Marrow (5 page)

“Mo,” I say. “Little Mo.” He won’t break his gaze with the bushes. I start whistling. I’m a fairly accomplished whistler; Judah looks up from where he’s doing wheelies on the sidewalk. Little Mo turns his face to me.

“Finally,” I say. “It hurts my feelings when you don’t pay attention to me.”

I whistle him a song I’ve heard on the radio at work. He smiles a little. When Big Mo comes back to the door, he reaches down to take the baby and slips a couple baggies in my lap. I stand up and dust off my pants. Mo leans against the doorframe. “Your mom okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Same as always.”

“She used to babysit me, when I was real little.”

I keep my face blank, but I’m more than surprised. She never told me. Not that she tells me shit.

I leave the wad of twenties on the stairs.

“Bye Little Mo,” I say. But the door’s already shut. I put the baggies into my Groceries & Shit bag.

When I reach the street, Judah looks at my bag.

“Those for you?”

“Nah, my mom’s a prescription pill druggie.”

He looks relieved. “Even if they were, you’d have no right to judge, pot head.”

“Marijuana is different,” he says. He pronounces it mari-jew-wana.

“No. It’s all an addiction. Emotional, physical. You do it because you need it. It doesn’t matter if your body craves it or not. Your mind does.”

“I like you,” he says.

I’m surprised.

He walks me home. He wheels me home. Which is better, because anyone can walk you home. I don’t let him get right to the house. Everyone knows what my mom is, but you still don’t want anyone to see it first hand.

“What are you addicted to?” he asks me before I can say goodnight.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask him.

He nods his head knowingly. “Sarcasm,” he says.

I shift my Groceries & Shit bag from one arm to the other.

“Food,” I say. “Namely Honey Buns. But, if it’s processed, I’ll take it.”

No use keeping secrets in a place where everyone airs their sins. Mine is gluttony.

“I’m fat,” I tell him. And then I add, “Because I eat Honey Buns for dinner.”

“You’re not fat,” he says. I don’t stay to hear what he says next. I beeline for the front door.

A FEW DAYS AFTER
I CONFESSED
to Judah Grant about my Honey Bun addiction, there is a knock on the front door.

Pra pa pa pa pa

I am trying to glue the sole of my sneaker back on when I hear the knock. I’m so startled I drop the shoe and the tub of gorilla glue. I stand frozen, not sure what to do, watching the amber stuff leak onto the linoleum. No one comes to the eating house at this time of day, not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I glance up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom with my heart still raging. She won’t wake up for another few hours. My mother has severe agoraphobia, not to mention the paranoia and the prescription pill addiction. If she were awake right now, she’d be tossing little white pills in her mouth and sweating bullets. Nights she left the door open for her men, just so she wouldn’t have to hear them knock.

Ra pa pa pa.
Louder this time.

I pad, barefoot, to the door, and peer through the eyehole. A cluster of humans is crowded in front of the eating house. They are all different sizes and ethnicities, packed together under the slight overhang to remove themselves from the rain. I latch the security chain before I unlock the door. Then I peer through the gap at their hodgepodge group.

“Yes?”

A man, near the front of the group, steps forward and shoves a piece of paper at my face. He’s grizzly looking, with a gray beard and a brown head of hair. I look from him to the paper. There is a little girl’s face in the center; she has pigtails and two missing front teeth. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? is written in bold, black letters along the bottom. A chill creeps up my spine.

“We are part of a search team for Nevaeh Anthony,” he tells me. “Have you seen this little girl?”

I slam the door shut and unlatch it. When I throw it open, everyone, including me, looks surprised.
Seen her? Seen her?
I see her every day. I saw her what…? Two days ago? Three? I take the paper from him.

“Wh-when?” I ask him. I press my palm against my forehead. I feel funny. Clammy and sick.

“Mother says she hasn’t seen her since Thursday. Got on a bus to see her gramma and never came back?”

Thursday … Thursday was the day I braided her hair.

“I saw her on Thursday,” I say. I step out of the house and pull the door shut behind me. “I’m coming with you.”

He nods at me real slow. “You have to go down to the po-lice station. Let them know what you seen,” he says. “When they done with you, we’ll be canvassing this whole area. From Wessex to Cerdic. You come find us, hear?”

I nod. I’m running down Wessex, barefoot, my fat jiggling around my body like jello, when I hear Judah call my name.

I stop, breathing hard.

“You seen her?” he calls. His brow is furrowed, and he’s pushing himself up out of his chair by his arms so he can see me.

“On Thursday,” I yell back. He nods. “Where are your shoes?”

“They broke.” I shrug.

“Go! Go!” he says. I run—fast and barefoot.

I wait for Detective Wyche at his desk while he gets himself a cup of coffee. When I walked in, the first thing he did was ask where my shoes were. “I need to speak to the detectives in charge of the Nevaeh Anthony case,” I said, ignoring his question. He looks startled for a minute, then he leads me to his desk, announcing that he needs a cup of joe. He has bobble heads of the last ten presidents lined up around his computer. I examine my filthy feet and wonder how a person’s shoes can fail them on a day like this. I’m bleeding in a couple places where the sidewalk nicked me.
Even the sidewalk in the Bone is broken
, I think.

Detective Wyche comes back with his partner—a much fatter, older man with sweat stains around his armpits. He grunts loudly when he sits down next to me. He smells of Old Spice and desperation. They question me for two hours while I bounce my knees up and down and wish I could have a cup of coffee, too. I don’t ask for one, because I’ve been taught to believe it’s wrong to ask for things. You suffer quietly so no one has the right to call you a pussy. Detective Old Spice takes the lead. He wants to know when I last saw Nevaeh.

On the seventeen bus; she was going to her grandma’s, I was going to work. I don’t know exactly where her grandma lives.

What was she wearing?

Red tights and a T-shirt with a smiley face emoji that said:
Don’t text your ex.
When I say that, Detective Wyche raises his eyebrows.
Oh shut up,
I want to say.
Nobody has money for clothes.

Did she say anything unusual?

No, she was happy. Normal.

Did she have any bruises on her arms and legs? Not that I could see.

Did she ever mention anything about abuse? No. She spoke a lot about her grandma. She loved to be with her.

Do I know Nevaeh’s mother, Lyndee Anthony? Just in passing.

We’ve never spoken? And on and on it goes. When I finally think it’s over, they ask me all of the same questions in a different way.

I walk home in the rain, my feet throbbing, and grab my raincoat. It’s getting dark. I wonder how long the search party will look for her in this weather. It’s too late to find them now.

I am walking down Wessex with a pile of the posters I took from the detectives when Judah wheels himself in my path. I stare at him blankly before he hands me a pair of rain boots.

“They’re my mom’s,” he says. “She doesn’t use them.”

I take the boots. They are green with red cherries. I pull them on my bare feet without saying a word.

“Give me some.” He holds out his hand, and I slide a thick stack of posters between his fingers. We decide to hand out the flyers at Wal-Mart. Neither of us speaks. I’m not entirely sure Judah knows Nevaeh; he never had reason to run into her, but his face is drawn and pale. That’s how it is in the Bone. You are scared for yourself, mostly, but sometimes you are scared for someone else. As for me, I know what it is like to be a kid, and to be alone. When we run out of posters, we go home.

“We had to shove them at people,” I say. “It’s like no one wanted to look.”

“You have to understand something about the Bone,” Judah says. “Every bad thing that happens here reminds people of what they’re trying to forget. When you’re rich and you see stuff like this on TV, you hug your children and feel grateful it’s not you. When you’re from the Bone, you hug your children and pray you’re not next.”

I’m quiet for a long time, thinking about this. I’ve been sitting alone in a dark room with a box of Honey Buns for so long that it’s nice to talk.

“Why don’t they do something? Why don’t we do something? We could all leave here—every last one of us—and go look for something better.”

“It’s not that easy,” Judah says. “The Bone is in our marrow. It’s complacency and fear handed down from generation to generation.”

Judah stops at a food truck and studies the menu. I wait for him under the stubby metal awning of the bus top, trying to stay warm. The guys behind the window seem to know him. They step out of the truck to bring him his bag of food, which he sets on his lap when he wheels over to me.

“Dinner,” he says.

I sit awkwardly as he doles out tacos and chips onto napkins he puts on our laps. There are little cups of bright red salsa to go with everything, and a large fizzing cup of Coke. It’s the first time someone’s bought me dinner.

The rain is a fine mist tonight, but it’s not overly cold. If Nevaeh is outside—hurt or something—she won’t freeze. I hate that I’m thinking that.

“Where could she be?” I ask, gingerly picking up a chip. “This is a small town. Hardly any strangers even come through here.”

“Maybe she ran away,” Judah says. His mouth is full of taco. I can smell the cilantro and meat. “You know how little kids are around here. I used to want to run away once a week when I was her age. I probably would have if I had the legs to do it.”

I shake my head. “No, she’s not like that.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m just trying to make myself feel better.”

I nibble on the chip I’m holding, crunching it between my two front teeth like a gopher.

“Did you know her?”

He hesitates. “Yeah…” He licks the sour cream from the corner of his mouth and continues eating.

I try to think of all the ways he could have come in contact with Nevaeh and come up empty. Nevaeh didn’t live on Wessex; she lived on Thames Street, two down, one over. She went to school, she caught the bus to her grandma’s, she played on her street, but never wandered farther than the end of the block. How does a crippled, college-aged man know a second grade girl?

“Why aren’t you eating?” he asks.

Because I don’t want you to think I’m fat.

“Not that hungry, I guess.”
I am so hungry.

He sets his taco down and stares at me. Pieces of lettuce tumble off his lap and onto the ground. “If you don’t eat, I’m not eating. And then you’ll be responsible for starving a cripple.”

I unwrap my taco, smiling a little.

“Where do you work?” I ask. We are finished eating, wrappers disposed, hands dusted on our pants. I step down from the curb and then turn back to help him over a patch of bad street—cracked and rippled. I know he takes classes in Seattle because three times a week his school sends a white van to pick him up. Though I don’t know what he’s studying.

“At my job,” he replies.

“Okay, smartass, what are you studying?”

“Elementary education.”

I am surprised by his quick answer, when he’s been dodging the other for so long. Though something about him being a teacher fits. It’s glove-like, appropriate.

“Is that how you knew her?
Know
her…” I correct myself.

“Yes,” he says. And that’s all he says. And even though he bought me dinner, I have the urge to reach out and smack the back of his head. I’m a hypocrite, I realize. I don’t like intrusive questions either.

I feel as if I’ve known him for a very long time.

I SKIM TEN DOLLARS
from the floorboards to buy myself a new pair of shoes from the Rag. I have seven work checks, made out in my name, and no bank account in which to deposit them. I need picture identification to open a bank account, and so far I haven’t even been able to find my birth certificate. I asked her for it once, and her eyes got bleary before she walked away without saying a word. I have a social security card, Margo Moon and a nine-digit number that tells the world I’m a valid American. Since I don’t have a photo ID, Sandy had to take my word for it when she hired me.