My Abandonment(18)

"It's me," I say. "Where are we?"

"We're locked up," she says. Her hair is all bleached white and cut ragged at her shoulders. She has six earrings in one ear and five in the other and a ring pierced between her nostrils. Her lips are all chapped and dry from licking them.

"Taffy," she says to the other girl, "this is the chick I told you about before, that girl that lives in Forest Park."

"I do not," I say.

"With her father," she says.

"We have a house but we spend a lot of time in the forest park," I say. "Because we like it."

"Right," she says. "You sleep there."

"A couple times," I say. "Just to go camping. You don't know where I'm from."

"Whatever," Valerie says. "This is Taffy."

They are both wearing the same outfit as I have on only Valerie has dirty sneakers and Taffy has on rubber sandals. Taffy has what looks like blue ballpoint pen scribbled on her cheek and forehead. She's even skinnier than Valerie, with dark hair longer on one side.

"Is that your real name?" I say.

"Yes," she says.

"That's really nice," Valerie says. "That's a really nice way to be. You see how she is, Taffy, growing up in the woods so she has no manners."

"I do so," I say. "I just never heard that name before."

There is no room on the sofa so I try to sit on the edge of the green chair which is cold and slippery.

"Why are you here?" I say.

"Shoplifting," Valerie says. "Taking spray paint and whipped cream for whip-its."

"What?" I say. "Did Johnny and Isabel tell you to steal?"

"Duh," she says.

"How long have you been here?" I say.

"These fuckers have no idea about my parents," she says, "or how a real family works. Johnny and Isabel know."

"Have you seen my father here?" I say.

"Maybe," Valerie says, "just maybe you got luckier with your daddy but you see how this shit works out so the police will try to take you apart from your family every time."

"Right," Taffy says. She is looking at me but still watching the television where a woman in a dress is shouting at and then kissing a man in a doctor's uniform.

"Now stop interrupting," Valerie says, "so we can watch our show."

After a minute I go over and look at the bunk beds.

"That one is ours," Valerie says, pointing and shouting. "Don't touch it. You take the other one."

There's only one window and it looks across to a brick wall. Down below is only an alley with no one in it except a trash can and what looks like the broken part of a bicycle. If I lean close to the glass I can see only a long thin line of sky which is barely blue.

The voices on the television are loud and ridiculous. Everyone is very excited. I want to watch it and I don't want to watch it. I start walking circles around the room, right close to the walls. The window, a corner, behind the television, a corner, past the door, a corner around the beds. The fourth time around I kick the cord out of the wall and Valerie and Taffy yell and I only look at the plug before Valerie leaps up and sticks it into the wall and leaps back to the couch so she won't miss anything.

"Jesus," she says. "Retarded."

I sit at the table and try to remember the game we'd played in the forest park on one of the few times Father let me. Something about driving a car and to a beach and the kitten was part of the game but now I'm afraid to say anything about that since she seems so angry and is watching the television. I wait until the show is over and then I try to talk again.

"I like your hair," I say.

"No you don't," Valerie says. "What a fake thing to say."

"What do you think Nameless is doing right now?" I say.

"That idiot," she says. "Probably eating bugs or worms or something."

"I don't know if he really does that," I say. "At least he's not in here. He didn't get caught."

"Not yet," she says.

"What happened to your kitten?" I say.

"He's gone away somewhere," she says. "Probably the same place as that dumb horse of yours."

Later I take the top bunk and Valerie is in the other top bunk straight across from me in the dark. She is whispering to Taffy and Taffy whispers back and it's in a way where I can't understand the words.

"What are you saying?" I say, and they giggle and after a while start up again.

I wonder how many days it will be and if that will be long enough for all three of us to be friends together. I cannot fall asleep in the same room with them and without Father next to me. I stretch my foot all across the bed and don't touch his hairy leg. I rest there with my foot sticking out in the air until it's cold and I pull it back. Somewhere I hear a dog barking far away. I am thinking hard on Father's face so hard that I can feel him thinking back at me and so I don't worry. Miss Jean Bauer said it was illegal to live in the forest park and I wonder if already Father is in an orange outfit, if he'll be taken out to cut the long grass with the white truck of dogs watching him through their cages, ready to chase.