Rabbit Ears (4 page)

The anger slithers away, and your skin twitches at the shame that clings to you in its place.

As you walk, you snuggle into your coat and wonder how Sarah can stand her bare legs and thin fitted jacket in the cold damp. She doesn’t look as gorgeous in broad daylight, you
notice. Her clothes are a bit worn, a couple of sores show through her makeup, and her eyes are kind of dull. But her energy, her friendliness, trumps all that stuff. She seems to know everyone, or just says hello whether she knows them or not. You’re not sure which, but it doesn’t matter.

People say hello back, but Sarah never stops and she never introduces you to anyone.

You look and you don’t look, not wanting to see the dirt, the misery, or, even worse, the fact that all that dirt and misery is attached to human beings. What are you doing here?

Then Sarah slows down. You are approaching a corner.
PRINCESS AVENUE
, the sign says. A corner store. And on the other side of Princess, the Union Gospel Mission down the block, and closer, two little grey houses, a matched set.

“This is where I get off,” she says, pointing at the closest of the houses. “And this is where you get on.”

You look at her, puzzled, and she grins. “On a bus, that is!” She seems awfully pleased at her own cleverness.

“But …” You aren’t sure what to say, how to argue. “I … I just got here.”

“That, Kaya, is the very best time to leave. Trust me,” she says. Then, “I’m kind of busy here, actually.”

She doesn’t invite you into her house. She doesn’t take you somewhere to talk. She doesn’t tell you to come back sometime. She just ushers you toward the bus stop. You swallow thick hurt and take a step away from her.

“All right,” you say, defeated. “I’ll catch a bus.”

“Do you have some money?”

You nod, even though all you have is a handful of coins in your pocket.

She pulls a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her minuscule purse. “Here,” she says. “Get yourself a burger or a slice. And use the change to catch a bus home.” She looks hard at you, almost glaring, and goes on. “Listen, Kaya,” she says, “don’t come back, okay?”

“Goodbye,” you say, hating how tiny your voice is.

She looks into your eyes, and, almost as an afterthought, points again at the little house, its front step overgrown, its front windows boarded up. “If you ever need me, knock at the back door. Ask for Blackie.” A pause, her eyes locked on yours. “Well, off you go, then.” And she turns away.

Obediently you start walking back the way you came. When you look back, a few doors down, Sarah is gone. If only she had invited you in.

A bus is coming, but you ignore it. You don’t have the right change anyway.

After an absence of an hour or so, Michelle is back in your head. She seemed to trust Marcos, but from what Sarah said, you know that she thought she was rescuing you from Jim. And what does that say about Jim’s young friend?

It takes forever to find the building again. Your stomach grows demanding at a certain point and you pick up a couple of Chinese pork buns. You walk extra fast as you pass the hotel where Sarah found you with Jim. You don’t want to run into him, or any of those women. Your stomach churns at the thought of facing the scowler all on your own.

Then you have to find the right bus stop—the one where
you and Michelle got off—and stand and remember. This way. No. That way. People look at you. One or two try to speak to you. But you put on your shell, the same one that’s been working pretty well for you at school since Michelle rescued you from those girls—until Diana showed up, that is—a small self-assured smile, almost eye contact, but not quite, as if you have something important to do. A longish stride. Arms relaxed. Just past the first corner you have to stand again, retrace your steps. After a long search, you see the dusty plants and you are sure, though it’s amazing how many dusty plastic plants you have had to examine before you find the right ones.

You stand and gaze at the buzzers. Five of them, grimy; the spots for names, empty. What should you do? Press them all? Your finger hovers, but before you commit, feet clatter down the stairs and Marcos himself barrels out the door almost right into your arms.

You move around him and stick your foot in the door before it swings shut. “Marcos,” you say.

He looks at you, and you find yourself staring at his eyes; his pupils have disappeared. You resist the temptation to say
Anybody home?
and after a moment you see a glimmer of recognition.

“You’re her friend,” he says slowly.

“Yes,” you say. “I need to get her now. We need to go.”

“I don’t think …” he begins, glancing back up the stairs, his eyes flicking nervously.

That’s all you need to send you into the building. “I’ll just get her myself,” you call over your shoulder as you dash up the stairs. Maybe he’ll go away. Maybe she’s in there all by
herself. Maybe. This isn’t safe, you think. You should call the police. Or Michelle’s mother. Her foster mother, that is. And you wonder for a moment what she has been through in her life. Anyway, you’re not calling anyone. You’re going in.

Marcos rattles up the stairs after you, but you get to the room before he does and the handle turns when you try it. You push it open and stand in the doorway, adjusting to the dim light. The room looks much as it did earlier, except that a second figure is in the bed, making a hump in the quilts. You don’t have to look to be pretty sure it’s Jim, snoring away. Michelle, on the other side of the bed, is kind of propped up against the wall. Marcos stops behind you.

“You can’t be here,” he says slowly, quietly so as not to disturb the hump.

You ignore him and step forward. Michelle is awake, you realize, as you see her head shift, her gaze lift, peer out. “I’m here,” you whisper, hoping she will hear, hoping Jim will not.

At the bottom of the bed, you stop, lean forward, grab a foot. “Let’s go, Michelle,” you say. “Let’s get out of here.”

Slowly, slowly, she loosens herself from a quilt and wriggles your way. You turn your eyes away when you realize she has no clothes on her bottom half, and scrabble around on the floor for her pants. You get her onto her feet and into her pants and turn toward the door. Marcos is long gone. The heap on the bed shifts once and you both freeze, but all that emerges is a snorty snore.

Nobody stops you on the stairs, on the street, at the bus stop. Your left arm tight around Michelle’s waist, you jam coins into the slot on the bus until one then two transfers pop out at you.

“Get a move on,” the driver says. “There’s people on this bus with somewhere to go.”

Your head rears up and you sneer, but Michelle tugs at you. “Just get the tickets,” she says.

So you do, relief at the sound of her voice washing away your anger. The two of you teeter to the back, giggling as you bump into people, grabbing at each other and the backs of seats for balance. You swing into the best seat, the one at the rear, nothing but bus behind you. Michelle has the window, and you sit back a bit and look at her. Is she all right?

She smiles kind of shyly. Her eyes look funny, like Marcos’s but more so. She seems swirly, mushy, somehow. But she leans into your shoulder and you feel the contact all the way through you. It’s real, meant. You manage a bit of a lean back.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” she says.

“I couldn’t just leave you there,” you say, remembering that you did exactly that and that you even considered going home without her. You look her over again. “Are you all right?” you ask. “That man, Jim, was there.” You pause. “In the bed.” You want to add,
and you were naked
. But you can’t say those words. “Do you … do you need to go to the hospital?”

She leans back as you speak, her eyes sliding shut, her head lolling.

A man looks at her from the sideways seats and rage crackles through your forearms and into your fingertips. You tighten all the muscles in your face, flare your nostrils and give him your best sneer, even better than the one you were lining up for the bus driver. Then you turn, reach out and
give Michelle a shake. She moans quietly, shakes her head and sinks deeper into her druggy’s sleep.

She sleeps the rest of the way, while your thoughts grind your brain down to a pulp. The light is fading by the time you steer her off the bus. You see her to her door, even wait while she walks through it. After that, you are all alone with yourself.

Your own house is only three blocks away. You wander down Eleventh and turn at the corner, one foot in front of the other. It would be nice to get home where it’s warm. Your bed is there, unmade perhaps, but clean and sheeted. The fridge is there. The TV is there.

And Mom and Beth. Looking at you, thinking about you, worrying about you. You stop and look back the way you came, toward that bus stop. You think of Sarah. Her straight back. Her strong shoulders. Yes, she told you to go home, but if home is supposed to be so great, why doesn’t she go to hers? She’s obviously sorted out a way to live downtown and keep a spring in her step. If you told her … If you explained …

Your transfer is still good.

The bus passes you just as you reach Tenth Avenue, sending a wall of water over the curb. Three people at the stop down the street start putting down their umbrellas and shuffling forward. You pick up your pace. Perfect timing! Then, it seems as if the bus and the people speed up and you slow down. If you shout, you think, it will come out all stretchy and weird. In an instant, the bus has swallowed the people and their umbrellas. It pulls away. You wave and shout, your voice sharp and ordinary—not stretchy at all—to no effect.

“Fucking bus driver,” you snarl. If you were a forty-year-old white lady, he’d wait. No question. You look back up the street. No bus. Your body shivers. You feel like slapping it. A little rain and it goes all to pieces.

By the time the next bus comes, your transfer will be worthless. You upend your purse onto the sidewalk and examine the coins you have left: three dollars and forty-seven cents. That will get you on the bus and leave you with less than a dollar once you get down there.

Even with that knowledge, even with the rain dribbling down your neck, even with your body’s shakes and shivers, you stand there. A man strides past, his muttered “Excuse me” code for
What are you doing standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the rain?

“Fuck you,” you mutter at his back, not loud enough for him to hear. Your teeth crash together, chattering, on the
you
. You almost stomp your foot as you turn and head for home.

Beth is on her way down the stairs when you open the door, and she stops on the third step from the bottom, eyes widening in relief. “She’s here!” she calls, and Mom comes charging out of the kitchen.

You close the door behind you and shrink against it for a moment. Then, “Yeah, I’m here,” you say sharply to your mother as you shove your way past Beth and head up the stairs. “I’m here, and I need some dry clothes.”

“When Beth came home alone, I called the school,” Mom is saying as you close your bedroom door. “They said you—”

You shock yourself a little with your own rudeness, but what else can you do? If you have to stay in their company
for one fraction of a second, a fraction of a fraction of a second, you will scream words that will make their ears bleed. Better this way.

A small knock interrupts you minutes later as you strip off your wet clothes. The door inches open. It’s Beth.

“Are you all right?” she says as you bound across the room and slam the door on her.

“I’m fine, Beth. Fine,” you say through the closed door. “Just leave me alone. Please!”

There. That should do it. You even said
please
. Why are they freaking out so much anyway? It’s not even suppertime. You’ve been away way longer than this.

You pull on a flannel nightshirt and huddle on your bed, drawing the quilt around yourself, letting the warmth seep in. As your body stops shaking, hunger asserts itself. Why, oh why, didn’t you stash some food in your room? And where’s Sybilla?

When you look at your clock, you’re shocked that it says four thirty. It seems impossibly early and impossibly late, both at the same time. You doze a bit. Wake again. Six o’clock. After that, you lie awake, watching that clock and waiting. For what, precisely, you can’t say.

Over and over, your mind takes you back to the sight of Michelle, scrambling, bottomless and barely conscious, out of that bed. Diana wanders into your mind. It takes all your concentration to get her out again.

Not long after that, your hunger turns ravenous. Pork buns long gone. At six thirty, Mom taps on your door.

“Supper’s ready, honey.” Long pause. “Would you like me to bring you up a plate?”

Your stomach growls, so loud that you can hear it. “No,” you snarl. “Can’t you just leave me alone?” Why can’t she ever, ever just leave you alone?

You slide onto the floor and dig into an ancient toy chest full of old dolls and dress-up clothes, reaching underneath everything and feeling around until you come up with a little girl’s diary complete with lock. Scissors. Scissors. It takes you a minute, but you find those too, and
snip
, the piece that holds the book closed is no more.

You flip through quickly, looking for the blank part, not interested in reading your nine-year-old drivel. Not interested at all. Blank page found, you forget your grumbling gut for a while, you forget that strange and terrible trip downtown, as you create a list, a catalogue, of your sister’s various stupidities.

At last, at eight o’clock, the house settles, grows quiet, and you shove the diary right back where you found it and head downstairs. Sybilla rises from the carpet. You sink to your knees, wrap your arms around her and bury your face in her fur, and remember. One sob, big and deep. She wriggles against you. She has love to spare and she knows nothing of the deep dark dirty places inside of you. Another sob, this one even deeper.

“Kaya?”

Beth has followed you down the stairs. She is standing behind you, her path to the kitchen blocked by the pair of you: happy dog, sad girl. She looks desperate. Terrified.