He thought she couldn’t open the heavy bolts on the doors but she found a hammer and hid it under her mattress. She could open the back door bolt with that but she was scared he’d catch her, scared to run away. She only went in the backyard in the sunshine. When he got home after work he just sat in his chair, didn’t talk to her, and he never read books or the newspaper like when she was little. If he turned on the TV she didn’t think he saw or heard it, he just sat there and never moved except to drink whiskey. Except if she did anything he didn’t like. Then he yelled at her. He always heated a can of soup for their supper and made her sit at the table with him but he never said a word. If she went near the front or back door, he’d shout. And then one day he came home from work and she was in the backyard playing jacks. She’d forgot how late it was. He was real mad, and that night he found her hammer and he took it and nailed the back door shut. But he didn’t find the pliers she’d taken from the garage. The next day he put padlocks on both doors and that night she lay in her bed thinking about what Mama would do.
She had that social worker’s phone number. That lady that met her at the airport. Had it in her school notebook but she didn’t want to call that woman, she didn’t want to go to another foster home. When she knew he was asleep, when she could hear him snoring, she stuffed her clothes and toothbrush in her backpack, crammed in some cans of beans and plums from the kitchen, and a jar of jam and one of peanut butter. She used the pliers to open the kitchen door to the garage, where there were boxes of old, musty clothes from when she and Mama lived there.
She’d dug around real careful because there were spiders. She found the old plaid blanket and a rolled-up sun pad with a cord around it from when Mama used to lie in the sun. Both of them smelled like the boxes of clothes did. And when she was rooting around in the boxes, that was when she found the billfold-that was when everything changed.
That was when she really, really knew she couldn’t stay with Pa any longer.
She didn’t remember Uncle Hal very well except she didn’t like him much. He was always too nice to her. Always asking so many questions about school. “You’re finishing the first grade? Most girls your age are just going into kindergarten. Are you doing numbers yet? Do you like that? Do some sums for me, Lori. Or why don’t you read to me? Your mama says you can already read real well. Read to me from your little book.” Shehatedthat. Pa scolded her for being rude to Uncle Hal but she couldn’t help it. She was glad when he went away to British Columbia. To spend his days fishing, that’s what Pa said.
The morning she found the billfold, she was surprised Uncle Hal would go away without his driver’s license and credit cards. British Columbia was in Canada, but was that place so different that he didn’t need a license or credit cards? Not likely. His snakeskin belt, that Uncle Hal wore all the time, was with the billfold, and his gold ring shaped like a dragon; she’d never seen him without that ring on his middle finger. She didn’t know what made her take them when she found them, but she stuffed them in her backpack. She broke the garage window to get out. Hit it with a shovel then climbed on Pa’s work bench and jumped out.
It was after she ran away that she thought about the terrible argument Pa and Uncle Hal had the night before Uncle Hal left. The two of them shouting and swearing so bad that Mama took her out for a walk to get away from the house and they ended up at a late movie. When they got home real late Uncle Hal was gone fishing. And after that, he didn’t come over anymore. That was when Pa started being so cross all the time.
Had Pa been looking for her the day she saw him outside the library? She’d never seen him in the library, even if Mama used to work there; he didn’t like libraries. Anyway he didn’t know about the hidden room. She’d found it when Mama worked upstairs at the checkout desk. She was only six. She came down to the workroom to watch the library assistant, who was in high school, paste pockets for cards in the books. When the assistant went home for lunch and she, Lori, stayed there reading, that was when she found the loose bricks in the wall. She’d taken some of the bricks out and looked in. The hole was big and like a dark cave and smelled of old, dry concrete and mice.
Now, scowling at the silenced alarm clock, she sat up at last in the icy room and reached for her flashlight. In its thin glow she pulled on two sweatshirts and her jacket and then her jeans and jogging shoes, all the time keeping her blanket around her as much as she could, and listening to the wind howl around the library windows.
She didn’t eat anything. She was really tired of plums and cold beans. She could choose among plain red beans or navy beans or baked beans. That got old. And the peanut butter and jam were gone; she’d dropped the empty jars in a trash bin at the beach. Now, moving the bricks, stacking them where she could reach them from the other side, she crawled through, then put them back, arranging them carefully. She was getting tired of this, and her hands were scratched raw.
Mama would say she was lucky to have such a cozy place. But Mama would hug her and kiss her and rub on thick hand cream and bring her a nice, thick quilt to make her warm again.
Well, she was acting like a baby. Mama said you did what you had to do. And tonight, right now, she had to do this, had to talk with Genelle Yardley. Find out about Pa so she’d understand. Find out why Pa was so angry.
Pushing the bookcase in front of the bricks, careful to get it exactly where it had stood before, she hurried to the dark basement window that opened to the sidewalk.
Sliding open the glass, she looked up and down the dark street. Molena Point had no streetlights. Only the shop lights, to light the sidewalks real soft. The sky above her was lighter than the village streets. From the stars, she guessed, and from the crooked moon that was smeared by clouds. She couldn’tseeanyone on the street. Climbing out into the concrete well that was lower than the sidewalk, she slid the glass back in place. The lock, the way she had broken it with tools she’d found in the janitor’s closet, still looked like it was locked tight. She was proud of the way she’d done that. When she stood up out of the window well, the wind hit her hard, slapping her against the building. Climbing out, she stared up the street toward the hills to the north. She was scared to go way up there alone, she wished Mama could reach down and take her hand.
One morning when she’d slipped out of the library she’d stayed out too long. When she came back someone was already in the workroom. She hid in the bushes all day and was really hungry by nine that night when the library closed. She’d thought of going home and, if Pa’s truck was gone, trying to get more food, but she was afraid to try. And that night when she got back the cat was there, the library cat, waiting in the basement workroom for her, and real glad to see her. Dulcie stayed with her all that night, snuggled close. You could talk to a cat and it couldn’t repeat a thing. A cat couldn’t tell Pa where she was. Dulcie was someone to talk to while she ate her beans and then rolled out her bed and got under the blanket and pulled the lamp close. The cat had curled up on the blanket close to her while she read, then came right up to snuggle in her hair. And Dulcie had lain there beside her cheek looking at the pages, almost like she was reading, too.
Then when she woke up in the morning, the cat was gone. Likely went out its cat door in that librarian’s office, Ms. Getz. Strange that a cat would live in the library part of the time. Wouldn’t find nothing like that back in Greenville; if Mama saw a sight like that, she’d laugh. Lori could just hear her.A cat in the library? A library cat? What does it do, honey, read the books to the children?But everyone loved Dulcie, all the kids wanted to hold Dulcie at story hour.
Mama couldn’t make jokes anymore.