But still, something was missing.
Her hands.
They were empty.
No blue satin.
No ribbon.
Ripping her from the carpet with my fingers under her arms, I plonked her on my hip and turned to face the woman. “Her ribbon. Where is it?”
Her two boys continued to reap anarchy as she slowly put down the phone.
“What ribbon?”
Della squirmed in my arms. I squeezed her tight in warning. “The blue ugly thing she loves.”
The woman glanced over my shoulder toward the trash can in the corner.
My teeth clenched. “You threw it away?” Marching toward the can, I manhandled Della so I could hold her with one arm, ripped up the lid with the other, then dropped it before ploughing my hand straight through eggshells and bacon rind until I found the slipperiness of her disgusting ribbon. The moment I pulled it free with new stains and old, Della snatched it.
I wanted to snatch it right back. It needed a wash, but for now, I had other problems to take care of.
Turning back to the woman, we stared some more until she finally admitted, “I called the police. You can’t take her.”
I stepped toward her. “I’m leaving.”
“Just because I let you into my home doesn’t mean I’ll let you take anything out of it.” She slithered from my path, putting the bench in our way. “You can’t take her. You can’t just steal a person like you stole our food.”
Ignoring her tirade on my theft, I said calmly, “I can take her, and I am.” Placing Della by the sink, I tapped her nose. “Don’t fall off. It will hurt.”
She planted her hands—complete with threaded ribbon through her fingers—on the granite and pressed her little sneakered feet against the cabinets below. Trusting her not to be stupid, I wrenched my heavy backpack from the floor.
She would no longer be able to travel on my back.
The extra complication should’ve layered me with doubt, misgivings, and hate.
Not anymore.
Now, I only looked for solutions.
Glancing around the welcoming space, I fell upon a laundry rack drying a mismatch of baby clothes and sheets.
Giving the woman a sharp look, I strode toward the rack and ripped off a few t-shirts, shorts, and jumpers all in blues, blacks, and browns for little boys.
They would fit Della. They’d be too big right now, but she’d grow. We both would.
At the last second, I stole a sheet then stuffed the baby clothes into my backpack, wrapped the sheet around my neck and back and copied what I’d seen Mrs Mclary do when she’d carried Della out to the fields to see her husband.
A sort of pouch on my chest to support Della’s butt with her legs on either side of my waist and arms poking out the sides. She would be a nuisance. I wouldn’t be able to travel far with her weight and our supplies.
But for now, my time had run out, and we were leaving.
Della gurgled something happy as I marched toward her and ducked a little to put her legs in the wrapped sheet first. Once in position, I slipped her into the hammock on my belly and tested the knots around my waist and neck.
Claustrophobia drenched my blood being so burdened, but my mouth watered for the forest.
Sirens sounded on the breeze, far enough away not to be urgent but close enough to warn they were coming. And quickly.
Storming past the woman, I stopped and stared. “You didn’t want her. I changed my mind, and I do.”
Her mouth opened and closed as I unlocked the back door.
“You’re a kid. Where are you going to go?”
“Home.” I shrugged. “We’re going home.”
“And parents? Do you have someone to take care of you?”
Heat filled my limbs, a fiery sort of scorn that put her beneath me. “I’ll take care of her.”
The woman shook her head. “But you? Who will take care of you?”
The door swung wide as a gust of sweet-smelling air swirled in, leaves dancing over the welcome mat, tree branches bristling with speed.
I was being called just as surely as the sirens were running me out of town.
As the police wail grew louder, I stepped from her house and smiled. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I have her. She has me. Family takes care of each other.”
Not waiting for a reply, I half-ran, half-stumbled over her lawn, unbalanced with Della’s weight.
I didn’t look back as I raced through suburbia, chased the wind, and then vanished into the forest.
We were just figments of her imagination.
Ghosts she thought she saw.
Children she thought she’d met but would never remember.
CHAPTER NINE
REN
* * * * * *
2000
THAT FIRST NIGHT, I travelled as far and as long as I could.
Della didn’t grumble or squirm, no matter how many times I stumbled over tree roots that I couldn’t see with her on my chest or ducked under low-lying branches.