I don’t know how many of those words the baby understood, but she got the general meaning of the thing, because she started to cry.
“Oh, no, don’t cry, baby girl. I won’t go far at all, I just have to ask this nice lady to make a phone call so we can get you back with your mommy.”
“Mommy,” she cried. “Mommy.”
I told her, “Brave girl, quiet girl,” but I didn’t sing it. I said it kind of firm, like directions. Like, “I’m sorry but this is just what I need you to do.”
She didn’t stop crying, but she did bring the volume down some.
I slithered out from under the cardboard and ran a couple of steps down the hill.
“Hello!” I yelled, and waved my arms like I was bringing in a plane. “Hello? Lady? I need you to help me. Please! I need you to make a call. Hello?”
The reason I just kept yelling those things is because she heard me but she was pretending like she didn’t.
She wrapped her arms tight around her own self and walked a whole bunch faster, and behind me I could hear the little girl crying even though the freeway was loud over our heads.
“Please?” I yelled to the lady again, and I could hear how my voice was getting a lot more desperate. “Please just call 9-1-1 for me and send the police here to where I am?”
I didn’t want to say why, because of the way I’d yelled something about finding the kid to that first guy who’d gone by, and then after I did I realized it was a really stupid thing to do because anybody could’ve heard me, even those horrible boys.
“Please, I need the police!”
I shrieked it that last time, because I was totally losing it by then. Like really falling into panic, and the little girl could hear me and she got louder and more panicky, too.
The lady broke into a trot and ran right by underneath me and just kept running.
For a second I stood there and let it sink in. You know. Like what my situation really was right about then.
I looked down at myself and I was filthy from lying in that hole. I had accidentally smooshed the apple in my pocket and now I had a wet spot on my pants that might have made it look like I peed myself, and probably my hair was all matted and disgusting because I hadn’t brushed it for more than a day.
People don’t help somebody who looks like that, because they just figure you’re crazy. They either figure you’re not really in any trouble at all, you’re just crazy, or they figure whatever trouble you’re in is something you brought on yourself and they don’t want any part of it because it’s a crazy person’s trouble.
That was the first time it hit me that maybe a hundred people could go by and nobody would help me or believe me.
That hit me hard, let me tell you.
Then out of the corner of my eye I saw that boy come around the corner. The worst one—the one who was quiet most of the time. I guess they had split up by then but they were still out looking.
I moved faster than I ever have in my life, up the hill and under that cardboard, kind of all in one movement. It scared the heck out of the little girl, and she cried really loud, but I held her tight and sang her “Brave girl, quiet girl” in a whisper under my breath, and she did her best to cry quietly.
We just lay there like that for a long time, my heart pounding, waiting to find out if he’d seen me or not. If he’d heard the baby crying over the noise of the freeway or not.
I know she could feel my heart pounding, and it must’ve scared her to know I was so scared, but she did her best. She was the bravest, quietest girl she knew how to be at a time like that.
A minute or two later I figured out that he must not have seen me, and so my heart calmed down a little. But I didn’t dare look under the cardboard, because he could be right down there on the sidewalk. He could be anywhere on this block still, and how would I know?
So I didn’t dare look because I didn’t dare do anything.
Plus, also, I had no idea what to do.
I have no idea how much time went by like that. I think I already made the point that time is a hard thing to judge. Maybe not for people who live in a house with clocks, or who’re out walking around on the street with watches on their wrists. Maybe it’s not even that hard when you’re watching people walk up and down, and cars go by, and the way the sun moves and changes the spot where it sits in the sky.
But when you’re in a dark hole with nothing but a baby you can’t properly save and a lot of fear, time is not as easy to judge as you think.
I whispered stories in her ears so she would cry more quietly. Really silly stories that didn’t have good plots and didn’t go anywhere, but she didn’t seem to care.
After a while she tired herself out from the quiet crying and fell asleep again. It might have been hours. Like I say, it was really hard to tell.
I never fell asleep again.
I just lay there in that dark hole with her, knowing I needed to do something, but not having any idea what it was, or how I could do it without losing her to those terrible boys.
The hunger and the tiredness and being so scared for so long was making me feel like I couldn’t hold myself together. But I did anyway. Because, really, when you think about it, what choice did I have?
If there was one
