One day, when I was nine, Bobbie-Jo told me my parents had died. She was a neighbor, my friend Leah’s mother. Bobbie-Jo came right into the classroom wearing her bright blue windbreaker. Rain had wet her hair at the edges so it pinched together in spikes round her face. The class all stopped working, looked from Leah to her mom, wondering. The two adults whispered for a moment, their heads nodding mysteriously until finally the teacher called out my name, not Leah’s. All eyes turned to me.
Bobbie-Jo took me to her house in her new Saturn car. She said she liked their advert, particularly the one where the man stopped the line for a fault. My Dad called it the ‘stop the line Saturn.’ It still smelled new inside. Bobbie-Jo looked mad yet sad at the same time, driving slowly, peering through the rain. When two cars honked their horns, she ignored them. I wondered what I’d done, racked my brains about last time I’d stayed over. Had Leah and I committed some sin? Or Kevin, Leah’s brother, had he blamed us for something, told lies? As we drove to her house, she didn’t speak, but I saw the skin over her knuckles looked shiny, sharp-edged against the wheel. The sun came out so the raindrops glinted on the windscreen. I looked for a rainbow.
An empty police car sat in Bobbie-Jo’s driveway. Inside the house, a woman I’d never seen before said she was from the police, but she wore no uniform and I thought that strange. She gave me an odd smile that told me I was in no trouble, yet didn’t calm me. I saw her raise eyebrows, questioning Bobbie-Jo. The two women exchanged the kinds of glances Leah and I used while testing our ability to send telepathic messages like ‘ask your mom if we can put the tent up in the yard,’ or ‘ice cream, ice cream.’ Leah’s eyes would become wider and she’d kind of nod, so I supposed I did too. The two women didn’t, but I read some message pass between them as clear as our own. Bobbie-Jo took off her windbreaker with its rain-speckled shoulders. That’s when she told me. I can’t remember her exact words, a lot of things about Jesus loving my parents, angels, things I didn’t really understand. The police woman said nothing. But I understood dead was dead, all other words meaningless, like the telepathic messages I didn’t get from Leah, the ones I had to ask what she had been trying to say, but I didn’t want Bobbie-Jo’s words.
I didn’t feel any different at first, no sense of change. Bobbie-Jo’s kitchen looked the same as always, the clock pendulum still swung, the oven’s digital numbers flicked up a number. At the end of Dracula, he’s dead, but next time you watch, there he is again. I did not grasp that I would never see them again, that I was alone, that my life abruptly bore no resemblance to the one existing just two hours ago. Bobbie-Jo began to cry, pulling me against her sweater. The fluffy wool tickled my skin like cat hair. I wished Leah had come too. Bobbie-Jo was one of our Girl Scout leaders, the reason, I supposed, she had been the one to come to school. I wondered if she would earn a badge for telling me of my parents’ death, but thought probably not or she would have worn her uniform. The policewoman left after squeezing my arm perhaps harder than she intended. I could still feel the ghost of her grip while I sipped on the hot chocolate Bobbie-Joe made me. I wished for Leah’s presence. I sent her messages to ‘come home,’ ‘pretend a stomach ache.’ I focused them into the chocolate so the steam settled damp on my nose and made my eyes water. Bobbie-Joe put an arm round me. Telepathy didn’t work long distance. I glared into the hot drink once more, thinking of my Mom and Dad. I love you.
I stayed until the funeral, slept on the pull out bed where I always slept when I stayed with Leah. Bobbie-Jo watched me as though she suspected me of something. People I didn’t know came to the house, speaking in whispers, passing more of those glances. They didn’t have the right to do so unsparingly, nobody did. They should be used more carefully, like a last wish. Leah talked about me staying with them, our future lives as sisters. Bobbie-Jo said someone was trying to contact my last relative, an aunt overseas who I’d never seen, who didn’t send Christmas cards. I waited, hoping for word of some mistake, that my mom would walk in the back door like always.
I went to the funeral. I wore a dark blue dress that Bobbie-Jo had bought for me. I listened in church wanting to make sense out of everything happening, while they talked about Jesus, God, goodness. If Jesus is so good, suffers little children and all that, why has he made me alone, I wondered. In church, people looked at me, but when they knew I’d seen them they would turn away. So I knew I was guilty, but I couldn’t think of what. Was it my fault my parents had their accident? What did they all know that I didn’t? I pictured my mom’s face, the long brown hair she pushed back with a thumb. I thought of her the way I knew her at home when she didn’t bother to get out of pajamas or wear make up, when she let me watch TV, leaning against her while she read magazines. Sometimes she wriggled her toes when she turned the page. She didn’t talk much, my mom, not with words. I guess she knew she didn’t need them, like the Saturday before the accident. I was watching her, just staring. She worked on a crossword then looked up, like she felt my gaze, gave this big smile. It meant something, a conspiracy, a connection between us as strong as a touch, that replayed over in my head like the replay button on the video machine when I watched ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and the beast turns into the prince. The film flickers there now. My mom’s smile flickers. I’m afraid I won’t remember her voice.
Our town is quite small. Of course, I couldn’t stay with Bobbie-Jo. She tried to explain all the reasons -- single mom, already with Leah and Kevin, might be a long time until they traced my Aunt, social service decision. She bit her lip a lot on the day the social worker came for me, hugged me saying she was sorry. I was glad she didn’t have the cat hair jumper on. I didn’t cry. I thought perhaps it was still a mistake, someone else’s parents died. Mine had been in a wreck far away, survived, lay in hospital, but unconscious maybe. Soon they would wake and our lives would return to normal.
The children’s home proved quite nice really. I decided that I could be happy there until my family came back. Everyone treated me with an efficient kindness. They gave me a yellow check dress to wear, just like all the other girls. I pretended that they were all my sisters, that I’d been born here in this huge family of ten yellow-checked girls. Three of us slept together in a bedroom with white painted furniture, Peter Pan curtains, and pink walls. I wondered who had painted the walls. I had sat with my Dad when he had painted my bedroom, so carefully edging where the color changed, the scent of paint strong in the air, old sheets over the carpeting. My Dad could have shown them how to do the job better. None of the sheets and quilts matched on the beds. The pillows stayed stiff under their mismatched cases, but we each knew our own, weren’t allowed to trade. Lights went out at nine, then you couldn’t see the messy brush strokes spilling onto the floor. Carla was quiet, she liked to go straight to sleep at night but Amber, two years older, denied being an orphan, claimed her Mom planned to come for her soon, she just had to leave her boyfriend first. Her boyfriend was hot. I said I wasn’t an orphan either.
I ran away after a week. But that sounds too dramatic, for I didn’t think of the act as running away at the time. I just decided, that even though it was quite nice here, going home seemed the sensible thing to do. If my parents returned, that’s where they’d expect to find me. Nobody had asked me, after all, whether I wanted to stay at my house with my things were, my own fat pillow.
I didn’t plan ahead to go home. I woke up one night. The thin curtains let the moonlight through. I looked at Tinkerbell and wished -- but before my wish even formed, I remembered no magic really existed. I put on the yellow-checked dress, walked downstairs in my socks. I stood in the doorway, wobbling on one leg to put on my shoes, looking out into night. Night was when everything scary happened, the time to be inside, safe, not outside alone. The sky felt like the source of danger but only contained the prettiness of stars -- not even black, just the darkest of blues, a princess’s cloak, not a vampire’s.
I hadn’t thought how different everything would seem at night. The moon glowed bright enough to make intensely black shadows, full of hidden things. The world proved quieter than I expected, with only the breath of the wind, a few crickets, an occasional distant car, one with a radio so loud the ground thudded. My shoes echoed on the concrete as I walked. First, I walked slower, to see if the footsteps stopped. Then I paused, listening to silence, feeling my heart pulse to my toes, to make sure I was alone and once, I turned and walked backwards for a while. When I thought the headlights of an approaching car might see me, I jumped into the darkest patch of shadow with the hidden things, crouching until it passed. The yellow of my dress would flare bright in the night if headlights swept over me. My cheek felt cold where it touched my knees. The scuffs on my shoes didn’t show in the night.
My mom always left the key in the red geranium pot in the saucer of water. No one had watered the plant, the geraniums drooped, the weight of the pot felt too light when I lifted it.
My house remained just the same, another sign that confirmed my doubts, as though, like me, it awaited my parent’s return. The coffee cups sat in the sink waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher. The dryer door hung open, a red arm trailing to the floor. My Dad had probably pulled out something he wanted to wear, dressing in a hurry, left everything else. Mom would fuss at him when she saw, say he could have folded everything, and he would grin, wink at me when she turned away. The refrigerator hummed a soothing sound. I didn’t put on the light. I waited as though familiar footsteps would soon come, as they always did.
Outside my parent’s bedroom door, I stopped. I wished for some magic, some spell, that would make things right when I opened it, shiver the world to normal. Sometimes at night, when I went to the bathroom, I used to stand like this outside my own door. Had everything changed in there I would wonder? Will I open the door in this dark night and step into something new, unfamiliar?
I entered. The moon gave the room light, picked out the white of the china on the dresser, the sheets of the bed that looked like ghosts. Some of Dad’s clothes still lay draped over the chair. The fan whirred, its pull chain tapped ever so quietly, like someone’s heart beat in the room. I walked round, touched things familiar, the wood of the dresser, the cold slick glass lampshade, soft clothes, the twisted bedpost. I climbed on to the high bed by standing on one tiptoe, clutching the cover to haul myself up, kicking off my shoes. They dropped, tap, tap, onto the rug. I lay on my dad’s side, on cold, rumpled sheets, pressed my face into his pillow where I could smell his hair, the scent of him held there. I breathed deep into the feathers sucking through them wanting every trace of that scent within me. ‘Come back’ my mind said, my face pressing hard.
I did not sleep, but I pretended I did. I made up a dream, not truly a dream because I was awake. I was the one in control. The dream did exactly what I wanted. My parents came back after an unexpected holiday. They carried gifts for me. My mom brought me a doll that looked like me with trunks of clothes, boas, hats, lacy gloves, white petticoats, blue beads, things no-one wore any more, but I’d wear them. My Dad brought me a fat, warm, puppy. We loaded the truck and went to the lake house. I watched us moving, acting out our parts, rewinding the tape if I thought of an extra gesture or word.
Now, in my own house, where nothing had changed yet everything was different, I knew I could not stay. I didn’t know really who ‘they’ were, but ‘they’ wouldn’t let me stay here, the whisperers, in control of me now. How long before some one noticed my presence, neighbors would see me; people from the children’s home might come here to search for me. I thought about my dream as though I had really dreamed. I added another part to the dream - my Dad sending me a telepathic message to go to the lake house.
I went to the garage – found the truck still parked in there, so I began loading. All the food I could find I put in the back. I took the money from my moneybox, the heavy quarter jar, some dollars I found in Mom’s bedside drawer. Her gold cross and chain lay in the bottom, strange, usually she always wore it. When I fastened it, slinky against my neck, a throb of guilt tapped lightly in my stomach. Is this stealing? But I wanted part of her with me. I decided I’d give the necklace back someday. I’d want to give it back. From my room I took some clothes, my music box, the quilt from my bed that mom had made for me, then mended where I had cut it with scissors doing my homework in bed. I piled cushions in the driver’s seat to sit on, perched on top to look in the mirror. A child looked back at me. She could drive the truck. I had sat on my Dad’s knee in the front and driven it down the country roads at the lake house. Would anyone see me in the dark? Dad’s sunglasses hung from the visor, but when I put them on, the brown glass made me blind so I was happy enough when they slid from my face.
I wasn’t afraid. Nothing seemed scary about my plan -- only I didn’t want to get caught. I turned the ignition key, then thought of something. I went back upstairs for dad’s pillow, hugging it to me as though whatever of him lingered there offered me protection.
I hoped no neighbors would wake to see the garage door open, the truck emerge, the sound of metal scraping wood where I couldn’t get it out right because I knew where to shift the stick for reverse but not how to steer backwards. Only the tips of my toes touched the pedals, and if I turned to look behind me, they didn’t reach at all. No lights came on in the street. The girl in the rearview mirror pressed the button to close the garage doors, crossed over our grass, then our neighbor’s, then bumped down the curb onto the road so hard her chin hit the steering wheel and she could hear her supplies slide and bounce in the back. That would be the hardest part.
When I passed Leah’s, I thought about stopping. Leah could come too, share this adventure. We could play house at the lake together, no more school, no more parents. Something like a plum stone pressed inside my stomach. I thought of the Peter Pan curtains. Leah’s house looked dark and I kept on driving. When I passed under the streetlight, the yellow-checked dress glowed with false warmth. It had slid up my legs as I stretched for the pedals, looked like shorts now. I wished I’d changed clothes before I left. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to put my own things on, imagined I could feel warm jeans round my knees, soft fleece on my arms, but I daren’t stop. There’d be time later.
The corners were hard but I could do the straight lines OK. I knew the way. Mom, Dad, and me, had spent every weekend there through summers since I could remember. I drove slowly glad most of the journey took long straight roads. Few cars traveled on the road, and the few big trucks were too large and impatient to care about me. I listened to the roar of them passing, cut off from the darkness outside, secure in my capsule untouched by everything alien out there. Twice I saw deer at the side of the road, eyes glowing green in my headlights, the only living things to show interest in me. Watch the side of the road, I told myself. Perhaps you’ll see Mom and Dad, walking home to you. They’d lost their memory for a while after the accident, but now they have it back.
The wooden cottage looked forbidding amongst the black trees, as though, in our absence, the wood had become enchanted. I told myself I wasn’t scared. I’d watched Dracula on TV with Dad, and laughed. He liked that nothing scared me. I checked the trees, then above them to the sky to make sure it was deserted. A thin cloud veiled the moon to a ghost of itself. The wind blew the trees so their leaves shook as they huddled together, no longer separate but a tangled mass of tree containing one dark heart. Its branches reached like many arms over the roof. I pulled the quilt over the yellow-checked dress, wrapped it tight around me, pulled Dad’s pillow under me, clutched the cross until it dug into my palms.
Through the night rain fell, but I never knew, only saw how bright the leaves looked in the grey sky when I woke, how sharp the grass smelled, how cozy the house looked with water dripping from the roof protecting the inside. The rain ran in tears down the windshield, fresh blown leaves, caught beneath the wipers, now twitched to escape. Thirst made me wonder what the rainwater tasted like.
I ran inside. Raindrops wet my face and arms making goose bumps of cold prickle, the fine hair stand out. The wood floors creaked. Through the window the truck did not belong where it sat, shiny red with the deep scar along the driver’s side door. When the rain stopped, I’d bring everything in. I opened all the doors, ran room to room as I always did when I came here. I hoped some one would call out to me not to run, to calm down, to start bringing stuff in. The bedroom door swung back and forth. Wind blew down the chimney. I wandered round the emptiness and knew, for certain, I would always be alone.
