin you could see through them. Every time Mom tossed or turned below me, the top bunk squeaked and rocked like it was waiting for one big movement to crash to the ground. She pushed her covers off, then pulled them back up, and sniffled so loud I could hear her over the whir of a tiny white fan Miss May lent us when we found out there was no air-conditioning in our room.
In what was left of the silver light trying to break through the murky glass of the window at the end of the room, I opened my diary and spilled my feelings onto the page. When I was done, I tucked the diary into the crevice between the side of my bunk and the wall, laid my head on a foam pillow, and tried not to think about anything at all.
“Mom?”
No answer.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay, you know where it is.”
“It’s dark.”
I’m afraid.
The bed jiggled when Mom sat up. I held the side rail, which was supposed to keep me from falling to the floor.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
Step by step, I climbed gingerly down the ladder, gripping each rung with my bare toes. Mom shined the flashlight on her cell phone in front of us and we went down the hall to our tiny bathroom. The trash can was full of something rank.
“What’s that smell?” I whispered.
Mom lifted the lid, then slammed it shut. “Dirty diapers.”
“Are we sharing this bathroom with someone else?”
“Apparently.” She said it so quietly I almost couldn’t hear. “It will be okay, Lizzie. We’re only here until we are back on our feet. I promise.”
Her voice cracked on “promise.” She pulled me to her and laid my head on her shoulder. We stood like that, locked together, in our bare feet on that cold tile floor in the dark, and we wept.
Three
The next day, Miss May organized a meet and greet for us to get to know the other families before Sunday dinner.
“Do I have to go?” I asked Mom.
“Yes, it’s for us.”
“We’re not even going to be here that long. I don’t know why we have to meet the other people.”
We’d been alone at breakfast, which was instant oatmeal and juice boxes. It hardly filled my stomach, but at least the juice was grape.
“Regardless of how long we’re here, we have to go.”
“Do those people know?”
“Know what?”
“About Dad? What he did?”
“No one knows anything except that we are going through hard times and need a place to live until we are back on our feet. That’s all.”
“Well, I still don’t see why we should have a happy, jolly get-together. It’s not like we’re all on a cruise ship together. It feels like a lie.”
Mom sighed but said nothing. We sat on our beds for the rest of the day, reading, thinking, trying not to think, and waiting. I’d gotten used to being alone most of the time, ever since MaryBeth had her temper tantrum at school and everyone in the universe stopped talking to me. But at least before I was still at home. I had a TV in my bedroom and movies to watch. I could lie on the couch in the living room and read or sit at the kitchen table and draw. I even went outside to the privacy of our backyard and leaned against the trunk of the red maple tree to write in my diary. Plus, back home we’d had a car to go places. Here, it was just me and Mom, a set of bunk beds and a too-small dresser in a skinny room, with both of us trying to pretend it wasn’t weird at all. But it was.
The meet and greet wasn’t as bad as I expected. I stood with my back to the wall while most of the people nodded at Mom and told her their names. None of the other kids were the least bit interested in me, which was a relief. I knew they had to be wondering why we ended up at Good Hope, because I was wondering the same thing about them. But no one asked. No one seemed to care about much more than their dinner. Well, except a harried-looking, redheaded lady who was the last to come in, with a baby in her arms and two other little girls beside her. She wrestled them over to where we were standing in a corner by the coffeepot, half smiling, half grimacing.
“Hi, I’m Angela,” she said, “and this is Hope.” A little girl with dark hair tried to wriggle out of Angela’s grasp. “Hope is four, going on seventeen. She doesn’t like to be confined. She’d run off to the library by herself every day if I let her.”
“Library?” Mom raised her eyebrows.
Angela plunked Hope into a folding chair and pushed it up to the table.
“Yeah. Down the path behind the house,” she said. “You can get a card if you like to read.”
Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders and gave a little squeeze. “We’re big readers, both of us.”
“Me too,” Angela said. “Without a book, don’t know how I’d make it through sometimes.”
She grabbed another squirming girl and turned her around to us. This one scrunched her face and whined, “No-no-no-no-no!”
“This is Faith. She’s two—going on two, in case you can’t tell.”
Faith pulled away and scrambled under the table. Angela shook a finger at her.
“Manners, Faith. Remember our manners.”
Faith shook her finger back.
Angela rolled her eyes, then picked up a baby from the floor and kissed the pile of brown curls on top of her head.
“And this is my mopsy-bunny, Charity.”
Charity had fat, rosy cheeks and clear blue eyes that reminded me of the porcelain doll collection my grandma had had in her house when I was little. The baby bounced in her mother’s arms, then leaned forward and reached plump hands out to me.
“Awwwww, look at that,” Mom said.
“You want to hold her?”
“I mean, I haven’t held a lot of babies before—”
Angela didn’t wait for me to finish. She deposited the baby in my arms just as a series of putt-putt sounds came from inside her diaper. Charity giggled and wrapped her fingers in my hair, then laid her cheek on my shoulder and purred like a kitten.
“My sweet baby,” Angela said, stroking Charity’s face. “Making the world a happier place one smile at a time.”
The only other people we had any kind of conversation with were a lady in a wheelchair, Mrs. Ivanov, and her son, Leonard, who translated everything for her. Whenever Mrs. Ivanov wanted Leonard to speak for her, she tugged on his shirt, and he folded his lanky body at the waist to get close enough to hear her tiny voice.
“Skazhite im, chto vy khodite v
srednyuyu shkolu,” she said.
Leonard stood up but didn’t look up. He stared at his shoes—or maybe my shoes.
“My mother says to tell you I go to high school,” he said. His words had sharp edges to them.
“That’s nice, Leonard,” Mom said. “Do you like it?”
He shrugged, still focused on the floor. Mrs. Ivanov tugged on his shirt again.
“Skazhi devushke, chto my mozhem byt’ druz’yami,” she said.
“My mother says you can be friends,” Leonard told the floor.
“How nice,” Mom said. “We’d like that.”
Leonard leaned down again and said something to Mrs. Ivanov. “My dolzhny poyti obedat’ seychas.”
She patted his hand, then waved to Mom.
“We must go to dinner now,” Leonard said. He shot a dark look at me, then wheeled his mother away and settled her at one of the tables. A line of people had formed at a long counter where our dinner was set out in big ceramic bowls.
Mom squeezed her hands together. “Well, that was painless, right?”
“I guess,” I said. “Where are all these people from?”
“I don’t know, and it’s none of our business. We’re all here because we are in a tricky spot in our lives. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
My nerves jittered when we sat down to dinner. It had been only me and Mom for so long; the noise of seven families eating together made me want to run back to our room. But I was hungry, so I stayed.
First thing Monday, Mom and I found the path behind the house and went in search of the library. About five minutes along, a narrow, less-worn trail veered off to the right and disappeared around a bend.
“Which way?” I asked.
“Angela said to stay left.”
So we went left.
The library was much smaller than the one in our old town, and it was inside a house. Upstairs, on the second floor, was a whole separate store that had nothing to do with the library. Mom and I went to the desk to get new cards.
“Do you have proof of residency?” asked the lady at the desk.
Mom handed her a folder of papers.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“From Miss May,” Mom said. “They verify our address.”
My face heated up. I waited for the lady to say something, but she just kept typing, then handed the papers back to Mom without even looking at us.
“Got it,” she said. “You’re all set.”
After we each picked out two books, Mom wanted to go upstairs and scout out the second floor.
“Oh, it’s a consignment shop,” she said when we got to the top.
“What does that mean?”
“They sell things someone else didn’t need anymore.”
She pulled a few pairs of jeans off the racks and checked the handwritten price tags.
“Wow, these are your size and they’re only five dollars.”
“Mom, no, they were some stranger’s first,” I said.
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Didn’t you share clothes with MaryBeth? Anyway, this shop will be good to keep in mind when you outgrow what you have now.”
We didn’t buy anything, but on the way to the stairs I spied a corner full of horse-riding stuff. Paddock boots, beige and brown riding breeches, used crops, and one single black velvet riding helmet exactly like the one in the mudroom back home. I forced myself away and caught up with Mom downstairs. No need to torture myself with reminders of everything we’d left behind.
During our first couple of weeks at Good Hope, Mom and I walked the path to the library every day, even if we hadn’t finished the books we’d checked out. We liked being there. It was cool and quiet, with room to move around and comfy chairs to read in. Mom made friends with Linda, the lady who worked at the checkout counter and, if there wasn’t a line when we went in, Mom would sit with her and talk while I found a place to read. A few times, I even heard Mom laugh again.
On our way back to Good Hope, we liked to stop where the trail split and the trees thinned enough to let sunlight warm the honeysuckle vines, releasing the intoxicating fragrance into the air.
“Our very own honeysuckle spa,” Mom said.
We sat on a fallen tree trunk and read a little more, or I’d get out the pink diary and jot down descriptive nature words to keep for poems I wanted to write.
One afternoon we were meandering along the trail when Mom pointed up ahead.
“Look, Lizzie!”
The mother dog I’d seen on our first day was racing away from the back of the house, gripping a brown plastic bag in her teeth. Pieces of trash spilled from a rip in the side.
“That’s the dog I told you about!”
The dog stopped when she saw me and Mom, dropped the bag, then clamped her jaws around it again and darted off between the trees.
“She’s so skinny,” Mom said.
“Didn’t it look like she had puppies somewhere?”
“She’s probably trying to find food for them, poor thing.”
“Do you think Miss May would let me give her leftovers from our meals?”
We were just coming around the bend at the back of the house when I said that. Miss May was bent over by the trash bins, picking up litter spread all around a can that had tipped on its side.
“Varmints,” she grumbled. “Nasty, no good, lazy varmints.”
“There’s your answer, I’m afraid,” Mom said.
That night Miss May posted a notice on the bulletin board in the dining hall.
DO NOT LEAVE TRASH CAN LID OPEN!
STRAY ANIMALS ARE GETTING
INTO THE TRASH AGAIN.
ALWAYS LOCK THE LID
AFTER DUMPING BAGS.
After dinner, I crawled to my bunk to write about the dog. Mom left me alone and went to the common room, only to come back a few minutes later, her eyes lit up.
“Guess what? It’s game night,” she said from the doorway. “They’re going to play Monopoly, and we’re invited!”
“Are you going?”
“Why would I not? Come with me. It’ll be fun.”
“No, Mom, please, I can’t.”
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Why can’t you?”
I turned to face the wall. “I just don’t want to, not with all those people.”
“It’s fewer people than we eat dinner with every night.”
I shrugged in answer. That was kind of the point. It was easier to keep my distance in a crowd. She reached across my bunk and gently rubbed my back.
“Will you do this for me?” she asked.
Her voice was so sad, I couldn’t say no. Slowly, I climbed down from my bunk and followed her to the common room. A round table, covered with a green cloth, and some metal folding chairs had been set up in the middle of the room. Leonard glanced up from dividing the money, then looked away quickly. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it’s possible he rolled his eyes when he muttered something to his mother in Russian.
Mrs. Ivanov’s chin barely reached over the top of the table, but her smile filled the whole room. She patted the chair beside her, motioning for Mom to sit.
“Thank you.”
“Spasibo.”
“You both say thank you,” Leonard said absently. His attention was still on doling out the play money.
A man named Brad, who had sat with me and Mom a couple of times at dinner, came in with his twin boys, David and Daniel. I’d never seen those boys when they weren’t tormenting each other. David shoved his brother and reached across the table for the plastic cup of tokens.
“I pick first!” he snarled.
Daniel shoved back. “You always pick first!”
“Boys, stop!” Brad said sharply. Then he sighed. Brad was always sighing. “Unless anyone else objects, David will pick the first token, and Daniel, you can take the cup around for others to choose theirs. Everybody all right with that?”
No one cared. David made a face at his
brother, then picked out the miniature cannon. Daniel made his way around the table with the plastic cup. Mom took the iron, Mrs. Ivanov took the thimble, and I dug out the little Toto dog from the bottom. The dice were rolled and our first game night at Good Hope began.
Ten minutes in, I drew the Get Out of Jail Free card. I stared at the glaring orange piece of cardboard burning in my hand, so hot I dropped it, faceup, right by Marvin Gardens. Everyone else waited for me to do something, like tuck it under the edge with my money, or speak, or anything. But I couldn’t move.
Finally, Leonard picked it up and waved it around for everyone to see. His black eyes danced, and his lips were drawn into some kind of weird smile.
“Get out of jail free. You need that one. It is like gold, yes?”
“It was a coincidence, Lizzie,” Mom said later. “Leonard doesn’t know any more about us than we do about him.”
“How do you know that for sure? How do we know Miss May didn’t tell everyone before we came?”
Mom sat on her bed and tucked her hands between her knees. “We don’t. But we have to have faith that these are good people who are trying to help us.”
“You can have all the faith you want,” I said, climbing up to my bunk. “Except for eating or going to the bathroom or out the door, I’m staying in this stupid room until we leave here forever.”
Four
On a Wednesday morning, I snuck an extra piece of toast from breakfast into our room. I’d only seen the mother dog one other time, sniffing around the trash cans searching for food. Miss May saw her, too, and had run out the back door wielding a broom, screaming, until the dog bolted for the woods.
I propped open the window and leaned my elbows on the sill, waving the toast around in the hopes the dog would smell it. Mom startled me when she came back from the laundry room with a freshly ironed dress draped over her arm.
“What are you looking at out there?”
I let my arm dangle so she wouldn’t see the toast.
“Just trying to find that dog. She’s probably really hungry since the trash cans are locked now.”
“Don’t feed that dog, please. We don’t need any trouble.”
I let the toast drop to the ground and slid the window shut. “Where do you think that other path goes to?”
Lizzie Flying Solo Page 2