Faye had always prided herself on her powers of observation, but she’d walked at least a mile without realizing that there was anyone nearby. “What about you? How come it’s safe for you to walk through here but not me?”
“I know where I’m going. I know where the bad people stay. I know when they sleep. But you?” She flicked her eyes up and down Faye’s body. “You don’t know nothing about this place. You should go home.”
“How do you know I’m not already home? How do you know I’m not from around here?”
The girl gave another quick, hoarse laugh, but said nothing.
“It’s that obvious?” As a woman of color, Faye had thought she’d be able to blend into a city where only a third of the people considered themselves white.
“You look like somebody on TV. Slick. Not even real. Talk like that, too.” She leaned her head back and gave Faye’s face a hard, cold look. “Rich. I think you’re rich, and so will those people sleeping up there. You don’t want to be around here when they wake up and try to take what you got.”
What did the girl think she had that was worth stealing? She already knew Faye’s pockets were empty. Her purse was locked in the trunk of her car. Then she remembered her cell phone and the slim gold band on her left ring finger. People had been killed for less, just not in any neighborhood where Faye had ever lived.
Joe had argued against her taking this job without him, but she’d brushed him off. Frankly, she’d been offended by his insinuation that she wasn’t streetwise.
And now she was reacting just as strongly to the suggestion that she was a rich outsider. Faye remembered wearing secondhand school clothes bought with the money her mother made as a nurse’s aide, and she remembered the nasty things the other girls had said about those clothes, clean but long out of style. She remembered daily peanut butter sandwiches in her lunch box, because her mother couldn’t afford to pay what the cafeteria charged, and she was too proud to apply for free lunches.
Most of all, she remembered the day her mother, giddy with accomplishment, had said, “I got my license! I’m a practical nurse now and I got a new job. I can do better for us now.”
Not that this news had stopped the steady flow of peanut butter sandwiches. Oh, no. Faye’s mother had been cheap as dirt, and she’d stayed that way till the day she died. Her grandmother, too. Poverty leaves its marks. Faye had more security now, but she would always keep a close grip on her budget.
“I’m not rich,” she snapped, then she felt stupid for letting a ten-year-old get under her skin.
The girl’s grunt said, “If you say so.”
She stood with her eyes on Faye, as if waiting for her to turn tail and run. Faye thought maybe she should do just that, but her stubborn streak was arguing with her, and it was winning. It was asking her what, exactly, she’d be running from. Sleeping drug addicts? Or a bottle-wielding ten-year-old?
“I’m not going back until you tell me where you go every day. And until I know you have a safe place to sleep at night.”
Instead of an answer, the girl gave her a small shake of the head, then another. She appeared be thinking hard, but she eventually reached a conclusion, because she tossed the bottle toward the creekbank. It landed in shallow water and sent ripples that brushed Faye’s legs while she waited for the girl to speak.
Finally, the child turned and started walking again. “Do what you wanna do. I’m sure the meth heads will be real glad to see you when they wake up.”
Faye had seen the undersides of two low-slung bridges since her companion had chucked her beer-bottle weapon into the shallows but she had not, thankfully, had to get herself through another culvert. Slowly, the banks got lower. The creek spread out on both sides until it was hardly more than a linear wet spot.
The girl took this opportunity to walk onto dry land and keep walking without looking back. Faye could see that they were in a wooded park with a playground surrounded by picnic tables.
There were children everywhere. Faye trudged in the child’s wake until she was stopped in her tracks by an order to “Wait here.”
The idea that the girl had slogged through a mile of water to find a place to play hit Faye in the gut. When she remembered that this happened every day of the week, she felt it in her gut again.
She stopped where she stood, as ordered, and considered what to do. Should she turn around and walk back up the creek, returning to the work that she probably shouldn’t have left? Or should she linger while the girl played, so that she could walk her back home?
While she dithered, the girl surprised her again by walking right past the swings, the slides, the jungle gyms, and the joyful, shouting children. Instead of stopping to play, she headed toward a picnic table loaded with coolers and plastic bags. Faye inched closer to see what was going to happen.
Taking a bag from the table, she turned around without acknowledging the middle-aged man who handed her a juice box. He didn’t seem offended. In fact, he reached into the cooler for a second box. This time, the girl gave him a faint smile as she took the second juice box, but she didn’t linger. She never even stopped walking. She just got her bag and her juice box, then turned and walked back to the creek.
Within a few steps, she had passed Faye and stepped back into the water. Faye followed her, although she could tell that the child didn’t care if she did or if she didn’t. She could also tell that the wary girl never stopped keeping track of where
