here are about 736,738 people in Monroe county, 64,658
in Livingston county, 99,012 in Steuben county, 51,746 in Tioga
county, and 90,413 in Chemung county. Almost all of them have homes,
and almost all of them have lights, and televisions, and furniture,
and jobs, and families, and pets, and hobbies, and myriad other
things to distract them from the machinations of the world outside.
I had never even thought to quantify how many lights I must see
every time I make the five-county trip, how many lights from homes
and cars and streets. I never thought about the gaps between the
light, and how someone could survive there and for how long and
who would notice and who would care and who would miss any one
light.
And now that Katelyn is gone I can’t think about anything
else. I felt it when she ran away. I felt my soul wrench, felt
an exquisite ache that I knew was hers, but I was at work and
I had buttons to push and computer screens to look at and things
to preoccupy myself long enough for me to convince myself that
I was just crazy. And the next day, when I drove to work, I saw
two falcons perched on a streetlight, the female huge and pale,
the male little and dark, both ruffled against the autumnal cold,
and I bubbled with pride that out of all the thousands of people
who must have driven by them obliviously, I had noticed. And
I got home that night and my husband told me that Katelyn ran
away and I didn’t think it possible that a day that started
with falcons could be so ugly.
When I saw her last Christmas, I promised her that I would bring
her up to Rochester for her thirteenth birthday in April. When
I made it, I half-expected that I would be homeless by then,
but I still had every intention of keeping it. When I called
my sister-in-law (her step mom) to make plans a week before her
big day, I learned that Katelyn’s mother had packed her
daughter’s worldly goods in a garbage bag and left them,
and her, on her father’s door. My husband and I made the
five-county trip that weekend, picked up Katelyn, my sister-in-law,
and her half-sister, and celebrated her birthday as best we could
in Rochester. Katelyn was every bit as happy as a child can be
a week after being abandoned by her mother, and with a step-mom
who complained non-stop about how she was stretching the grocery
budget. I saw her in June and she was still the same as she had
been the last time. If I had never met her before, I wouldn’t
have had any reason to remember her. As I listened to her step-mom
complain about her inadequacies as a babysitter, I strained to
see if I could see any of the little girl I remembered. Her light
was so occluded by scars that not a trace was visible. Something
so big had been ripped from her, and so much scar tissue had
formed, I wondered if there would ever be room in her for anything
else. I could see nothing left of the little girl who was ready
to overpower guests at my wedding so that she could catch the
bouquet, the little girl who would sneak onto the computer to
send me e-mail cards, the little girl who would watch Daddy push
Step Mom and Baby down the stairs, watch Daddy get arrested,
watch Daddy try to kill himself and still be afraid of spiders,
the little girl who spent hours in Wal-mart with me deliberating
on how she was going to stretch her $8 in spending money enough
to get gifts for her two siblings, four half siblings, two parents
and two step-parents.
In July we brought Katelyn, her step mom and half-sister up
to the zoo. Katelyn was excited, but still occluded with her
scars. She had the sense to keep me from reaching my hand through
the paddock, petting the elephant and getting myself expelled
from the zoo. As the polar bears swam inches away from our faces,
she asked me if it was safe to be so close to the bears, if they
used the same kind of glass to protect us from them that they
use in psychiatric hospitals. She asked if the orangutans were
safe with their cages set-up so that the male could walk into
the cage with the female and her young at will. And as I leaned
onto the fence to watch the wolves, she leaned onto the fence
beside me and her arm rested against mine. Like all good fuck-ups,
I don’t like touching or being touched, but I figured that
recoiling from her would probably send a wrong message. You can’t
recoil from someone who is at your wedding, who has listened
to the songs that changed your life, who lets you see her sketch
pad, who helps you write poetry with magnets on the refrigerator.
We left the wolves after a few minutes, and she started talking
to me again and I could tell that she was back.
We got back to my house and I told her to eat something while
we waited for the pizza to show up (she won’t ever ask
for food, and she had said earlier that she hadn’t eaten
anything all day). I gave her a pen and a sketch pad and she
drew and we talked and I almost-but-didn’t let her read
a story I wrote for her when I first learned about her mom (like
all good fuck-ups, I don’t like touching or being touched).
She told me how she misses art classes, because they’re
not offered in the School for Young Criminals her mom sent her
to, and she recited a list of which half-sibling had ruined which
art supplies she’s been given over the years. Before we
packed the car up for the return trip, my husband gave her some
painting supplies he hadn’t used for years, and before
the car left the city limits she had fallen asleep clutching
them to her chest. There were thunderstorms that day on the drive
up to Rochester, but they had cleared up enough so that the sun
could shine through the thick dark clouds, staining the sky and
the hills and the very air itself with wild dramatic hues, and
I spent the entire trip down silently thanking a God I had given
up on years ago for letting me feel so much that day.
It was dark when we got to my sister-in-law’s apartment,
and as always there were no lights on and as always my sister-in-law
told us that she and Katelyn would share the burden of hauling
the baby and all her equipment up the stairs rather than let
us come in to help. Katelyn hugged me goodbye, and I promised
that I would see her next month, at her half-sister’s second
birthday. When the birthday came and we pulled into the apartment
parking, Katelyn saw me through the window and I could see the
look of happy shock in her eyes.
“Don’t look so surprised! I told you I’d be
here!”
And she looked at me with the same look she or I give if you
ask either of us to make a decision, or express an opinion. Then
she ran off to keep one of the little guests from leaving the
back yard, and when she came back she made some balloon animals
and we talked, and then she ran off to attend to another little
guest, and then she came back and we talked, and then she ran
off to help her step-mom with the sodas, and then she came back
and we talked. When her dad was around and motivated, he was
going to get her mom to sign over custody officially, and then
she would be able to go to school in a different district. No
more School for Young Criminals! She would be able to go to chorus
again, and have art lessons and computer labs, and be able to
check her email more often. She spoke so fast when she told me
this, her eyes sparkled so much. In my mind, I started to make
plans to celebrate her first report card of the year…even
a mediocre one would be rewarded with world-class chocolate cake.
I promised her we’d have her up to Rochester before long.
After all the little guests had frolicked themselves into exhaustion,
and presents were opened and wrappings picked up and plastic
plates tossed and soda cans readied for recycling and the adults
were tired and cranky and out the door, Katelyn and I went back
inside to watch the birthday girl play with her new doll. I told
Katelyn a joke I had been saving up since the last time I saw
her, and she laughed and laughed, and I started telling her ones
I had forgotten about for years and years, and she sparkled and
laughed at every one of them. And her step mom was yelling at
her, and her dad was gone, and her house was so crowded with
baby toys that walking through it used up my entire monthly quotient
of dexterity, and she went about appeasing her step mom and cleaning
and playing with her half-sister and laughing with me all the
while. As I got ready to go, I asked her if she would be attending
the next family function, and she said no, she hadn’t been
invited, but before I would let her mind take the next logical
step (which I know she had already made, but I just didn’t
want to believe that she had), I promised her that we’d
have her over soon, probably not in September, but probably in
October, and she was happy with that, she was still laughing,
if only with her eyes.
At the next family function, my husband and I stopped by my
sister-in-law’s (I always have to identify the apartment
that way in my mind, somehow it feels wrong for me to think of
it as Katelyn’s), and found that she had been divested
to a friend’s for the weekend. I saw that her half-sister
had ruined her paints, and I got to watch her father and step
mom read through her diary. They poured through the pages, and
every little detail of her soul that they snatched from her and
didn’t like elicited howls of wicked laughter. I‘ve
never heard the laughter of hyenas after they‘ve felled
their prey and are snapping bones and lapping the marrow while
their victim isn‘t quite dead, but I think I have a pretty
good idea what it must sound like now. Katelyn’s eldest
brother had gotten arrested for drug charges a few weeks ago,
and they justified this by saying they wanted to learn more about
her brother’s transgressions. Every crime is justified
by the criminal who does it. I let my rage paralyze me (especially
when they offered me a turn), it was safer than saying something
and being pushed down the stairs.
I promised myself that I’d see Katelyn soon. Pretty soon
my husband and I would have her up to visit. I had hoped to invite
her to stay for a week at Easter, but I thought maybe we could
move it up to half a week at Christmas. I wanted to learn when
her first concert was going to be. Perhaps I could convince the
PTO gods at work to let me have the day so I could surprise her.
When she was up, I’d ask her if she’d be interested
in going to an art camp up here for one week of the summer.
Statisticians tell us that this year about 1,682,900 children
will experience a “runaway/throwaway episode”. The
same wise statisticians tell us that 14,800 of those children
will fall into the category of “caretaker did not care
that child was gone”. That’s 14,799, plus Katelyn.
My husband kept telling me that he couldn’t understand
why his sister seemed so unconcerned about her disappearance,
but I know that’s because apathy and hatred are so alien
to him that he can’t always recognize them when he sees
them. I guess light and falcons and beauty and love and strength
and innocent, shimmering laughter right from the soul work the
same way. And all the distractions this world has to offer, all
the distractions that keep 943,554 people (five county’s
worth, minus me) from thinking much about children experiencing
runaway/throwaway episodes aren’t enough to keep me from
thinking about the darkness between lights and lights that have gone out.
[END]
© 2005 Melanie Blow - Contributor's
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