10The way Momma and me walk back from the park, it’s the way we’ve walked unfamiliar high streets in the middle of the night. Dusty backroads with no streetlights. Highways that snake ahead to secret places we can’t reach. We walk with our arms looped together, our steps skittering in and out of time. She’ll squeeze me where she holds me and I’ll squeeze her back. She’ll nudge me with her elbow and I’ll smile. My mom and me, this growing up thing is something we’ve had to do together. Sometimes we’ll walk a long way before we talk.“Crystal ball, crystal ball…” she whispers to me, just loud enough to hear over the background rush of cars and bikes and strangers’ footsteps passing back and forth.“Round and small…” I say back.“What will we have when we have it all?”I haven’t thought about this in a while now. It’s been so long since we played this game. “A house in the woods with a moat all around it,” I say. Then think. “No, a h
11You know how many kids would kill to go on road trips all the time?It’s not only my mother who’s said that. A lot of friends and uncles have, too. I don’t know what other kids would feel about it, but I know about me.Forget Carris. Forget home. When we’re settled in a town or city for too long, I miss the freedom and chaos we find in the wider world. Following the roads, just my momma and me. Deciding a direction by flipping a coin, by dodging the sun, by watching the moon. By spinning around three times with our hands held out in front of us. Stop, stumble, stand. And whichever stretch of horizon we both see, that’s the way we go. I know we’re making our plans, I know we’re doing what we need to do so we can buy a house one day and never have to ask anyone for money ever again. I know when we reach this place it will be our new forever. But for now, the best part is still how we get there.Dumping our bags out at bus depots to
12Anyway. Susie. The guy with a girl’s name. The guy with the clenching hands he hasn’t used to touch me yet. Only her. His hands on her hips, her thighs, her breasts. Grasping, clasping. Open and shut.“You don’t care if your kid hears us?” Susie said the first night we crashed over. “Why should I? She’s not a baby. Plus, it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like, literally.”Susie watched me watching her.“Hey, kid,” she called to me, turning away from him with her arm slack around his neck. “You don’t mind if Susie and me make friends, do you?”“I thought you already were,” I said, spreading my smile so my mother laughed and Susie stared at me. Eyes stuck.I turned away because I was starting to blush. My heart stepping up like I was about to panic. The eye in my forehead itched. I messed my hair into my eyes and unzipped my bag. Cover. Distraction. Please stop looking at me.“Hey, angel,” Momma said later that night
13There’s nothing wrong with keeping some things to yourself. I know. But my mother holds details back like they’re black secrets with teeth, or monsters hovering in hidden places. Vicious things that can only come out when you look them in the eye. She leaves a lot of blanks for me to stare at. It’s not only about Auntie Clem—all those versions I’ve been told about how we got to stay with her, and later why we left. I don’t know the name of the place where I was born. I don’t know where we were when I took my first steps. I don’t know where we lived when I spoke my first word. I’m not even exactly sure how old I am. My mother lies about her age all the time. And if she won’t say hers, then I can’t know mine.I know who I am, but I don’t always know what. I’m a child. I’m a daughter. I’m both. I’m neither.Usually Mom says I’m twelve, maybe thirteen. People sometimes guess my age at sixteen, but only with the makeup and the clothes.
14There’s nothing special about Susie, no matter what he wants to think. There’s nothing unique about his house, his lifestyle, his stupid Star Wars jokes. Every time, every single one of them, they start to think they’re ahead of us. Some in small ways, some enough to make them think they’re untouchable—as the owner of our current beds, the master of our daily comforts. This isn’t always bad. Being underestimated only gives us more gaps. But if it is bad, it means things are about to shift over. That kind of change, it can’t always be stopped.Susie? There’s nothing special about him. He’s just another friend I’ve yet to figure out.These single guys we’ve known before.Mr. Big Car, Mr. Nice Shades, Mr. Trimmed Beard. Julian, Edward, Kyle. Max, Barney, Sam. The names they gave or the names we made up for them. Still so much the same.Unshaved cheeks and musty shirts. Dirty tiles, scattered socks. Dishes piled up in kitchen si
15Momma’s told me once or twice—and sometimes I remember—about the doll I had when I was really little. Samelsa. A name I made up myself. Mom says I wouldn’t stand for it when anyone dared mishear me and try to call her ‘Sam’. “Sam is a girl-name for hookers and strippers. Maybe waitresses,” she says. “I think you knew that, too. Even then. If people dared call your doll ‘Sam’ you’d give them the blackest evil eye. That look on your face! It was like a witchy old woman who’d just caught her neighbor’s dog peeing on her front porch.”It makes me giggle, the way she says this. Like I’m a shrunken hag underneath what people see, and they should really be afraid of me.Samelsa had a plastic face with painted freckles and big blue eyes that stayed stuck open. She was always staring. In my lap or under my arm or under the covers with me, she stared at Momma, she stared at the walls, she stared at the ceiling. When I turned her around and
16“Hey, we don’t have to go home if you don’t want to.”Home.We’re standing outside the train station in the late afternoon, the business rush and crush around us, overdressed people in uncomfortable shoes making queues and talking on phones and shouldering each other out the way. We stand to the side and watch the chaos. High above and over everyone’s heads, the notice boards switch information in neat, color-coded lines.Arrived.Departed.Delayed.Names of places I know and places I don’t. Wherever we go, or go back to, it’ll never be the same.“Yeah, I know, Mom,” I say, staring up.“It’s just, the thing is…”The way she won’t finish the thought, I know what she’s about to say.“I was so sure we’d be heading back with some cash today, I didn’t—you know—”“You didn’t take any extra?” It sounds like a question, but it shouldn’t be. She shrugs at me, guilty eyes. “We can try to sneak through?”We’ve done this before, but
17My mother would hate hearing this, but she wasn’t the only one who got hurt back in Carris. She wasn’t the only one who had stuff to cry over. I knew that same fist-round-the-ears feeling, the same helpless fear of a mismatched fight. Powerless. My mother’s unravelings were sporadic, sharp. Her mind a drawstring bag with a snapped cord, contents sliding out the mouth, slipping loose across the floor. A storm of tiny, shattered marbles. Funny how when she was hurting me, she thought she was the one really hurting.Those moments got closer together in the weeks before we left. She would hate hearing this, but they’re the reason I feel the same when she says we had to leave Carris.Not because of Clem, Momma. Because of you.I don’t remember where I was when I first recalled this, but I feel the sun beating down on me, tightening my damp skin. My hair is wet and whatever I’m wearing clings across my breasts, between my legs. My eyes