Page 8 of And Still Her Voice
***
A squawking mockingbird jangled my nerves before the first light. In the bowels of Verdugo Park, perched on a huge river stone inside the cold tunnel, I’d snatched at a stingy sleep, shivering until dawn, my head throbbing the whole time. I stood, hiking my gown before squatting to pee over the sound of frogs and then, emerging like a tadpole, I adjusted my eyes to the new day and sidestepped a spider’s web at the exit. Grandma spider lady already had me in her web.
A brown bunny scampered across a bed sheet of white frost covering the ground. I stomped my feet to get my blood going, and as I blew to defrost icicle fingers, I could see my little puffs of breath. My hands were freezing; my nail beds were blue. I panicked. Am I dying?
“No, you just need to eat,” Grandma said, “so we can live.”
I’d rather die. I grinned, thinking I still had control over whether I ate or not. I stuffed my hands into my sweater pocket and felt the little chocolate Easter egg I’d saved and reluctantly popped it into my mouth, the juices coming alive in my mouthwhen I realized I was still in my nightgown. Reaching into my knapsack, I grabbed the hand-sewn maxi skirt and slipped it on over my gown. I then trudged over onto the highway to wait with my guitar and knapsack strapped to my back. How hard could it be? Stick out your thumb, a car stops and, it’s strawberry fields forever.
“Anna, you’re a smart girl—not so street smart. Let’s go back. This can all be fixed.”
“Like I’m your little pot of liquid gold used to repair our broken family and make us stronger. I’m not one of your fancy antique vases.”
I decided not to call my cousin—at least, not yet. I stuck out my thumb.
***
After a while, a dusty green Ford Econoline van pulled over. Behind the wheel sat a young woman. Her long frizzy braids swung pendulum-like across her lap and a cigarette poked out of the skinny leather band tied around her forehead. In the passenger seat sat a girl with long, licorice-colored hair, probably around my age. A hand pulled back the curtains on a small porthole-type window on the side of the van. Through the smudged glass I made out some others in the back gawking at me like tiny goldfish inside a giant fish bowl. The driver’s bangled arm reached across to tap the passenger who rolled down the window. “Dig the maxi. Where you headed, babe?” the driver asked, leaning toward me.
Flattered out of any good sense, I answered, “Griffith Park.”
Inside, I heard someone say, “Us, too.” The hand closed the curtain and the side door slid open, blasting out a haze of smoke. The interior reeked of body odor and pot, that same skunky smell in Dad’s garage. “Hop in.”
Gurgling crept up my windpipe. “Anna, call Teddie. Don’t get in! It’s all my fault.”
No argument there. But there was no swimming back upstream for this little salmon. As I climbed in, the oyster light on the ceiling went out. I took a moment for my eyes to make friends with the dark before finding a spot amongst the others. The van lurched forward and I stumbled to the floor, landing directly across from a dark-haired man seated cross-legged on the floor.
“Meet Charlie,” the driver said.
Somewhere in his thirties, maybe my father’s age, he sat between a raven-haired girl and an acne-faced boy. Across him sat a blonde Barbie-look-alike. Every cell in my body sparked at the sight of the man in the dark with my father’s name. I had the burning sensation I’d just jumped out of the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
“What’s your name?” Charlie asked. I dared to look through the curtain of my hair as the light from the windshield bounced off his dark, searing eyes.
Alarms sounded in my gut, signaling my brain something wrong. So far out of my element, I felt as if I’d been hit by a tsunami of oddballs, choking and drowning inside this sinking ship. Grandma Phoebe had always been super sensitive to these signs, something she always nagged me about.Anna, trust your instincts,she shrieked white in my head now. I shouldn’t have been here. I reached into my pocket to feel for my packet of matches.Don’t talk to thisman. He could be dangerous.
But he looked scrawny, under a white T-shirt, baggy jeans, and black boots, like I could take him. Patting the knife under my skirt, I tried to calm down and stop shaking. Being homeschooled hadn’t prepared me for this. I had no social skills or any practice on how to have a proper conversation with most humans, much less a man. If only people were as easy for me to diagram as thosesentences Mamá had me work on—mostly so she could understand subject and predicate.See Dick Run. Anything I’d learned about relationships came from witnessing my parents’ twisted interactions and those sneak peeks at the Million Dollar Movies when they left me home alone. Wasn’t everyone a macho mobster? Didn’t everyone talk like Bogey and Bacall inKeyLargo?
“Your name?” he asked again. “I heard you talking to Caroline, so I know you’re not deaf.” So that’s the driver’s name.
I remembered Nora inKey Largodid a lot without saying much. “What’s it to you?” I replied, stiffening like a petrified clown fish, yet trying to appear self-assured and shark-like powerful, as if I could go it alone without Grandma. And then he laughed, spittle splashing my face, the crevasse in his chin growing wide enough to swallow a minnow.
“Anna,” I murmured, before adding, “you have my dad’s name.” Immediately, I regretted volunteering this unnecessary information.
“Hear that everyone, her old man’s name is Charlie.”
“Her old man’s name is Charlie,” Pimple Boy repeated, trying to light a joint.
Smirking, Charlie leaned in a little closer. “If Dad’s anything like me, it’s no wonder you’re inside this van. Is he the reason you’re running away?”
It felt like a bucket of ice cubes got dumped down my back. “I just want to go enjoy the music,” I responded, tapping my guitar, my heart thrumming.
The crack of his laugh could have pierced my eardrums. “How sweet. You dig music. Child, play us a tune.”
“I’m not a child.” A little unruffled duck on the surface, but beneath, I kicked my Mary Janes frantically.
Sneering now, eyes like a measuring tape, he sized me up. “Oh, no? Shouldn’t you be home playing with your baby dolls?”
“I never played with dolls.”
