My Name Is Venus Black(81)
My hands on the steering wheel are damp with sweat. Other parents begin to show up. At about two forty-five—ten minutes early—a woman comes out of the building with six kids in tow. One is in a wheelchair, and I quickly realize what’s happening. She’s letting the special-ed kids board the buses first.
And then I see him. A slender blond boy who looks about thirteen. His hair is long and covers most of the right side of his face. He has a pack on his back and carries a large music case. Could it really be him?
As they get closer, I see that he looks at the ground as he walks and tilts his head to the left. I can’t help myself. I jump out of the car and race to intercept the teacher. “Ma’am? Can I have a word?”
She is stocky, a redhead with two inches of gray roots. “Yes?”
I glance behind her. “Can I talk to Leo for a second?”
“I guess,” she says warily. So his name is Leo! It has to be him!
“Hi, Leo,” I call out. He and all the other kids stop walking. I walk right up to him. I get down on my knees as if to pray, so I can look up at his face. “Leo? Do you remember me?”
Leo tries to look at me.
“It’s Venus, Leo,” I say. “Remember your sister, Venus?”
His grayish eyes skitter across mine and he nods. “My sister, Venus. From before.”
I have never wanted to hug a person so badly in my life.
As usual, Tessa gets home first and then waits for Leo at his bus stop. When she asks Leo about his day, instead of his typical “Fine,” he says, “I saw Venus.”
“What?”
“I saw Venus from before.”
Suddenly Tessa feels her throat closing. “Where did you see Venus?”
“At school,” he says. “After.”
Tessa tries to stifle her panic as she walks Leo the two blocks home. As they enter the house, Tessa looks back and notices that a red Honda is parked half a block away with a woman sitting in it. Tessa swears she is staring right at her.
Inside, she quickly locks the door, using both bolts. She peeks through a crack in the front-room draperies and watches the red car pass. The girl has big black curly hair, and she is staring at their house as she goes by.
Oh my God, could it be Leo’s sister? She waits by the window to see if the woman passes by yet again. She doesn’t.
Tessa feels flushed with fear, as if she has a fever. She goes to the kitchen and gets a glass of water. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her knees feel weak. She sits in a kitchen chair. Leo has started playing his cello, even though it’s not time to practice. It’s a beautiful song, sweet and full of heavy, slow notes.
Her eyes sting. She looks at the clock. How will she pass the hours until her father comes home? What will she tell him? Maybe she should call him at the shop right now and warn him. But it might be nothing and she knows he’s in the middle of a busy day, still making up for lost time when he was in Seattle.
She goes to her room. She lays her hands on her statue of the Virgin Mary. She prays, Let it not be Venus. Let it not be Venus.
* * *
—
SINCE I CAN’T just grab Leo, I tell him goodbye and that I’ll see him in a little bit. I watch what bus he gets onto and then follow it. When he gets off at the second stop, he’s met by a pretty Mexican girl who looks sixteen or so. I stay behind, crawling along until they enter a small ranch-style house together. Then I drive by slow enough to see and memorize the address.
Worried I’ll forget it in my panic, I pull over a block later. I frantically scour the car for a pen. What if I forget the address and never find the house again? What if it’s a dream?
I hurriedly dig around in Inez’s messy glove box. No pen, but there’s a lipstick. I use it to jot down the address on some receipts that look like they had to do with car repair. I try to picture Inez’s face when I deliver Leo back to her.
My lipstick handwriting is shaky, and I need to calm down and think. The house Leo entered was in a decent neighborhood. Maybe Leo is at least being treated well. Then again, what if this house isn’t even where he lives? What if that girl was his babysitter or something? If I pull away, I could still lose Leo between there and the real kidnapper’s house.
But all my instincts tell me that this is where Leo is living. The way the girl glanced down the street at me, looking worried. With no car out front, and it being afternoon, it seemed safe to say there wasn’t another grown-up there.
I guess the next step would be to find a police station. I hadn’t thought this part out—what to do when I found Leo. I must not have really expected to find him—especially unharmed and apparently cared for by another family.
I realize the smartest thing to do right now is to call the police and get them involved so they can arrest this Tony guy. Oh, the irony! Once, the police locked me up, and now I need their help to nab someone else. As I drive to find a phone booth, I keep saying to myself, “Oh my God, Leo is alive. Oh my God, Leo is alive.”
I’m so excited I’m afraid I’ll get in a wreck or something dumb like that and miss my opportunity to rescue Leo. I drive carefully until I reach a busy boulevard, and then I search for a pay phone.
I spot a small diner, which I know will have a phone. The restaurant is dark inside and smells of burned coffee. The pay phone is where I thought it would be, just outside the restrooms. I flip open the front of the book, where you can usually find important community numbers. I should call the Oakland police, but they make it hard to figure out which number you should call. Is this an emergency? I decide that it is. I dial 911 for the second time in my life.