If You Find Me(5)

I think of tellin’ her what Mama told me about him, because there’s no way she’d make us go with him, if she knew. But I look down at Ness, disappearin’ before our eyes.

I can’t leave my sister.

“How much time do we have?”

“Enough time to pack up your things. You’ll need to pack a bag for your sister also.”

She leaves us sittin’ there, with the late-afternoon sun dapplin’ the forest floor as if it’s any other day. I watch her reach into the bin by the foldin’ table, then walk back over. She hands me two of the shiny black garbage bags folded up like Mama’s letter. I slip out from under Jenessa, balance her on the tree, and proceed to shake each bag into its full size. We all stop and watch the birds scatter into jagged flight at the unnatural sound of plastic slappin’ the air.

“Just take the necessities. We’ll send someone back to pack up the rest.”

I nod, glad to turn my gaze toward the camper before my face melts again. How could Mama do this to us? How could she leave us to fend for ourselves—leave us at all—without explainin’ or sa-yin’ good-bye?

I hate her with the fury of gasoline set on fire. I burn for Jenessa, who deserves better than this, better than some screwed-up, drug-addicted mother, better than this chaos that always seems to find us, rubbin’ off on us like some horrible rash.

Ness is my shadow as the trailer door creaks on its hinges, this old piece-of-crap ve-hic-le we’ve called home for almost as long as I can remember—definitely as long as Ness can remember.

I glance around, absorb the mess, the clothes strewn about, the plates dribblin’ crumbs or caked with dried bean glue, and begin to pack Ness’s bag first. She sits on the cot, unmovin’, not even jumpin’ when I grab the nearest book, one of her Winnie-the-Poohs, and slam it down on a cockroach scuttlin’ across the tiny stainless-steel sink; without runnin’ water, it was as useless as a dollhouse sink, until I’d turned it into a place to store plates and cups. Mama never hooked the camper up to water because water sources meant campgrounds, sites out in the open, and judgmental strangers with pr-yin’ eyes.

Almost everythin’ of Nessa’s is some shade of pink. I pack a pair of Mary Janes and her pale pink sneakers, her neon pink long-sleeve T-shirt, a dark pink-and-red-striped T-shirt, and another T-shirt with a peelin’-off Cinderella iron-on on the front. I pack her spare undershirt and underpants; “one on and one off,” as Mama says when we complain. Ness’s two pairs of jeans look small and vulnerable stretched between my hands, and my heart wrenches.

When her bag is full, I use mine to gather up her rag doll, her onearmed teddy bear, and her stuffed dog. Her Pooh books. The brush and elastics. On top, I place my own pair ofjeans (one on, one off), a newer T-shirt, two tank tops, my spare underpants, and the only shoes I own besides the ratty sneakers on my feet: a scuffed pair of cowboy boots from a garage sale in town, the toes stuffed with tissue paper to force a fit.

Not much fits me clotheswise, after a growth spurt last year. Now I’m glad, because it means more room for Jenessa’s stuff. I don’t need much anyhow. I don’t have toys from childhood or any stuffed animals. I left my childhood behind when Mama dragged us off in the middle of the night. My belongin’s consist of a sketch pad I place on top of the pile, while I make a mental note not to forget my most prized possession: the violin that Mama taught me to play the year we moved to the Hundred Acre Wood.

Mama played in a symphony before she met my father. I grab the scrapbook crammed with clippin’s from her performances and place it on top of the sketch pad, then draw the yellow plastic strings tight. The bag looks close to burstin’ by the time I’m through. But it’s good, because I bet the bag holds more than any suitcase would, if we had one.

Before I can call for her, Mrs. Haskell appears, and I hand her down the bag, which she struggles beneath. The man gets up to help, lockin’ on my eyes while takin’ the bag from her and slingin’ it over his back. He does the same with the second bag.

“May I have one more bag, ma’am?”

Mrs. Haskell obliges. I fill it with our schoolbooks, with my Emily Dickinson, my Tagore, my Tennyson and Wordsworth, making the bag impossibly heavy. Lookin’ at the man, I’d have giggled in different circumstances. He looks like a reverse sort of Santa Claus. A Santa Claus of garbage.

No one speaks as the man plunks the lightest bag down in front of Mrs. Haskell.

I go back inside and gather Ness from the bed. Reachin’ out, I pluck her thumb gently from her mouth. Her lips remain in an O shape, and the thumb pops right back in.

“You’re gonna make your teeth crooked, you know it.”

She stares right through me, droolin’ a little, and I give her a hug before helpin’ her stand up and walk to the door.

“How about a piggyback?”

[page]I squat in front of her, and she slowly climbs on.

“Hold on tight, ’k?”

The sun is meltin’, poolin’ behind the trees, and still Mama don’t come. I scan the Hundred Acre Wood, somehow expectin’ her to show up with a greasy brown bag and save the day, but she don’t.

The man takes the lead, with Mrs. Haskell strugglin’ behind him, trippin’ over roots and sinkin’ into the mud, cursin’ under her breath as Ness and I follow. It’s a long ways to the road, and if we go the way they’re headin’, it’ll be twice as long.