When Rosie picked Willow and Asher up from their father’s house, she didn’t even get out of the car to greet them with hugs and kisses. There was no music playing and the windows were locked shut. Willow had to tug on the car door twice to get it to close without Mom’s help.
When Willow felt the car roll over the asphalt, the claws of fear dug deeper into Willow’s heart. Again. And as Willow looked out the window and out toward the dusting of snow on the road, she put her hand over her brother’s in the quiet back seat of Lili Von. Again.
When Willow and Asher got to their mom’s house, they asked if they could play outside even though it was cold out. And they were ushered out to the driveway by a listless and lipstickless woman who barely resembled their mother. Willow wiped her red lipstick off with the bottom of her T-shirt as soon as she noticed her mother’s bare lips. And then Rosie dragged a bucket of chalk out of the front closet and dumped the contents at her children’s feet on the cold asphalt.
“Why don’t you draw something for Mom?” Rosie mumbled as she turned around to shuffle back into the house. The sounds of her mother’s shoes scraping against the ground grated against Willow’s ears and broke her heart. Her mother used to float. But this woman, dragging her feet like that, didn’t look anything like her mother. Willow watched a stranger in a bathrobe make her way into her home one slow and labored step at a time.
By the time Willow had turned her attention toward the blacktop, Asher already had blue chalk all over his face and hands. Willow crouched down, picked up a purple piece of chalk and started writing out her name in big rounded letters. As she pulled the chalk across the asphalt a purple powder swirled around her hand and landed delicately on the ground. Even though the cold was nibbling at her nose, Willow felt at peace outside with the chalk in her hand. The repetitive motions of drawing the lines of her name over and over again. The smooth vibration on her hand. The brisk air filling her lungs. The calmness around her.
But the distant sound of a car rumbling quickly toward her interrupted the quiet stillness. Willow snapped her head up and noticed that Asher had done the same. It was their father’s car roaring around the bend.
As Rex’s sleek black car came to a quick stop on top of Willow’s and Asher’s doodles, all of Willow’s organs started to rumble. This wasn’t right.
“Hi, Dad!” Asher said while Willow stood there frozen.
Go away! Get out! Get out of here! Willow willed with her mind as she stood rigidly in her place.
Rex got out of the car with determination between his eyebrows.
And then he said, “Get in.” And he said it firmly. With a shakiness in his words.
Asher tilted his head to the side in gentle perplexity. But Willow was already boiling. “No,” she yelled. She yelled it as she stomped her right foot down on the asphalt.
“Willow, get in the car. Asher, you too,” Rex insisted curtly.
Asher took a hesitant step toward the car but Willow refused.
“NO!” Willow screeched as she thrust her arms down by her sides and tightened her eyes. Everything bad was coursing through her voice and her body. Fear. Confusion. Anger. Sadness. Vulnerability. Protectiveness.
Smallness. So much smallness.
Without another pause, Rex scooped Asher up in his arms and yanked on Willow’s rigid shoulder. But Willow refused to move her feet.
“NO! NO!” she yelled as Rex dragged her rigid body by the arm. It was so visceral, holding her arm out stiff like that. But her scrawny body was no match for Rex’s strength. For Rex’s bigness. So much bigness.
“Mom! Mom!” Willow yelled and yelled. The words scratched against her throat and they thrust themselves into the cold air.
“Get off me!” Willow howled as she tried thrashing her way out of her father’s grip. “Get off me!” she howled again.
Rex had already forced his daughter into the back seat of the car and wrapped her in a seat belt. But Willow continued thrashing and yelling and yelling and thrashing. She tried ripping the seat belt her father had buckled around her straight from her chest. “Get off me!” she screeched again and again and again. She thrashed some more, and then yanked and yanked on the door handle that had been child-locked from the front seat.
“MOM!” Willow yelled again at the closed icy window.
But no one was answering her cries.
“MOM!” she yelled as forcefully as she could at the glass.
“MOM!” she yelled again, pushing her words as far as she could.
“MOMMYYYY!”
As Rex’s car started to roll way, Willow saw her mother nonchalantly pressing her palm against the front door to open it.
“MOMMYYYY!” she yelled again, pressing her own hand into the cold glass.
She watched her mother slowly scan the scene out there on her driveway. She watched her mother slowly digest everything happening out there on top of her chalk drawings. She watched her mother try, but too slowly, to put all of the pieces together. And then she saw her mother’s big brown eyes fill back up. With life. With terror. With rage. With horror.
Rosie met her daughter’s big brown eyes, bulging with fear. She saw her daughter whipping her wild hair wildly around. She saw her daughter’s seat belt tightening around her chest as she tossed her body back and forth. And then Rosie leaped to a run behind the moving car.
But Rosie was too late.
Willow turned around and pressed her hand on the cool glass of the back window again. She had finally become still as she watched her mother chase the car down the street. She watched her mother run and run and run until her legs gave out.
By the time they made it back to her father’s house, Willow was depleted of her voice and her tears. And she fell asleep in her rigid bed at her father’s house with the taste of emptiness on her sheets.
* * *
As Willow completed her checklist the next morning, not a word was mentioned about Rosie. Not a word was mentioned in the whole house at all. And Willow helped Asher with his hat and mittens, and then walked out of the big heavy door, and then walked down the winding driveway, and then boarded Bus #50 with nothing but her mother on her mind.
As soon as Willow took her spot behind the bus driver, she peeled the duct tape back on her seat and dug into the hole, willing a gift from her mother to be waiting in the depths of the green vinyl cave. And there it was. Two more Pixy Stix. Two tiny purple cylinders of relief. Two skinny purple tubes of love. Willow clutched the Pixy Stix close to her chest, and then placed them delicately into her backpack. She wanted them for recess. Yes, Pixy Stix and Prince and a word search and thoughts of Mom.
It would be okay.
And when Willow got to recess, she did what she always did. She ignored the rest of the kids in Robert Kansas Elementary School, running and swinging and playing and laughing. She ignored the rest of her classmates with the jungle gym and the slide and the soccer ball and the basketball hoop. She ignored the rest of her classmates with their friends. So many friends. Because the only things Willow ever had at recess were her CD player and her word search book. And it was usually enough to fill her head and heart. She had the sounds she loved. The sounds that reminded her of Mom’s house. The sounds that reminded her of dancing around and dressing up and feeling happy. The sounds of feeling loved. And with those headphones, she could drown out all the other sounds of the playground. She could drown out all the other sounds as she scanned the page of her word search book. She would stare at the mess of letters until a word emerged.
But today when Willow leaned her back against the brick exterior of Robert Kansas Elementary School with her legs stretched across the blacktop, she realized she didn’t have her word search book. It was left in the entranceway at Mom’s because she didn’t have any time to pack when Dad came to steal her like that. And when she put her big purple headphones on and pressed Play on her CD player, no sounds came out. She twisted the cord of her headphone. She pressed the play button over and over and over again. She jammed her finger into it and shook it around. She turned the silver contraption over and saw the red “low battery” light blinking menacingly. There weren’t going to be any sounds at all. Willow slammed the CD player onto the pavement. She slammed it again until it was in pieces. Until it was as shattered as she was.
Willow tore open her Pixy Stix and inhaled the purple crystals as her racing heart slammed against her chest. But she was still as sad and lonely and frustrated and confused as ever. There was a limit to what those Pixy Stix could do for a breaking and raging heart.
Willow closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. She loosened her jaw and tried to slow her mind. But she couldn’t drown out the sounds of laughter whooshing by. The swishing of feet through the grass. The screeching of a bouncy ball on the pavement. And then, so clearly and loudly above all the other sounds, there was the soft scraping of chalk against the blacktop. The click of the chalk hitting the hardened asphalt, and then grating against it.
And as soon as she heard that familiar sound, Willow was so viscerally taken back to the moment she was drawing big purple letters on Mom’s driveway yesterday. She could feel the granules on her fingertips. She could taste the powder on her tongue. And all of a sudden she was right back there on Mom’s driveway with Dad’s car roaring around the corner. With Dad pulling on her arm. With her seat belt pressing across her chest. With the car door refusing to open as she tried to get out. With Asher’s big wobbling tears. With her words scratching against her throat. With Mom running down the street. With Mom’s legs giving out on the street.
But before Willow could get her bearings, before she could come back to the reality that she was just sitting on the blacktop at school, Willow’s fear had clawed its way back up her throat and made its way out of her mouth.
“GET OFF ME!” Willow screamed at no one.
“GET OFF ME!” Willow screamed as she sat there with her eyes closed, tossing her body back and forth.
“MOMMMMYYYY,” she shrieked.
“MOMMMMYYYY,” she shrieked and shrieked and shrieked on the blacktop of Robert Kansas Elementary School.
Willow flinched aggressively when she felt a hand on her shoulder. But when she opened her eyes, it was Mrs. McAllister. And a group of fifth graders were standing in front of her with their hands over their mouths in shock. And there was a pool of urine in Willow’s purple leggings. As Mrs. McAllister walked Willow inside, the urine dripped down her legs and pooled around her socks. But all Willow could think about was getting to have pizza with Mom later that night. She ignored the warm urine and focused on her pizza. Yes, pizza would be good. It would be perfect. It would be like it always was. With soda and cheese teeth and cheese earrings and quarters for pinball.
And with thoughts of her evening with Mom, and when her legs had slipped into the fresh pair of purple leggings from her cubby, Willow’s heart slowed to the same steady tick, tick, tick of the second hand of the clock in Mrs. McAllister’s room. She watched as the second, and then minute, and then hour hand of the clocked moved to three forty. And when it did, Willow did the same thing she always did. Smiled a big full smile, went to get Asher from his classroom and waited for her mother at the pickup circle.
* * *
And for the first time Willow could remember, her mother and Lili Von were waiting right there as soon as she and Asher got outside. No waiting. No fear. Just Mom. Everything was already so, so much better.
And without an explanation of what happened outside the day prior, Rosie drove her children straight to Lanza Pizza after school. She even stayed on the proper side of the yellow lines in the road.
As they pushed through the glass door under the neon Pizza sign, Willow waved at John and Rosie shuffled to the counter to accept her crayons and three paper cups. But when Rosie walked over to the soda fountain and pressed her empty cup into the cream soda dispenser, nothing. Rosie aggressively whipped her head around to John behind the counter and sharply asked, “Where is it?”
“Oh, Rosie, we had to get rid of the cream soda. You were the only one who ever drank any!” John chuckled a bit with one hand over his overhanging belly, expecting an undoubtedly charming response from his most loyal patron.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Rosie came back combatively.
As Rosie’s words left her lips, Asher tugged on his mother’s long skirt, and then held his cupped hands out for a roll of quarters.
Rosie looked down at her son with an unfamiliar crinkle in her upper lip. “Asher, I don’t have any quarters. Go sit down.”
“Oh, man!” Asher said as he dropped his shoulders and walked away.
Rosie immediately turned her attention back to John. “Seriously though. You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
John just looked at her. Perplexed at the response. Perplexed at the anger behind it. At the grumbling in her voice. Perplexed that Rosie Collins, whom he had known for so many years as a beautiful orb of pleasure, was so unpleasant.
Rosie whipped her head around a second time, now toward her two children, who were perched on their knees and sliding the salt and pepper shakers across the orange tables.
She grabbed her son and then her daughter by the hand and pulled them out the door by their arms, leaving their paper cups empty and the pepper shaker on its side.
“Mommy needs her cream soda,” Rosie said as she walked her children hastily through the parking lot. Asher turned around and waved to John through the restaurant even though he was stumbling over his feet as Rosie dragged him across the asphalt.
That night, Willow and Asher got their pizza and Rosie got her cream soda. But it was a frozen cheese pizza with no toppings and they ate it while sitting on the couch in silence. And the cream soda was in cans, and they each sipped it quietly through a straw until Rosie announced that it was time for bed. And then Rosie dragged her feet up the stairs as her children followed behind her.
When they nearly reached the top of the staircase, Rosie lifted her knee lazily to complete the final step, but crumpled onto the carpet instead. Her small body hit the floor and her head followed quickly behind. And then Rosie’s narrow limbs were in a twisted pile on the floor. Willow and Asher stopped and stared down at their mother. Afraid to move. Afraid not to move. Afraid to talk. Afraid to stay quiet.
But then Rosie untied every morsel of tension in the air when she picked her head up and laughed. She laughed and laughed so hard that she snorted. And that snort caused Asher to laugh, which caused Willow to laugh. And, just like old times, Willow and Asher and Rosie were in one big jumble of laughing on the floor. And in between clutching her elated tummy filled with giggles, Willow noticed that Mom had tears running down her cheeks. And there wasn’t any way to tell whether these were happy tears or sad tears.
Willow fell asleep quickly that night to the resonant echoes of her mother’s laughter in her mind.
But when she woke up the next morning, Willow saw blue walls instead of pink ones. And a wicker dresser instead of the wooden one she and her mother had doodled all over with Sharpie markers. And it didn’t smell like Mom’s or sound like Mom’s either. Because it was her father’s. Her father’s sheets and blue walls and cold carpet. Willow turned out of bed and stumbled downstairs in a sleepy blur to find her father sitting sturdily by the kitchen table.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Rex said to his daughter without blinking.
Yeah, right! Willow thought but didn’t say as she poured herself a bowl of cereal.
Yeah, right that he was glad. He didn’t even like her. How could he be glad she was home? And what did he mean by home, anyway? This wasn’t home. Home was, would always be, at her mother’s.
As Willow listened to the sound of her own crunching cereal, she wondered whether anyone would mention the kidnappings. Whether anyone would explain to her why they were happening. How many times she would expect to be at Mom’s and end up at Dad’s.
She wondered whether she was safe anywhere.
Safe for sleeping or for living.
Willow decided not to wash out her cereal bowl and put it in the dishwasher before leaving the house for school.
She was sick of her father’s rules.