“How’d you get here?”
In August, she said, a boy took her on a ferry to Bainbridge Island for the day. But he got high and was a total jerk, and she refused to go back with him. Besides, she liked being away from the city. It felt safer. When she heard of jobs at the fast-food places in Poulsbo, she hitched there and slept in the park until a co-worker offered her sofa. Evangeline stopped, satisfied with this variant of her life.
“Poulsbo is forty-five minutes from here,” Isaac said gently. “How’d you end up in Port Furlong?”
“I heard it was pretty, so I hopped a bus a couple days ago.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, shook her head. “It had to do with a boy.”
Unfortunately, this story line confused rather than clarified, provoked more questions and more dubious answers. “I have no idea where my aunt went. She could be anywhere. Mexico, maybe. She talked a lot about Mexico. . . . Her name? Babs Phatbut . . . Yes, Phatbut is an unusual name. German, I think.”
She wasn’t always good under pressure. He didn’t seem to believe her on the Phatbut part, but she did actually know a girl by that name once—though, on reflection, that might have been a nickname. “My last name? McKensey.” He did believe that, or at least was willing to go with it.
Overall, she worried that despite her attempts to provide easy-to-understand details, he was getting distracted by what he perceived as factual peculiarities. She wondered if a less imaginative rendering would have gotten him further along in the core-truth department.
“That’s it,” she said, aiming for an air of breezy triumph. “That’s my whole story.” She told herself it didn’t matter what he believed. She wouldn’t even have bothered to answer his questions if her clothes hadn’t been in the wash.
He bent his head forward and rubbed his neck, as if listening to her had kinked it all up. His hands were a little off, the tips of his fingers not quite lined up. After a minute, he took a slow, deep breath and lifted his head to study her. The way his eyes landed on her, like those of an animal just wondering what she was, unnerved her. How did you play to eyes like that?
“I’ll go put my clothes in the dryer and get out of your hair,” she said.
Yet, with his eyes still on her, she was unable to move.
The man took another slow breath. “Seems like you don’t have anyplace to go.”
And what could she say? She tried to launch into a tale about friends of friends in a nearby town, but she was certain he would see through her.
“I’ve got that guest room no one’s using,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here? For now.”
She thought of the rain she’d barely escaped the night before, the cold descending. She thought of the trailer and how afraid she’d been. She thought of the baby and being alone. She hadn’t let herself know how bad it’d been these last three months. But to have it lifted off her, if only for that one night, to lie in a clean, warm bed not wondering if she would eat the next day . . . well, it crushed her knowing what she had endured.
“Okay,” she said, “maybe for a little while.” She would stay for the baby. The baby needed her to stay warm, to eat decent food. She just had to remember that the man’s generosity wouldn’t last. Nothing ever does. He’d said it straight out. Whatever he was offering, he was offering it only “for now.”
15
Each day I wondered if the girl would be there the next. She carried her stuffed backpack whenever she left and rarely came home when promised. She slept huge swaths of the day, raided the pantry—dry cereal shaken into her mouth, fingers dragged through peanut butter and jam—then slipped out in the late afternoon.
She reminded me of Henry, a scruffy terrier I adopted in my twenties, an alert-faced mutt who’d likely been on the run for some time. Whenever he entered a room, his eyes shot to windows and doors. He studied furniture he might climb should he need a high escape. He ran away with some regularity, but I always managed to find him and return him home. Until I didn’t. Until I never saw him again.
And what would it matter if this girl left and never returned? Why did I feel a loss each time she was gone yet declined Peter’s requests to stop by? I suspect I wasn’t ready to have Peter know about the girl, was worried he’d think she belonged elsewhere, because I harbored the same thought. But there was more to it than that, something the girl and I had in common that Peter and I did not. She and I shared an ignorance of each other. That is what I missed when she went out, the relief of another’s presence without the false notion that I was known.
* * *
—
IN THOSE FIRST DAYS, we focused on the basics: plans for her return to school, the purchase of clothing and supplies. I instituted two household rules, the need to appear for dinner and to let me know where she was. She seemed confused by these simple courtesies. “You do know I’m sixteen. I haven’t had to ‘check in’ since I was ten.” When I assured her that nevertheless it was a requirement of the house, she shrugged and muttered under her breath, “Now, that’s just plain weird,” then to me as if she hadn’t already spoken, “Sounds reasonable enough.”
Providing appropriate attire proved challenging. My inclination toward simple, functional clothes was more than a matter of preference; it was a statement of belief. We are all equal, and clothing should never suggest otherwise. Daniel had been easy. He lived in jeans and tees, a flannel shirt or two. Plain clothes suited him.
I was not so dimwitted as to think it would be the same for a girl. Still, I saw only virtue in my suggestion that she use Katherine’s things and only thoughtfulness in my offer of needles and thread for whatever alterations she chose to make. She did wear some of that clothing around the house, but she never picked up the sewing kit, and when she walked out the door, she wore only the outfit in which she’d arrived.
The fourth day, when I saw her leave once more in her stained jeans and pilled red cardigan, I understood the shame she’d feel in arriving at school wearing the discarded clothes of a middle-aged woman. It shocks me how slow I was in coming to that, but grief leaves little room for anything else.
I finally saw her as the other students would. They’d sniff poverty, a lifestyle beneath their own, and give it a wide berth. They had done that with Jonah, the skirting away. Even Daniel might have avoided him if I hadn’t urged him to keep Jonah in his group. And Evangeline had no friend like Daniel to break her path. She would be walking in alone, more than a month behind, hardly needing the additional hurdle of being embarrassed about her attire.
It was my habit to engage in a process of discernment, and I did so then. It’s nothing more, really, than sitting in stillness. Some would call it meditation, but I don’t think of it that way. When I do, my mind becomes busy with judgments about my posture or the thoughts that invariably pass through. I question if it is okay to shift position or scratch an itch. No, my process was nothing as complicated as meditation. I simply waited for the murk of my mind to settle, to reveal the answer already there.
In the end, I set up a credit at the local mercantile and sent the girl over. Though she was likely disappointed in the plain selection, she came home with a couple of long, loose tops, leggings, and a pair of soft ankle boots. She also bought a simple knit dress I suspected would make her appear an entirely different girl.