My Abandonment (6 page)

"This is a very unusual day for me," Mr. Harris says. He takes off his wire glasses and blinks his small eyes while he rubs the glasses with his handkerchief.

"It's only the two of you," he says. "Correct?"

"Who else would there be?" I say. "What's going to happen?"

"There will be time for more questions," he says. "I'm sorry. I see that this is a surprising time for you. A lot is changing all at once."

"Sir!" a man shouts and then they are holding Father back, who has gotten close to where I am sitting.

"Caroline," he says. "Don't be afraid. Just because they don't understand us doesn't mean we've done anything wrong. I love you. We'll be back together soon."

"Yes," I say, and a policeman puts a hand on his arm and turns Father away and then they walk away. The man with the pack and another in front, then Father, then the camouflage man with his gun pointing at the ground.

Father looks back only one time and smiles at me. I watch the back of his head slowly disappear down the slope, his hair sticking up on one side and I'm thinking it's almost time for me to cut it again.

Once Father is gone the air around our house gets harder to breathe. I am trying to slow down my breathing. Mr. Harris and Officer Stannard are just standing there waiting for me to do or say something.

"Can I fill up my pack, too?" I say.

"Yes," Mr. Harris says. "Do you have library books, as well?"

I walk over and take my pack and put in all the papers of my journal and I pick Randy up off the mattress.

"That's quite an unusual horse," Mr. Harris says, and I tie my strip of blue ribbon around Randy's neck and push him all the way in so he's out of sight because these people don't deserve to see him.

I take out the E encyclopedia and open it to as far as I've gotten. All alone I know the E will be useless so I slide it back in with its friends. Instead I put the dictionary in my pack even though I can already tell it will be frustrating to read.

When I start putting my clothes in Mr. Harris says, "You won't need those. We can give you new clothes."

"When am I coming back?" I say.

"We have to get going," Officer Stannard says. "Take what you need, please."

"Don't rush her," Mr. Harris says.

"Will someone bring my encyclopedias?" I say.

"Not today."

I put the branch across the door to our house when I have everything I can take.

"Don't worry about that, now," Mr. Harris says with his hand on my shoulder.

"People will take all our pots," I say, "and plates and our stove and our bed even."

"Don't worry about any of that," he says. "Really. Wouldn't you like to wear shoes?"

"If you like," I say. "I can wear shoes if we're going to the city."

And then we start walking down the slope toward the soft roar of the highways. Mr. Harris is ahead of me, his arms stiff and his shoes sliding in the long grass. The way he goes leaves so many marks you would think ten people had walked here.

"Is my father waiting for us down here?" I say.

We come out of the trees and way off to the left I see the sharp green towers of the St. Johns Bridge far away and I feel those sharp inside. Straight ahead and closer is one empty black-and-white police car. Everyone else is gone. A semi-truck rattles past without slowing down.

Mr. Harris opens the back door and I sit down and swing my legs inside and he closes the door then walks around and gets in next to me. Officer Stannard is in the driver's seat. He starts the engine and we slide fast onto the road with everything passing in the window. The electrical station, Fat Cobra Video, the waste depot where sometimes we scavenged. I look behind us and it's a yellow truck. I can't see any of the other police cars or the truck the dogs probably went in, none of the places Father might be.

"You can talk," Mr. Harris says. "Or not talk, if you want to. If you want to, you can cry."

A sign says Wood Monsters. There are semi trailers on train cars and storage containers out in the railyard. In my pack on the seat between us are the things they let me bring. A cup and a jar of raisins and the dictionary and Randy, who I unzip the zipper to touch his head. I almost want to cry but I remember what Father said and I don't want them to think anything untrue.

"Did you read the scratched leaves?" I say. "The ones I scratched? That's how you found us."

"Pardon me?" Mr. Harris says.

"Nothing," I say.

We're driving toward the tall buildings. Next to us on the right is still the forest park and we drive so fast it's a blur of green. I can't see the edges of the trees, can't hardly read the signs on the road as they slide past. Machines cause more problems than they solve and I have not been riding inside a car for a very long time. For a moment I remember driving with my foster parents, sitting in the backseat like this with my little sister. Each of us is eating one half of a sweet, cold orange popsicle. Outside the windows a cemetery full of jagged gray stones stretches up a hill.

"All right," Mr. Harris says. "We're almost here. No reason to be afraid. We're just going to ask you some questions so we can decide what is the best thing to do next."

"Yes," I say. "I know that you don't understand us."

People walk up and down the streets. They cross in front of us staring in when we stop at the red light and maybe it's because of seeing a girl in a police car. The buildings all around are tall and full of windows. The car I'm in turns across the sidewalk and drives into, under a building and past many parked cars, most of them police cars and we circle around and finally stop at a lighted door. The first thing they do once I step out of the car is take away my pack with all my things in it.

The building is full of doors. Hallways full of closed doors where there are rooms I cannot see into. In the hallways there is nothing but adults. The floors are hard and the air smells like chemicals. I sneeze and no one blesses me.

"My name is Jean," Miss Jean Bauer says. "You can call me Jean. I work with Jim. Mr. Harris."

She has a stripe of gray hair in front but she is not old. She is only a little taller than me and she wears a white jacket with her name on it in red thread. All different colored pens are in the pocket of her jacket.

"Is Mr. Harris your boss?" I say.

"No," she says. "We work together. We just thought it would be easier for you to talk to me, maybe. But if you want to talk with him you can."

"That's all right," I say, but I'm not angry with Mr. Harris. He doesn't know any better. He doesn't understand. There is never a reason not to be polite, I know. To let someone make you angry is always a mistake. I remember this. I can tell that this building is a place to be careful.

"First we're going to have you take a shower," Miss Jean Bauer says, "and after that a quick checkup to see if you're all right and then we'll see how you're feeling. The shower is in here," she says, opening a door for me. "There's a towel and soap right there."

"You're going to watch me?" I say.

"No," she says. "I'll be back in five minutes. I'll wait right out here in the hall."

It is a large room with flickering lights. Most of it is full of gray metal lockers, some with round combination locks and some dented. There are benches made of wood and metal. The first thing I do is circle the whole room. There is one other door but it is locked closed. I decide to wait, to do what they say. Father could be close in this building. There are so many doors, so many rooms.

It is not just one shower but almost a little room with ten showers sticking out of the tiled walls and the floor is tile too with metal drains in it. There's water drops under one shower and I decide that's where Father was, right before me. Whatever they want to do with us they want us to be very clean.

I want to turn all of the showers on at once but the handles are tight and my hands are small. The water is so hot and then I remember and turn the other handle to mix the cold. It's so different than in the forest park where usually we use a shower made out of a silver bag that we hang up high in a tree so the water gets warm and no one sees it. This is a ways from our camp, a good walk we walk carrying our clean clothes. We bring the shower down with me usually climbing the tree and there is gallons of water but it goes fast. So first we strip down and turn it on enough to get wet, second we soap up, third we rinse off. Twice a week or less in the winter when it's cold. In the summer sometimes we use the water cold. Sometimes when it rains we find a place where the trees aren't thick and we strip down there and soap up and rinse off in the hard rain.

It is so different in the building, in the tiled room with ten showers. The water keeps coming and coming, never running out and through it I can hear someone calling my name. I step out of the water coming down with water still in my ears.

"Finish up," Miss Jean Bauer says from where I can't see her. "It's been ten minutes."

The towel is so soft and when I get back to my clothes my clothes are gone and on a hanger is a dress that has only two ties and is made of paper.

"Where are my things?" I say. "I need a comb. Where's Randy?"

"Who's Randy?" Miss Jean Bauer says. "Just put on that robe; I'll give you clothes after what we do next."

"What am I going to do next?" I say.

She bends down a little to look at my face. "How are you holding up?" she says.

"What do you mean?" I say.

"Aren't you tired? You must be exhausted."

"Why?" I say. "I've hardly done anything at all today."

She asks if it's all right if she stays in the room once we've reached the Doctor's room and then stands there with a clipboard sometimes writing and sometimes listening.

None of it really surprises me except that I am now five feet three inches and ninety-seven pounds, almost a hundred. It's been a long time since I've been measured or weighed.

The Doctor has no hair on his head. He shines lights in my ears and nose and mouth. He looks at my teeth. He listens to my heart and organs with a stethoscope.

"Do you have any pains?" he says. "Any part of your body that's hurting you?"

"No," I say. "Would you like to see me run?"

He bends down and looks into my vagina with his light. I explain menstruation to him and Miss Jean Bauer writes down some of what I say.

"All it really means is that a girl is ready for breeding," I say, "but I'm not to do that until I'm twenty at least and married."

"I see," the Doctor says, and says I can get dressed. "I'm very happy to report that you're an extremely healthy young woman," he says, "who's really taken care of herself."

"Father teaches me," I say.

The clothes Miss Jean Bauer gives me are blue pants that are too short and a blue buttoned shirt that is scratchy and doesn't match. There's new white underpants and white socks. All that is left are my black city shoes.

"I am also supposed to wear an undershirt," I say, but she doesn't seem to hear me as she walks ahead of me.

The next room is full of wooden chairs that have desks attached like a kind of arm on the right side. There are blackboards but no writing on them and no chalk in the metal trays. I sit down in the front row.

"Are any other children coming?" I say.

"No," Miss Jean Bauer says. "Just you." She hands me a pencil and a booklet of paper and then some scratch paper. "Can you read?" she says. "If not, that's fine. I can read it for you."

"Of course I can read," I say.

"I'll be just outside," she says. "If you need me."

The questions are sometimes like stories and then you have to mark what they meant or why someone did something or what they should do. Or simpler ones about what tools are for what or what is a shelter and what is not a shelter. It's kind of fun. It keeps me from thinking of other things. I want to get all the questions all correct in case that will help. The math hardly gets up to algebra but still I double-check my answers on the scratch paper.

After half an hour the door opens a little and Miss Jean Bauer looks in at me and I look up from writing and she closes the door without saying anything. After another half hour I am finished and I'm using the pencil to pull the snarls out of my hair which is now mostly dry and then the door opens again.

"How's it coming?" she says. "Are you taking a break?"

"I'm done," I say.

"Already? Are you sure?" She has three silver rings on each hand and she turns through the pages of the booklet.

"Yes," I say.

"Yes you are," she says.

"It's like homework," I say. "Only easier."

"When did you have homework?" she says.

"All the time," I say. "Is this place a school? For adults, maybe?"

"That's very smart," she says. "These are rooms where police officers sometimes get trained or take classes."

"How many rooms are in this building?" I say.

"I don't know that," she says.

"It's a big one, though," I say. "How many people are inside?"

"Yes," she says. "It's big."

"Am I going to live here?" I say.

"No," she says, and smiles. "Do you understand why you're here?"

"I would like please to be back together with Father," I say.

"Let me explain a few things to you, Caroline," she says. "So you'll understand. A person running in the park saw you last week, and it is illegal, against the law for people to live in the park but especially we had to check out the report of a young girl. To see if you wanted to be there, or who took you there, to make sure that you were all right."

"You chased us with dogs," I say.

"We're trying to help," she says. "We're trying to get a complete picture of the situation."

"The way we live is different," I say, "than how you are used to things being."

"Very true," Miss Jean Bauer says.

She looks at her watch and I see that it says four thirty and I look at mine which says eleven twenty. I think of my father somewhere with the same time on his watch.

"Let's see," she says. "You must be hungry. It's a few hours to lights-out and then tomorrow morning you and I can talk some more."