The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 13

A fter three days of wonderfulness, more charity ladies trickle back in. I am sitting back in my baby-bird egg, enjoying the view. The way the sun shines through the un-boarded-up window. The tree out there Birdie says is called a chinaberry and it shushes in the breeze. She says she can finally see her dang hand in front of her face in here. Her motto is sometimes it is better to ask for the forgiveness than the permission.

Ladies walk past the office and exclaim, Well look at that! like they had not ever noticed this little room before. Ask me, they are just glad it got done because it wasn’t them had to do it. Meanwhile the Asskisser looks to be all nerves, waiting to see if Miss Garnett comes in. The way she keeps touching the copper pin on her collar, she is wetting her pants hoping it will turn silver soon. I bet she thinks we girls do not notice things like that.

I pray to baby Jesus Miss Garnett is still sick as a dog. But the word around the place is she is on the mend.

I hear the Fatass say out in the hall, What I’d like to know is where she took the money from to buy all that paint.

Oh I just been stealing it out your pocketbook, Pripp. Little bit every day , Birdie calls back without looking up from our desk.

Stop that, Birdie , Miss Frances says. Birdie found a little money left over in the books to pay for it, isn’t that wonderful?

Well, she’s gonna have to answer to Garnett on that.

Long as I don’t get in trouble, I don’t care what the Big Phony thinks. Though it would be nice if it irritated her a little. I sit back and think about that.

Sure enough, at eight thirty sharp, I hear the clacking. Like so many skeleton bones coming in the door. Birdie has gone upstairs to take another look at our ceiling.

I hear, Welcome back, Garnett! We all been prayin foya. I lean out and here the Big Phony comes, moving stiff like somebody stuck a broom handle up her. She stops and lifts her nose to smell. That is change you are smelling, lady.

Garnett, it was so smart of you to freshen the office up before the inspector visits, a lady says.

Now that one burns me up. And then she is standing in the door of the office, fixing her gray eyes on me in my nice new blue walls. The Fatass warned her but not this good. She looks at the sun streaming pretty in here, and lookathere, Birdie even put a little potted plant up on the file cabinet. She kind of lurches at me when she sees that.

I sit still in my chair and try not to look like a criminal even though I still got some blue and white evidence on me.

The Asskisser follows her into the office and asks, What do you think of the spiffing up Birdie did, Garnett? It looks real good, doesn’t it?

That Big Phony looks at the un-boarded-up window, then at me. Her skin is a even paler shade of runny oatmeal. It is eating her alive that I am not sitting in sickly light with mold all around me. But she knows she has got to act happy. Well look at this , is all she can get out.

Miss Frances is waiting on more praise than that, though. But don’t you think it looks better? Especially considering you’ve got the little girl sitting in here and all. Birdie worked so hard getting it done in time.

Don’t bring me into this, lady. I wish the flat-faced phony was still in bed.

Where is Birdie? Miss Garnett wants to know.

But Miss Frances keeps going. You know, Birdie came in early and scrubbed the walls and ceiling and everything. And to be honest, it kind of needed it, don’t you think? I hadn’t realized how dingy it’d gotten until she cleaned it up.

Well, well, well. I didn’t think the Asskisser had it in her.

Miss Garnett’s smile turns so tight it curves down in the corners. What we NEED is for Birdie to finish the books so we’ll get the funding to keep this place going. I’m sure you’d understand that better if you were on the senior committee, Frances.

Miss Frances shrinks back down in her neck. She says she better go tend to the toddlers.

Soon after, Birdie walks in. Welcome back, Garnett.

Please tell me while you were painting walls you also had time to finish the books like you were assigned? Miss Garnett’s nose is flared wide. I can see all up in there.

Don’t worry, I finished, I’ve just got a few questions. She don’t care one way or the other if Miss Garnett likes her paint job, she goes right to pointing to things in the books. Asking what is this entry and that one. Covering a card with my hand, I draw a new portrait of the Big Phony. I give her a tooth missing so she looks like a witch.

When I compared last year and the year before to this year , Birdie says, opening books, I realized a lot more used to be spent on the big girls. Clothing, food, books …

The big girls need scripture, not storybooks , Miss Garnett says. She starts to babble about their line and how the mothers of these girls are giving birth left and right, breeding more imbeciles. I add horns to her flat face, a hairy mole.

Birdie taps her finger on a number in the book. So most of the money allocated for the big girls is going towards the cost of the work program? Is that right? And so is the girls’ pay?

Well, I look up at that. I want to hear about pay.

It’s going towards their futures. Unfortunately, with the new child labor laws, their hours are limited and their pay is a pittance. So as of now there’s nothing left over. She tells some ladies at the door she will be out momentarily .

I look at Birdie to see what that means, but she is asking more questions, pointing to the book.

Miss Garnett says, Transportation, food, clothing. Separate safe housing for the girls, it’s very costly.

I agree they need to be kept safe, but maybe children shouldn’t be working in a cannery at all.

Can you get back to the thing about pay? I ask.

It’s a wonderful opportunity , Miss Garnett says. She is looking serious at Birdie. We don’t just keep these girls separate for their own safety. We’ve got to do something for the sake of our society. There’s legislation down at the capitol already. Now we just need to see to it that it’s enforced.

I watch Birdie’s eyebrows rise. She looks the way I felt when she pulled the boards off the window. Ah , her face seems to say. I see now. How it is in your world.

All I want to know is do we get damn paid.

Miss Garnett tucks the books in her arms and walks out, and Birdie follows after her.

When Birdie is back in the office, I say, Tell it to me straight: Do we get our pay for sticking things in a can or not?

She rubs hard between her eyes. It leaves a red mark. Your pay goes towards your housing and board until you’re old enough to work a full day, which is sixteen. So. No. I’m sorry, Meg.

Sixteen is grown .

Oh, but it gets worse.

Birdie says, Now that I’ve finished my assigned assignment, she excused me for the rest of the week. She frowns. But I’m worried, Meg.

On a different day I would figure she is worried about being a old maid with a newspaper subscription and needing cash money, since it is usually those things. But today she says she is worried about me .

Six months is a long time to be here and not have a person , Meg. Which is what she calls the human being you want to be around most. The way Ava was mine.

Do you have to go home?

I do. I’m sorry.

I straighten the pencils, the eraser, the Bible in the center. But there is a lonesome taste in the air.

Do you miss your mama, Meg?

What a thing to ask a orphan.

It’s alright to say you miss her.

No, it’s not.

If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s alright. But it might help you.

Will it?

Try it, start small. Tell me something good you remember about her.

I do want to.

Just one thing.

I could try.

She was good at dancing.

What kind of dancing?

Jitterbug. Foxtrot. She taught me the latest moves.

What else?

She read everything she could get her hands on, even the back of the soup can.

What else?

She is buried down so deep I got to think hard. That means I am starting to forget her. She smelled like rose talc. She was better with a needle than a real seamstress, she taught me to tell time from a silver wristwatch with a broke clasp, she liked fall over spring for the mood , and she tried to hug me, but I ran off down the road and that is a regret I have. I am not sure how much of this I have said out loud.

At View Day I want you to please try your hardest to get adopted, alright Meg?

Why bother? View Day is a waste of my sweet time.

It’s tricky to explain, but will you please just try? I won’t be here, but Frances will. I’m gonna see if there’s anything she can do to help.

I lie and say I will try, though that woman out there will just steer them clear. Birdie gathers up her pocketbook and glasses and reaches over and squeezes both my hands and says, I am so lucky to know you, Meg.

The days after Birdie is gone grow long and dull again. Long, skinny fingers hold the hands of the clock so they do not move for hours. It makes me grumpy every time I see the biscuit drawer empty. A couple times I stick my nose down there and try to smell the biscuits of yore.

Miss Garnett comes in the office the morning after the inspector’s visit. She pushes the warped door half closed and moves up behind me. I get stiff all over. Here we go , I think. Sure enough, she starts fooling with my hair. I can hear her lips unsticking, gearing up for the damn dirty, filthy —

But I do not fall in a mess or drool this time, not even a little. Since that inspector visit, I have damn had it up to here with her.

Yesterday morning, she told us big girls to line up in the hall— Stand still and erect, girls —hair brushed and itchy in our white Sunday dresses. Miss Garnett’s nothing-colored dress was ironed flat as a board, and she’d had her bland hair done stiff around her head. I don’t know why some women try.

Like usual, the inspector smelled like he had soaked his whole old self in a Lysol disinfectant. Which I did not blame him, coming in here. She took him to the office to show off all the work she had not lifted a finger to do. She has some gall. I could see them in there, him complimenting our nice blue paint and looking impressed when she showed him the books she’d straightened out .

Well, sometimes a girl just has to roll her sleeves up , she said, and the pot of paste actually giggled at the man. Ask me, she is too damn old for that business. They chatted about how she has got nominated for some charity award and he hopes she will win. It was in the big Jackson newspaper and everything. While he told us to folla the finger (Fanny with the lazy eye got a F) and asked do any of us bleed (no), he told her how the state is organizing an important test for intelligence in schools . Well, that caught my ear. I always love a test.

Problem is, schools just don’t have the money to implement the test or a place to move all the imbeciles. He snorted like this was a funny joke to him.

That’s exactly why we’ve started the work program , she said. To give them a place to go. But we could do more, Richard, if we just had the funds.

You’re lucky to get what little bit you’re getting, Garnett. These are hard times we’re in. And I thought, You don’t know the half of it, mister. We don’t even get paid to stick the vegetable in the can.

I heard the state’s so broke , they’re turning folks loose from the lunatic asylums, he said . Say they don’t have the funds to feed ’em.

He chuckled again, but Miss Garnett, she was not chuckling at all.

But they are a danger. To our communities , she said. Surely the colony over in Ellisville can find a way to look after them. It’s the only way to contain this terrible problem.

He shrugged, saying let’s hope so, and he’d see her at the View Day next week. He tipped his hat at her and left. The whole visit hardly took thirty minutes.

Oh but you could see something boiling in that woman’s mind. A furious tea. And the next thing I knew, she marched in the office and nailed my damn window shut again while I sat there and watched. And then she told me I would from now on be taking all my meals in the office . That I was not even allowed to eat with the other girls anymore.

What does she think I am? A diseased person? Not turned loose for meals or nothing? And now she is standing behind me, fooling with my hair, calling me names? I get a throw-up feeling in my tummy, thinking about sitting alone in here for six whole months. And I would be a little fool to think a girl my age can get adopted in a snap, like Birdie thinks I could do. I heard those charity ladies say one time we are not even normal here, how it is peculiar that we do not even bleed and the ones who started before coming here stop. Something froze us in time because we know nobody wants a big girl. Well, I have had it and whip my hair from her bony fingers and tell her—

STOP IT.

She blinks at me, surprised. Sit down, young lady.

NO.

I know my life would be easier if I just sat there and took it. But here is what else I have come to know: If you give a girl a taste of fresh air and then take it away, she will grow fierce and wild to get that fresh air back again.

I move away from her until I am at the wall. I am big for my britches but I still have the sense to put distance between us. I don’t want you calling me that anymore or keeping me separate in this room! I say. I want to know why in the hell you hate me so much, lady.

Her lips open and make the sticky sound. The answer is on the tip of her tongue. I can almost see it in there and am apt to pry her mouth open and pull the answer out. I fathom a long black snake, my two hands gripping it, the snake squirming while I get the whole thing out.

Can she at least give me this littlest of courtesies? And tell me what in the hell this is about?

But she shakes her head and says, You. Ungrateful. Little brat. After all I’ve done for you. She reaches over and pushes the door shut that will not shut. She gets it shut. She moves at me so close, the back of my head is touching the wall. You should be thanking God you’re here and not where you came from. Now you get down on your knees right now, young lady, and you thank him for that.

I would like to know: What is wrong with people? And what do you say back to those that can put a belt to you for asking or put you in a room alone until you are singing songs out of season? I will tell you what you say:

I would not pray that shit if you paid me, lady.

She slaps my face hard—oh! It burns—and I want to hit her back I am so furious—

You were not supposed to be born, Meg, you were a mistake. And now I am the one looking after you instead of that depraved mother of yours.

I don’t know what that damn word means, but I am spitting tacks. Well, my mama was a lot smarter than you, lady, and she was prettier too and you got a flat bottom and a flat pasty face and I think you are just jealous because your baby died I think it wanted to die when it realized it was inside of you.

She stares at me up against the wall. Then she steps back and smiles, with actual teeth. I wonder how all this could make her so happy. Her hate is so hot my body burns.

Don’t forget, Meg, that smart, pretty mother of yours? She abandoned you. Two days before Christmas. She smiles again and it is even bigger this time. Your mother hated you so much, she left you to starve.

Sometimes I feel old. Old in my skin and my bones. I remember when I turned nine at my mama’s house, I could still feel a little eight left in me. But when I turned ten in this place, there was not any nine left to spare. Now I am afraid I might already have used up the rest of my eleven and most my twelve too.

Here is what I have learned in life: You cannot count on people. Look away and poof, they are gone, even if they planned to cut that hair of yours. Or said you were sisters and they would write you a secret letter. Or wanted something better for you than factory work.

I eat my supper at the desk alone that night. Miss Mildred brings it in. The sting of Miss Garnett’s hand is gone, but I still feel it burning my face. I hear the other girls filing out the dining room and I jump up to join them, but Miss Mildred says I got to wait , palm up, to use the outhouse and pump when the rest are done.

What did I do so awful? I beg her. Please tell me right now! Her saggy self will not meet my eyes. I know she is scared of Miss Garnett, but am I a stranger to her? Doesn’t a criminal at least deserve to know the crime?

When it is finally my turn to go, I see Miss Mildred shake her head sorry at me. Least she knows a injustice when she sees one.

Up in the big girls’ room, the other girls all stare at me quiet. Not just Dorella, Lord, all eight of them and not just like I am crazy. They are starting to look at me scared.

Miss Mildred says it is prayer time, girls, so we kneel next to our beds. Nightgowns tucked under our knees so the floor is not so hard. It is never interesting what these girls pray for here, Bless my ten brothers and sisters or Bring me something such-and-so to eat or flat out Don’t let Nutmeg scream in her sleep amen. Most nights I don’t even try to pray, I just pretend to. When the day is over, I am usually not in the mood to discuss it.

But I decide to pray tonight. Not like Miss Garnett, all Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for thy whatever . I will keep my prayer short and simple. If I was Lord and had so many requests coming in at once, I personally would appreciate short and simple.

Dear God , I pray. This is Meg Lefleur speaking. And I need you to listen to me a minute.

I got one thing I need from you, God.

Please. Give me something better than six months alone in that room.

Just this one thing and that is all I ask.

This is Meg Lefleur speaking. Amen.

When I get in bed, I repeat my prayer a couple more times. I figure if it is already in the till, it can’t hurt to say it again. Plus Mama always said men are slow learners, so you got to repeat it until it sticks.

While the rest of them sleep, I lie awake and watch the spooky stains on the ceiling start to dance.

The December before last, Mama brought me to town to look at all the Christmas decorations. A tall tree with real electric lights stood fancy in front of the courthouse. Folks toted boxes and bags of presents and surprises. A sign ran across the front of Neilson’s that said HAVE A VERY VERY MERRY! Even though we couldn’t afford anything, we always went in for fun. The minute we did, I spotted a pair of red mittens that looked too good to be true. The tag read Baby Lamb’s Wool Price 50 cents . I knew that was too much for my mama to spend, so I bit my lip to keep from asking. Oh but I turned them over a lot of times, feeling their baby lamb softness. All Mama had bought for me this trip was a couple hard candies. She would not even let me drop a penny in the orphan box. I liked the sound it made when I did, and I always wondered about these orphans. What those children did so naughty for their mamas to give them up. That was how I thought the orphan business worked when I was little. But then Mama went and dropped a whole nickel in crazy Old Miss Rondo’s peach can. I pouted about that on the drive home.

The very next afternoon, Mama said she was going to town—

But we just went!

She knew it but she plumb forgot to buy curling fluid and she had just as soon go on her own. She said Ophelia would sit me while she was gone. See now, my mama generally did not forget things ever. I remember she had on her nice yellow wool dress with the red rickrack on the collar and when she fooled with one of the buttons on the front, I knew something was up.

But I played along, smiling, and said, Alright. You just go on back to town, then.

And she smiled funny back at me and said, Alrighty, I’ll drop you at Ophelia’s on the way.

Before we left the house, she fingered a strand of my hair. Gentle like it was a strand of gold, and said, Tomorrow I am trimming this hair of yours. No excuses.

See I thought she was going to town to get my secret Santy Claus. She wanted to buy those red mittens for me and did not want to ruin the surprise.

When we got to Ophelia’s house, Mama tried to give me a hug goodbye, but I was too excited and ran inside. That is a regret I have.

I was not there a hour when Ophelia said, I ain’t feeling too goot.

So I made a big grown-up fuss tending to old Ophelia. I was feeling smart with my nine-year-old self for figuring out my present. I told Ophelia, You just get in bed and I will do it all. And I brought her some coffee she had boiling and a cool cloth for her head and set her up with a old Life magazine to look at the pictures since Ophelia couldn’t see well enough to read. Then I let the big fat pregnant mama dog outside, and later on I let her back in. She always let the very pregnant mamas sleep inside the house. I petted Ophelia on the hand like she would do me when I was not feeling goot.

She said, You a goot doctor, Coreen.

Coreen was Ophelia’s sister. But I figured why tell a old sick person they mistaked you for somebody dead, it would only make them feel worse.

She said, You go on and rest now, Coreen. I be fine.

I said, Alright. You get some rest too, Ophelia.

At dark I ate the buttered grits she had on the stove and played “Oh Peter Go Ring Dem Bells” on her piano and laid on the little settee, waiting for Mama to come and get me. I remember thinking I had done a good job.

When I woke up next, I was not getting carried down the road. It was light out and had turned a awful cold. Ophelia coughed and said, Why you mama didn’t come get you, Meg?

At first I was scared I was not already at home.

Ophelia said, You reckon she fell asleep?

I said, That must be it , and I tried to act grown up about it. I got Ophelia something to drink and let the pregnant mama dog outside. After a while, I decided to just run my own self home the mile or so. Mama had let me do it a lot of times before. I ran fast in all that cold. So cold I saw not hide nor hair. Not too many people lived out this way but us.

But when I got home, Mama was not there. I waited around the house all day worrying where she might be, playing pretend with my magazine meals. I put my money on that old car of ours broke down again. It was barely worth the cost of the gasoline from the service station.

It got dark early with it being so near to Christmas. Froze-up rain started coming down from the sky. I was very mad at my mama by then and was not walking back to old Ophelia’s in this mess. I will wait right here for my Santy Claus, I decided, and when she gets home I will yell at her a little for the cold cornbread I had to eat for supper, but then I will cool off because I will be happy she is home with my secret surprise. I believe I cried in the night, but that is not something to be repeated.

The next morning when I woke up, she was still gone. I got very scared then and thought of more things that could have happened to her. What if she had a automobile accident and was bleeding by the road? Or got locked in the lending library and was waiting on Mrs. Block to let her out? It was Christmas Eve, she would have to spend a couple days locked up in there. That would be about heaven for Mama. Which made me madder.

Finally I put on as many clothes as I could still walk in and headed back to Ophelia’s because I was too hungry to even play with my toys. Plus that seemed the thing to do with sense. But it had got so cold out like you would not think Mississippi could get. It froze up the inside of my nose holes. I had tee-teed my pants a little in the night and that felt froze too. That is something else I do not want to get repeated.

When I made it to Ophelia’s, a white man in a red-checked coat was standing in her house. I had not knowed a white person besides us to ever be in there. He said, Who you?

I said, What?

He said, You know ’bout that dead nigga that let my dog freeze?

I said, Who?

He said, That nigga Ophelia! You think she’d have the courtesy to let the damn dog in the house ’fore she died!

I said, Who? Died?

He said, Now I got a dead nigga and a dead dog, and if that dumb nigga had the means to let the dog out, you’d a thought she’d a let her back in!

Ophelia is dead? Or the dog is dead? I did not like how he was waving his hands at me.

Both’s dead! Any fool knows you let a dog that pregnant shit on the floor ’fore you make her stay out in this weather!

I said, Ophelia is dead?

Dead setting up reading a goddamn Life magazine!

The mama dog is dead too? With the puppies inside?

I told you they both dead! he said, grabbing at me. I already done sold four a them bird dogs and if somebody ’sides that nigga let that dog out to freeze, I wanna know who’s respons’ble.

I turned and ran. I ran and ran all the way home. Ran inside and stuck a chair up under the door and hid up under my bed. I cried hard then for my mama being gone and for the mama dog with the puppies inside and I cried for my old friend Ophelia. I cried until I had to sleep so as not to think of it anymore.

Two more days passed by with me in the house. I gnawed my teeth on what was left of the hambone. I tried mixing up cornmeal with the last of the milk and baking it. It was awful but I ate it. We did not have eggs or any type thing left to eat up in the house. Except a short can of red beans and a jar of oysters that Yankee lady Mama worked for gave us. When I smelled the oysters, I could not touch them with a ten-foot pole.

Where had Mama gone to? Maybe she was trapped down in a wellhole. Maybe some highwaymen captured her for ransom. Maybe in the automobile accident, she hit her head and got the memory loss, you hear about that kind of thing on the radio.

Or maybe the accident was worse than that. What if Mama was dead like poor Ophelia? If I had gone straight back over there, maybe Ophelia would not have died. I know the mama dog would not have froze or the puppies inside her.

It got to where I could see my breath right in the house. It was a bone-hurting cold. I could not get the oil heater to work. Somebody special had to come light the thing. When I toted some wood in to make a fire, my fingers stung and I could barely get it lit, froze up wet like that. So I fastened up every coat and mitten I could find and got up under the covers and told myself it was just my imagination I had to go to the bathroom.

To pass the hours I looked through the books Mama had borrowed from the librarian, Mrs. Block. The Age of Innocence. The Sun Also Rises. She was bound to be fuming that Mama was late on her return. I tried to read one Mama had ordered by mail. She pronounced it You Liss Sees . It was spelled different on the spine, and the story was dull, and I couldn’t follow much of it.

One of those days I went outside, looking around for someone. I walked up and down the road, but there was not a house or a car or a person nohow. We lived rural. When I walked over to the school, it was locked up tight. Then on my walk home, I saw somebody! A car way off down the road, maybe coming from our own house, and I ran after it hollering and waving and acting a fool, but it kept on going. It had got even colder, too cold to stay outside chasing it for long.

Except for those oysters, it was like a olden tale you read in the torn-up books at school, the cupboard was bare so the poor dog had none.

When I still could not get that wet firewood to light, I started eyeing the household items. Smiling at the chairs and books like I could trick them into the fire without my doing the throwing. Would it still be my fault if some books hopped their own selfs in there? It got to where I was colder than I was afraid of getting in trouble. Oh what a feeling, to get warm for a few minutes. But before it was even nighttime, I had burned all the books, the pages fluttering like Mama’s ghost was turning them.

One night I felt something odd on my face, and in the mirror I saw a red spot on my cheek. That is when I started burning up more things, wooden spoons, wood crates, clothes hangers, my special important colored papers I had drawed at school, hand fans, a wood stool, the cushions off the sitting thing. A table and a wood chair I could not fit in there to light but I still tried.

I guess it had been five or six days when I started talking like her and carrying on.

I would sit in a chair and pretend to be Mama. I would say, Meg, you comb that hair of yours and wash your face I did not raise you to be a pig in a sty how about using soap this time! That was how I would make myself wash and generally keep myself in one piece. You would not believe how I would carry on when I would not do what I told me to do.

Finally the weather broke and it was not so cold. So I said, I will walk the twenty miles to town and beg for food like crazy Old Miss Rondo with the can. But somebody in my head said, You better think about that, Meg, because what if she comes back? And you are gone and then you keep on missing the other, back and forth and back? So I got me a red crayon and I wrote big on the wall: STAY HERE I WILL BE RIGHT BACK . I had burned up all the paper already. The whole time thinking how cross she would be with me for crayoning the wall.

If I had just stayed at Ophelia’s.

If I had just let the pregnant mama dog back in the house.

My bones ached like they had cutting blades in them. They started to squeak like doors. When I threw up, nothing came out, so I went to the cabinet and shut my nose and I swallowed a oyster and it slid down like a slimy thing might slip down a hole. But then up it came. So I tried again. Before I knew it I had ate the whole jar of them.

I was so tired. I was still so sure she was coming back. If anybody asked, I would have said it.

One morning, the pretend mama who made me wash myself came in and sat me down. She said, You have been a very bad girl, Meg. Burning my things up. Crayoning my wall.

I said, I did not , trying to fool her with the lying lesson like she had taught me. She said, Yes you did, I have had it up to here with you. And the pretend mama got up and walked out the door and left me there. You would not think that could happen to a person twice.

I believe it was a day or so after that when a man pulled up in a car with square wood sides that looked like a box on wheels.

I thought, That is the white man, Bert, who found the dead pregnant mama dog coming to wring my neck. I hid behind the plaid settee with the wooden arms that I could not get off to burn.

He knocked and then opened the door right off himself. I leaned around to see. It was a man in a wrinkled brown jacket. He was not fat but he did look like he ate pretty good, and had brown hair and crinkled eyes. He must have saw me peeking because he came inside and around the settee and said, Oh Jesus. Oh dear God.

He was not mean or mad, but I stayed where I was.

He said, Darlin’, are you alright?

I have been better, mister.

He asked, How old are you?

Nine , I said. How old are you?

He ran his hand slow through his hair. I noticed it was a toasted bread color because food was on my mind. He reached for me, but I jerked back.

It’s alright, darlin’, I’m a doctor—

I told him I did not need any kind of shot.

How long you been out here by yourself?

What day is it today? I asked. I looked over at the wall calendar with the cheery Santy Claus drinking the Co-Cola bottle. Dammit, I could have burned that damn thing for heat.

He said, It’s January 2.

Lord. Where does the time go?

He swallowed hard in his neck and looked at a silver watch on a chain like he did not know what he was supposed to do with me.

So I told it to him straight. All I need is you to ride me to town, buy me some bread and a bacon slab, maybe a couple hard candies if that is not pushing it, and then you just bring me right on back home. To meet my mama when she comes on back home.

He told me to stay where I was and went and got me a apple from the car.

I had not ever ate a apple so good. I asked, What other food you got in there, mister?

He was walking all around the house, looking at the half-burned chair and all inside the kitchen cabinets. I worried maybe this was about money. I told him, Just run me to the store and I will pay you back. Soon as a thing comes in, I will pay you right back.

He shook his head and said, I need to get you somewhere better, darlin’.

But what if she comes back? I pointed to the writing on the wall because I was very confused.

I would’ve come sooner if I’d known, if your mama had gotten in touch sooner—

Well I threw a flying fit then. Where is she and When is she coming home and Where is she gone to and What do you know—

He shook his head. Darlin’, I need to get you somewhere safe, and you need something to eat.

Lord, I just wanted food, so I said, Alright. And then you bring me right on back? You take me to the store and then you will bring me right on back?

Because it said on the wall I WILL BE RIGHT BACK and you see, I was very confused.

He nodded and he was not scratching his nose or anything. He put me on the seat of his car next to him, and I asked him more questions about my mama, but he just shook his head. I was so tired, I could not stay awake. When I woke up, the car was in front of a blue house with a sign out front that said THE LAFAYETTE COUNTY ORPHAN ASYLUM FOR GIRLS .