I leaned toward Emma. Her eyebrows, I saw, were painted on. Her left ear was filled with earrings. “She was here earlier, though. I dropped her off. She came in to work. To work for you.”
Emma’s eyes went large. “Let me get the manager,” she said.
There was a bench by the service desk, a golden oak one. I sat down while Emma called for the manager. Smells of French bread and fresh-baked cookies and garlic floated over from the deli. The fluorescent lights buzzed. I realized I was hungry, though I’m not sure I could have eaten a bite, the way I felt tied up like a knot. I waited, praying the words “Please help me find her,” again and again.
The manager was named Alfred, though he looked way too young to have that name. Emma talked to him a moment, then Alfred walked over to where I sat.
It was kind of like in the movies, the way he came up. You know, getting bigger and bigger with each step. Me feeling the blood race through my neck. I stood, my mouth dry. Heard Aaron walk up beside me.
“You’re Angela’s daughter?”
I nodded.
Alfred said, “She left less than an hour after she got here. Quit.”
I opened my mouth twice, trying to get the word out. “Quit?”
Oh. No.
IX
“She was…” Alfred stumbled around for words. “… she was pretty upset.”
“I see,” I said. “I see. Okay then.” But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t at all.
I wanted to shout at Alfred. I wanted to holler at him. To say, “You should have stopped her. You should have kept her here. Kept her safe.” Wasn’t that his duty? To make sure his employees were happy and stayed at their jobs and …
But even as the thoughts tumbled in my head I knew they were wrong. Why, I couldn’t keep Momma home and safe. And I knew her.
My bottom lip trembled a little. If I wasn’t careful I might just scream. It was like I could feel a scream wanting to come out.
“Use the service phone,” Alfred said. “Call home and see if she went on without you.” Then he said, “I’m real sorry. She seemed awful distraught, that one.”
I nodded, though I knew it was useless. It took me three failed tries before Aaron dialed home for me. And then the phone just rang. On and on. Thirty times I let the phone ring. Then I hung up.
“She’s not there,” I told Aaron. My voice was half a whisper.
Now he patted my elbow. His touch was awkward. But it gave me a bit of courage.
I could do this.
You can’t.
I could! I always did it.
I ran up and down that little shopping strip, looking through every store over and over for I don’t know how long. Then Aaron and I stood in front of the Winn-Dixie, neither one of us saying a word. In the distance, storm clouds piled up high. White on the top, and dark gray at the bottom. The air was heavy and still and smelled of cars and summer heat.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” My backpack rested on the ground beside me, leaning against my leg. I twisted my hands till they hurt. Bit my nails till one bled. “Now it’s possible that she went home.”
Aaron cleared his throat and I looked over at him, though he never took his eyes off the clouds building in the east.
“Lacey,” he said. “If my mom went home, it’d be no big deal. I mean, she goes home all the time without me.”
“Yes, yes, I understand.” Though I didn’t really. A momma who went home on her own?
“Maybe you’re worrying about your mom a little too much. Maybe she’s fine.”
I couldn’t speak at first. Anger boiled up into my brain. What did Aaron know? Nothing. Nothing at all!
That’s right, a calmer me thought. Nothing at all. How could he know my momma?
“She doesn’t think so good sometimes,” I said after moment. “I kinda have to take care of her.”
He gave a half nod. Standing right there next to me, Aaron was a good three inches taller than I was. Something Momma would have been proud of. She always says to me when we’re sitting in my bedroom, the curtains pulled over the windows to keep out the light, “A boy oughta be taller than you, Lacey. Yes, he oughta.”
“My momma…”
Could I tell him? Could I tell this boy about Momma not getting out of bed on some days, or cutting herself, or crying for hours and hours? Or about the nights she didn’t sleep at all, and kept me up talking? How she was deathly afraid of birds because they meant death to her—any kind—even hummingbirds. Or how some days she was so upset, so afraid, that Aunt Linda had had to destroy all the credit cards because Momma went through Granddaddy’s money so fast trying, hoping, to keep us safe?
No, that was too much. Way too much.
“I mean,” I said, taking in a deep breath, “I mean, my momma’s sick.”
That’s what Aunt Linda had said. Momma was sick. And getting worse. But I didn’t tell Aaron that. I didn’t tell him how Aunt Linda said Momma was killing herself a bit at a time. He wouldn’t get it. Not unless he lived at my place. He just wouldn’t get it.
He wouldn’t get it? You don’t get it.
So true. So true.
“We better find her then,” Aaron said. Like that. He said it just like that.
The we again. That word made me feel sad. We. Momma, Aunt Linda, and me. We.
“Won’t your momma be wanting you home?” I asked, making the words cotton-soft.
“I’ll call her. It’ll be okay.”
Something kind of weird happened to me right then. I mean, I know I wasn’t handing the burden of Momma over to anyone, but I was sharing it. It’s not like I wasn’t worried, I still was. But the worry didn’t seem so heavy.
Aaron walked over the pay phone to call his momma because his cell phone
