But then Mother darling would come home or say something and the door would slam shut again.
I heard a door slam shut and looked up to see Kathy Ann practically bouncing toward me.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I want to buy something for Axel, something to give him the next time he calls.”
“Where should we go?”
“Let’s go to Dillards,” she suggested. “C’mon, we’ll catch the bus. So, why did you leave Charlotte Lily’s house like that?”
“I had to be home by eleven, and it was already close to midnight,” I said.
“Oh. How did you get home?”
“I took a taxicab,” I said, instinctively deciding not to reveal Keefer Dawson.
She believed me and then spent the rest of our travel time talking about Axel. From the way she spoke about him, I thought it wasn’t only the first time she had made love, it was the first time she had been with anyone. She went on and on about the promises he had made to her concerning their future, how he was going to make sure she had tickets to all the home games, and how he would take her to dances and parties.
“Promises can be like balloons,” I told her. “They look and feel good when they’re pumped up, but they all leak and eventually fall to earth.”
“Not my promises,” she vowed. “And when my daddy makes my stepmother a promise, he always keeps it.”
“Goody goody for her,” I said.
“And he keeps the promises he makes to me most of the time. Didn’t your father do that, before he was killed in the plane crash, I mean?”
I gazed out the window without replying.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s painful for you to think about it. Let’s just think about good things. I know, I’ll practice my Spanish. How’s that?”
“Whatever,” I said, and she began a catalogue of Spanish words for common things.
After a while I didn’t hear her anymore. I felt tight inside, like my stomach had been tied into a knot and everything in it and around it was being squeezed. No, I didn’t have a father to even break his promises to me, and now, now I wasn’t permitted to have a mother. I was the balloon I spoke about. My life was just full of hot air, and I was leaking badly. Soon, I would fall to earth.
When we arrived at the department store, Kathy Ann went to the men’s department to search for a gift for Axel. I went to the women’s clothing area, and after a while, I found a young-miss skirt and blouse I really liked. I thought about Keefer Dawson and how he would appreciate seeing me in the outfit. The skirt was nearly sixty dollars, however, and the blouse was another thirty. One wouldn’t be good without the other.
The saleslady was a little overwhelmed, which gave me the opportunity to take the skirt and the blouse into the fitting room together. I had done this before, so I felt confident about it. I put the blouse on under my blouse and made sure it was well hidden. Then I came out with the skirt and told the saleslady I wanted to buy it.
She glanced at me quickly and asked me to wait until she was finished with the customer ahead of me or else go to another register. That was even better, so I went toward the front of the store and placed the skirt on the counter. The cashier ran it through the register, and I paid her with Cory’s money. Now that I had what I wanted, I wanted very much to get out of the store and away, but I didn’t see Kathy Ann anywhere. Nevertheless, I thought it would be wiser to leave, so I did.
Not more than a minute after I left the store, a tall, dark-haired man in a suit and tie seized my left elbow, squeezing it hard enough to make me wince.
“Hey!” I snapped at him. “What do you think—”
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
“I’m going home. Who are you?” I demanded.
Some customers going in and out paused to watch the exchange, and I thought I would start to scream any moment to draw more attention and frighten whoever he was away, but he surprised me by opening his wallet and showing me a badge.
“I’m the store security man, and you, young lady, are under arrest for shoplifting. Now, turn around and head back into the department store,” he ordered.
“I paid for this!” I cried, and showed him the slip.
He smiled.
“What about what you’re wearing underneath your blouse?”
How could he know that unless they had some sort of camera or peep hole in the changing room? I wondered.
“Do you want me to make you take it off out here, or what?” he asked.
I thought about running, but the small crowd of onlookers had built considerably and was now surrounding us.
“Well?” he demanded.
I turned and headed back toward the entrance of the store. As we approached, Kathy Ann came out.
“Where were you? I’ve been looking all over for you. Why did you go out without telling me?”
“Step aside,” the security man told her.
“What?”
“Go home, Kathy Ann,” I said, “and tell my sister I’m in trouble.”
“For what?” she asked, looking at the security man.
“For shoplifting,” he said.
Her mouth dropped open. The security man put his hand on my back and pushed me toward the store entrance.
He took me to an office at the rear of the store where the store manager waited. He was a small, baldheaded man with deep wrinkles under his eyes and thick, wet lips. I could see from the way he was nodding and smiling that his day had been made.
“You juvenile delinquents think you can come in here anytime you want and just rip me off,” he said. “This time you were fooled, eh.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well? What’s your excuse? C’mon, let’s hear it. Maybe you have something new.”
“I just forgot,” I said.
“Oh,” he groaned, and sat hard in his seat. “She’s not even a little original. I’ve already called the police. We’re going to press charges against you to set an example. We know you kids have been coming in here and pulling these stunts all year long, and we’ve grown sick and tired of it. The only way to stop it is to see to it that when you’re caught, you pay the price, and I don’t mean the price of what you stole, either.”
I was hoping he was saying that just to frighten me. I was afraid, but something in me kept me from milking it. I couldn’t even cry. The rage and tightness I had felt on my way here were still strong.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Puddin‘ Tame,” I said.
“Oh, I see, a smart-ass. All right, we’ll leave it all to the police and the courts. Sit,” he commanded, pointing to a chair.
I looked at it, at the security man and the door, and then sat.
“She had a friend with her,” the security man told the manager.
“And?”
“She was clean, as far as I could tell.”
“Sure, they come in pairs. One distracts while the other pilfers.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “She has nothing to do with this. She wasn’t even with me in that department.”
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Pippi Longstocking,” I said.
He sat back and rubbed his hands together like someone anticipating a great feast.
A few moments later, the door opened and a policeman entered.
“This is our thief,” the manager said. “She’s wearing the stolen item under her blouse. You’ve got your evidence. Book her,” he told them.
“Stand up,” the policeman told me. He took out a pair of handcuffs. This had never happened to me in Ohio. The sight of them did stab me with a cold blade of fear. I know my arms trembled as he snapped the cuffs around my wrists.
“Let’s go,” he said firmly.
Marching through the store again, this time with a policeman right behind me and me wearing handcuffs, I drew more curious faces, some heads shaking with disgust. When we emerged, I looked for Kathy Ann, but I didn’t see her anywhere.
“Move,” the policeman said, poking me toward the patrol car. There was a policewoman waiting beside it. She held the rear door open.
“Watch your head,” she said, putting her hand on top of my head as I leaned in to sit on the caged rear seat. “What do we have?” she asked the policeman.
“She’s wearing a blouse under her blouse.”
The policewoman smiled and shook her head at me.
“Honey,” she said, “you just put yourself in a whole can of worms.”
They got into the patrol car and we started away. I looked back at the people watching from the entrance.
At least I made someone’s news of the day, I thought.
I had been in a police station before, but I was two years younger then, and although everyone had been serious, I’d had the sense that my youth would provide a parachute. This time when they brought me into the station, I saw no one remotely close to my age. All of the other prisoners looked hardened and experienced.
The policewoman took me into a private room, where I removed the blouse I had taken. She folded it and then brought me back to the desk sergeant, where they took down my name and address. I had a picture ID from my school back in Ohio. Then I was fingerprinted and put in a holding cell with two other women. One looked like she was still coming down from a drug she had taken. The other was talking to her, but I didn’t think she heard a word. I gathered they had been arrested for soliciting sex on the street. I was actually happy they showed no interest in me.
I sat on the bench and waited nearly three hours before Mother darling appeared.
“Robin Taylor,” I heard, and stood up. The policeman unlocked the door. “Come with me,” he said. I looked back at the two women, who were both asleep now, one leaning on the other. In the lobby Mother darling and Cory were standing and talking with the policewoman who had brought me to the station.
They all turned to me as I was brought along.
“I don’t even want to hear your excuses, Robin,” Mother darling said. “Cory and I have guaranteed your appearance in court. Just walk,” she said.
I glanced at Cory, who had a twisted smile on his face.
“Told you not to sin, Robin Lyn,” he quipped as they followed me out of the station.
“Don’t joke with her, Cory. She knows she’s in deep trouble with me. The whole Nashville world can find out I’m really her mother and not her sister,” she said, and I spun on her.
“That’s what bothers you the most?”
“No, what bothers me the most is your not keepin‘ your promise not to get into any trouble here. I told you this was a strange, new place. Luckily, Cory knows one of the policemen, and he helped arrange your release, but now we got to think about gettin’ you a lawyer and that costs money. How could you do this?”
I got into Mother darling’s Beetle and sat in the rear. Cory was driving.
“When that girl, Kathy Ann, came huffin‘ and puffin’ up the stairs to tell me you were arrested for shopliftin‘, I nearly fainted with disappointment. They said you paid for this,” she added, showing me the bag that contained the skirt. “Where’d you get the money for it, Robin, or did you somehow fool ’em?”
“I had some saved,” I lied.
“I don’t want you goin‘ anywhere until I say it’s okay, hear me? You stay right around the apartment complex. Hopefully, you can’t get into any more trouble doin’ that. You know they could send you to jail for this? They do send sixteen-year-olds to jail, Robin. You’re just lucky they don’t know about your record in Ohio.
“They keep the juvenile records secret,” she told Cory.
“How many times did she get in trouble like this?” he asked.
“Enough to have her called a kleptomaniac. I had her see a therapist, too.”
“That did a lot of good, I see,” he said.
“Now you see how hard it is to work on building a career and bring up a child,” she told him.
“I’m not a child.”
“You sure behave like you are,” Cory said.
“At least I don’t bust in on people when they’re taking a shower.”
“Oh, save me,” he said. “Next time I’ll do my business in a beer bottle. No, maybe I better not do that. Del might drink it by mistake,” he said, and laughed.
Mother darling laughed, too.
“Oh, Robin,” she said, shaking her head, “with me startin‘ work in a real club tonight, too. Don’t you realize how good our lives could be?”
I folded my arms under my breasts and stared out the window. It was always Mother darling who was disappointed, always Mother darling who had to be protected.
The moment we drove into the apartment complex, Kathy Ann, who was obviously sitting by her window waiting, came charging out of her apartment.
“What happened?” she asked.
“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened,” Mother darling replied. “She was booked, fingerprinted, and given a court date where she could be sentenced to jail. That’s what happened. Go on upstairs, Robin. You sit and contemplate what you’ve done.”
I hurried ahead and went into my bedroom, slamming the door closed behind me. Then I threw myself on the bed, became aware of the stench in the sheet and blanket again, and sat up quickly. I thought for a moment and went to the door. They were sitting in the living room, feeling sorry for themselves. Cory was saying how grateful he was that he never got married and had any children. The ones who should be grateful are the children, I thought, who never had him as a father.
“Can I go down to the laundry room and wash something at least?” I asked.
“What?” Mother darling wanted to know.
“The smelly old sheet on this bed and the blanket and the pillowcase. I can’t sleep on it! It all stinks from cigarette smoke,” I moaned.
“It’s better than what you’ll have in jail,” Cory called back.
“Can I?”
“Just the laundry and back, Robin, and I mean it. You better not run off.”
“Unless you want to keep going,” Cory added, and then laughed.
“I wish I could,” I muttered, returning to the bed to strip it and roll up the sheet, blanket, and pillowcase. Then I started out.
“Don’t you need money for that washing machine and dryer?” Mother darling asked Cory.
“Yeah, you have any change?” he asked me.
“No.”
He reached into his pocket and then he pulled out his wallet.
“You can get change for a dollar. They have a change machine,” he said, and froze, his eyes blinking rapidly as he fingered the bills. “Hey.” He looked up at Mother darling and then at me. “I had eighty dollars in here. Now I have only twenty.”