Sara Lost and Found (3 page)

“Keep up, Anna.” In my mind, I see myself letting her go—leaving her to find her own way. But then my body heats up with shame. What am I thinking? Leave Anna alone? She needs me. And what about the promise I made to her? The promise that no matter what, nothing and no one will ever pull us apart.

I don't like to think about the last time Mama ran away. It was a Thursday. I remember because my birthday was on Monday, and she left a few days later. Our caseworker picked us up from school.

“Where's Mama?” I had asked her.

“Let's talk in the car.”

“Talk in the car” meant she didn't want everyone else hearing, so that told me that whatever news she had wasn't good.

After Anna and I were buckled in, she put her arm up over the top of the seat and cranked her neck around to look at us.

Even though it happened a year ago, I remember her answer like she was saying it to me today. “Your mama was picked up in another state for DUI and damage to another person's vehicle.”

“What's DUI?” It didn't sound like anything too bad. ABC, DUI.

“It stands for ‘driving under the influence.' She drove after she had been drinking and ran into someone's car.”

Mrs. Craig paused, letting the information sink in. But something about what she said refused to sink.

“Wait. You said Mama was picked up in another state? Why is Mama in another state?”

Our caseworker sighed. “I don't know all the details, Sara, but since your father has his own set of challenges and can't come home, you and Anna will need to go stay with some temporary families until your parents are free to come and get you.”

I won't say she tricked me. She did say “families,” not “family.” I should have been sharper. I should have picked up on it. But I didn't, and for the first time, Anna and I were ripped apart and placed in two different homes. Sometimes one family that already has kids can't take on two more, even for a short time. That's what Mrs. Craig said, anyway.

It was the longest month of my life, not knowing how Anna was getting on, and not being able to talk to her. Most kids at school have cell phones, but you can't eat or wear a cell phone, so it wasn't something we could afford to get, and with the caseworkers being so busy, it's left up to the foster parents to arrange the phone calls.

After that awful month, when we got to go back home, Mama never talked about why she had been in another state, and I never asked. And something about Anna wasn't right. It was as if something broke inside her. I tried to get her to talk about it, but she'd just growl and draw her shoulders up almost to her ears, head back, arms bent at her sides, with her hands clenched into fists, looking like a cornered animal about to attack.

What I did see before she hid them were the raw, red marks on her arm. “What are those?”

She wouldn't say. She just crossed her good arm over the one with the blistering red dots and looked away.

After Mama got us back, she said she would never leave again, but she did, and here we are, running away. Even though I'm ten now, it still hurts that she lied.

“Feet hurt,” Anna grumbles, bringing my thoughts back to the dark street, the cold, and how I need to keep my head on straight. As Daddy would say, “Can't see forward if you're lookin' back.”

“We're almost there,” I assure her, trying not to think about my own achy legs and feet, hoping that Ben and Rachel are home.
What if they aren't? Where will we go?

While we walk, I try to think of a “plan B,” as Daddy calls it. It's the plan you follow when the first one falls through.

BEN AND RACHEL SILVERMAN ARE
foster grandparents who take in kids for short periods of time. But to me and Anna, they are more than that. They are the grandparents we never had. Daddy said our real grandparents lived far away, and it was too expensive for them to come and visit us. We've stayed with the Silvermans a lot over the past two years—sometimes for weeks at a time.

By the time we reach their house, our feet are bleeding, our nightshirts are torn, and we're both streaked with dirt. I knock on the door, wondering if any kids are already staying with them. It's okay if they are. I have a plan B. We'll run away again, only this time
back
to our old house. No one would think to look for us there. And even if they locked it all up, I have a way to get in—a secret way that nobody knows about. Not even Anna.

Ben opens the door, takes one look at us, and gasps. He pulls us into a hug, not even minding about the stickers that are poking into his arms. He smells like toothpaste and shaving cream. We smell like dirt and scared stuff, all rolled into one.

“Girls! What happened? What are you doing here in your nightclothes and no shoes?”

“Run away,” Anna blurts, clutching her doll and dropping her chin to her chest.

As he ushers us in, the phone rings. We all jump. When Ben answers it, I can tell by his face and voice that it's Mrs. Craig.

“Yes, they're both here. No, they're fine. Yes, yes. Of course we will. Tomorrow?” He looks at us. We both shake our heads as hard as they will shake.

“How about a couple of days?”

I hold my breath. Will they let us stay?

“Okay. We'll wait to hear from you.” He hangs up the phone and turns to us. “When she sees you and hears what you have done, Rachel will put extra marks on your charts!”

“Ben is right!” a voice says. Rachel Silverman shuffles sleepily into the room and smothers us with hugs. Her accent is heavy. “Look at you two! For this you get maybe two marks on your charts. Yes, maybe even more. Now you have to earn three stars to get the marks off.”

The charts she is talking about are kept on the refrigerator with spaces for stars and marks. For every three stars earned for good behavior, we get one mark removed. For every three marks against us for not being so good, we lose a star.

If we earn five stars and no marks, we get to pick out a treat at the ninety-nine-cent store. If we get all marks and no stars, we have to visit Ms. Thistleberry, the Silvermans' neighbor, who is as prickly as her name.

It's not so bad, really, going to Ms. Thistleberry's. We listen to her complain about every creaky joint she has for two whole hours while peeling vegetables. I like peeling vegetables. I don't tell Rachel, but it's kind of fun to hear about all of Ms. Thistleberry's new creaky spots.

Ms. Thistleberry lives by herself and makes vegetable soups, which people in the neighborhood buy in bucketfuls. Anna and I have peeled a lot of vegetables for Ms. Thistleberry's soups.

“Come,” Rachel says, taking our hands. “Let's get some hot cocoa into you and clean you up. A mud bath you will make in my tub.” Even though she sounds like she's mad, I know she's as happy to see us as we are to see her.

I look across the hardwood floor toward the kitchen and smile. Ben is already heating up the cocoa. I can see him because the wall between the kitchen and dining room is solid cupboards that open on both sides, and the doors are glass on both sides too, like windows.

A fat pot-bellied stove sits to one side. The crackling fire heats both rooms. As we shuffle toward the kitchen, I look around at the furniture. Ben made it all. He's good with his hands. He also put wood around all the windows. Ben's windows shut tight. No wind gets through them!

The walls have pictures, not of people, but of mountains, meadows, and the ocean. They're so real, it feels like I can step into them and be there, wherever “there” is. The other thing the Silvermans have is a bowl of fish. I bend down and stare, wondering what we must look like to them.

What strange animals they have in this zoo!
I picture the orange one saying to the blue.
What are they called
again?

And the blue one would put a fin on his chin and think hard. “Humans,” he would say, and bubbles would blub up to the surface. Only underwater it would sound like “Who-moos,” which is what we'd be called if fish named us.

Ben already has cocoa set at our places at the table. I take one sip, and the warm chocolate covers my tongue and slides all the way down my throat. Warm cocoa is what safe tastes like.

*  *  *

“Sing a song,” Anna murmurs. We've taken a bath, put on the soft flannel nightgowns Rachel saved for us, and been tucked snug in bed. I bury my nose in the sleeve of my nightgown and breathe in the sweet scent of flowers. That's what Rachel's soap smells like: flowers. The bed is big, with a post at each corner—not just a mattress on the floor, like at our real house.

A few months ago, when we last stayed with the Silvermans, Anna and I slept under the bed so scary things had no room to hide. Rachel screamed when she came into the room and found us gone. She thought we had run away again.

When we slid out from under the bed, she said, “What under the bed are you doing?” Her sentences get more mixed up when she raises her voice.

When I told her how scared we were, she had Ben put a little light under the bed, and we all slept better.

“Sing a song,” Anna pleads again. I open my eyes and look at the shadowy face leaning close. Her breath smells like Ben's toothpaste.

“A song?” My voice tries to whisper. She's so close, I feel her nod.

“Daddy's song.”

“Why? Are you worried about having another nightmare?”

Anna nods again, planting her hand over the spots on her arm. I rub my eyes and sit up. Too bad Daddy isn't here to sing it himself. I swallow back the hurt. Thoughts of him and Mama turn over and over in my head.
When will you be out of jail? When will the judge let us go home? Where are you, Mama? When will you come home?
I flick on a small flashlight that Ben saved for me.

“Sing!” Anna insists.

I hold back. I know the song she wants. Daddy wrote it just for me—or so he said when he sang it to me on my last birthday. And even though I heard him tell Mama he had written it for her, and then told Anna the same thing when he sang it to her on her birthday months later, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he wrote it and that I knew the whole song by heart.

It's not that I don't like to sing. I do. Singing is my most favorite thing in the world. Daddy says I sing like a songbird—that when I grow up, we'll sing together, him and me. But I also know that singing a song this late might wake up the Silvermans. We'd already woken them up once. I didn't want to push our luck.

“Please?”

“Okay. But I'll have to sing soft, so listen up.” I snuggle close to Anna and take a deep breath. But just as I'm about to start, a noise stops me.

“Quick! Under the covers! Somebody's coming!”

What if Mrs. Craig changed her mind and came back to get us? Or worse, the police come and take us away? I flick off the flashlight and cram it under the sheet. Anna starts to tremble. Sometimes being scared makes me breathe so fast, I feel floaty in my head. Other times, it can take the wind right out of me till I think I can't breathe.

I'm not sure which noises are good ones and which are bad ones in the Silvermans' house. The Silvermans are old. They probably wouldn't even hear a burglar sneaking around.

“Pretend to be asleep,” I say in a muffled whisper. Under the covers I must sound like fish talking underwater.

“I can't,” Anna squeaks. “Scared.”

“You can, Anna. Just do like we did when Mama and Daddy were fighting. Close your eyes until the scary stuff goes away.” It's the same thing I've told her maybe a hundred times before. Too bad we couldn't close our ears, too.

“Still scared.” Anna rolls up into a ball and clutches her doll.

“Shhhh,”
I whisper back, trying not to sound mean. “Close your eyes and don't open them, no matter what. Okay?” I can feel Anna's head nodding against the pillow.

I pull my head out and wait. My eyes are squeezed so tight, I can see white stars. A flood of light suddenly turns the stars dark, putting a new scary thought into my head—someone is in our room! My heart pounds so hard, I can hear each beat against my pillow. I try to breathe slow and easy, pretending to be asleep, but my breath comes out fast.

“My two sleeping beauties,” a woman's voice whispers. I relax. It's only Rachel, checking to make sure that we are still in the room.

I crack one eye open to check on Anna. She's slid out from under the covers but still has a white-knuckled grip on Abby. The doll's eyes are wide open. They are supposed to close when she's laid flat, but sometimes they get stuck. One time one eye stuck open and the other stuck closed—just like when Anna came home from school once and couldn't open a swollen eye; we ran to the neighbor's house. The lady there put ice on it to make the swelling go down and asked a million questions. Anna never did tell anyone how her eye got so puffed up and dark.

Rachel leans closer. She smells of garlic and onions, probably because she has a string of them draped around her neck. “It keeps away the germs,” she told me the last time we stayed here. I believed it too. That smell would keep anything away! My nose twitches, and for an awful moment I feel a sneeze coming on. I breathe through my mouth to chase away the feeling. Mrs. Silverman finally seems convinced we're asleep, and leaves. As she shuffles down the hallway, her pajamas make a soft
shoosh, shoosh, shoosh
.