All the Lost Things

by Michelle Sacks

  I shut my eyes and and let everything go dark.

  “I’m sorry,” said a voice. “It’s all my fault.”

  I couldn’t tell if that was Dad or me.

  Wednesday

  Dad was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. He was very still, and he seemed far away even though his body was right there.

  “Good morning,” he said. His eyes were red and shining, and they looked at me with WORRIED-AFRAID-TIRED-SAD-I-LOVE-YOU written inside them.

  “Were you watching me sleep?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “All night?”

  He nodded. “Most of the night. I wanted to make sure you were okay. That the fever didn’t come back.”

  “Oh. Did it?” Dad shook his head.

  “You slept through.”

  The curtains were pulled shut but there was a line of light sneaking through. It made the dust dance.

  “I was very sick,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I was scared.”

  “Me too.” Dad came over to the bed. He touched my forehead, stroking it gently like I was a very delicate baby bird.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “A little.”

  “And—and how’s Clemesta doing?” Dad asked.

  “Clemesta?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked at Clemesta, who was tucked in beside me. Dad must have put her there after I fell asleep.

  “Good morning, Clemesta,” I said. “My best-treasure horse.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “Dad wants to know how you are.”

  “Humph!” she said. “He’s just trying to get on our good side. To make up for all the disgraceful and bad stuff he’s done.”

  “I like when he’s trying,” I said. “He’s nice when he tries.”

  “No, I don’t think he’s nice at all.”

  She folded her horse-hooves to sulk. I flipped the covers back over her head. Dad was watching me with his shining eyes. He was paying me every bit of his attention, like I was his most special-precious thing.

  “Clemesta’s fine,” I told him. “She’s ready for breakfast. And we need REAL FOOD from now on. Nutritious and with hundreds of vitamins and NO MORE JUNK.”

  Dad smiled. “All right,” he said. He took my hand in his and held it over his heart. “I’m going to take much better care of you from now on,” he said. His brown eyes were big and serious. “I promise,” he said. “See?” He stuck out his little finger for a pinkie promise. I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “Those don’t work with your fingers.”

  I went into the bathroom to wash up. My face was all blotchy and splotchy from getting sick, and my hair was fuzzy from sweating out all the fever juice. I was glad that Dad was being SORRY DAD who remembered that I was his EVERYTHING and felt destroyed with shame for not looking after me properly. I still had some mad left in me, and I tried to get it out like Mom does on the days when she practices her meditating exercises. Breathe in love, breathe out all your mad and sad and bad. That’s how it works, and afterward you are brand-new and happy and you can forgive people when they hurt you. Unless it’s THAT BITCH or YOU KNOW WHO. You don’t ever have to forgive people like them.

  The Motel Disgusting had one tiny bottle of shampoo and no conditioner and no soap, but I did plenty of rinsing to clean my hair, and after that I combed out all the tangles, and then I brushed my teeth and after that I was SPOTLESSLY CLEAN AND FRUITY FRESH. I felt better in my stomach after being sick but there was a new feeling inside there now, like a big rock was sitting at the bottom making everything heavy. Especially I felt it sinking every time I thought about Mom back at home without us.

  “That’s because you’re remembering,” Clemesta said.

  I put the towel over her head. “Here,” I said, “dry yourself off.”

  I dressed myself in the new shorts. They felt tight around my legs, and I tried to pull on the edges to stretch them so they wouldn’t pinch. Probably I was putting on PILES of weight from all the junk Dad was feeding me. Mom would be mad at him about that. And the other stuff too.

  “You look nice,” Dad said, when I came out of the bathroom.

  “The shorts are too tight. Or I’m too big.”

  “You’re perfect,” Dad said.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m not perfect at all.”

  I watched as Dad packed up the Walmart bags and zipped up the duffel with all the money inside. He slipped the pack of cigarettes into his jeans even though it belonged in the trash.

  I looked at him. “I want to call Mom,” I said. “I need to speak with her.” Dad nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Of course you do.”

  “Can we call her now?”

  “Well, this phone doesn’t work. I tried yesterday.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll stop somewhere. Find a pay phone.”

  I nodded. “Because Mom doesn’t like not hearing my voice for so long.”

  Dad’s sad eyes blinked. “I know, sweetheart.”

  “What about Miss Ellis?”

  “What?”

  “Does she know I’m missing more school? Today is three days I’m not there. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dad said. “I told her on Monday that you’d be out a couple of days. She doesn’t mind.”

  “But I’ll miss so much.”

  “You can catch up. She said so.”

  “Probably because I’m advanced.”

  “Exactly.”

  I pressed my fingers into my stomach. I picked up Clemesta and folded her against me.

  “And we’re going home now, right? That’s what you said.”

  Dad nodded. “Yeah, we’re going back.”

  The clerk at the front desk was running his tongue around a doughnut, licking off all the pink frosting. He was wearing the same T-shirt AGAIN but I forgot to check if his face pimples had burst. His head was turned to watch the TV screen hanging on the wall. The voice said IN THE LATEST ON THE ABDUCTION OF—and the man’s eyes went from the TV to me. His mouth dropped open just as I felt Dad’s hand push at my back very hard and shove me out the door.

  He grabbed hold of my hand and dragged me to the car and didn’t stop when I said OUCH or nearly tripped over my feet. He pushed me inside and jumped in front to start the car and he didn’t put his seat belt on or set our bags on the seat, he just raced out of the parking lot with everything still on his lap and the seat belt reminder screaming loudly in our ears.

  As the car spun us away, I could see the clerk standing outside. Shayna was right next to him and I heard her calling after us, “I told you that was Dolly Rust.”

  Dad drove very fast, screeching the brakes and then racing off again. We came to a red light and he drove right through it. Clemesta and I held on tight to our seats and said a wish not to crash into a pole.

  “He’s mad because I told Shayna and Crystal my real name,” I said. “Now he’ll get in trouble for taking me out of school.”

  Clemesta shook her head. “It isn’t that.”

  Dad swerved and we went sliding on the seat. He tried to unfold his map but he couldn’t get it to lie flat with one hand.

  “Here,” I said. I reached over and smoothed it out and set it on the passenger seat.

  Dad was looking in his side mirrors, watching the cars behind us. His eyes were wild.

  “Are you mad at me?” I said. “Because the guy from the motel knows my name?”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m not mad at you, Doll. Not ever.”

  He turned off at the next exit and then we were on a road with no other cars, just trees thick and green on either side. Dad was still going very fast and I had that feeling inside me the same as when the superstorm was about to hit New York. Everyone had to stay home and buy flashlights and food and keep safe indoors and I was scared that the storm would destroy everything, that it would flatten the whole neighborhood and crush it to pieces unt
il nothing was left.

  In the end, it wasn’t even scary, because Mom and Dad and me got to spend all day in our pajamas and Dad made big bowls of popcorn that he refilled every time we ate it up, and we watched movies and played board games and when the power went off, we lit candles and went around in turns to tell ghost stories. Mom and Dad fell asleep on blankets on the living room floor, all twisty and curled in each other’s arms. Clemesta and I made a bed next to them and we all stayed just like that until the morning came and the storm had passed.

  “Probably this will turn out fun too,” I said. “It feels scary now but soon it won’t be. Isn’t that right?”

  Clemesta put her hoof into her mouth and bit her horse-nails. “Dolly, it’s bad.”

  I watched Dad’s eyes in the mirror. He was back to no blinking.

  “What’s abduction?” I said.

  His hands on the wheel were shaking. “It’s like stealing,” he said. “Stealing a person.”

  I tried to catch hold of his eyes in the mirror but he didn’t look back, he just stared ahead.

  I kicked off my shoes. The Jeep’s windows were starting to get dirty. It made the pictures outside blurry.

  We drove through two more boring towns, past ugly broken houses with no one mowing the lawns or picking up the empty beer cans they’d tossed out onto the grass. Most of the houses weren’t even real houses, they were just old trailer homes on cement blocks.

  Abduction, abduction.

  I picked at the scab on my leg.

  “Don’t,” Clemesta said. “You’ll make it bleed again. It will leave a scar.”

  “Maybe I want a scar,” I said. I lifted the rusty skin part till it came off in my fingers. The blood oozed out and the skin underneath yelled at me.

  “Dad. Are we still going home?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I watched the blood on my leg slowly trickle away.

  We passed by a man sitting on his porch, drinking a can of beer and watching the cars. He was scratching inside his dirty jean shorts and the sofa he was sitting on had all its yellow stuffing oozing out. There was a Confederate flag on his porch, waving its blue X in the breeze.

  I combed my wet hair with my fingers to help it dry, and then I took the plastic comb and brushed all the tangles out of Clemesta’s thick mane.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her. “Even if you can be a nag sometimes.”

  “DITTO,” she said. “And I’m only looking out for you. That’s my job.”

  “I know,” I said. “You’re a very good protector horse. Except you didn’t protect us from Shayna.”

  Clemesta hung her head.

  “But don’t worry. I bet she catches the bubonic plague from a rat.”

  It’s all right to wish bad things on people who are mean because they deserve it.

  DEAD POSSUM.

  FLAG FLAG FLAG.

  GOD SEES EVERYTHING.

  “Does he? Even inside my secret-secret box?”

  Clemesta looked at me. “Why? Did you remember what’s there?”

  “No.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  WELCOME TO ALABAMA it said on the side of the road.

  “Hey,” I said. “This is another state. Why aren’t we going back the way we came?”

  “It’s faster this way,” Dad said.

  I tried to remember the world map we have hanging up in the kitchen. It shows all the countries in the whole world and all the states of America, but I couldn’t figure out if Alabama was up or down from where we were. When I was back home again, I would stick pins into the map, marking all the places we’d been on the adventure. Then I would take it to class to show Miss Ellis and she would say, “Gosh, Dolly, you are a real world traveler.”

  Alabama, I said in my head. I like the word very much, because it makes your tongue curl back in your mouth and it also sounds like a poem.

  Alabama, I said, Alabama.

  There used to be a girl in my school called Alabama, but she moved with her family to Los Angeles because her big sister became a famous actress on a TV show. Mom and I watched an episode once, but Mom turned it off when we were only halfway through.

  “If that’s talent, I’ll eat my shoe,” she said.

  Los Angeles is the place where DREAMS COME TRUE. That’s how Mom explained it. That’s what YOU KNOW WHO said too.

  “You’ll love it,” he told me.

  “I hate you,” I said back. I stuck out my tongue even though that’s RUDE and rude girls don’t get gold stars.

  YOU KNOW WHO said he had just the part for Mom on his new show and she would be famous again and we wouldn’t have to worry about bills and Mr. Angry Bear anymore.

  “I’ve spent all these years waiting for things to get better,” Mom said. “Waiting for him to pick up the pieces and get back to the man he was when I met him.”

  “It’s never going to be different, Anna,” YOU KNOW WHO said. “You must know that.”

  Mom sighed. “He can’t even look at me,” she said. “All I do is remind him of everything he’s lost. The life we had. Well.” Mom pressed her eyes and switched on her smile. “And now you’re here,” she told him. “Like my knight in shining armor.”

  YOU KNOW WHO took her hand and I put my best-worst curse on his head.

  “Where is that damn waiter?” he said. “I told him to bring the dressing on the side.”

  Just thinking about YOU KNOW WHO made me so mad that I squeezed my hands into two fierce punching fists without even trying.

  “It’s all right, Dolly,” Clemesta said. “He can’t ruin things anymore.”

  “Why don’t you look happy about that?”

  She picked at her hooves. “What if we were wrong about him? What if he was really trying to be her friend?”

  “Silly horse, moms can’t have friends who are boys. And YOU KNOW WHO is definitely and certainly and for surely the WORST. Rita even warned Mom about him. She said, ‘Watch out, Anna. That man is full of promises but he’s never been the most sincere. And this isn’t asking him to get you into that damn members’ club you’re so obsessed with; it’s your lives.’ See? Everyone can tell he’s a monster.”

  She knitted her horse-brows together into a W for WORRY. “I don’t know, Dolly,” she said. “I think we might have made a mistake.”

  Dad looked back at me in the mirror. He smiled but it was like a smile that hurt his face. “We’ll…we’ll pull over in a bit. Get something to eat.”

  I frowned. “Are you very sure this is the right direction for going home?”

  Dad kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure.”

  I rubbed the skin on my arms, which was changing color in the sun. Probably back home it was still cold and rainy. Mom would be saying, “Perfect weather to be a duck,” and I would be wearing my rain boots, which are blue with yellow bottoms. They are made of rubber to be waterproof against splashes and puddle-jumping, which is the best fun, especially in the garden where the water gathers in very deep pools. Sometimes Mom puts on her rain boots too, and then we have a SPLASH-OFF COMPETITION and we get so muddy that we have to throw all our clothes off at the back door before we can go inside the house. Sometimes Mom even strips NAKED and we do the crazy naked dance right outside with our bare bottoms shaking in the rain. Mom doesn’t care if the neighbor Mrs. Mistry sees us and tattletales to Dad.

  “I don’t think she’s doing too well,” is what Mrs. Mistry told him last time. We were outside in the drive getting ready to go to the park and practice my bicycle riding tricks, but she came over to us and whispered her NOSY NEWS to Dad. It put him in such a bad mood that by the time we got to the park, he just sat on a bench and didn’t help me ride. When we got back home, Dad pulled Mom to him and stroked her face and said, “I’m here, I’m here,” and she laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes and melted. Dad’s arms around her were big and solid, like one of those Life Sav
er floats you throw to a drowning person in a lake.

  My stomach made a noise and I pressed my hands into my belly button. That’s the place where a baby is joined to its Mom when it’s inside her stomach. That’s called GESTATION and if you’re a baby elephant you spend twenty-two months in there but if you’re a baby human it’s only nine months.

  Mom keeps an album of photographs from when she had me growing in her. In one of them, she looks very beautiful and smiley in a long blue dress with no sleeves and a big straw sunhat that covers half her face. She has her hands cupped around her belly WHICH IS ME and she’s cradling it like it is something very precious.

  “Were you excited for me to pop out?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “It was a very happy day.”

  “Did you know already that I’d be a girl?”

  “No,” Mom said. “But I hoped you would be.”

  “Did you love me right away?”

  “Oh, yes. And forever and always to come.”

  I like the photo very much.

  I wondered if Mom felt something in her belly when I was far away from her, like an ache of missing and loneliness, or a special stomach-voice that said, DOLLY IS GONE, DOLLY IS GONE, SOMETHING IS WRONG BECAUSE DOLLY IS GONE.

  “Something is wrong,” Clemesta said.

  “It isn’t,” I said. “We’re going home now.”

  Clemesta shut her eyes. I think she was trying to meditate out the bad.

  Dad pulled up in the parking lot outside a strip mall. It was all square and concrete and flat, like there weren’t any colors left to make the town look pretty.

  “I’ll be a minute,” Dad said. “You wait here.” He put down all the windows to let in the air.

  “But I’ll be bored.”

  “I’ll be quick,” Dad said. “And Clemesta will keep you company.”

  “I need to pee,” I said.

  “Didn’t you go at the motel?”

  “I need to go again. I’ll go in the store.”