Cries of the Children(61)

She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. Then she stood up and felt an urgent pressure in her bladder. She reached down and shook Sandy.

“Sandy? Sandy, I have to go!”

Sandy bolted upright, jerked out of a dream. For a moment she gazed at her surroundings as if she didn’t know where she was.

“Sandy,” Lorraine whined, “I need to go.”

She held herself between the legs. Sandy yawned.

“Don’t do that, kid,” she said. She turned onto her knees and shook Donny. He grumbled at her. “I’m taking Lorraine to a bathroom. It’s morning. You better get up.”

Donny sat up and grimaced. He spit sand from his mouth.

“My back hurts,” he complained, after a night on the soft beach.

Sandy stood up, brushing sand from her jeans. Then she took Lorraine by the hand and headed for the nearest staircase up to the boardwalk. At this early hour, it was virtually deserted. The concession stands were boarded up, and only a few early-morning joggers passed them by.

They found a bathroom in a nearby hotel, ignoring the hard stares of the concierge. There was a separate powder room, with a gilt-edged mirror and three gleaming white sinks. Sandy pulled a clip from her pocket and tied back her red hair. Then she made a face at her reflection, sticking out her tongue.

“Gawd,” she said. “Worst case of moose-mouth I ever had! I wish I had brought my toothbrush in here.”

“I’m hungry, Sandy,” Lorraine said.

Sandy looked down at the child. In the light of day it suddenly dawned on her how ironic it was that she had been “assigned” to care for this strange small girl. Little kids were precisely the reason she left home in Pennsylvania, making her way first to Manhattan and now Atlantic City. She’d been sick and tired of her nagging parents making her baby-sit her bratty seven little brothers and sisters.

I’m seventeen! she’d cried. I have a right to a social life, you know!

But they’d only laughed at her, asking what kind of social life a kid could have.

She looked into Lorraine’s gray-green eyes and sighed.

“Yeah, kid,” she said. “You and me both.”

They went outside again, passing through an ornate lobby, all glass and gilt with a central fountain and thousands of hanging plants. Through an archway they could see a dining room set up with white linen tablecloths and fresh flowers. Breakfast was being cooked for the hotel guests and for those in the neighborhood who could afford it. Sandy pulled on Lorraine’s hand, hurrying from the hotel before the smells of bacon, sausage, pancakes, and the like could make her drool like a rabid dog.

Donny was waiting for them, burdened with all three suitcases and the jackets. His dark hair flipped wildly in the ocean breeze.

“We’re hungry,” Sandy said. “I can’t think until I eat. Look, there’s a little coffee shop over there. Let’s have breakfast.”

“Sandy,” Donny said in a warning tone, “we don’t have a heck of a lot of money.”

Lorraine looked from one teen to the other.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, kid,” Sandy said. “You bought me a bus ticket last night. That’s enough.”

“It’s okay!” Lorraine insisted. “I don’t want to argue, do you?”

“ ’Course not,” Donny said.

“Then let’s go have breakfast,” Lorraine said, leading the way.

Donny leaned closer to Sandy and whispered, “Did she say she was eight, or forty-eight?”

Sandy giggled.

In the coffee shop Lorraine remembered Marty’s warning not to flash her money around. She wondered where he was now. She waited until they were given a booth, then excused herself.

“Didn’t you just use the potty?” Sandy asked, talking to Lorraine as she would speak to one of her younger siblings.

“I have more inside me,” Lorraine said, picking up her bag.

“You can leave that here,” Donny said.

Lorraine shook her head vehemently and walked away.

“I wonder what she has in that thing?” Sandy said.

“We won’t be around long enough to find out,” Donny said. “As soon as breakfast is done, we find a place to clean ourselves up real good so we can start job-hunting.”

“Oh, Donny,” Sandy said, “you can’t mean we’re gonna leave that baby on her own?”

Donny leaned back as a waitress put glasses of water in front of them.

“Seems she did pretty well on her own before she ran into us,” Donny said. “I don’t know what her case is. It isn’t my business, and I don’t want to get wrapped up in it. It could get us in a hell of a lot of trouble, Sandy.”