SHE COMES HUMMING. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know it was her out there. “Roxanne?”

“Yeah—it’s me, Char.”

I cry. She don’t tell me everything is gonna be okay, just that she’ll stay here with me as long as she can. The door is too short on the bottom for the space it’s in. Her fingers slide under it and wiggle. I sit down as close as I can and hold on. My words come out in a whisper. “Where’s everybody else?”

“Sleeping. Bone tired.”

“Where’s Daddy? You think Carolina would talk to him for me?”

“He had to leave. Carolina is asleep, I think, in her room with the door closed.”

“Roxanne?”

“Yeah.”

“Get the key. Let me out. Then me and you could run.”

“You know I can’t do that, Char.”

I know.

“But here.” They come rolling in like they on skates. Straws filled with water, chewing gum stuck in both ends. A pack of Mentos—the pretty color ones—comes next. Then there’s pretzel rods—dragging dust on the way in. I drink first, empty all ten straws, save the used gum. I’m starving, eating while food is still coming. A pack of peanut butter crackers slides under last. I keep quiet and eat. Choking on the crackers, I pat my chest. Once I’m full, I hold on to her fingers again.

She tell me that he never keep a girl here more than a day or two. Some get sent off for good after that. Some he lets Carolina take care of. I bring up April. He don’t do that too often, she say. “It’s bad for business and don’t make him no money.”

“Roxanne?”

“Yeah?”

“Why would God let this happen to us?”

She thinks on it some. “I don’t know.”

My forehead is leaning against the door when she ask if I want to pray. “Why? Is God gonna bring me a key and get me out of here?”

I hear her yawn, so I tell her it’s okay for her to go back in the house. She’ll leave when she hears Daddy’s tires outside, she tell me. Then out of nowhere she ask if I knew she was born in a orphanage for teenage mothers.

“They still got those?”

It wasn’t called an orphanage, she say, but that’s what it was. “The church across the street ran it.”

“That’s why you talk ’bout God so much?”

“He the only father I ever knew besides Pastor and Daddy.”

I ask if something happened to her there like we hear about on the news with priests.

“No.”

“So, why you leave?”

They paddled one of the girls. She called child welfare to report them, she says. “Then they came for the rest of us. Some kids went into foster care. Some to group homes. Some got sent back to their real families. I ran away.”

“We can run now too.”

“Where would I go? Anyhow, if I left, he would get another girl to take my place. And I don’t want that.”

“But—”

She say for me to hush. Then I hear it too. Car wheels spitting gravel.

She don’t leave when I say go. Next thing we know, the door opens. His feet stomp around upstairs while he talking on the phone. I don’t hear all her words, but I do hear her say father, God help us.

His feet is on the steps, on their way down, when I close my eyes and pray for her. Roxanne is everybody’s friend. I don’t want nothing bad to happen to her ’cause of me.

“Char,” she says. “I think he brought somebody with him.”

I put my head to the door and listen, then I tell Roxanne to run fast as she can. “And don’t stop for nothing, or nobody, even me. You hear me?”

“But—”

“You stupid, girl? Go!”

I’m crying by the time the door opens. But don’t nobody care.