My Name Is Venus Black(10)
“Shirley’s? But why would…” Before I even get to the end of my sentence I know the answer.
“Why? Well, let’s see,” Inez says sarcastically. “Could it be because his home has been turned into a crime scene?”
“But it’s been a week! Surely by now…”
She looks at me with a mixture of panic and guilt. “Things have been crazy every day—police questioning me, reporters hounding me. And then there’s trying to get you out of jail!” She is pacing. “It was just better for us to be at Shirley’s, and it seemed like Leo was starting to adjust, so I thought he could stay a little longer….”
Her voice trails off. “He was in the backyard,” she says finally. “Yesterday morning. He was playing in a sandbox.”
I’m surprised she’s actually explaining and defending herself to me this way, like I matter. But then I realize she isn’t really talking to me. She’s blabbering on because she’s so scared and she knows it’s her fault.
Pretty soon her fear triggers my own and I realize this is real. “Oh my God!” I yell. “This is so stupid! It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. You can’t just put a kid like Leo in a house with people he barely knows!”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she says, glaring at me.
“Well, then, what are you doing here? If Leo is out there lost, you need to go find him. The police need to look for him!” I want to push her out the door.
“Don’t you think we’re looking, Venus? Everywhere!” She spreads her arms dramatically. “The cops are looking but they say he’s not officially a missing person until he’s been gone seventy-two hours. Can you believe that? He’s seven years old! We’ve already checked Jimmy’s and all the neighbors’ and everyone we know.”
Jimmy is a weird nineteen-year-old kid who lives nearby and keeps tons of hamsters. Sometimes he watches Leo if Raymond is at the shop and Inez has to leave for work before I get home from school. I think he smokes pot, but Inez doesn’t know that.
“At least Leo knows his address,” I tell her. “Since I taught him that.” It took me a long time to teach Leo to say our street address if you asked him. Inez has always left it to me to teach Leo stuff, acted like she’s too busy, when really she just doesn’t have the patience for it.
“So what about his phone number?” Inez asks hopefully. “Did you teach him that?”
I haven’t. Leo doesn’t exactly carry on conversations, and so I never pictured him using a phone or needing to call home. It just didn’t occur to me.
“Aren’t you his mother?” I shoot back. “Why didn’t you teach him his phone number?”
Inez covers her face with her hands, and her shoulders start to shudder. But I am too scared to cry. I keep trying to picture Leo out there, lost, wandering around looking for us. “Someone must have seen him by now,” I announce firmly. “It’s not like he’s going to blend in. A little kid like Leo…”
I feel a stinging in my eyes, and my left cheek starts twitching.
“Oh, Venus,” Inez says in a softer tone. She dares to reach out as if to touch me, and I slap her hand away.
“No!” I yell. “Don’t you touch me! This is all your fault!”
She gives me a wounded look. “No, Venus. If something has happened to Leo, it’s because of what you did.”
After she’s gone, I sit on my bed, shivering. I wrap my arms around myself as hard as I can, like I’m freezing. I shut my eyes and talk to Leo, wherever he is. Go home, I tell him. Go home, Leo. Go home!
Then I remember what happened there, and I realize he might be too scared to come home.
I can’t sleep at all that night, terrified of what I will dream if I do. Every time I start to drift off, I hear Leo crying out for me. And then I hear Inez saying, over and over: It’s because of what you did….
I wake up Monday in a panic about Leo, adrenaline shooting through my body. I go down to use the communal shower, hoping I didn’t sleep too late. I always make sure I’m the first one there, so I’m alone. I’m modest that way. My friends used to make fun of the way I dressed for gym class, maneuvering inside my clothes so no one could see anything.
This morning, I have so much excess energy that I decide to go to the trouble to wash my hair, even though it always takes quite a while, because it is so thick and long. Then I have to untangle it and use a hair pick to comb it out, which is always embarrassing if people see me.
By lunch, when I still haven’t heard any more about Leo, I break down and get permission to call Inez. I can’t believe it when the phone rings and rings. How many times have I told her we need a stupid answering machine? What if I was someone calling about Leo?
I want to scream at the top of my lungs. What if a car hits him? He doesn’t even know how to look both ways. What if he’s hiding under someone’s porch, afraid to come out? What if he only needs to hear my voice calling for him around the neighborhood?
I have to get out and help look for him. I know if I do, he’ll come home. I beg the guards, my caseworker, and anyone who will listen. “You have to let me out. Leo will come to me! He knows my voice! He’s probably just scared and hiding under a porch and he’ll hear me and come out.”