I’d never set foot inside the baby store at the mall with its pale blue sign above the window and the rows of sleepers, dresses and pants so tiny they’d fit Esther Penner’s perfect dolls.
I ran my fingers across display cases of baby booties and smiley-face bibs and hairbands for bald baby heads. I’d neglected to ask if Baby Metcalf was a he or she, but yellow or mint green would work for either sex so I loaded up my cart with one of everything in those colors.
Moms with strollers and Dads carrying babies in snugglies milled around the aisles laughing and chatting. Pastel colored posters of smiling cherubs beamed down on me, reminding me of Birdie’s broken dreams.
Shoving my purchases towards the pink-cheeked sales clerk with the blonde ponytail and unicorn-covered smock, I paid cash. Threw out a wad of fifties and tens and fives so she had to sort through it, glancing up at my frowning face every couple of minutes. I could sense her confusion. Why aren’t you happy? A baby brings joy to a home. You should be brimming with hope for the future.
“Just put it all in the same package,” I said, unnerved by the polished gloss of instant happiness that exuded from the place.
“I’m going as fast as I can, ma’am,” she said. Finally I grabbed the bags, stumbled through the door into the mall and breathed in the tropical scent of air freshener. My shoulders instantly relaxed. I headed towards the coffee bar and promised myself a fat, sticky pastry. A sugar fix was exactly what I needed.
I saw Birdie a month or so after the car incident. The last week of school before summer break.
An early heat spell had charred the grass to a dull brown and polluted the air with dust. Sizzling heat pressed down on everything, blanketing me in sweat. It got so bad I actually caved in and showered in Patti and Lester’s moldy tub. Patti had given up housework months ago so the place was rancid.
The air conditioner was bust so they lay on the couch most days, a creaky fan whirring around in front of them, barely stirring the heavy air. Patti usually shoved a couple of bills into my hands and told me to go to the store for slushies and hot dogs. That’s what I lived on those weeks before the summer break. The fridge was empty. Nobody bothered to go shopping any more. Any spare cash went to Tray and Anita and a troupe of other junkie scarecrows who showed up wherever a good time could be had.
Birdie left a message shoved into my locker to meet her in a diner just a couple of blocks away from the school. I was starving and hoped she’d buy me supper. Two months of leftover noodles warmed up day after day had left me craving a fat, juicy burger and hot fries with ketchup.
I barely recognized her when I walked in. She sat at a window seat. Sunlight blazed through the blinds casting a shadow of slats across her bony chest. Her face was so thin the skin looked transparent. A network of bluish veins spread like a web around her temples. Her eyes were sunk into dark sockets. She chewed on her nails and I noticed a bald patch above her ear where she’d been pulling her hair out.
“What’s up?” I said, sliding into the seat opposite noticing how she persistently drummed her knee on the underside of the table. “You look like shit.”
“Screw you,” she said, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers.
The waitress, a lumpy fortyish woman with spiked burgundy hair swept up to the table. “You have to order. It’s not a drop-in center.”
Birdie looked right through her, reached into her purse and slid a couple of fives onto the table. “Two coffees. One black and…”
“One with triple cream. And an order of fries,” I added.
Burgundy-hair shuffled away mumbling to herself and I looked at Birdie. I wasn’t going to ask again.
“The baby’s gone,” she said, staring vacantly out onto the street.
I breathed an inner sigh of relief. “You lost it?”
She shook her head. “They made me kill it.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. She wiped her arm across her face and I handed her a napkin. Next thing she’d be blowing snot bubbles like she did when she was a kid.
“Who made you do that?” I leaned back as the waitress placed the coffees onto the table. She glanced at Birdie but I glared up at her. Didn’t want any of her fake concern.
“That guy I was seeing. Said he’d changed his mind and couldn’t deal with the responsibility. And his wife would make his life hell for him if he left her. She’d take more than half his money and business. Then Earl found out and told me I had to get rid of it. Just like that. They sucked my baby out in a few minutes.”
“Did your guy tell Earl about the baby?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I loved him. He said he wanted me to have his babies because together our kids would be the best. So I didn’t take my pills. I thought he loved me. He told me over and over again.”
“Don’t you know he was lying to you, Birdie?” I grasped at her skinny wrist and tried to get her to look at me, but she just shook her head and stared down at the table, jabbing at her paper napkin with a fork. “There’s no way he’d let some teenage whore’s brat pollute the happy family home.”
She looked up at me with wounded eyes, but I had to keep going. Had to make her see sense. I remembered the fine-skinned boy in the BMW. “He has a kid already.”
“How do you know that?” she said, tears running down her cheeks and a tiny dribble running from her nose to her lip. I felt as if some evil hand was clawing at my heart, squeezing the breath from me.
“I saw him.”
She glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “So it was you sneaking around out there. You scared him off.”
“You’re crazy. You think that guy would leave his fancy wife and kid for you?”
Her eyes drifted back to the street again. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking any more. That connection between us was long gone.
She looked back at me with those sad, puppy eyes. “I knew about his son, but he said the kid was going off to college and wouldn’t need him anymore, so he’d be free.”
“And you believed him?”
“He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him.”
I asked myself which soap operas this guy had been watching to come up with bullshit lines like that. “Did he tell you that when he had his hand up your schoolgirl panties or when he was spanking your bare ass?”
She doubled over and retched into her napkin. Burgundy hair flew over so quick her feet barely touched the floor. “You need help, honey?” she said, hovering over Birdie then glaring at my wild mane of hair, which was tangled and greasy after a year’s deliberate neglect.
“Fries and ketchup?” I said, realizing she’d probably spit on them before she brought them to me. I didn’t care. I’d eaten worse at the Flatts’ place.
“Now he’s gone. Finished with me. And he won’t return my calls. And Earl’s pissed,” whispered Birdie, her eyes darting to the door. “I mean really pissed. We’re not supposed to contact the clients. He says I’m becoming a pain in the ass.”
My skin felt cold and prickly despite the hum of heat. I reached out to her. Clasped her hand. “You don’t have to go back to him. We can leave here.”
“What can I do? Go back to Lester’s hellhole?”
“We’ll run away,” I said, my body feeling suddenly lighter. I’d been waiting for this chance to get Birdie alone to talk some sense into her. But I had to make sure about something first. “What about Loni? You still hanging with her?”
Birdie picked at a dried spot of ketchup on the table. Eased it off with her fingernail. “Haven’t seen her in months. Don’t know where she is. Nobody knows. She never came back from the ships. Earl says she got sick, but I haven’t heard a word.”
“And I guess there’s no search parties out looking for her?”
“Why would they? Nobody cares. You don’t either. You’re probably glad she’s gone.”
I couldn’t lie to her, so I said nothing. Just waited until she was calm again.
“So there’s just the two of us again. Like the old times. We’ll run away somewhere. Get the hell out of the city. Hitch a ride up north. Maybe even ride all the way up to Canada.”
The fries appeared and Birdie actually ate a few. Dipped them daintily into the paper cup of ketchup. I tried to hold myself back from stuffing them down three or four at a time. I was so hungry I couldn’t fill my mouth quickly enough.
“Could we really get there?” she said, a smile twitching at the corner of her lips.
I nodded in between bites. “I bet we could find Dennis if we tried.” The food and the idea of being with Birdie were making me dizzy.
She shrugged. “I have money and we can sell some of my stuff. There’s enough to keep us going for a while. Until we get a job.”
“We could be waitresses,” I said, a spark of hope crackling inside me.
She rested her elbows on the table and smiled. “Maybe I could work in a clothes store. Or do makeup at Dayton’s.”
She grinned and we clasped hands. Suddenly I knew she was back. For real.
“We’re gonna do it tonight,” I said. “I’ll come back to your place with you now. Make sure you’re okay. Then we’ll head out on the road. Maybe even get a bus.”
A cloud passed over her face. “Remember Esther and her dolls?”
I nodded.
“I dreamed about my baby. How beautiful she would be.” Tears oozed from the corners of her eyes. “She was perfect. Like those dolls. But so soft and pretty. She smelled like soap and powder and I held her in my arms. I sang to her and told her I’d always be there to protect her from all the bad things no matter what. She was so small. I touched every tiny toe and counted her fingers. When I cuddled her she looked up at me and I knew she loved me. More than anybody else in the world. She’d always love me.”
Birdie had always ached to hold Esther’s dolls. She’d even pressed her face to the glass so hard, Esther had to push her aside and make me polish away the smudges left by her sticky nose and mouth.
“I love you like that, Birdie,” I whispered. “We’ll be okay together.”
She smiled through tears, and our hands clasped so tight I felt the old electricity again. The charge that bonded us together. Sisters. Forever. “I love you too, Anna, and I’m sorry about Loni and the way we hurt you.”
“I forgot about that already,” I said, my heart so big in my chest I thought it would burst.
“But you gotta wait here for now,” she said, getting up. “Don’t want anyone getting suspicious. I’ll be back in an hour.”
I pushed my chair back. “No. I’m coming with you. I’ll stay hidden just to make sure you get out okay.”
She smiled at me with real love in her eyes. Again, like the old times. “Always looking out for me, Anna. You never change. But this time you’ll have to trust me.”
My heart thudded so hard it seemed deafening. I couldn’t let her out of my sight. She’d never come back. I knew if she walked away it would be the end.
The diner door swung shut and I watched her disappear down the street, walking with that awkward pigeon-toed limp. She crossed into a shimmer of heat that scrambled her figure into a thousand wavy lines until she was gone. As if she’d never been there.
My sister. My Birdie.
Gone from the empty chair across from me. The faint scent of cigarette smoke the only evidence she’d been there.
Birdie was here.
Only a minute ago. Wasn’t she?
I picked at a cold fry, dropped it back into the bowl without even touching it to my lips. It felt cold and heavy like a dead finger.
I waited there until burgundy-hair threw me out a couple of hours later. Then I hung around outside till it was dark. I left just after ten.
Back at the Flatts’ place, bodies were passed out on the couches, chairs and floor. Six of them stretched out, the pipe lying unguarded on the table. I lit the tiny crumbs of meth left in the bowl and inhaled deep, waiting for the smoke to blast me into oblivion. To a place where there was no image of Birdie cringing under a sweating pig of a captain in the stuffy cabin of some rusty tanker up north, while the rest of the crew punched, cursed and jostled each other into a lineup outside her door.
A couple of weeks later I pulled myself up from my stupor. After a few days without a hit I saw the grime in every crack on the ceiling, every spore of mold that spread in damp patches down the wall and I couldn’t turn that dark feeling off. I knew eventually I’d have to get myself up and out of that prison.
One evening Lester and Patti actually went out. Made the effort to drag themselves to Tray and Anita’s dump of a place two blocks away. I’d seen them there before, with a crowd of deadbeats slouched on the steps outside, drinking beer, smoking and waiting for the next hit.
I ate a hasty supper of leftover hot dogs then walked to Birdie’s apartment building, avoiding Tray and Anita’s place. Once there I sat by the cedar bush to watch for her.
The pink curtains were gone, but someone moved across the window. Hope soaring in my heart, I raced over to the door just as a guy leading a chocolate lab stepped out. I slipped around him and into the lobby before he could protest.
Birdie’s floor was silent so I sat by the elevator, waiting for her door to open. I didn’t want to knock and get her in trouble so I stayed still like a zombie, my head reeling because I needed a hit of something but I had no way to get it. I must’ve been tired because I fell asleep. When I woke up, the moon was full, like an orange disc in the hallway window. I gazed at it, hypnotized, as if I’d somehow slipped into another life. Someone had placed a bottle of water and a bag of chips next to me. I wolfed them down, cramming handfuls into my mouth even though I tasted nothing but oil and salt. Then I remembered Birdie. Maybe she’d left them. Maybe it was a sign that she was okay.
I scrambled to my feet, ran to her door and smacked it hard, slapping the wooden panels with the flat of my hand.
“Birdie, it’s me. Open the goddamn door!” I screamed over and over.
Nothing. Not even the sound of breathing. I smashed at the door again, this time with my fists, calling for her, my voice cracking with the pressure of tears. The door next to Birdie’s smacked open, bouncing off the wall. A guy in a plaid robe stuck his head out.
“Nobody lives there, so stifle the noise or I’ll call the cops,” he yelled, slamming his door shut again.
I fell to my knees and flopped forward onto my stomach. If I could only look under that door I might catch her making tea or doing her laundry or painting her nails. But all I saw was the moonlight streaming through her window and all I could feel was the bone crushing, choking sadness that comes when you realize you’re totally and absolutely alone in the world.