Where am I?
It wasn’t the first time I’d asked myself that question. It should’ve been old hat by now.
Where the fuck am I . . . ?
I’d woken up in too many places not knowing where I was, and some of those places had turned out to be pretty awful.
I didn’t recognize anything.
A window of rippling silver.
A potted cactus with a dead flower half attached to it.
A desk with a blank computer sitting on it.
A miniature universe.
Focus.
The window was rippling because a heating vent was blowing the silvery shades up and down, up and down.
The universe was not a universe but a dusty diorama, slowly crystallizing into an actual and recognizable object.
It belonged to Ben. Ben’s diorama. Ben had stopped outside my door last night and gone, Ha . . .
But there’d been someone in this room last night.
I could swear it.
I’d been flitting in and out of half-remembered nightmares—that was old hat too—and when I managed to escape from a particularly terrifying one—I was chained to a tree at the bottom of a lake lit on fire—not exactly waking up, but not exactly sleeping either, someone was stroking my hair. And whispering to me.
Someone like Mom.
I stayed right there. In bed, which was really a couch, a couch bed, letting the sun creep through the shimmering blinds and up over my legs, like someone slowly pulling a warm woolen blanket up over me. I could hear waking-up sounds. They comforted me, those sounds: shuffling slippered feet, soft voices meant not to wake anyone, muted clanging from down in the kitchen.
What day was it?
Sunday.
I’d always had a kind of love-hate thing going with Sundays, since it was the first day of the rest of the week, and usually the rest of the week was going to suck. It was also the day they made newbies work at the Sioux City Mall, so you had to watch everybody else enjoying themselves on their day off, while you busted your ass fetching them BB&B catalogues and plastic hanger racks.
But before I joined the retail ranks, there’d be some Sundays where I actually did Sunday things. Like lying outside in the grass and picking out crazy shapes in the clouds or drawing my latest comic book—I’d started by tracing the Superman ones in Father’s stash. The hero of my comics was a thirteen-year-old girl with superpowers who was able to make herself invisible. Super Invisible Girl.
Ha! Just try and find me!
No need for invisible powers now.
I’m home, I thought.
Or said.
Or thought and said.
“I’m home.” This time purposely saying it out loud, so I could hear what it sounded like. Home at last. Home for good.
I sat up and looked for my jeans, which I could swear I’d flipped over the chair last night but were somehow missing. I looked on the floor, under the bed, in the closet, but they weren’t there either. I tried the bed, but when I lifted the blanket, I saw Goldy’s dead eyes staring back at me.
So now what?
I went over to the door and cracked it open. I was in a blue T-shirt and panties. Cheap lime-green H&M, with my tattoo peeking out over the left hip, the only tattoo I’d ever gotten because having a needle punch holes in your skin actually hurts like hell. Zonked on Xanax, I had thought it was a great idea at the time, which says something about great ideas, because afterward I’d wanted no part of it, even though it was part of me. VIDI. That’s Latin for I saw. The whole point of tattoos, as far as I could tell, was picking a language no one speaks, so people have to ask you what it means.
I saw, I’d tell them. That’s what it means.
Saw what?
Things.
What things?
Things you don’t want to know.
Which usually ended the conversation, because most people don’t want to know, even when they said they did.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
“Hey there,” Mom said, spying me through the crack in the door. “Good morning. Are you okay . . . ?”
“I can’t find my jeans.”
“Oh, sorry. Hope you don’t mind. They were kind of . . .”
“What?”
“In need of a wash. I was doing a load anyway, is that all right?”
“They’re my only clothes, and I didn’t know where they were.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Okay. Just didn’t know where they were, that’s all.”
“Sorry about that.”
“What do I, like, walk around in . . . ?”
“I have some sweats. Is that all right for now?”
“I guess.”
“Hold on.” She passed by the door on the way to her room, where I heard her rummaging around a drawer. She came back and pushed a pair of red sweatpants through the door, like someone sliding a meal tray into the cell of a possibly dangerous prisoner.
“Last night . . . ,” I asked, still holding the sweats in my hand, still talking to her through that crack in the door, “did you . . . ?”
“What . . . ?”
“I don’t know . . . come into my room? I kind of remember you being here . . .”
“You were having a nightmare, I think.”
“Why . . . was I saying anything?”
“Not saying anything. Just, I don’t know . . . agitated.”
“Oh.” It was like waking up draped over a car with that woman leaning over me. Someone seeing me do something when I didn’t know I’d been doing it.
“I held you till you calmed down. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy,” Mom said.
“Just not used to it,” I said.
“To being . . . comforted?”
“To privacy.”
“I understand. Look, Jenny, I know I’m going to be making mistakes here. A ton of them probably. It’s going to take a while for all of us to get reacquainted, right? We’re making up for a lot of lost time . . .”
Lost time, as if someone had simply misplaced it, draped it over a chair one night and woken up in the morning to find it missing.
“Oh . . . the FBI called.” Mom saying it the way she might’ve said, Uncle Brent called, or Oh, some guy selling life insurance called, as if it were a normal occurrence around here, getting personal telephone calls from the FBI.
“Why?” I said.
“Why? I think . . . I’m not sure about this, but I think the police, they need to alert the FBI when there’s a kidnapping across state lines . . . something like that. Anyway, they want to talk to you. The FBI. About the people who kidnapped you. This . . . Father and Mother. They need your help to find them.”
“I don’t know where they are. I can’t help them.”
“They’re hoping there’s things you do know. Things that might turn out to be important. They just want to talk to you, Jenny . . .”
“I don’t have the slightest idea where they are. None. They could be anywhere by now.”
Detective Mary had called the Sioux City police and directed them to the trailer. The deserted trailer, it turned out. Not surprising, Detective Mary had explained to Mom over the phone yesterday, since I’d left it more than two years ago, and they hadn’t really expected to find my kidnappers just sitting there waiting to invite the police in. Mom told me they’d be investigating the trailer for clues. Which is what they wanted to do to me now.
That crack in the door—I felt like shutting it. Like crawling back into bed and staying there for a long time.
“Look, Jenny,” Mom said softly, “I know this has to bring up horrible memories for you. I’m sure it’s the last thing in the world you want to do right now—talk about that. I get it. Would it help if I just put them off for a while?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“Thanks.”
“They’ll have to understand. I mean, we just got you back. You need a little time to . . . come to yourself. To just be Jenny again.”
“I am Jenny.”
“I know you are. I meant you need some time to . . . acclimate to things.”
“Sure.”
“Want some breakfast?” Mom asked, changing the subject.
“I’m starved,” I said, and I was, and for more than just breakfast.
When I got to the kitchen, Dad was staring out the window at the backyard, but he quickly turned and said good morning. He looked happy to see me but a little fuzzy on who I was, like my branch manager at Bed Bath & Beyond, who was always glad to see me show up but kept confusing me with another girl, named Josie.
“What about some eggs?” Dad asked me.
“You got any Nutella?”
“Nutella? What’s that?”
Mom had come in from the living room with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Yes,” she said. “What’s a Nutella?”
I blushed. “It’s like half-chocolate and half-nutty. I don’t know. You put it on bread.”
“Sorry,” Dad said. “All out.”
“I can go get some from the market,” Mom said. “Take me a minute.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “eggs are cool. Ummm . . . where’s Ben?”
“Ben?” Dad said, as if I’d just said Nutella again. “Ben doesn’t deign us with his presence until dinnertime. Ben sleeps.”
“Well, it’s Sunday.”
“Yeah, well, he sleeps on Saturdays too.”
“Ben’s in that phase,” Mom said. “Sorry about last night, by the way . . . how he acted.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Dad said. “You’re in good company. He acts that way with everybody.”
“I was kind of just dropped on him. It’s cool.”
“Glad you think so. How do you like them, sweetheart?” Dad asked. “Your eggs?”
“Sunny-side up,” I said.
After all, it kind of fit my mood.
I was really hungry,” I said, after slurping down the yolks in two seconds—I always saved them for last.
“You want more? Just take me a minute,” Mom said.
“I’m good.”
“The detective,” Mom said, “she told us you were out on your own. For like . . . over two years?”
I nodded.
“How did you manage?” she said softly. “I mean . . . what did you eat?”
“Nutella,” I said.
On the way back from the police station, Mom had promised they wouldn’t ask me any questions about what I’d been through unless I felt like talking about it. My days on the streets—that time between the worst thing that ever happened to me and the best—she must’ve felt that was a gray area.
“Where did you . . . sleep?” Mom asked tentatively, like she didn’t really want to hear the answer.
“Anywhere I could find. Not like I was used to staying in four-star hotels. I got by.” I decided to leave out the part about how I got by. She definitely wouldn’t want to hear about that.
We reverted to small talk.
Dad asking if I’d slept okay—Yeah, absolutely, even as I was wondering if Mom had told him about my nightmare. Mom telling me there was an extra toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet, and me saying thanks, Dad saying he hoped the warm weather would continue, and me agreeing that’d be nice, all right, the conversation doing some serious dwindling, and then pretty much coming to a stop. We were sitting around the kitchen table like nothing had changed, even though everything had.
“How about we get you a real bed today?” Mom said, breaking the silence, which seemed on its way to eternity.
“The couch is fine.” It was fine, more than fine compared to some things I’d slept on over the years. For one thing, there were no creepy crawlers in it. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite. For another thing, no one was going to try to come share it with me in the middle of the night.
“Don’t be silly,” Mom said, “you need a real bed now. And some clothes. Why don’t we take a trip to the Roosevelt Field Mall?”
Mom gave me a button-down shirt of hers, and my freshly cleaned jeans, which smelled of bleach. On the way to the mall, she let me blast the radio as loudly as I wanted.
We went to T.J.Maxx first. Every time I tried something on, I came out of the dressing room so Mom could see it on me.
Great, she’d say, or, I think you need a smaller size, or, You sure you like that color?
When she told me how pretty I looked in a yellow scoop-neck blouse, I said, “Thanks, Mom. For taking me shopping.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Jenny.”
The final tally: three pairs of skinny jeans, five tops, two sweaters, three pairs of shoes, a winter coat, ten pairs of Hanky Panky panties, and a brown leather belt.
In Bed Bath & Beyond I sat on three different beds because Mom said, “You need to try them out.” On the Sealy Posturepedic Plus with actual firmness controls, I pretended to conk out, closing my eyes and fake snoring. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Mom said. I opened my eyes and laughed, until I saw Mom staring at me with one of those “I’ve just seen a ghost” looks.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing . . . ,” she said.
“Seriously? Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry . . .”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Jenny. Nothing. It’s just . . . the detective yesterday—she asked us if you had any identifiable physical characteristics. Like beauty marks, things like that. You know, when we first got there, before we actually saw you . . .”
“Okay . . . ?”
“I told her how your eyes . . . they used to crinkle when you laughed.”
“Huh . . . ?”
“They just did. When you smiled.”
A saleswoman was staring at the bed as if she wanted me off it. The PA system was asking, Will the mother of Leshaun Washington please report to the front register. I didn’t feel like Sleeping Beauty anymore.
“They’re . . . beautiful, Jenny. Like little dimples.”
“If you say so.”
Say so . . . please . . . say so . . .
I ended up picking the bed without firmness controls, which I believe is for older people with bad backs; then we picked out three sets of sheets with floral patterns and a pink comforter.
When we went to pay for it, I stared at the girl across the counter, who looked about my age, and wondered if she was as bored as I used to be. Probably.
The bed came later that day, and two delivery guys in stained wifebeaters carried it up the stairs after they’d taken the couch bed down to the basement. “Now Ben has two places to sleep all day,” Dad said.
Speaking of which, he wasn’t there. Ben.
“He’s sleeping at Zack’s,” Dad said.
“Really?” Mom said. “On Jenny’s second day home?”
He shrugged, one of those “What are you going to do?” shrugs, which maybe had become second nature when it came to Ben.
“Jesus, Jake . . . ,” Mom said.
Later, I heard them furiously whispering about it, thinking they were out of earshot, which they might’ve been, if I hadn’t been snooping outside their bedroom door.
I only heard pieces of their back-and-forth, but it was enough.
“. . . hard on him . . .”
“. . . suddenly she shows . . .”
“. . . he’s angry . . .”
“. . . dammit . . .”
After dinner—Mom made spaghetti and meatballs, my second-favorite dish—Mom said she was going to call the rest of the family and tell them the good news, that she might even ask them to come over the next day to see me, the ones who lived close by, anyway, like Dad’s stepbrother, Brent. Only if that was okay with me, though?
“Sure,” I said.
When I woke up after another shitty night—I was stuck to my new bed as if I’d sweated through it—I thought they were already there, and that the family must’ve been bigger than I remembered, since it seemed like they’d all come at once to say good morning. It sounded like an honest-to-God commotion just outside my window.
I opened the blinds to tell them to please knock it off.