Getting Somewhere (6 page)

Sarah leans back into the couch. She scans the walls of the room, notices that all the available wall space is covered with shelves crammed with books, and wonders, with all the work they have to do on the farm, how anybody has time to read.

“You know, I'm not going to do any of this.” Sarah is startled out of her reverie by the tone and force of Lauren's voice. She sees that Lauren is glaring directly at Ellie and that Ellie is, incongruously, smiling back.

“Not going to do what, Lauren?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost kindly.

“This.” Lauren waves randomly around her. “All of it. Any of it. There is no fucking way I'm going to go wading in that filthy water or dig in that dirt or handle other people's food. And, to be honest, I'm not really interested in talking to any of you about it either.”

Jenna has scooted into a more upright position and is staring directly at Lauren, so intently that Lauren finally turns to her, feeling her gaze. Jenna's voice is low but not threatening, matter-of-fact. “When they said ‘farm,' what exactly did you think they were talking about?”

“I don't know,” Lauren whines. “Like, horses or something?”

Jenna's face has a look of total incredulity on it, and Ellie looks at her and then quickly away. She seems to be searching for some way to respond, until Sarah realizes she is trying as hard as she can not to laugh. Unfortunately, Ellie then looks directly at Sarah, who is grinning broadly, and Ellie can't hold it in any longer. She begins to chuckle, and within seconds has lost control. She is laughing out loud and the girls are all staring at her, and then everyone, except Lauren, is laughing, too. Lauren is almost shouting to be heard. “What? What are you laughing about? This isn't funny.”

It is the kind of hysteria with no good explanation that refuses to give up. Ellie is wiping tears, and then Donna is at the side door, drying her hands on a towel with a questioning look on her face.

“What in the world is going on? Is everything okay in here?” Nobody can answer in any kind of a satisfactory way and then Sarah says, “I guess you kinda had to be here,” and they are all set off again. Ellie motions Donna into the room and she hesitantly sits beside Cassie on the hard piano bench.

“So what's going on?” Donna asks again.

Finally, Ellie catches her breath and says, “Lauren was saying that she's not very happy with what she's found here. It's not what she expected and when she said that she expected horses instead, for some reason that just cracked us up. Lauren, honey, you know we're not laughing at you, don't you? It was just funny the way it all came out.”

Lauren looks completely unconvinced, has her arms folded across her chest again, her jaw clenched, her crossed foot tapping an angry rhythm against the side of the couch. Ellie has sobered now and is leaning toward Lauren, her elbows on her knees.

“I'm sorry, Lauren. I don't think any of us meant to hurt your feelings. We were laughing with genuine amusement not intended to be at your expense. To address your comments though, what I'm understanding you to say is that none of what you've seen so far here is work you can imagine yourself doing. Is that correct?”

Lauren nods her head pathetically.

“Well, I am truly sorry to hear that. At the same time, while we're not interested in making anyone miserable or forcing you to do things you can't stand, your presence here is not optional, and so I strongly encourage each of you to make the best of it. We've made something available that we think can help you, but it's up to you to make use of it. Do you understand that?”

Ellie has not once taken her gaze from Lauren, addressed anyone besides her, but it is Cassie and Sarah who are nodding. Jenna's face is completely blank though she is looking right at Ellie, and Cassie is staring down at her own lap. Sarah finds herself exchanging a glance with Donna, a kind of telepathic high-five, acknowledging, it seems to Sarah, both that Ellie has said the right words and that Lauren may have done them all a huge favor by creating an absolute how-low-can-you-go standard that no one else wants to beat.

Before Ellie has a chance to begin again, Donna gives everyone a little wave and heads back to the kitchen. Ellie smiles a little bleakly and focuses momentarily on the clipboard lying in her lap. Finally, she looks up and scans the faces in the room again.

“I think we should start today by each of us saying why we are here.”

Everyone remains silent. Ellie waits a moment and then continues. “I don't mean what you did to get here, unless you want to talk about that right now. I mean, why you chose the farm, what you thought it would be like, what you might be hoping to get out of it.”

Still, no one speaks.

Ellie turns to Cassie who is now fairly close beside her and asks, “Cassie, can you tell us why you picked the farm?”

Cassie looks alarmed.

“There's no right or wrong answer,” Ellie says. “I'm just thinking we need to start somewhere, get us talking, and this might be a way for us to understand what each of us brings to this experience.”

Cassie is breathing hard and twisting the ends of her ponytail, trying to decide where to look. Her voice is stronger, louder than Sarah imagined it would be.

“I didn't want to go to jail. Gram . . . Gram would have been very upset if she knew I was in jail.” Cassie's mouth is still open, poised for words, but nothing comes out. She holds her head perfectly still, studying a spot just in front of her feet on the floor, looking exactly like a rabbit who believes it can't be seen if it just doesn't move.

“Who's Gram?”

Everyone turns to Jenna. Sarah wonders the same thing. Cassie looks at Ellie, hesitates, her face blushing a deep pink clear up to her hairline.

Ellie asks, “Do you want to tell us who Gram is?”

“Well, she's my grandmother. I lived with her before I came here. She's, well, she's not quite right.” Cassie glances briefly at Ellie, drops her eyes, assumes the rabbit stance again though, this time, her gaze is trained onto her lap where her fingers nervously twine and untwine so forcefully that Sarah has to look away.

“Is there anything else you want to tell us right now?”

Cassie's no comes out in a whisper.

“Okay, thanks. Sarah?”

“I told this all at the Center before, but I don't mind telling it again. I'm Sarah. I'm seventeen or I will be soon, in June. I left home when I was fourteen because my mother's boyfriend was sexually molesting me. I've been living on the street since then with my friends and we sold drugs for money, usually, and I got arrested for prostitution and because I was, I am, a drug addict.”

Sarah thinks she knows how this is done, what Ellie wants to hear, not only because of the sessions at detention but because she saw it in a movie. She's not sure though how much she should say. She wants Ellie to like her, but she doesn't want the other girls to think she's kissing up or anything. She decides it's safest just to tell about the movie.

“They showed us this movie at the Center, a documentary, you know? It was made by some people who filmed homeless kids in Seattle, and it was pretty good, like, I think it was real and stuff. They said, ‘My name is' and told their ages and everything and what kinds of trouble they'd gotten into. I thought it was pretty interesting. I think we were supposed to see ourselves in it, you know, like, feel sorry or sad or something, but I didn't really get that out of it.”

“What did you get out of it?”

Sarah instantly wishes she could take those last words back. They didn't talk about what other kids might get out of the movie
in
the movie.

“Ummm, well, I just saw it as, you know, like, another way for people to be. I mean, I know it's not good for you to take drugs and stuff and I know that little girls, like me”—Sarah puts her thumbs under pretend suspenders and grins coquettishly—“are not supposed to have to sell their bodies for food and shelter and stuff but, you know, I don't think it's any worse than all the things people in the ‘real world' do”—and she makes air quotations with her fingers—“to get money, you know?”

Ellie is frowning a bit so Sarah scoots up to the edge of the couch. “I'm not saying I resent being here or anything. I feel pretty lucky, I really do. It's just, you know, my friends are still out there, and it's not helping them at all.”

Ellie nods, studies Sarah for a moment. “I bet you miss your friends, huh?”

Sarah hesitates, coughs a couple of times to dislodge the lump that has formed in her throat. “I don't think you could understand it even if I tried to explain it to you.”

Ellie doesn't blink, keeps her face expressionless. “No,” she says, “I'm absolutely sure you're right about that. Do you want to tell us any more right now?”

“No.”

“Okay. Thanks, Sarah. Jenna?”

Sarah is pretty sure Jenna won't say much. There was a girl in the documentary just like that, who simply refused to answer the questions.

“I'm here because my mom thought she wanted me back and then changed her mind,” Jenna says belligerently.

“Do you want to tell us more about that?”

“I guess I don't really see the point. I don't see how it would change anything.”

Ellie looks skeptical, not quite ready to let it go. “Why do you say your mom changed her mind about getting you back?”

“Because she set the cops on my trail, basically turned me in. They were actually just looking for her stupid-ass boyfriend, but she told them if they'd seen him at her place, it was because he was coming to see me. She lied to save her own butt. And then she just made up everything they wanted to hear to get them off of her back. It was like she wanted me to get caught or something.”

“So you were pretty angry that your mom didn't protect you.”

Jenna has a fake-sincere look of serious consideration on her face, places her finger on her lips like she is evaluating the question.

“Yeah. I guess angry might be one word for it. That's what they wanted me to talk about at the Center, how all my antisocial behavior was designed to get back at my mother. Do you think that's what it was, too?”

“What do
you
think?”

“I think that it's going to be pretty impossible to forget the stuff she did that got me taken away in the first place. And I think Social Services made a huge mistake when they believed her song and dance and let her have me back.”

Jenna looks straight at Ellie. “I'm sorry but I guess that's why I kind of hate this place. It feels like going backward. I just don't see how being out here in the middle of nowhere is going to teach us anything we need to know, you know, to live in the regular world.”

Jenna lets her body slip back into the couch and crosses her arms, but then she goes on.

“I don't know,” she says, shaking her head. “I guess it's still probably better than detention, but I just hate the way this feels like the end of the line or something. Where they send you when they can't think of anything else to do.”

The room is very quiet and Ellie waits to be sure Jenna is really done, then turns to Lauren. Sarah thought Ellie might try to argue with Jenna, explain why
she
thinks this is something other than the end of the line, but she doesn't, just says, “Anything you'd like to share, Lauren?”

Lauren shifts in her chair, composes herself as if she is gathering the last of her patience for explaining something simple to an intractable child.

“Look, I'm sure you guys are just trying to do the best you can. I'm not holding anything against you, okay? It's just that it's not going to work for me, all right? I don't think anybody ever really explained it, like, that we were going to have to work to stay here and stuff. I just had a different idea and now that I know what it's really like, I can just see, you know, that it isn't really going to work out for me.”

“Okay, Lauren. How about you and I set up a time to talk about this privately?”

“Whatever. Are we done now?”

Ellie glances at her watch. “Does everyone else feel done for today?”

General nods accompany Lauren and Jenna bolting from their seats and out the door. Cassie and Sarah follow more slowly.

Sarah is the last one through the door and glances back to see Ellie still sitting there, a ray of light from the double glass doors pooling at her feet. She isn't moving or writing on her pad or even looking up. She is just sitting there with her hands folded on top of that clipboard like she has no more strength for whatever might be coming next.

Sarah turns from the doorway and begins to slowly climb the stairs, sees that the other girls are clustered at the top.

Lauren is spitting her words out in a loud whisper and Sarah can hear what she's saying even before she gets any closer, glances briefly behind her to see that the foyer is empty, no one else close enough to hear Lauren say, “I don't know about the rest of you, but there is no way in hell I'm going to stay here working for those fucking dykes.”

TUESDAY, MAY 29

JENNA HAS WANTED TO BE IN THIS ROOM BY HERSELF,
and so here she is.

At first she just sits, the same place she has been sitting for the sessions, on one end of the couch. There was still a little daylight left when she first came in, but now it would be completely dark without the lamp she has reluctantly switched on beside her.

The real reason Jenna is here is the books. She is fascinated by so many books, doesn't have a clear idea of what she might find among them but is determined to find out. She has brought her own book with her,
The Bean Trees
, and she lays her palm on the cover for a moment before she finally pushes herself up from the couch and tentatively approaches the shelves.

The first books she wants to see are the ones with the red spines and the gold lettering. She quickly discovers that they are part of a Great Works series, a few authors she has heard of and many that she hasn't. She could read one of them if she wanted to, may yet, but they are not what she is looking for.

Not surprisingly, quite a few of the books relate in some way to gardening—soils and composting and plants, some with beautiful photos of elaborate flower beds and others with simple line drawings, lots of words. There are quite a few sciencey-type books, stuff about astronomy and physics, geology and biology that make Jenna wonder whose books these really are, and if anyone has actually read them all or even most of them. She spends quite a bit of time looking at the art books and knows these are the next ones she'll return to.

Then, on the second set of shelves, she discovers a geography section and knows this is what she's hoped to find. Again, some of the books are very specific, talk about mountains of the western U.S. or European rivers. There is a pile of larger, magazine-like books, and Jenna pulls the whole pile down, studies the cover of the first one in the stack,
Plat Maps of Somerset County
. She flips it open to pages and pages of detailed maps showing towns and rivers and railroads with little squares labeled with names. She checks to be sure the others are the same, then stacks them up again and slides them back onto the shelf.

With her knees beginning to hurt from the hard floor and her neck strained from reading titles sideways on the bottom shelf, Jenna's eyes finally land on the subdued mustard-colored spine of a book entitled
These United States
. She slides the heavy book carefully from the shelf and holds it on her thighs, staring at the cover as if she has stumbled onto lost treasure, then carries the book over to the couch. She begins on page one, spends the next half hour tracing her fingers along the path taken by
The Bean Tree
's main character from Kentucky through the southern tier of states to Tucson, Arizona.

Though Jenna had noticed a light on under the door of the office when she came down, she doesn't even hear when Grace enters the room.

“Planning a trip?”

Jenna looks up to see Grace smiling, feels a little shaken not only by her unexpected presence but by hearing her state those words when Jenna herself hasn't even come to full awareness about what she's doing.

Jenna laughs uncomfortably and then looks back down at the book. She shrugs and closes the cover, says, “Just reading.”

“Well, don't let me stop you. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to say ‘hi' to whoever was in here.”

Jenna tries to smile again, mutters a weak, “Hi,” and begins to get up to replace the book on the shelf.

“Really, Jenna. I didn't mean to disturb you. You don't have to stop reading. Were you looking for anything in particular? We've got a little of just about everything.” She waves her arm to take in the crowded shelves.

“Are these books yours?”

“I guess most of them are. Now. They belonged to my grandparents but I think they probably bought a lot of them with my mom or any future grandkids in mind. My grandpa was always looking things up. You could hardly talk about anything without him running off to find a book that would tell you more about whatever issue you might be discussing.” She pauses. “Hard to be in this room without thinking of him.”

“Have you read all of them?”

Grace laughs but not meanly. “No. I guess I've read a lot of them but not nearly all. A disappointment to my grandfather, I'm sure.” Grace laughs again, clears her throat. “Some of these are Ellie's, too.”

Jenna nods, feels anxious to put her book away but doesn't really want to end the conversation.

“So you like maps?” Grace asks.

Jenna glances down at the atlas that is now closed on her lap, fights the urge to hide it, find some way to camouflage the vivid map on the cover. She shrugs. “I guess.”

“Have you ever seen a plat map?”

“A what? Oh yeah, I saw the books over there.”

Grace has started to move toward the bookshelf but stops when she hears Jenna's response. She seems at a momentary loss and then comments, “You can find this place on there, in Adams Township, see the river and how the creek comes in and everything. If you're interested.”

Jenna nods. “Cool. Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks.”

Grace steps back over to the couch and leans over to pick up
The Bean Trees
from where it lies beside Jenna on the couch. “Is this one yours?”

Jenna suddenly notices how beat up the book is, hopes none of the pages slip out while Grace is holding it. “Yeah.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. I love Barbara Kingsolver. Have you read the next one?”

“No.”

“Would you like to? I think I have it out in the cabin. I'd be happy to loan it to you. In fact, you can have it. I'm pretty sure Ellie had a copy, too, so we probably don't need both of them.”

Jenna isn't sure what to say. So she just shrugs and nods.

“Do you want to get it right now? I'm going on out there. I think I know right where it is.”

Jenna nods again. “Sure.”

She pulls herself up from the couch and walks over to the bookshelf and searches for the place where she removed the atlas. For a second, she feels a flush of panic that she won't remember where it goes, but Grace doesn't seem to be paying any attention so she slips it in beside another book that looks a little bit like it.

Grace turns out the light and Jenna follows her out the door and into the hallway. Just then, the bedroom door beside the office opens and Ellie steps out, wearing a pair of plaid boxer shorts and a saggy T-shirt. She has a pile of folded towels resting on one arm and is clutching a much smaller pile of washcloths in the other. She looks at Grace and Jenna curiously and then asks Grace if she's all done. Grace says, “Almost. I'll have to finish the rest tomorrow,” and then says good night and heads out the front door. She holds the screen for Jenna who then hastens to follow, turning back in an effort to prevent the door from slamming behind her to see Ellie still standing there, staring after her.

J
ENNA HAS SEEN
Grace go into this building but she had no idea that she lives here. If Lauren is right and they really are lesbians, wouldn't that mean that Ellie and Grace would want to sleep together? Jenna honestly believes that she doesn't care about any of that, but suddenly, all kinds of questions are cluttering her mind and she literally trips over the edge of the rug in her confusion.

Grace either doesn't notice or pretends not to, walking directly over to shelves that are attached to the wall above a mattress that appears to be sitting in a large wooden box. Grace slips off her flip-flops and steps onto the mattress, perusing the shelves while Jenna uses the opportunity to look around.

Just about everything in here is made of wood. The floor, the walls, even the ceiling are a kind of golden yellow color though turning grayish in some places. Jenna can see Grace's hanging clothes inside an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe with one door missing, and there is another cupboard that Jenna realizes is a converted bathroom vanity with a sink in it and shelves built above to hold Grace's few dishes, bowls, mugs, and glasses. Grace also has a two-burner hot plate and a coffeemaker, a small teakettle, a mini refrigerator, and the smallest microwave oven Jenna has ever seen. In the middle of the room is a table that looks like it is made from a single slab of wood, the four legs sticking out at angles like pictures Jenna has seen of newborn baby calves. Two chairs flank the table, but there is only one placemat, a pile of books, and a small notepad stacked beside it.

“Here it is,” Grace announces and steps down from the bed, brings the book over to Jenna and hands it to her. Jenna thanks her and is just ready to leave when Grace asks if she'd like a cup of tea. “I was going to make one for myself so it's no trouble.”

“Okay.”

“Have a seat. It will just take a second.”

Jenna pulls out the chair that is obviously not the one Grace usually sits in.

Grace has her back to the room so Jenna feels safe asking, “Do you live here?”

Grace turns and peers for just a moment directly at Jenna, then turns back to the kettle and the box of tea she has retrieved from the shelf above her.

“Yep. I just fixed it up this last winter so I'd kind of have my own place.” She hesitates, seems to be debating her next words, turns back to face Jenna. “I guess I'm not always the best with crowds. Maybe because I grew up as an only child.”

Jenna nods, thinks that she's not too great with crowds for exactly the opposite reason: she's never had any space to herself. She thinks about saying so when Grace continues.

“I had the idea to fix up this shed for a long time and, over the winter, I drew up the plans and started collecting materials and then it just evolved from there. What do you think?”

“I like it. How did you make the walls and stuff?”

“Oh, that's a special kind of board they call shiplap. Each board has a lip on it that fits under the next board to make the surface solid wood. Years ago, my grandpa helped log the nearby woods and, as part of the payment, they gave him some of the tulip poplar logs they cut down. He never did anything with them, and they were starting to get a little punky, rotting, you know, so I took them to this Amish sawmill and had them plane them—make them smooth—and saw shiplap boards out of them. Usually, you wouldn't use tulip on a floor because it's pretty soft, not as durable as, say, oak or even maple. But, I don't expect to get a lot of traffic in here so I think it will be all right.” Grace smirks a little at that and Jenna just nods.

“I'm probably boring you to tears.”

“No, you're not.” Jenna hopes Grace can tell that she's sincere. She's a little surprised how interested she actually is, wants to ask more questions but isn't even sure where to start. Instead, she blurts out, “Does it bother you to have to move out of your own house?”

Grace smirks again, is still smiling when she carries the teacups and spoons over to the table. “No, it's okay. Ellie needs to be in there with you guys, and I really like it out here. I didn't have to move out, I chose to. And, mostly, I just sleep here. I'm outside most of the time anyway.”

Jenna can't tell if Grace is telling her the full story. And, not surprisingly, Grace seems anxious to change the subject.

“So, what other authors do you like besides Kingsolver?”

“Um, I don't really know. I don't really get much time to read during the school year and I just . . . well, kind of found this book and it ended up being really good.”

“Don't they assign you books to read in school?”

“Not whole books. Not like this. I think maybe the accelerated classes do, but not the ones I'm in.”

“Why aren't you in accelerated classes? You're obviously really smart.”

Now it's Jenna's turn to laugh. “They don't put kids like me in those classes.”

The teakettle is whistling and Grace gets up to pour the water. “What do you mean, ‘kids like you'?”

“Kids who are constantly moving from one school to another or who get kicked out for fighting or truancy or whatever. I don't think I've ever been at one school long enough for them to even find out which classes I should be in. They see someone like me and they automatically stick them in with the remedial group, the kids with discipline problems and the retar—well, the kids who actually have trouble learning.”

“I see. I guess I never thought about that. They didn't have all these different levels when I was in school. Everybody was just in the same class and the teacher had to deal with it.”

“Yeah. Maybe that would be better. I don't know.”

They sip their tea for a while without talking. Finally, Jenna asks, “Did you live here as a kid? On the farm, I mean?”

“Um, no, not exactly. My mom and I lived in town until I was about twelve. But my grandparents lived here.”

Grace gets up from the table like she is looking for something, opens the little refrigerator door and Jenna sees a lot of beer in there but not much else. Grace doesn't get anything out and closes the door again and then remains standing by the table.