“Daddy’s dead,” I said sharply.
“When someone dies, you don’t lose or forget your obligations to him or her. If anything, what you promised becomes more important because it’s really all up to you. That’s a lesson I guess you were never taught, but then there are many lessons you were never taught and should have been. That’s why we’re sitting here like this right now.”
I squinted at him.
“Why are we sitting here, Uncle Buster?”
I didn’t think he was going to answer because it took him so long. Finally, he looked up at me.
“When we came home from church and realized you had run off, I had to call the police, Phoebe. Your aunt Mae Louise was hysterical about it, too. The police sent that policewoman over to speak with us. She was concerned, and she told us about a school that might be able to help you.”
“What school?”
“A school for girls who get themselves into too much trouble, much more trouble than most parents or guardians can handle themselves. We know you’ve got a history with the devil. This time you almost killed someone. Next time, you might do that or something almost as serious. Then what, Phoebe? We would be to blame, too.”
“I don’t see how another school makes any difference, especially any school around here. The girls and the boys here are just too stuck-up and fancy.”
“This school’s not around here, Phoebe. You won’t be living with us anymore.”
I raised my eyebrows. That should have sounded good to me, but something in his voice made me hold back my glee.
“Where is it then?” I asked.
“That boy you hurt, his father has a lot of influence in the community, Phoebe,” he replied instead of answering my question. “This situation isn’t going to disappear, especially now that they know you broke the agreement and ran off. They’ll expect you to do it again. I can’t chain you to the bed in your room, can I? And your aunt doesn’t want to stand guard outside your door, and I can’t be called away from my work to go looking for you or to solve some new crisis.”
“I get the point, Uncle Buster. I never wanted to live with you and Aunt Mae Louise. You know that.”
“Right. Right,” he said. He sounded too relieved.
“But I don’t understand about this school.”
“It’s a school that’s run by people who know how to help you, to save you from yourself.”
“What is it, some Bible-thumping, hymn-singing camp? Because if it is…”
“Now you listen to me,” he said, pointing his thick right forefinger at me. “This is precisely your last chance. After this, no one’s going to take your side or be bothered with you, Phoebe. You’d be left out there with the sharks and you wouldn’t last long, no, ma’am.”
He nodded after his own thoughts.
“You be grateful you have this opportunity, and you don’t fail at it, understand?”
“Whatever you say, Uncle Buster,” I told him.
He lowered his hand.
“Your aunt’s right about you, girl. You do need this.”
“Yeah, everybody has always been right about me, except me.” I pushed the coffee cup away, spilling some coffee on the table.
He took out his wallet and put down some money.
“We’re going now, Phoebe,” he said. “You want to use the bathroom? You have a trip ahead of you.”
“What do you mean, a trip? Aren’t we going back to the house first?” I asked, a small sense of panic balling into a lump in my throat.
“No. Your aunt would rather she didn’t see you right now. You need the bathroom?”
I slid out of the booth and headed for the ladies’ room without answering him. After I went, I stood by the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I was tired, very tired. I could see it in my eyes, eyes that had seen too much sadness and too much disappointment. They wanted to just close and remain closed forever and ever. For a moment I understood why Mama had tried to cut her wrists. Sometimes, it all gets to be too much, even for someone as young as I was.
I ran the cold water and splashed it on my face. Then I ran a brush through my hair. I stood there staring at myself and didn’t realize how long I was there until I heard a voice behind me and turned to see a tall woman with very short hair. She wore a blue jacket and a pair of dark blue slacks.
“Your uncle sent me in here to see what was keeping you,” she said.
Now he was asking strangers to help. I grimaced and picked up my purse.
“Nothing’s keeping me. That’s the point,” I told her, and walked past her and out the door.
I returned to the booth, but Uncle Buster wasn’t there. And neither was my suitcase!
I looked around the diner. The woman from the bathroom came up beside me.
“Just keep going out the door,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked, pulling myself back.
“Your escort,” she replied.
“My escort?” I didn’t know whether to laugh at her or tell her to get lost. “Where’s my uncle?” I cried, and headed for the diner entrance.
She followed right behind me, spooking me with how closely she kept to me. I stepped out and looked over the parking lot. I didn’t see him or his car anywhere.
“We’re here to escort you to your new school,” the woman said, stepping up beside me.
“You’re taking me to a school?” I pulled my head back. “Where’s my uncle? What happened to my suitcase?”
“He took it and he’s gone,” she said. “You just come with us now.”
“Why would he take my suitcase? My uncle didn’t say anything about any escort.”
“Trust me,” she said. “That’s who we are.”
The lack of any emotion and the firmness with which she stood facing me actually frightened me. That surprised me because I had seen things and been confronted by people who looked a great deal more threatening than she did, but there was something so cold about her calmness.
“I’m going back in there and call my aunt,” I said.
“That would be a waste of time. Just get into the vehicle and we’ll get started,” she said, blocking my path back to the front entrance of the diner.
“What vehicle?” I looked in the direction she nodded. “I only see an ambulance there.”
“That ambulance is for you,” the woman said.
“What?”
She nodded again at the white ambulance I had seen pull up. A man sat behind the wheel staring at us.
“This is really stupid. Where’s my uncle?” I asked again. I could feel my chest tightening.
“I told you. He’s gone,” the woman said. “You don’t see his car anymore, do you?”
She was right about that, which only increased my anxiety. A state policeman had brought me here to meet him, and now Uncle Buster had just disappeared without saying good-bye? And he had taken my suitcase! This didn’t make any sense at all.
“Why would he just leave me? What is this?”
“Your last chance,” she said through tight lips. “Go on,” she urged, her hand now on my shoulder. She pushed me a few steps toward the ambulance.
I turned out of her grasp sharply and then heard the ambulance door open and close. The driver came walking toward us. He was wearing what looked like a pair of construction man’s overalls with deep pockets and a T-shirt that his firm and thick muscularity was stretching to the limits of its seams. He had’a shock of black hair and sleepy brown eyes.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” the woman said. “She’s just a bit tired. You’re tired, aren’t you, Phoebe?”
“I’m not tired. I want to see my uncle,” I said, sounding a lot more frightened than I had wanted to sound. It was just hard to put up a brave front under such weird circumstances.
“We don’t have time for this,” the man said to the woman.
“I know what time it is and what we have and have not time for,” she told him irritably.
He lifted his hands as if he was going to have nothing to do with any of it anymore and stepped back.
I turned in a circle. Where was Uncle Buster? How could he just leave me? Why would I be going anywhere in an ambulance? And how could they call that an escort service?
“I gotta get out of here,” I moaned.
“Now you just relax,” the woman said, and before I could take another step, she put her arm around my shoulders. I tried to pull away, but she was amazingly strong and had my arms pinned against my sides.
“Let go!” I screamed. An elderly couple who had just pulled up and parked looked at us, but the sight of the woman holding me just made them walk away faster.
“Okay,” she told the driver. “You’d better give her the first-class ticket.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said, smiling. He stepped up and pulled a syringe out of his deep pocket. I felt the needle go into my arm, and again I tried to pull free, even kick her. Then he stepped back and walked quickly to the rear of the ambulance. She held on to me as I continued to squirm and cry out.
Suddenly, though, I felt so numb. I wasn’t even sure I was making any sound even though my mouth was opening and closing. The whole parking lot went into a spin.
“Hurry up, will you!” I heard her shout at the driver.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Man, you’re getting to be a slave driver.”
A stretcher was wheeled toward me, and I felt myself being lowered to it. First, I sat and then, despite willing myself to put up resistance, I was easily made to lie back. Straps were pulled over my legs and across my chest under my breasts. A pillow was shoved down beneath my head.
I heard someone ask what happened and the woman say, “Epileptic fit.”
“Oh, poor thing.”
“She’ll be all right,” the woman said.
I vaguely felt myself being lifted. I had no pain. It was actually a pleasant sort of feeling that came over me. I wasn’t exactly asleep either, but I wasn’t fully awake. I was caught somewhere in between and I was drifting. I heard the door shut after I was moved farther into the ambulance.
Then another door opened and shut. The woman was beside me. I sensed her, but I didn’t see her. My eyes were closing.
“I never like it like this,” the driver said.
“Shut up and drive,” the woman told him.
I was sinking farther down now. I thought I was falling through the stretcher. It was like my whole body was melting, too, and seeping into it. Was this death?
I began to hear music. The driver started to sing along with a song.
And then I heard other music, a tune coming from a black marble pedestal upon which two ballerinas twirled. I remembered it well. It was at my bedside, a birthday present. I was hypnotized with it, with their graceful movements as the male dancer twirled and swung the female.
How wonderful it must be to dance like that, I thought, to be airy and unafraid of your body failing you. How I wished I could be a dancer.
“It’s pretty,” I heard myself say.
“The moment I saw it, I knew I had to get it for you, Phoebe,” Daddy said.
There he was, standing at my bedside, smiling down at me. Then he lost his smile and put his hand on my forehead.
“Still got some fever,” he muttered, and straightened up quickly, concern on his face. “She still has some fever, Charlene,” he called behind him.
“It’s nothing,” Mama shouted back. “Kids get fevers all the time.”
“Maybe we should take her to the doctor. She’s been sniveling and coughing for days.”
“She’ll be all right. Everything scares you, Horace. I swear you were brought up a mama’s boy, frightened by the sound of your own footsteps. You going with me or not?”
“Going? We can’t leave her, Charlene. The girl’s sick. What, you crazy?”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “You know where I’ll be.”
Daddy wound up the music box again and I watched the dancers.
“I’ll get you some hot tea and honey to drink, Phoebe. You feeling all right?”
I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the dancers.
Daddy left, but he didn’t come back. The dancers stopped and the music ended.
I wanted it all to start again.
“Daddy,” I called. “Daddy.”
He didn’t reply. I struggled so hard to get to that music box, but I couldn’t reach it.
The dancers waited. This was all they were created to do, dance, but it was enough to give them purpose and beauty. Silence and neglect were the two sides of the same cruel sword cutting their lifeline. And they weren’t just waiting for any music. They needed the music that belonged to them, the music they were born with, the music that had become a part of them. They looked so helpless, waiting there, so full of disappointment, too.
They started to disappear.
I felt myself drifting pleasantly again, but I kept thinking about the dancers.
And then it came to me.
I’m just like them, I thought.
Waiting for the music that belonged to me.