CHAPTER 7
Just as Annie was approaching the entry ramp to I-75, she decided to buy some more diapers before she left Atlanta. Her nose told her that Natasha already needed another change, and she didn’t want to take any chances.
She considered trying to find a drugstore so she could buy one of the brands she liked, but decided against it—they were all too crowded this time of day. Plus, she would have to unstrap Natasha and take her inside the store with her. Unlike some mothers, Annie refused to leave her baby alone in the car, unless she could see Natasha every second.
Annie decided to go to a mini-market instead. They usually only had Pampers, she knew, but that would just have to do for the moment. She could stock up tomorrow when she and Natasha were safely in Chattanooga. The best thing about mini-markets was that Annie could leave Natasha strapped in her car seat and just run inside and be back in less than a minute, keeping an eye on the baby the whole time. Whoever came up with the idea of a mini-market was a genius, Annie mused.
Annie followed the creeping flow of traffic along Windy Hill Road and across I-75. She spotted a mini-market on the right-hand side, just past the exit ramp. Good. There was a traffic light there, too. It would be easy to get back out of the parking lot and onto the Interstate.
She searched for a parking place near the door. Unfortunately, the lot was packed full of rush-hour customers. In fact, there weren’t any parking spaces available at all, near the door or otherwise.
Annie had no choice but to wait until someone moved. She put the car in park and looked at Natasha. “Can ooo help Mommy find a parking space?”
Natasha smiled back and wiggled her arms.
“Sure you taaaan,” Annie said, patting the baby’s fuzzy blonde head.
Annie saw an aging red-haired woman emerge from the storefront. She walked over to a shiny blue sedan that was parked only two spaces away from the front door.
“Perfect,” Annie said, waiting impatiently as the woman unlocked her car door. Annie put her own car in reverse and backed up a little bit, giving the woman plenty of room to pull out. The parking lot was at a steep incline away from the front door, and it made things a little awkward.
Annie smiled at Natasha again, waiting.
But after about thirty seconds, the blue sedan still had not moved. Annie leaned forward and squinted through the windshield. In the dim dusk light, she could barely see the woman’s head through the sedan’s tinted windows. The head didn’t appear to be moving.
“Come on, lady,” Annie moaned.
“Daaaaaa,” Natasha added.
Annie laughed. “I don’t think she’s going anywhere, honey. Not before you start high school, anyway.”
Annie put her own car back in drive and inched forward, eyeing two handicapped spaces that were directly in front of the store’s entrance. She had already learned her lesson about parking in those. The year before, she had gotten a $150 fine for parking in one at Lenox Mall. But this wasn’t Lenox Mall, and she would only be in the store a second or two.
“Mommy shouldn’t do this,” she said as she pulled into the nearer handicapped space, “but Mommy is going to do it anyway.” She put the car in park and turned to Natasha. “Now you just sit right here and be good while I buy you some more diapers.”
Natasha smiled again. Annie touched her little nose playfully. “No loud music or smoking until Mommy comes back, o-taaay?”
Natasha stuck one finger in her mouth and looked out the window.
“O-tay,” Annie answered for her.
Before Annie got out of the car, she pressed the emergency brake as far down as it would go, to the floorboard. The lights were still on, but that was okay—it was safer.
Annie went inside and searched for the diapers, keeping a sharp eye on Natasha through the store’s large plate glass windows. When she found them (they only had Pampers, of course), she picked up two packages and quickly headed for the cash register, snatching up a few candy bars along the way. There were four people in line, two mud-caked men in yellow hard-hats; in front of them, a boy of no more than ten; and in front of him, a bald-headed man who was buying two six-packs of beer. The man had just set the two six-packs on the counter when he noticed Annie holding the Pampers.
Annie gave him a friendly I’m in a big hurry look, hoping that he would notice what she was buying. She had discovered that many people, particularly men, were sympathetic to young mothers.
This particular man took the cue. “Would you like to go ahead of me, young lady?”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind...”
“Not at all.” The man slid his six-pack over to one side of the counter to make room for her.
Annie glanced at the men in the hard-hats, who were giving the man dirty looks, and smiled apologetically. She set the Pampers and candy down on the counter and looked outside. From this angle, she could make out the silhouette of Natasha’s little head against the car’s rear window.
A gum-popping teenage clerk rung up Annie’s purchase. “That’s eight forty-two.”
Annie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. As she did this, she accidentally dragged out a big clump of change along with it. The coins scattered all over the floor. Before she had left the apartment, she had gathered up all the loose change she could find and filled her pockets with it.
Annie felt stupid and clumsy. She handed the girl the twenty and squatted down to the floor to pick up all the money. The little boy behind her in line dropped to his knees to help her.
When Annie finally stood up, the clerk was waiting with her change from the twenty, looking annoyed.
“Sorry about that,” Annie said, taking the change and stuffing it in her jeans. She glanced back out the front window.
Natasha was gone.
It took a moment for this information to register in Annie’s brain. Then, she realized that it wasn’t just Natasha that was missing—the whole car was gone.
For a half-second, Annie was completely frozen, unable to come to grips with the data that was being fed from her eyeballs to her visual cortex, thinking that maybe she was looking out the wrong window or that her eyes were playing tricks on her. But it was the same window she had just looked out a moment earlier, and her eyes were just fine.
Her child—her baby—had disappeared!
“Natasha!” Annie broke into a sprint, flying towards the front door.
After a few strides, she could see her car. It was backing out of the parking space. No, it wasn’t backing out, it was rolling out by itself—there was no one in the driver’s seat.
“Oh my God!” she gasped, as she burst through the front door. She could still see the silhouette of Natasha’s head against the car’s rear window. The front wheels weren’t straight, so the car was rolling at an angle, picking up speed, headed towards the street.
In a split second, Annie estimated the trajectory and knew there was a good chance the car would make it out of the entrance to the parking lot and into the heavy rush hour traffic. She shot like a bullet across the pavement, fueled by blind protective maternal energy, towards the right side of the runaway vehicle. She would throw the door open, jump inside, and jam her foot on the emergency brake (hadn’t she already put on the emergency brake?) before the car could roll out into the street.
During the next few seconds, the world seemed to slow down like a frame-by-frame sports replay. Each moment infinitely short and infinitely long at the same time. There seemed to be minutes, hours, even days to reflect on her whole life—her childhood, her high school days, her first period, her first job, her pregnancy, the endless fights with Neal about having an abortion, even Neal’s paranoia about Natasha during the past few days. Yet, during those fleeting flashbacks, the car seemed to be inevitably hurtling towards the traffic.