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Elro wasn’t coming, I decided. He might have had to go out to his father’s house to pack up, but that would barely take half an hour—an hour at the most. He obviously wasn’t coming. He’d obviously just been talking when he said he wanted to take me away. Now that I’d accepted the offer, now that I was really going to test his talk, he’d lost his nerve.
I squirmed and rolled on the bed. That’s typical, I thought. Empty promises. I’d heard nothing but empty promises in the last two weeks. From Mrs. O’Brien, from Reverend Vaughn, even from Bunny. Promises that blew away and disappeared when the time came to live up to them. Now Elro. I should have known better. After all, he’d been drunk the times he said it. He probably didn’t even remember. He’d probably looked at the note and wondered what in the world I was talking about. I pictured him there at the back gate of the KTD, standing against a post, trying to read what I’d written. Maybe he wasn’t even able to read it. I saw the strain lines making circles around his eyes, his lips moving clumsily over each word. Why was that so familiar? Of course. In grade school, he’d been one of the worst readers in class, stumbling, struggling, fighting to make sense of even the simplest sentences. People would giggle—not so much because he was dumb, which he wasn’t, really. They laughed because he tried so hard. An oversized, gawky, slow-talking boy, deadly serious about things the rest of us dismissed in a moment. A strange boy. He had a bullying older brother who was always pushing him, needling him, and still Elro followed the brother around, hoping for the least bit of attention. And the mother—thin and frail with the softest, gentlest voice I ever heard. I used to imagine that her words were a kind of cloth that I could reach out and run my fingers over. Mrs. Vernon said she died last year. What from? For some reason, I imagined breast cancer. Now Elro and his brother and father were alone. Alone at the Gardner place, in the tenant house, Mrs. Vernon had said. I thought of them sitting at a table, having dinner. Alone.
Like Bunny. She’d be alone, too, now that I was running away. Of course, she’d have Eddie, but that wouldn’t last. Pretty soon, he’d be gone like all the others. Then the next man would come and the one after that and the one after that. But how long could it go on? She was getting older. The men wouldn’t be chasing her forever. She used to joke that someday she and I would grow old together, just the two of us. She always said it with a laugh, but I could tell she was a little bit serious: Bunny and me keeping house, sharing secrets, always having each other. The idea comforted her. Of course, that’s not something that I’d want. I always hoped I’d marry and have my own family. But I never stopped Bunny when she made remarks about the future that way. I guess somehow the idea comforted me, too. Now, that was all gone. I could get by. As long as I didn’t get sent away, I could get by, I was sure of that. But what about Bunny? She was like a child, really. She needed someone to take care of her, to keep her out of trouble. I’d been doing that for years—almost since I could remember, I’d felt responsible for her. She was always on my mind: What was she doing? Was she okay? Did she need my help? Thinking back, I could see now that that responsibility could have been a burden, but I never resented it. I liked it, really. It made me feel important. Fussbudget. A fussbudget daughter. I was a fussbudget before my time. But who would look after Bunny once I was gone? Not Eddie, certainly. He was more of a child than she was. All her men had been children, none of them worth a thing when it came to responsibility. She’d be alone, truly alone. Like Edith, the old woman at the Buffalo Tavern. Alone and disgusting. How could I do that to Bunny? How could I leave her to that? Would her hair turn gray and frizzy, like Edith’s? Would her clothes be rumpled and smelly? She’d already started to drink too much—would she turn into a solitary, slumped figure in the corner of a lonely bar? How could I abandon her to that?
My stomach was clenched up in knots, so I rolled over on my back and stretched on the bed, trying to relax myself. Elro
wasn’t coming, and it was just as well, I decided. This was a bad idea, one more mistake. More insanity. Worse, this was selfish. I’d be ruining Bunny, just to save myself. And what kind of life would be left for me, anyway? How far could I go with Elro? He was just a dupe, a way to get away. I’d be ruining his life, too. It was better he didn’t come.
But was it really? I remembered how I’d felt in court today. I thought of Tom’s letter. Running away had looked like the only solution an hour ago. I’d been so certain, I’d felt almost happy. At least I’d be doing something to help myself. I wouldn’t just be taking it, letting them do things to me. There’s something noble about taking control—even in my confusion I could sense that. Maybe suicide was the answer after all. That would be taking control. I hadn’t thought of suicide since the night of the blackout, but now the idea started to seem reasonable again. I’d show Judge Horner. I’d show Mrs. O’Brien. I’d show the whole town of Katydid. I’ve got my pride, and I’m not going to take it.
I started making an inventory of things around the Vernons’ house, trying to figure out the simplest, most painless way to do it. There weren’t any pills, except for that one old vial in Mrs. Vernon’s medicine cabinet—and who knew if they’d kill you. I couldn’t take the chance. I’d never seen a gun in the house, and, anyway, guns scared me. I wouldn’t want to end up feeling scared like that. A knife? Mrs. Vernon’s knives were certainly sharp enough. Or a razor. I could even take the blade out of the razor I used to shave my legs. But think of the pain and the blood. Would I have the nerve to draw a blade deep across my wrists? There must be another way. Tom used to joke about licking the light socket. Would that really do it? I imagined myself on my knees, underneath Sissy’s desk. What if it just burned my tongue? I’ve never heard of anyone committing suicide that way. How did people die? Old age, disease. Cars. That’s it, I thought. A car crash. Kids are always dying in car crashes. I’ll steal the Vernons’ car, take it out in the country, get it going a hundred, and then aim for a tree. Just another teenage casualty. It would be so simple. Only I didn’t know how to drive.
Something bumped the wall outside. I rolled over to look out the window, and Elro’s face popped up. “My father wouldn’t go to bed,” he whispered. “He was up drinking coffee.”
“That’s okay.” I was surprised at how glad I was to see him. I almost had an urge to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him.
“I got some money. Almost a hundred dollars.”
“Great!” I scrambled off the bed and pulled out the suitcase and pushed it near the window.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My suitcase.”
“That’s too big. We can’t get it down the ladder.”
“But I’ve got to take some stuff.”
“Find something smaller.”
I looked around the room and remembered the brown Piggly-Wiggly bags that Mrs. Vernon used to line wastebaskets. Fortunately, she’d changed the one in Sissy’s room just the day before. I fished out the crumpled letters to Bunny, the only things I’d thrown away. Then I took the clothes from the suitcase and stuffed them in the bag. Everything fit. I folded the top neatly.
“Hurry up,” whispered Elro.
I put the money from the purse in one of my jeans’ pockets, retrieved the letter to Bunny from the French book and shoved that into the other pocket. The letter would get crushed, but that was okay. I’d been barefoot all this time, and I started to put on my tennis shoes, but then I thought that my brown loafers would go with either the jeans or the skirt I was taking. So I dug the loafers out of the closet and slipped them on. For a moment, I stood by the bed and let my gaze circle the room. I’d been there two weeks—two weeks of staring at Jesus statues, at the world’s ugliest wallpaper, at things that a dead girl had touched, slept on, lived in. Two weeks, and already the place seemed almost normal and safe.
“Come on,” hissed Elro.
I climbed onto the bed and handed him the bag. He backed partway down the ladder. I leaned out. This wasn’t going to be easy. The ladder stopped two feet below the window ledge, and somehow I had to get to the top rung. I pushed the window open as far as it would go and sat on the sill, so I could dangle my legs along the wall. Scrunching down to get into the space of the window, though, I couldn’t get my legs outside.
“I’m too big,” I whispered.
Elro came back up the ladder. “Maybe you should just sneak out the front,” he said.
“Mrs. Vernon would hear me.”
“Then you’re gonna have to back down.”
I turned around, lying face down on the bed. Luckily, the bottom of the window was just a few inches higher than the mattress. Wiggling back slowly, I pushed my legs out the window, scraping my shins on the metal ribbing. I couldn’t see, but I knew my legs were sticking straight out into the air, fifteen feet above the ground. It was frightening, but not entirely unpleasant. Moving backward like this, pushing painfully against the windowsill, I had a strange sensation of something difficult and uncertain and yet somehow exhilarating. Was this what having a baby was like, shoving off blindly into the unknown?
Moving slowly, I maneuvered my waist over the sill; my legs finally bent down toward the ladder. Elro reached up and grabbed my ankle, guiding me. I still clung to the sill, but soon I was balanced with both feet on a top rung. This was going to be all right. Elro let me catch my breath, and then, still holding my ankle, he guided my right leg down an additional rung. I let go of the sill and let my hands slide down the scratchy shingles on the side of the house until I could grab the top of the ladder. I took another breather and stepped down again.
“Stop!” hissed Elro. Behind us, a light had flicked on suddenly, throwing our shadows against the side of the house. “Someone’s up,” he whispered.
We stood on the ladder without moving. The light had come from the Porters’ house across the lawn. I waited a minute—waited for a voice to shout, a door to slam, a phone to ring. Nothing. Finally, I turned and crouched, peering under a low, heavy branch of the oak. I found myself looking into the eyes of Grandma Porter. She was pressing her face up against the window, the way a child does on the morning of the year’s first snowfall. Her jaw moved slowly, worrying, but otherwise she just stared.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to Elro.
