Juvie

My three-year-old niece, Lulu, sits alone at the kitchen table, eating a frozen waffle. It is early, barely sunrise, the day I have to turn myself in to juvie.

“Hi, Lulu,” I say as I stumble in. I haven’t really slept.

“Hi, Aunt Sadie,” she says back.

I pour myself a cup of coffee that smells hours old and sit next to where Lulu perches sideways on her booster seat.

“Where’s Carla?” I ask.

“Bathroom.” Only she pronounces it
baff
room. It kills me how she says that.

Carla is Lulu’s mom, my older sister. Lulu and Carla have spent the night so they can say good-bye one last time. Usually it’s just me and my mom in the house. Carla and Lulu have an apartment downtown that Carla pays for with child-support money. She’s twenty and waitresses at Friendly’s, even though most of her coworkers are stoned most of the time and she promised to get another job. Lulu goes to day care. Her dad is twenty-five and apart from the child support is out of the picture.

“What about Moo-Moo?” I ask. That’s what Lulu calls my and Carla’s mom.

“Bedroom.”

“Did Moo-Moo make the coffee, or did you?”

Lulu smiles. “Moo-Moo made it.”

“You want some?”

She shakes her head. “Too stinky.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Like monkey poo.”

Lulu laughs at that.

“Aunt Sadie?” she starts. I know what’s coming next, because she’s already asked me a hundred times. “Where you going again?”

I try a bite of her frozen waffle, which isn’t bad. I wonder if they have them in juvie. “It’s one of those missions they send me on sometimes,” I say. “For national security. Fighting terrorists.”

She blinks, waiting for a real answer.

“It’s just this place I have to go to because I got in trouble,” I say. “It’s called juvie. It’s kind of like day care for big kids, only I’m not allowed to come home at the end of each day. But I’ll be back soon. And I’ll think about you every day. I promise. And I’m pretty sure they’ll let me talk to you on the phone.”

She’s quiet for a minute, chewing on her waffle. I’m afraid she’s going to cry.

Then she asks if I can bring her back a Happy Meal.

“Yes, Lulu,” I say, relieved. “I will bring you back a Happy Meal. It just might be a while.”

Carla walks in right when I say that. Her hair is a wreck; she’s wearing socks and an oversize T-shirt I haven’t seen before. She looks gaunt, her face all sharp edges and shadows. I remember when she used to be so pretty, back before she met Lulu’s dad and started hanging out with druggies. She starts crying, which gets Lulu crying, too.

“I’m so, so, so sorry, Sadie,” Carla says, also for about the hundredth time, while I try to comfort Lulu, who doesn’t even really understand why she’s crying.

“You sure have a funny way of showing it.” I nod toward the Pop-Tart wrappers strewn across the counter. I’m wondering if maybe Carla smoked something last night after the rest of us went to bed and then raided the cupboard for anything sweet. “You better get rid of those.”

But Carla doesn’t move fast enough before Mom comes in, looking tired. And angry.

She brushes past Carla without saying anything, then grabs the wrappers and throws them in the trash. She must have already seen them when she came in earlier to make the coffee. She just wanted to make sure Carla knew.

She gives Lulu a big hug, then turns to me.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” she asks. I have on jeans and a sweatshirt.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shakes her head at me this time. “Couldn’t you at least put on a dress?”

“Can’t,” I say, though the last thing I want to do this morning is disappoint Mom. “I’m riding over on the motorcycle, remember?”

She doesn’t respond, just pats Lulu on the head. “I’m off to work, Bug,” she says. “You be good today, all right?”

“OK, Moo-Moo.”

Mom turns to me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you over there?” she asks. “I can take you on the bus, before I start my route.” Mom drives a school bus in the mornings and afternoons and then works evening shifts at Target.

“No, that’s OK,” I say.

She sighs hard and then pulls me to her. She smells like cigarettes, which I know better than to comment on.

“You be good, too,” she says. “And just, you know, just —”

She can’t finish.

“I’ll come on visiting day,” she says, and kisses me on the forehead. She grabs her purse and brushes past a sniffling Carla without saying a word. The sound of the door slamming makes me jump.

I don’t have to show up at juvie at any particular time, so I take Lulu back in the spare bedroom to help her get dressed for day care. I pretend I can’t figure out which hole her head goes through in her shirt. “No, Aunt Sadie!” She laughs. “That’s for the arm!” I pull Lulu’s pants on her next, and
then
her underwear, which cracks her up, too.

Carla is sitting at the kitchen table when we come out, Lulu finally dressed for real. Carla’s staring into a cup of coffee, still disheveled, her hair still a wreck. “Could you clean yourself up already?” I say, harsher than I intend. “I have to go, and you have to get Lulu to day care.”

I don’t wait for an answer, just grab a bag of stuff I’ve packed. Carla catches me before I reach the door, though — hugs me and kisses me on the cheek and whispers some more about how sorry she is. I pull away.

Lulu follows me outside to where my motorcycle is parked. I bought it used last year when I was sixteen and got my license. I had to have some way to get to work, and Mom couldn’t afford a second car. Plus I had wanted a motorcycle since the first time I’d ridden on one, back when Carla was dating this guy with a Harley. I loved the thrill I got when he let me ride on the back. Mom was mad at me at first, but since I used my own money, there wasn’t too much she could say.

Carla stands at the back door and waves, still holding her coffee.

Lulu picks up a pebble from the driveway. “For you.”

I hold it in my hand. “Pretty heavy. What is it? Gold?”

“No,” she says. “A rock.”

I hand it back. “You better keep it for me while I’m gone. Will you do that? Keep it someplace special?”

She nods. Her chin quivers. “I love you, Aunt Sadie.”

I lift her up on the bike with me and hug her so tight I can feel all her bones.

“Love you, too,” I say.

“Love you three.”

“Love you four.”

“Love you more.”

I have one more person to see before I turn myself in to juvie: my dad. He lives half a mile away in a wing of Granny’s old house down a gravel road. Granny died three years ago, not long after Lulu was born; one of the last things she ever got to do was hold Lulu. She made Mom the executor of her estate, which wasn’t much besides the house, a big wood-frame place with a wraparound porch. Two engineers, a husband and wife, rent the main part of the house. But they spend most of their time commuting to their jobs up in DC, so aren’t around much. Dad got what was left, an addition off the side with a separate porch and entrance — enough room for him to do his hoarding thing. He also has access to three large sheds on his end of the property. There isn’t any mortgage, so the rent and Dad’s disability check cover his expenses. Either Mom or I bring him groceries and leave them on the porch once a week. If he needs anything else, he leaves us a note in a Tupperware container, also on the porch.

I see right away that the renters haven’t been mowing, though I got on them about it a couple of weeks ago. The weeds come halfway up the wheels on my motorcycle, which pisses me off. I make a note to have Mom talk to them about it the next time she comes by.

I wade through the weeds and onto the porch, squeezing past piles of junk. The wind picks up while I stand there by Dad’s door, not knocking. It blows gently through the trees that surround the property and shade the house, and is probably my favorite sound in the world. I close my eyes for a minute and listen. It’s like a symphony of whispers. I figure this might be the last time I hear it for a while, so I want to capture the sound and keep it with me as long as possible.

The wind dies after a little while and I finally make myself knock. I don’t know how many times over the past three years I’ve done that and then waited and waited on the chance that Dad will actually answer. Floorboards creak inside, which could be him tiptoeing around, but which could also be the settling sounds of an old house.

“Dad,” I say, leaning my head against the door. “It’s me, Sadie. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going away today. I have to turn myself in to juvie. You remember. I told you all about it — what happened with me and Carla. And Carla, she’s OK. She started going to AA and swears she’s going to keep it up while I’m gone. I know she’s said that before, but I think she means it this time. She was so scared when she thought —” I clear my throat. “Well, anyway, I just thought you should know.”

I pause, not sure what else to say. It isn’t as if I need anything from Dad, or expect anything, which is good because Dad’s not really in a position to help anyone these days, not even himself. But Granny always said that everybody has a purpose, even if you can’t see what it is. Her purpose, the last years she was alive, was taking care of Dad. I can’t figure out what Dad’s purpose is now, except for wandering around pig paths carved in the towering piles of paper and junk he can’t stop himself from collecting. But he’s my dad, and even if I don’t know what his real purpose is, I know that one of mine is to keep coming over here and checking on him, and I guess to be a good daughter, or as good as I know how.

“I have to go now, Dad,” I say to the door. “I’ll write you letters. Not that you need any more paper or anything.” I laugh lamely. “I hope you’ll read them. I hope you’ll write me back.”

I wend my way off the porch and am halfway to my bike when I stop. I change direction and head around back to the toolshed. I fill the mower with gas and spend the next hour and a half cutting the grass. I do the weedy areas twice to make sure I get everything. Weeds have a way of lying down under a mower and then springing back up once you’re past. I get sweaty in my jeans and sweatshirt, but since the only place I’m going is juvie, I figure it doesn’t really matter.