My Abandonment(36)

Sitting on the red brick steps I can't even eat half of it but then I leave it on the bricks and walk away. Father walks over from where he's standing by the Starbucks. This is how we do it, how we share so we're not seen together. If we tried it the other way with him eating first it would draw attention and someone might worry about a girl eating leftover food. We have to think all the time. The two of us together draw a kind of attention since they will look for us to be together.

When he finishes the burrito Father throws the wrapper into a trash can and walks away. I follow. Sometimes I'm across the street, sometimes on the same side trailing behind. If it's raining we have umbrellas and there are signals we have with opening or closing or twirling them but today it is not raining.

I think I know where he's going. My pack slaps my back, Randy's hard nose against my neck. We do all this and yet I'm the small one who people don't see and Father draws attention right away with his strong way of walking and his red frame pack that we have nowhere safe to keep so he carries it everywhere. And still he jerks his head to check behind him and he's drawing attention by trying not to.

I cross the opening of a parking garage, a car coming out and then a wide doorway. I shiver since it seems like maybe the building where we were locked up when we were caught. I walk faster and turn my face away as a police car drives past and turns under the building.

Father says the helicopters over the city are mostly for traffic, to tell people through their radios where there are a lot of cars but there are other people in the helicopters too who are looking down with binoculars for people like us. This is one reason Father wears the piece of mirror taped to the top of his engineer's cap, so it reflects back up whoever's face is trying to look down at him. As he walks the sun reflects in the mirror and slides shining lights all along the brick wall above his head. If he bends down to tie his shoes it can hit you sharp in the eyes.

I was right: He goes into the Mailboxes store. When we lived on the farm Father switched our address to a close post office and before we left the farm he rode his bicycle to town and switched it to this place. Smart. Only he is nervous when he comes out with the envelope in his hand so I can see that he got it, that everything's fine. Next, the Wells Fargo machine, to deposit the check.

He's ten feet in front of me on the same side of the street when a black man in a baseball cap comes out of a door and reaches out to touch Father's arm.

"Jerry!" he says to Father. "Haven't seen you in a long, long time. Missing a lot of meetings, my man. You staying healthy?"

"Been out of town," Father says like he's trying to get past.

"I keep getting caught up on the fourth step," the man says. "Moral inventory, you know. You coming back?"

"At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again," Father says. "I better get on my way."

"Way you talk," the man says. "Cracks my shit up."

We keep walking. I talk to Father's back and he does not turn around so if you saw us you'd think we were talking to ourselves and not having a conversation.

"Your name's not Jerry," I say.

"That's just what he knows me by," he says.

"Why?" I say. "How does he know you?"

Two more police cars drive by. I look at three mannequins wearing dresses in a shop window so the space between Father and me can grow wider. Then I catch up.

"How does he know you?" I say.

"Hardly," Father says. "I liked that burrito."

"And what's a sojourner?" I say.

"Look it up," he says.

He says this when he knows I don't have my dictionary with me and I'd have to go to the library to look up the word sojourner. The downtown library is very big and homeless people gather there both inside and outside so we are not allowed to go there. It's no place to be seen. I've hardly done any homework or read a thing since we left the farm. Father sometimes writes in his notebook but it's more like he's adding up numbers or checking off lists than writing and I haven't seen him reading his books like he used to. Reading in public draws attention.





It's almost getting dark and I come out of the mall and on the sidewalk a shepherd dog in a red vest is looking right at me. I know I'm caught. If I turn or run, it will chase me. I remember my hair and I try to not walk or move like me. I am already thinking what Father will do and whether I'll tell about the hotel and everything else.

The dog's leash is short though and it's held by a lady in square sunglasses and her brown hair back in a ponytail. She's not looking at me like the dog is and then I see how the writing on the red vest does not say POLICE but something else I cannot read. The dog is kind of pulling this woman along as they walk away and I see then that it is that the lady is blind. So I am not caught and I keep walking.