I Wanted Ten
Alle C. Hall
I was watching myself from beside myself. I saw myself crouched in the dim light of the hall stairs, eavesdropping on Dad and Lyle, Dad’s best friend from their army days. They were whispering about my older sister.
“Patrice has gotten mighty curvy all of a sudden,” Lyle said, and my dad agreed in the submissive voice he never used, only with Lyle. That was when I left.
When you sensed the danger, you left for the ceiling. That was when you found yourself looking down on yourself, thinking, Look what was happening to me.
I looked down at myself on the stairs—skinny, like any seventh grader, same Catholic uniform as all the girls, but I was different. I knew what would be mine. It was Patrice’s for three years, almost every time Mom left town. Mom traveled for work one or two weekends a month, and on those weekends, Dad, Lyle, and their other buddy, Ted, took Patrice to Lyle's cabin in the mountains east of Seattle. They left me home to take care of Matthew. I never asked and Patrice never told, but I totally got what happened. Because each time Patrice came back, she looked swollen.
The next time they went, they left Patrice home with Matt.
It was Friday night. Lyle’s cabin was buried in the forest, far from the main highway and the failed logging town. I watched from beside myself as Lyle, Ted, and Dad played pool and drank beer. The smell in the room was sour. They acted like I was not even there. And drank beer and drank beer. At home, Dad never got drunk. In the forest, his mouth opened and closed before anything came out. He had no chance of winning, everyone knew that. The real contest was between Ted and Lyle.
When you knew it was going to happen, you found yourself looking down on yourself from the ceiling. When it was not so scary, you moved only to the side of yourself. When you thought you were going to die, you were gone.
Lyle won. I was gone. After Lyle came Ted, then my dad. The next night, Ted won.
It was Sunday morning. Everything still hurt. Before we drove home, Dad told me to pull on a sweater. Its long sleeves hid the bruises on my arms, bruises I didn’t notice until then. There were some on the insides of my thighs, too. I saw their darkness when I changed my pad. That was when I remembered. Saturday morning, Lyle gave me a full box.
My sister got her first period when she was about my age, just turned twelve, just about the time Lyle’s daughter started looking curvy. Patrice didn’t get it again until, like, a year ago, when she was fourteen.
Patrice didn’t get her period, that first time.
In Lyle’s jeep on the way home, they smelled like cologne. We pulled into a truck stop—big orange sign, Truck Stop Seven—where they encouraged me to order anything I wanted. I gobbled two butterscotch sundaes and puked in the parking lot. Oh, the fuss. They sponged off my face, carried me to the jeep. Lyle clicked me in as if he were caring for a little girl. We drove right past a pay phone. I could call someone, the police? Tell them. Help me. They wouldn’t believe me. Dad wiped my face one last time. Ted gave me a mint. Did any of that really happen, at the cabin?
As we passed through the last tunnel into Seattle, my reflection in the car window stared back at me, swollen.
At home. Patrice called me a bitch. When we were little, we had a kitty. Whenever I petted him, Patrice’s eyes would narrow, little slices of fury. Eventually, I let Kitty out, knowing she would never come back. There was no cat to let out when Patrice called me a bitch, nothing to do but watch her dress for school, her sweater tighter than usual, her mini more mini.
I couldn’t eat. On my bed, I curled this way then that, refusing to come out of my room, refusing to go to school or even ballet, which I loved, I lived for. I couldn’t imagine wearing nothing but a leotard and tights. Across the room, my first pair of toe shoes dangled on the wall by their long, pink ribbons. I was so proud to buy them last fall, back when it mattered who got into pointe class. Blisters formed before barre exercises ended and popped during adagio. By the time you got to jumps, your own blood dried your white-pink tights to the insides of your toe shoes. Removing them after class was tricky work. I loved the pain, the blood, the proof that I was dancing. I was done with pain and blood.
It was that night, I listened to Patrice get calls from three different boys, new boys every one. I dropped into my chest, into an endless hole, the bottom of the universe. The whole, empty, cold weight lay on top of me.
Far, far away, there was the tiniest speck of light, barely a dot against the black background. Behind the background, I could see the cardboard the velvet was glued to, the strings holding the background up and the light fixtures creating the effect. I went to that speck of light anyway. It kept me alive.
It was Tuesday. When Mom returned from her business trip, she hovered over me, smoothing her already perfect hair, exhaling gently onto my face. Every night, two or three glasses of wine before dinner, one or two after. She became someone to stay away from. Never smeared her lipstick, though. I always wondered how she managed that.
She asked Dad, “Hon, was Jen like this all weekend?”
“Uh, no, I don't think … we had Chinese last night. Maybe it disagreed with her.”
Mom took my temperature. Normal. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
My mother, Earth First Cosmetics’ top outside sales rep, decided there was nothing wrong with me.
Receiving no response, Mom turned to Dad like a helpless child. He stroked her arm. “Tell you what. I'll swing her by the doctor's tomorrow.”
Lyle was our doctor.
Lyle was our doctor. My dad, who was in real estate, gave him the lead on the cabin, and Ted was their lawyer. Our families spent Christmas together. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July. These were our friends. These were our only friends. I wanted to spread my wings and fly to a land where kind people danced in the temples as the sun rose and set.
My parents left. I stared at the ceiling, sometimes down from it. Matt came into my room. He didn't knock, nobody knocked in our house, but he hesitated for a respectful two seconds in the doorway before embarking on a cautious path across the floor, a sub in enemy waters. He perched on the edge of my bed. We sat like that, in silence. A stench like a sewer welled up inside me, pressed against my throat. I locked my jaws against it and wrapped my arms across my chest. I would not cry. They would not make me cry. I knew what would be mine. It was Patrice’s for three years. Not only the weekends Mom was out of town, but also the two or three nights a week she worked late. A quiet descended on the house, a horrible, sticky quiet, and we waited—my sister, in her room, Matthew and me in my room, in the fort we built of pillows and blankets. Each of us felt Dad move from the kitchen to the den, back to the kitchen, then to the patio, where he stared at Puget Sound and the Space Needle, each of us as protected as we could be from the moment when Dad could not fight himself any longer and went to Patrice. Now I understood why she never turned him away, why she chose simply to wait in her room. There was no way out.
He would not go to Patrice anymore. He would bring that sour from the cabin into me and they would do to my body what they wanted, but they would never never never get to me. I would keep them out until I was old enough and strong enough to make them stop, and one day, I would make them hurt, too.
Matt put his hand on my knee. He was only eight. Who taught him to be so kind? I couldn't take it. I hit his hand away. I said, “Get out.”
It was July. Dad took us to Italy. Business trip. Those trips were numerous—Greece, Ireland, Spain. Mom dragged us from museum to monument. In Rome, leaving some big museum, Mom held Patrice by one hand and Matt by the other. Matt was her baby, and with Patrice fabulously curvy at fifteen, the Italian boys were always around. Mom barely bothered calling over her shoulder to me. Patrice was beautiful. I was easy to manage.
Matthew was the boy. That was all there was to that.
On a bridge, I stopped. The back of my mother’s summer suit receded, a balloon when you let go of the string. I kept waiting for her to turn around, to catch me not being good. And then she was gone.
I was thirteen and alone, my only effort at anything since that first time at the cabin. In those six months, all I did was wait for it, then wait for it to be over. The Sisters at school complained that I was not the active class participant I had been since grade school. It worried my parents. There were conferences.
Crossing to the side of the bridge, I stared several hundred feet below to the water, an ethereal olive green, dancing in the Italian afternoon. The sun beat down and the wind brushed my face, making it seem impossible, what happened every few weeks at the cabin, every few nights with Dad. My weight shifted to my left leg and I leaned a little farther over the railing. I wanted to be covered by the glassy-green movement. It might hurt for a second, that first smash, but after, nothing. Nothing else sour, no more of this hated numbness. Numbness offered survival, but the price was my life.
I could give life up, oh yes. But I didn't want to.
I wanted to be here for Italian summers. I wanted to take the summer sun inside me and grow tomatoes with it.
I was not going to die. I was going to get out.
Mom was shrieking. What registered before she clutched me was that she smeared her lipstick. Her smudge of a mouth moved weirdly fast, issuing disjointed noises, like a movie rewinding. She was more upset that she lost me than she was that I disappeared.
“Why?” she asked over and over, as if I were keeping an answer from her.
It was dinner at the hotel. Patrice kicked me under the table. “You just wanted attention.”
Kind of not, really. It never occurred to me to not be there the way a good girl always was. The next morning, I slipped away at yet another impressive monument and wandered to a fountain I recognized as being near our hotel.
I had no money.
I didn't know anybody.
My Italian consisted of the three phrases my parents insisted we learn in every country: How much? My name is . . . and Where is the bathroom? Meanwhile, they practically shouted as they tried to make people understand English.
Since I didn’t know what was next, I returned to the hotel. I got an extra key to our room, let myself in, waited.
Tap on the door. Dad’s desperate whisper. “It’s me, Jen.” I never considered not letting him in.
Dad glanced hastily around the room then pushed me onto the bed. “I love you,” he gasped, faster and faster. He stopped. I wondered what else I had done wrong, until it was in my mouth and more sour than anything and I was gone.
His face pressed into my neck. “I love you so much, Jen. That’s why I do it.”
He told me that a lot, in my room at night. Each time he said it, I experienced him as a child inside me. I looked out through his eyes as someone did it to him or someone he loved. That part wasn't clear.
The lobby. Biscotti and iced espresso. When everyone else got back, no one said a word, not Mom about her obvious panic, not Patrice, who glared at the tablecloth, or Matt, who stared at the floor. This would never end.
Seattle. Stealth personified, I scoured newspapers for stories of runaways. Generally, the kid made it as far as Portland, occasionally to San Francisco. But her parents had the police on their side. They had the newspapers and the TV blasting her picture all over the place. Nobody ever asked why she ran away. Those idiots give her right back to the parents she ran away from. Unless she was dead.
I switched to books about runaways. In my favorite, a brother and sister hid in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Matt and me, it wouldn't work. He was too soft. I got mad at the book then. Those kids had no reason to run away. They were so lucky and they didn't even know it.
Another book I loved, a mystery where someone poisoned the rich grandpa. Not a big surprise, it turned out to be his will's primary beneficiary. (I looked up “primary beneficiary.”) What was surprising was that she was a kid. When it came out in the last chapter, everyone wondered why the girl would murder her Grandfather. I had my theories. Plus, she wanted the money.
Who were my parents’ primary beneficiaries?
There were assets. I learned that word, too, assets. Dad was into swinging big deals that tapped their available capital, which included a lot of what she made or inherited, which they always fought about before she always let him have it. After the fight, he always did something like pour her a glass of wine and bring out the pictures of our last family trip. By the time she finished her second, her face was tucked into his neck. They would never find me in a foreign country.
Foreign countries take a pile of money to get to.
I could do it.
I had to.
It was the end of summer. I was back at ballet three times a week, working hard to get my arabesque to where it used to be. I welcomed the pain, I controlled the blood. At school, my friends didn’t seem to be my friends anymore. I didn’t bother making new ones. Girls always asked, “What’s your dad do?” I knew they meant his job, but still.
It was Matt’s fourth-grade carnival. I threw a ring around a bottleneck and won a goldfish. Less than two inches long, she—I decided she was a she—looked dead in her plastic Baggie by the time we stopped at the pet store for a fishbowl. But when we got her into her new glass home, she revived. So spunky.
After three weeks, Spunky died. The guy at the pet store assured me that goldfish never live long. I bought another, named her Spunky II. When she died, I brought in Spunky III. Pretty soon, Dad brought them home on a regular basis. They were all “Spunky.”
I loved feeding Spunky. Every morning and every night, I dropped a pinch of orange-brown flakes that smelled like spoiled shrimp into her round residence on our kitchen counter. Spunky felt so safe in there, so cool and safe. She peered out, unnoticed, as grownups double-checked plane tickets. She learned that traveler’s checks left traceable numbers, and filed the information away for the time she would use it against them. Spunky saw how parents operated one way for daytime and another for night. Spunky understood that nighttime didn't exist—just didn't exist, that's all; a movie happening to someone else.
And if Spunky ever wondered why the family she fell into with the unlucky toss of a ring couldn't be normal, she could, from behind the safety of the glass, accept that in her family, this was normal.
It was Nutcracker time, with rehearsals and performances. A lot of the girls my age, the fourteen-ish range, whispered about getting their periods. Fourteen was when Patrice got hers, for real. Shouldn’t I get mine? If I got curvy, it would stop.
None of the ballet girls were curvy.
I loved ballet. Ballet, Spunky, and Matt; these made life manageable. I would not allow curvy.
It was January. Mom landed a steaming casserole on the dining room table with quite a thunk. Her eyes were red from crying.
Ted was dead. Mom poured herself a drink, the hard stuff. She ignored her food the way Dad ignored the drink she poured him. Matt ignored everyone, and Patrice was out with some guy she met at an Iron Maiden concert. Skeeter. My parents just knew that she was out.
Because I was the good one, I asked, “What happened?”
Ted was driving home from skiing. There was a terrible snowstorm, and an eighteen-wheeler ran them off the road, them being Ted and not his wife. At Ted’s funeral, I did not cry. I felt guilty. The next morning, I got my first period.
For weeks, over steaming casseroles, Mom kept us up to date. Ted’s wife lost no time getting together with Lyle. Next problem, Ted left no will. Finally, Ted’s brother produced a letter naming him the beneficiary. Ted’s wife-now-with-Lyle protested it. Mom had nothing but gossip about the hundreds of thousands of dollars trickling down the lawyer drain.
It was April. At the same dining room table, Dad sat me down for a serious talk. “Matt's too young to discuss this, but you’re a real woman now.” Dad didn't mention Patrice. No one had, not for two weeks. She found out she was pregnant and ran off with Skeeter. The day before my fourteenth birthday. No one called the police or the newspapers. Mom kept her room in faultless order.
Ted had been Dad’s attorney, so Dad had to find a new one. The new one told Dad that if Ted had co-signed family members to specific bank accounts, the money would be in their pockets, not tied up in court. The new one thought that Dad should give me that kind of access. “To specific accounts.”
Dad brought me to his office one afternoon. The room had butter-yellow walls and forest-green carpeting. The furniture was heavy, purchased to inspire trust. Dad and the new one added my name to specific bank accounts. The size of numbers was a gut-punch.
I said, “No bank is going to let a kid take out that kind of money.”
“We’re not ever going do it, Jen. This is a precaution against an emergency.”
We all signed many forms. At that point, I became able to withdraw any amount of money from four different accounts. Legally.
If you booked a plane flight, you had to pay piles of cash within twenty-four hours. Got that covered. Ish.
But, go—where?
If you flew overseas, you had to show a passport.
I had a passport. It said Jennifer Brewer in bold, bold type. I was not going to get out.
I was going to get out. As far back as only January, I had nothing. It was May. I was fourteen and had access to as much money as I was brave enough to take. A bout of yelling between Mom and her husband, “I really am sorry,” over a bounced check, a big one, almost seven thousand dollars, alerted me that ducking out with a large lump of cash wouldn’t fly.
Dad kept wads of bills in his pockets. Several hundred, even a thousand dollars at a time. Mom thought it tacky that he ran drink tabs for his buddies then pulled out the wad to cover it. I bet he loved to feel that wad. It was gone from his pocket only at night, when he left on his nightstand. It was remarkably easy to swipe a twenty every so often, hard not to do it too often. I kept it to forty or sixty dollars a month. He blew that on lunch. I sequestered my stash in the old standby, a hollowed-out book. I approached sixteen proudly. $540 tucked throughout my bookshelf. My “library fund.”
It was June. Dad told me I would work at his office over the summer. I spent my time in the back room, filing. Granted access to the murky world of his finances, I paid particular attention to the four bank accounts with my name on them. As a real estate investor and developer, Dad often bounced thousands between accounts for a day or a week, most of it the monthly payments from his rental units. That money didn't get the to-the-penny accounting he had to give properties in escrow.
I practiced Dad's signature. I worked my way up to sorting the afternoon mail and running errands—first coffee and sandwiches, then Fed Ex drops, and finally bank deposits. My goal was to handle cash transfers.
It was Nutcracker again. Dead-Ted’s estate settled. His alive-wife and Lyle moved to Atlanta. They sold the cabin. It all went on at home. I surprised myself by missing Patrice. Also, she could be caring for Matt, when Dad was in my room. One evening, not long after I turned sixteen, I went to the kitchen to feed Spunky. Making dinner, Mom was halfway through a glass of wine. I hoped it was her first. The phone rang. Picking it up, I heard highway sounds. I heard scared breathing. I said, “Patrice?”
Mom spun, knocking her wine to the floor. On the phone, Patrice started crying. Mom snatched the receiver and started shrieking. Matt ran in from the TV room. I dragged him to my room and threw together some pillows. We held each other and rocked as Mom’s voice found its way around the fingers we stuffed into our ears. “It’s been two years, and you expect money?”
After a short time, the screeching ended. Dinner-making sounds began again. Dad came home, and we were called to eat. Spilled wine and broken glass, vanished. Mom had a fresh one. She probably counted it as her first. No mention of Patrice—where she was, what made her desperate enough to call. I’m not ending up on some highway. How much money did she need? I had $780.
And the ability to forge Dad’s signature.
I used it to assist in the set up of a business account in both our names at a bank he knew nothing about. The interest was pitiful, but the minimum opening deposit was only a hundred bucks. I wrote a twenty-five dollar check on one of Dad’s accounts, an amount he might easily think, if he bothered to think about it, that he forgot to record. The twenty-five dollars showed up in my secret account. No bombs detonated.
It was a Wednesday toward the end of the month. I was sorting mail when I spotted the logo of my secret bank right there on an envelope. The monthly statement.
I should have been ready for this. I slipped the envelope under my blazer and took a break. Running to the pay phone down the street, my feet pounded out, “Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Would have been at ballet.” No idea what I would have said, confronted with a statement in both our names. No idea what I was going to say to the bank. I dialed the number to ask if I could arrange to pick up my statement.
The bank lady said, “We're not allowed to hold them.”
It could not happen like this.
“But we could send it to a P.O. box.”
In my most grown-up voice, which is kind of deep, for a kid, I said, “We were considering that.” A month later, I tried it again. This time, one hundred dollars. I blew it, last time. My dad would never write himself a check for only twenty-five dollars.
The hundred bucks cleared. I wrote one check each month, making sure to bounce between his accounts. Every three months, I drained my secret account of all but the hundred-dollar minimum. The cash went into my library fund, along with whatever twenties I snitched. My fingers were in his wallet one morning as he showered. Mom was supposed to have left for work. Behind me, I heard, “What are you doing?”
I snapped around. How did she--
Mom’s eyes darted to their bed. With two quick steps, she crossed the room and smacked my face. The shrieking began. From the bathroom, Dad called out. I ran. All day at school, my knees bounced and my head went, I am so stupid I am so stupid. I should have grabbed the library fund. I could just take off.
After school, I did what good girls are supposed to do. I took the city bus to work.
Dad’s office was normal. The secretary handed me the mail. I sorted it, chanting my excuse to myself: I’m a drug addict. I stole to support my habit. A girl at school did that. All they did was throw her into rehab. I could handle rehab. Just don’t find my money.
Dad called me into his office. I sat in an overstuffed chair. He passed a manila file folder across his desk and asked me to arrange a cash transfer. “Additionally, the office manager will start you on bookkeeping skills. The increased responsibility earns you a raise.”
How easy it was to imagine Dad stroking Mom’s arms, explaining everything away with low, comforting murmurs. I return to my desk and arranged my first cash transfer. My first legal cash transfer. The raise allowed me to swipe one fewer twenty a month. I packed an old duffel bag with clothes and some money and stored the duffel in the garage—a precaution against an emergency. I still didn’t know where I was going.
It was the Christmas before I turned seventeen. A new girl at ballet, Cecile, invited me to a party her parents were throwing. I’d never been to a party. Cecile’s older brother, Jeff, was visiting from Japan, where he taught English. He looked like he should smell like sunscreen. Catching me staring at him, Jeff nodded me over. He smelled like soap. He told me he liked slim girls. He asked if I wanted to sneak out. No one had ever asked.
We tiptoed into our coats and to the back patio, just the two of us, where Jeff talked about Jeff and the strong yen. My concept of Japan was limited to smooth, green hills and kimono ladies. Jeff bragged about saving ten grand in only ten months, then bumming around Southeast Asia. He came closer, with stories of adventures and endless, sunny beaches.
I was stuck on Jeff’s ten grand. In ten months. “Can anybody teach English?”
Jeff moved even closer. “As long as you have a college degree.”
“What if you don’t?”
“There are ways to bend the rules.”
At the center of each of Jeff‘s eyes was a concentrated dot. I knew that dot. Soon, the hardness would take over his whole face, then spread south, and everything would get sour—the way he smelled, the way he tasted. As if Jeff were the pinball and I the bumper, I asked how he knew so much. Jeff told me about Lonely Planet guidebooks, “travel survival kits” that detailed cheapo travel. When Mom took me to the after-Christmas sales, I ditched her for a bookstore. By now, she was used to this.
It was that night. For the first time, I read South-East Asia on a Shoestring. The view offered was far less seductive than Jeff's. Horrible diseases, thieves. The “Getting There” section baffled me. I would never get out.
That noise. I didn’t even have to look over. Dad was paused in my doorway as if confused. “Still up, Jen?”
I slid the book under my bed as he entered. He was used to this. So was I.
“Late, ya know.” It was the talking-to-his-little-girl voice he reserved for these situations. He settled heavily onto my bed, stroked my arm. “How 'bout a good-night kiss?”
The ceiling was not far enough, nor was outside the window, looking in. This time, it was the darkest dark. I almost left for good. I went for the second time to that light, the tiny speck that kept me alive in the beginning, and it told me: you can get out. You have to. You don't have a choice. It was in my blood, too. I had to get out.
It was the next morning, I retrieved the Lonely Planet and covered it determinedly with brown paper. When school started up in January, I stored it in my locker and read it during lunch as religiously as I did the ads each Sunday, pricing airfares. I went over “Getting There” word by word until it started to gel. Southeast Asia was unbelievably cheap. In Indonesia, you could get by on five dollars a day. Amidst the chaos of the school cafeteria, I sketched out a budget: a thousand bucks for a flight, a couple thousand to live on until I turned eighteen, and a couple more to set me up in Japan until I found a job.
Five grand. My current stash weighed in just under three. At this rate, it would be another two years before I could get out.
I put my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. All around me, kids my age threw food, flirted, or prepped crib sheets for that afternoon's algebra test. Meanwhile, I could still taste him.
I was going to steal a big chunk of money.
If five grand would work, eight to ten would be more comfortable.
I wanted ten. That bastard owed me at least that much.
It was February. I turned seventeen. First thing that morning, Matt gave me the most adorable treasure chest for Spunky’s bowl. Standing at the kitchen counter, we edged it into the water and then fed her, to calm her. We laughed as she gobbled the shrimp-scented flakes. Squealing like a little girl, Mom wanted in on the action. Dad said, “Let them have their fun.” Mom jutted her hand in anyway, spilling the shrimp-stinky stuff all over.
The kitchen went silent. Matt slunk to the TV room, leaving the mess on the counter and the cabinet door open. After a moment, Mom announced that she had to work late that night. Dad avoided my eyes. I could not put up with it. I could not.
It was a movie happening to someone else. Think about money.
I cleaned up the fish food. It had to be during a vacation, or school would call when I turned up not there. By summer, I should have $3,540, plus another grand from wages and birthday presents in the college savings account that everyone knew about. Five thousand five hundred short. Five thousand five hundred dollars.
Okay, so that was a lot of money. So what. I regularly arranged to transfer thousands for him. I could transfer the five-five from the four accounts with my name on them into my secret account and withdraw the cash; traveler's checks leave traceable numbers.
If the bank would give it to me. Five grand is a lot for a kid to ask for.
It was the summer before my senior year, Mom and Dad kicked around the idea of whitewater river rafting in Idaho. It was an eleven-day adventure with a long day’s drive on either end, conflicting marvelously with my rehearsals for Cinderella. I faked a loathing to give up my parts as various rodents and partygoers and arranged to stay with the girl from ballet, Cecile, who appeared to have as few friends as I did.
Thirteen days. Including a stopover in Seoul, the flight to Hong Kong ran about twenty hours. I would need two days in Hong Kong, to arrange a safe-deposit box for the money and to buy a ticket to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, to any city where one small girl was easily lost. Not long after they hit the rapids, I'll be deep in the Southeast Asian jungles. Fuck me then, pal.
It was the day before they left. A call in my professional little-girl voice confirmed availability on the next day’s flight to San Francisco. You have to show ID for international flights, but not for domestic. I hung up, called back, and in my regular voice, used a false name to reserve a one-way ticket. I would pay at the airport. Later, if they checked passenger lists from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, they wouldn’t find my name. Three hours after landing in San Francisco, the real me would leave for Hong Kong on a different airline. There was a chance that someone would remember me. Dark glasses and a hat. From wherever I flew after Hong Kong, I would go overland, train or bus. Jeff said they didn't record people at the borders. A stamp in your passport and you were on your way.
Even if they managed to track me down, they couldn't prosecute. I was not an adult.
It was the longest day of my life, and it continued. I borrowed Mom’s car. Ballet thought I was at work, work thought the same about ballet, and my parents were idiots. Meanwhile, I conducted my own dress rehearsal.
$450 was number I had in mind. $450. I was trying to see how much a kid could request without bringing in the FBI. Dressed in a newly pressed Evan-Picone pantsuit, I made the withdrawals in person from two of Dad’s accounts, transferring identical sums from two others into my secret account. Twenty minutes later, I withdrew every penny. With part of the money, I bought a really good backpack. The rest went into the library fund.
New total: $6,337.
I stared at the pile of cash in my hands. I could go on this.
I wanted to hurt him.
Them.
It was the night before. I called Cecile from a pay phone, groaning, “Believe this. Mom finally wore me down. I'm going on this lame trip.”
“No way! Madame will totally recast your parts!”
“You tell my mom that.”
I heard a fellow seventeen-year-old's grunt of commiseration. I said, “Lemme talk to your mom.” Changing tones, I thanked Cecile's mom for offering to let me stay.
“That's sweet, dear,” Cecile's mom said. Another focused adult. One wondered how they tied their shoes. Cecile's mom handed me back to Cecile.
“Make sure to tell Madame I'll be out of town for two weeks,” I said. That should take care of any calls, “Why aren't you at rehearsal?” from the studio tomorrow morning.
Cecile made one last attempt to keep me from ballet disgrace. “You're blowing your chance to get anything good in Nutcracker.”
I was on the verge of never seeing anybody, not Matt, not my fish, ever again, and Cecile cared about Nutcracker. I paced the meager footage of the phone booth. What if the banks wouldn't give me the money? There was a big difference between withdrawing $450 and over a thousand.
That's why three different banks.
What if I got caught?
I slammed my palm flat against the glass wall. I was getting out. That night, I endured him by putting my mind on an airplane. It was the last time. I was already out. I just had to get there. In the morning, I hovered near the phone as they loaded the car, even though it is way too early for the studio to call, checking on me.
They drove off just after seven. Zooming to my room, I stuffed the backpack with the Lonely Planet’s list: underwear, swimsuit, jeans, shorts, three T-shirts, a sweater for cold nights, sneakers, and a lightweight jacket. Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, tampons, razor. For the plane, sandals and a nice dress. I carried the load through the garage to the car, so the neighbors couldn't see me, and drove to the first bank. My stomach jumped like a gerbil.
“Merde,” I whispered in French, the way ballet girls have for good luck for centuries.
It was 9 a.m. sharp. The bank was cool and relatively busy. Having watched it for three years, I knew that they usually had a small rush right when they opened. That is what I wanted. In the movies, when the bad guy was about to do something bad, he acted like he knew it all and had no time to waste. I tried this routine with the teller, leaving him not a lot of time to fuss over my request for fifteen hundred dollars. “Hundreds will be fine.”
“Miss, you should really take this as a cashier's check.”
“Sorry, no, can't wait.”
9:20 a.m. From a pay phone, I arranged to transfer one grand each from banks numbers two and three to my secret account, and was on my way downtown to bank number four. This was a bigger bank, one I figure wouldn't raise a pulse over a fifteen-hundred-dollar withdrawal. I figured right.
Before heading to my secret bank, I stopped at the Westin Hotel on Fifth Avenue. I told the concierge, “I've checked out, but my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon. Could I leave my backpack while I do some shopping?”
“Certainly. Your room number?”
After all the checkouts I've studied, and I didn’t plan for this. I could take the backpack home, but I didn’t want to be carrying luggage when I took the bus to the airport. A neighbor might see. The concierge’s hand moved to the phone on the desk in front of him.
Rage slammed through me, a bull I saw in the Basque country years ago. This little shithead of a guy was not coming between me and getting out. “No,” I hissed as if he had done something to offend me. “It's not like that. You're wrong.” Taking advantage of his confusion to say, “Forget it, just forget it,” I grabbed my backpack and stalked out.
Courage deserted me on the corner. I marched blindly up the busy street, half of me not knowing what I was doing and half seeking water to wash down the vomit taste at the back of my mouth. A Burger King. Entering the French-fried air, I saw that the dining area opened into a bus station. Well, then. I rented a large locker for the backpack and decamped for the secret bank.
It was 10:45 a.m. Later than I wanted. The morning rush was over and the lunch one hadn't begun. After looking at my withdrawal slip, the teller asked me to step over to her supervisor's office. Trying to appear casual, I did, certain they were leading me into a room full of FBI agents. The supervisor, name tag said Shelly, examined the request.
“This is a bit unusual.” Almost imperceptibly, Shelly glanced at the signature on my withdrawal slip. “Jennifer.”
My excuse had been ready for months. Pronoun carefully chosen. “We do this all the time. Shelly.”
“We are not accustomed to giving this much in cash to someone your age.”
“I transfer larger sums on a regular basis. For my dad. He's whitewater rafting, okay? They left this morning. This came up last night. He told me to handle it.”
The more I talked, the more suspicious she looked.
“We do this all the time,” I concluded, and finally just shut up.
After a breath, Shelly said, “Your account showed similar activity yesterday—”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“—but for a much smaller amount.”
There was another pause.
She asked, “Is there any way to have this go by wire transfer?”
“That is not what he wants.”
“Can I at least have you take a cashier's check?”
“It has to be cash.”
“Why?”
“In all honesty, I really couldn't tell you.”
I had to smile to myself at the sincere way I delivered that one. Shelly took it at face value. I got my money and got home.
12:20 p.m. Late. Wearing a blue Ralph Lauren dress that I thought made me look grown-up, I set the car keys on the kitchen table, next to a note dated the day of their return.
There is a late rehearsal tonight and an early one tomorrow morning, so I’m staying at Cecile's. I'll be home late tomorrow night. Can't wait to hear about your trip.
Jen
I stopped one last time in front of Spunky’s bowl, armed with a timed-release food tablet. My fat little fish stared as if she knew.
Matt would feed her. He had to.
The mess of fish food on the counter. The cabinet door left open.
My hands ran down the familiar coolness of her round home. I glanced at the clock.
There are those who sink and those who swim. I was barely dog-paddling.
Matt would feed her. I took the bus downtown, collected my backpack, pulled out dark glasses and a big, white hat, and caught the airport shuttle. In the hour before takeoff, I squinched into my seat, pulling the hat further around my ears, and concentrated on not screaming. I was the first one in my boarding group on the plane. A fog-related delay in San Francisco forced a three-hour wait at the gate. They were halfway across Washington state and moving farther east every minute. They had no reason to be suspicious for at least fourteen days. Or maybe they just wouldn’t care. I sobbed. Two kids across the aisle stared. I rushed to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and flushed continually as I cried. People probably thought I was bulimic. Ballet girls did it all the time.
My reflection, in the austere metal stall. Eyes puffy, nose runny, but my face, strong and sure. There was beauty there I only associated with Patrice. I washed my face and returned as calmly as possible to the waiting area. Within minutes, my flight was called. I held my breath until lift off. The last thought I had before passing out was: I did it. I got out.
“Patrice has gotten mighty curvy all of a sudden,” Lyle said, and my dad agreed in the submissive voice he never used, only with Lyle. That was when I left.
When you sensed the danger, you left for the ceiling. That was when you found yourself looking down on yourself, thinking, Look what was happening to me.
I looked down at myself on the stairs—skinny, like any seventh grader, same Catholic uniform as all the girls, but I was different. I knew what would be mine. It was Patrice’s for three years, almost every time Mom left town. Mom traveled for work one or two weekends a month, and on those weekends, Dad, Lyle, and their other buddy, Ted, took Patrice to Lyle's cabin in the mountains east of Seattle. They left me home to take care of Matthew. I never asked and Patrice never told, but I totally got what happened. Because each time Patrice came back, she looked swollen.
The next time they went, they left Patrice home with Matt.
It was Friday night. Lyle’s cabin was buried in the forest, far from the main highway and the failed logging town. I watched from beside myself as Lyle, Ted, and Dad played pool and drank beer. The smell in the room was sour. They acted like I was not even there. And drank beer and drank beer. At home, Dad never got drunk. In the forest, his mouth opened and closed before anything came out. He had no chance of winning, everyone knew that. The real contest was between Ted and Lyle.
When you knew it was going to happen, you found yourself looking down on yourself from the ceiling. When it was not so scary, you moved only to the side of yourself. When you thought you were going to die, you were gone.
Lyle won. I was gone. After Lyle came Ted, then my dad. The next night, Ted won.
It was Sunday morning. Everything still hurt. Before we drove home, Dad told me to pull on a sweater. Its long sleeves hid the bruises on my arms, bruises I didn’t notice until then. There were some on the insides of my thighs, too. I saw their darkness when I changed my pad. That was when I remembered. Saturday morning, Lyle gave me a full box.
My sister got her first period when she was about my age, just turned twelve, just about the time Lyle’s daughter started looking curvy. Patrice didn’t get it again until, like, a year ago, when she was fourteen.
Patrice didn’t get her period, that first time.
In Lyle’s jeep on the way home, they smelled like cologne. We pulled into a truck stop—big orange sign, Truck Stop Seven—where they encouraged me to order anything I wanted. I gobbled two butterscotch sundaes and puked in the parking lot. Oh, the fuss. They sponged off my face, carried me to the jeep. Lyle clicked me in as if he were caring for a little girl. We drove right past a pay phone. I could call someone, the police? Tell them. Help me. They wouldn’t believe me. Dad wiped my face one last time. Ted gave me a mint. Did any of that really happen, at the cabin?
As we passed through the last tunnel into Seattle, my reflection in the car window stared back at me, swollen.
At home. Patrice called me a bitch. When we were little, we had a kitty. Whenever I petted him, Patrice’s eyes would narrow, little slices of fury. Eventually, I let Kitty out, knowing she would never come back. There was no cat to let out when Patrice called me a bitch, nothing to do but watch her dress for school, her sweater tighter than usual, her mini more mini.
I couldn’t eat. On my bed, I curled this way then that, refusing to come out of my room, refusing to go to school or even ballet, which I loved, I lived for. I couldn’t imagine wearing nothing but a leotard and tights. Across the room, my first pair of toe shoes dangled on the wall by their long, pink ribbons. I was so proud to buy them last fall, back when it mattered who got into pointe class. Blisters formed before barre exercises ended and popped during adagio. By the time you got to jumps, your own blood dried your white-pink tights to the insides of your toe shoes. Removing them after class was tricky work. I loved the pain, the blood, the proof that I was dancing. I was done with pain and blood.
It was that night, I listened to Patrice get calls from three different boys, new boys every one. I dropped into my chest, into an endless hole, the bottom of the universe. The whole, empty, cold weight lay on top of me.
Far, far away, there was the tiniest speck of light, barely a dot against the black background. Behind the background, I could see the cardboard the velvet was glued to, the strings holding the background up and the light fixtures creating the effect. I went to that speck of light anyway. It kept me alive.
It was Tuesday. When Mom returned from her business trip, she hovered over me, smoothing her already perfect hair, exhaling gently onto my face. Every night, two or three glasses of wine before dinner, one or two after. She became someone to stay away from. Never smeared her lipstick, though. I always wondered how she managed that.
She asked Dad, “Hon, was Jen like this all weekend?”
“Uh, no, I don't think … we had Chinese last night. Maybe it disagreed with her.”
Mom took my temperature. Normal. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
My mother, Earth First Cosmetics’ top outside sales rep, decided there was nothing wrong with me.
Receiving no response, Mom turned to Dad like a helpless child. He stroked her arm. “Tell you what. I'll swing her by the doctor's tomorrow.”
Lyle was our doctor.
Lyle was our doctor. My dad, who was in real estate, gave him the lead on the cabin, and Ted was their lawyer. Our families spent Christmas together. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July. These were our friends. These were our only friends. I wanted to spread my wings and fly to a land where kind people danced in the temples as the sun rose and set.
My parents left. I stared at the ceiling, sometimes down from it. Matt came into my room. He didn't knock, nobody knocked in our house, but he hesitated for a respectful two seconds in the doorway before embarking on a cautious path across the floor, a sub in enemy waters. He perched on the edge of my bed. We sat like that, in silence. A stench like a sewer welled up inside me, pressed against my throat. I locked my jaws against it and wrapped my arms across my chest. I would not cry. They would not make me cry. I knew what would be mine. It was Patrice’s for three years. Not only the weekends Mom was out of town, but also the two or three nights a week she worked late. A quiet descended on the house, a horrible, sticky quiet, and we waited—my sister, in her room, Matthew and me in my room, in the fort we built of pillows and blankets. Each of us felt Dad move from the kitchen to the den, back to the kitchen, then to the patio, where he stared at Puget Sound and the Space Needle, each of us as protected as we could be from the moment when Dad could not fight himself any longer and went to Patrice. Now I understood why she never turned him away, why she chose simply to wait in her room. There was no way out.
He would not go to Patrice anymore. He would bring that sour from the cabin into me and they would do to my body what they wanted, but they would never never never get to me. I would keep them out until I was old enough and strong enough to make them stop, and one day, I would make them hurt, too.
Matt put his hand on my knee. He was only eight. Who taught him to be so kind? I couldn't take it. I hit his hand away. I said, “Get out.”
It was July. Dad took us to Italy. Business trip. Those trips were numerous—Greece, Ireland, Spain. Mom dragged us from museum to monument. In Rome, leaving some big museum, Mom held Patrice by one hand and Matt by the other. Matt was her baby, and with Patrice fabulously curvy at fifteen, the Italian boys were always around. Mom barely bothered calling over her shoulder to me. Patrice was beautiful. I was easy to manage.
Matthew was the boy. That was all there was to that.
On a bridge, I stopped. The back of my mother’s summer suit receded, a balloon when you let go of the string. I kept waiting for her to turn around, to catch me not being good. And then she was gone.
I was thirteen and alone, my only effort at anything since that first time at the cabin. In those six months, all I did was wait for it, then wait for it to be over. The Sisters at school complained that I was not the active class participant I had been since grade school. It worried my parents. There were conferences.
Crossing to the side of the bridge, I stared several hundred feet below to the water, an ethereal olive green, dancing in the Italian afternoon. The sun beat down and the wind brushed my face, making it seem impossible, what happened every few weeks at the cabin, every few nights with Dad. My weight shifted to my left leg and I leaned a little farther over the railing. I wanted to be covered by the glassy-green movement. It might hurt for a second, that first smash, but after, nothing. Nothing else sour, no more of this hated numbness. Numbness offered survival, but the price was my life.
I could give life up, oh yes. But I didn't want to.
I wanted to be here for Italian summers. I wanted to take the summer sun inside me and grow tomatoes with it.
I was not going to die. I was going to get out.
Mom was shrieking. What registered before she clutched me was that she smeared her lipstick. Her smudge of a mouth moved weirdly fast, issuing disjointed noises, like a movie rewinding. She was more upset that she lost me than she was that I disappeared.
“Why?” she asked over and over, as if I were keeping an answer from her.
It was dinner at the hotel. Patrice kicked me under the table. “You just wanted attention.”
Kind of not, really. It never occurred to me to not be there the way a good girl always was. The next morning, I slipped away at yet another impressive monument and wandered to a fountain I recognized as being near our hotel.
I had no money.
I didn't know anybody.
My Italian consisted of the three phrases my parents insisted we learn in every country: How much? My name is . . . and Where is the bathroom? Meanwhile, they practically shouted as they tried to make people understand English.
Since I didn’t know what was next, I returned to the hotel. I got an extra key to our room, let myself in, waited.
Tap on the door. Dad’s desperate whisper. “It’s me, Jen.” I never considered not letting him in.
Dad glanced hastily around the room then pushed me onto the bed. “I love you,” he gasped, faster and faster. He stopped. I wondered what else I had done wrong, until it was in my mouth and more sour than anything and I was gone.
His face pressed into my neck. “I love you so much, Jen. That’s why I do it.”
He told me that a lot, in my room at night. Each time he said it, I experienced him as a child inside me. I looked out through his eyes as someone did it to him or someone he loved. That part wasn't clear.
The lobby. Biscotti and iced espresso. When everyone else got back, no one said a word, not Mom about her obvious panic, not Patrice, who glared at the tablecloth, or Matt, who stared at the floor. This would never end.
Seattle. Stealth personified, I scoured newspapers for stories of runaways. Generally, the kid made it as far as Portland, occasionally to San Francisco. But her parents had the police on their side. They had the newspapers and the TV blasting her picture all over the place. Nobody ever asked why she ran away. Those idiots give her right back to the parents she ran away from. Unless she was dead.
I switched to books about runaways. In my favorite, a brother and sister hid in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Matt and me, it wouldn't work. He was too soft. I got mad at the book then. Those kids had no reason to run away. They were so lucky and they didn't even know it.
Another book I loved, a mystery where someone poisoned the rich grandpa. Not a big surprise, it turned out to be his will's primary beneficiary. (I looked up “primary beneficiary.”) What was surprising was that she was a kid. When it came out in the last chapter, everyone wondered why the girl would murder her Grandfather. I had my theories. Plus, she wanted the money.
Who were my parents’ primary beneficiaries?
There were assets. I learned that word, too, assets. Dad was into swinging big deals that tapped their available capital, which included a lot of what she made or inherited, which they always fought about before she always let him have it. After the fight, he always did something like pour her a glass of wine and bring out the pictures of our last family trip. By the time she finished her second, her face was tucked into his neck. They would never find me in a foreign country.
Foreign countries take a pile of money to get to.
I could do it.
I had to.
It was the end of summer. I was back at ballet three times a week, working hard to get my arabesque to where it used to be. I welcomed the pain, I controlled the blood. At school, my friends didn’t seem to be my friends anymore. I didn’t bother making new ones. Girls always asked, “What’s your dad do?” I knew they meant his job, but still.
It was Matt’s fourth-grade carnival. I threw a ring around a bottleneck and won a goldfish. Less than two inches long, she—I decided she was a she—looked dead in her plastic Baggie by the time we stopped at the pet store for a fishbowl. But when we got her into her new glass home, she revived. So spunky.
After three weeks, Spunky died. The guy at the pet store assured me that goldfish never live long. I bought another, named her Spunky II. When she died, I brought in Spunky III. Pretty soon, Dad brought them home on a regular basis. They were all “Spunky.”
I loved feeding Spunky. Every morning and every night, I dropped a pinch of orange-brown flakes that smelled like spoiled shrimp into her round residence on our kitchen counter. Spunky felt so safe in there, so cool and safe. She peered out, unnoticed, as grownups double-checked plane tickets. She learned that traveler’s checks left traceable numbers, and filed the information away for the time she would use it against them. Spunky saw how parents operated one way for daytime and another for night. Spunky understood that nighttime didn't exist—just didn't exist, that's all; a movie happening to someone else.
And if Spunky ever wondered why the family she fell into with the unlucky toss of a ring couldn't be normal, she could, from behind the safety of the glass, accept that in her family, this was normal.
It was Nutcracker time, with rehearsals and performances. A lot of the girls my age, the fourteen-ish range, whispered about getting their periods. Fourteen was when Patrice got hers, for real. Shouldn’t I get mine? If I got curvy, it would stop.
None of the ballet girls were curvy.
I loved ballet. Ballet, Spunky, and Matt; these made life manageable. I would not allow curvy.
It was January. Mom landed a steaming casserole on the dining room table with quite a thunk. Her eyes were red from crying.
Ted was dead. Mom poured herself a drink, the hard stuff. She ignored her food the way Dad ignored the drink she poured him. Matt ignored everyone, and Patrice was out with some guy she met at an Iron Maiden concert. Skeeter. My parents just knew that she was out.
Because I was the good one, I asked, “What happened?”
Ted was driving home from skiing. There was a terrible snowstorm, and an eighteen-wheeler ran them off the road, them being Ted and not his wife. At Ted’s funeral, I did not cry. I felt guilty. The next morning, I got my first period.
For weeks, over steaming casseroles, Mom kept us up to date. Ted’s wife lost no time getting together with Lyle. Next problem, Ted left no will. Finally, Ted’s brother produced a letter naming him the beneficiary. Ted’s wife-now-with-Lyle protested it. Mom had nothing but gossip about the hundreds of thousands of dollars trickling down the lawyer drain.
It was April. At the same dining room table, Dad sat me down for a serious talk. “Matt's too young to discuss this, but you’re a real woman now.” Dad didn't mention Patrice. No one had, not for two weeks. She found out she was pregnant and ran off with Skeeter. The day before my fourteenth birthday. No one called the police or the newspapers. Mom kept her room in faultless order.
Ted had been Dad’s attorney, so Dad had to find a new one. The new one told Dad that if Ted had co-signed family members to specific bank accounts, the money would be in their pockets, not tied up in court. The new one thought that Dad should give me that kind of access. “To specific accounts.”
Dad brought me to his office one afternoon. The room had butter-yellow walls and forest-green carpeting. The furniture was heavy, purchased to inspire trust. Dad and the new one added my name to specific bank accounts. The size of numbers was a gut-punch.
I said, “No bank is going to let a kid take out that kind of money.”
“We’re not ever going do it, Jen. This is a precaution against an emergency.”
We all signed many forms. At that point, I became able to withdraw any amount of money from four different accounts. Legally.
If you booked a plane flight, you had to pay piles of cash within twenty-four hours. Got that covered. Ish.
But, go—where?
If you flew overseas, you had to show a passport.
I had a passport. It said Jennifer Brewer in bold, bold type. I was not going to get out.
I was going to get out. As far back as only January, I had nothing. It was May. I was fourteen and had access to as much money as I was brave enough to take. A bout of yelling between Mom and her husband, “I really am sorry,” over a bounced check, a big one, almost seven thousand dollars, alerted me that ducking out with a large lump of cash wouldn’t fly.
Dad kept wads of bills in his pockets. Several hundred, even a thousand dollars at a time. Mom thought it tacky that he ran drink tabs for his buddies then pulled out the wad to cover it. I bet he loved to feel that wad. It was gone from his pocket only at night, when he left on his nightstand. It was remarkably easy to swipe a twenty every so often, hard not to do it too often. I kept it to forty or sixty dollars a month. He blew that on lunch. I sequestered my stash in the old standby, a hollowed-out book. I approached sixteen proudly. $540 tucked throughout my bookshelf. My “library fund.”
It was June. Dad told me I would work at his office over the summer. I spent my time in the back room, filing. Granted access to the murky world of his finances, I paid particular attention to the four bank accounts with my name on them. As a real estate investor and developer, Dad often bounced thousands between accounts for a day or a week, most of it the monthly payments from his rental units. That money didn't get the to-the-penny accounting he had to give properties in escrow.
I practiced Dad's signature. I worked my way up to sorting the afternoon mail and running errands—first coffee and sandwiches, then Fed Ex drops, and finally bank deposits. My goal was to handle cash transfers.
It was Nutcracker again. Dead-Ted’s estate settled. His alive-wife and Lyle moved to Atlanta. They sold the cabin. It all went on at home. I surprised myself by missing Patrice. Also, she could be caring for Matt, when Dad was in my room. One evening, not long after I turned sixteen, I went to the kitchen to feed Spunky. Making dinner, Mom was halfway through a glass of wine. I hoped it was her first. The phone rang. Picking it up, I heard highway sounds. I heard scared breathing. I said, “Patrice?”
Mom spun, knocking her wine to the floor. On the phone, Patrice started crying. Mom snatched the receiver and started shrieking. Matt ran in from the TV room. I dragged him to my room and threw together some pillows. We held each other and rocked as Mom’s voice found its way around the fingers we stuffed into our ears. “It’s been two years, and you expect money?”
After a short time, the screeching ended. Dinner-making sounds began again. Dad came home, and we were called to eat. Spilled wine and broken glass, vanished. Mom had a fresh one. She probably counted it as her first. No mention of Patrice—where she was, what made her desperate enough to call. I’m not ending up on some highway. How much money did she need? I had $780.
And the ability to forge Dad’s signature.
I used it to assist in the set up of a business account in both our names at a bank he knew nothing about. The interest was pitiful, but the minimum opening deposit was only a hundred bucks. I wrote a twenty-five dollar check on one of Dad’s accounts, an amount he might easily think, if he bothered to think about it, that he forgot to record. The twenty-five dollars showed up in my secret account. No bombs detonated.
It was a Wednesday toward the end of the month. I was sorting mail when I spotted the logo of my secret bank right there on an envelope. The monthly statement.
I should have been ready for this. I slipped the envelope under my blazer and took a break. Running to the pay phone down the street, my feet pounded out, “Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Would have been at ballet.” No idea what I would have said, confronted with a statement in both our names. No idea what I was going to say to the bank. I dialed the number to ask if I could arrange to pick up my statement.
The bank lady said, “We're not allowed to hold them.”
It could not happen like this.
“But we could send it to a P.O. box.”
In my most grown-up voice, which is kind of deep, for a kid, I said, “We were considering that.” A month later, I tried it again. This time, one hundred dollars. I blew it, last time. My dad would never write himself a check for only twenty-five dollars.
The hundred bucks cleared. I wrote one check each month, making sure to bounce between his accounts. Every three months, I drained my secret account of all but the hundred-dollar minimum. The cash went into my library fund, along with whatever twenties I snitched. My fingers were in his wallet one morning as he showered. Mom was supposed to have left for work. Behind me, I heard, “What are you doing?”
I snapped around. How did she--
Mom’s eyes darted to their bed. With two quick steps, she crossed the room and smacked my face. The shrieking began. From the bathroom, Dad called out. I ran. All day at school, my knees bounced and my head went, I am so stupid I am so stupid. I should have grabbed the library fund. I could just take off.
After school, I did what good girls are supposed to do. I took the city bus to work.
Dad’s office was normal. The secretary handed me the mail. I sorted it, chanting my excuse to myself: I’m a drug addict. I stole to support my habit. A girl at school did that. All they did was throw her into rehab. I could handle rehab. Just don’t find my money.
Dad called me into his office. I sat in an overstuffed chair. He passed a manila file folder across his desk and asked me to arrange a cash transfer. “Additionally, the office manager will start you on bookkeeping skills. The increased responsibility earns you a raise.”
How easy it was to imagine Dad stroking Mom’s arms, explaining everything away with low, comforting murmurs. I return to my desk and arranged my first cash transfer. My first legal cash transfer. The raise allowed me to swipe one fewer twenty a month. I packed an old duffel bag with clothes and some money and stored the duffel in the garage—a precaution against an emergency. I still didn’t know where I was going.
It was the Christmas before I turned seventeen. A new girl at ballet, Cecile, invited me to a party her parents were throwing. I’d never been to a party. Cecile’s older brother, Jeff, was visiting from Japan, where he taught English. He looked like he should smell like sunscreen. Catching me staring at him, Jeff nodded me over. He smelled like soap. He told me he liked slim girls. He asked if I wanted to sneak out. No one had ever asked.
We tiptoed into our coats and to the back patio, just the two of us, where Jeff talked about Jeff and the strong yen. My concept of Japan was limited to smooth, green hills and kimono ladies. Jeff bragged about saving ten grand in only ten months, then bumming around Southeast Asia. He came closer, with stories of adventures and endless, sunny beaches.
I was stuck on Jeff’s ten grand. In ten months. “Can anybody teach English?”
Jeff moved even closer. “As long as you have a college degree.”
“What if you don’t?”
“There are ways to bend the rules.”
At the center of each of Jeff‘s eyes was a concentrated dot. I knew that dot. Soon, the hardness would take over his whole face, then spread south, and everything would get sour—the way he smelled, the way he tasted. As if Jeff were the pinball and I the bumper, I asked how he knew so much. Jeff told me about Lonely Planet guidebooks, “travel survival kits” that detailed cheapo travel. When Mom took me to the after-Christmas sales, I ditched her for a bookstore. By now, she was used to this.
It was that night. For the first time, I read South-East Asia on a Shoestring. The view offered was far less seductive than Jeff's. Horrible diseases, thieves. The “Getting There” section baffled me. I would never get out.
That noise. I didn’t even have to look over. Dad was paused in my doorway as if confused. “Still up, Jen?”
I slid the book under my bed as he entered. He was used to this. So was I.
“Late, ya know.” It was the talking-to-his-little-girl voice he reserved for these situations. He settled heavily onto my bed, stroked my arm. “How 'bout a good-night kiss?”
The ceiling was not far enough, nor was outside the window, looking in. This time, it was the darkest dark. I almost left for good. I went for the second time to that light, the tiny speck that kept me alive in the beginning, and it told me: you can get out. You have to. You don't have a choice. It was in my blood, too. I had to get out.
It was the next morning, I retrieved the Lonely Planet and covered it determinedly with brown paper. When school started up in January, I stored it in my locker and read it during lunch as religiously as I did the ads each Sunday, pricing airfares. I went over “Getting There” word by word until it started to gel. Southeast Asia was unbelievably cheap. In Indonesia, you could get by on five dollars a day. Amidst the chaos of the school cafeteria, I sketched out a budget: a thousand bucks for a flight, a couple thousand to live on until I turned eighteen, and a couple more to set me up in Japan until I found a job.
Five grand. My current stash weighed in just under three. At this rate, it would be another two years before I could get out.
I put my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. All around me, kids my age threw food, flirted, or prepped crib sheets for that afternoon's algebra test. Meanwhile, I could still taste him.
I was going to steal a big chunk of money.
If five grand would work, eight to ten would be more comfortable.
I wanted ten. That bastard owed me at least that much.
It was February. I turned seventeen. First thing that morning, Matt gave me the most adorable treasure chest for Spunky’s bowl. Standing at the kitchen counter, we edged it into the water and then fed her, to calm her. We laughed as she gobbled the shrimp-scented flakes. Squealing like a little girl, Mom wanted in on the action. Dad said, “Let them have their fun.” Mom jutted her hand in anyway, spilling the shrimp-stinky stuff all over.
The kitchen went silent. Matt slunk to the TV room, leaving the mess on the counter and the cabinet door open. After a moment, Mom announced that she had to work late that night. Dad avoided my eyes. I could not put up with it. I could not.
It was a movie happening to someone else. Think about money.
I cleaned up the fish food. It had to be during a vacation, or school would call when I turned up not there. By summer, I should have $3,540, plus another grand from wages and birthday presents in the college savings account that everyone knew about. Five thousand five hundred short. Five thousand five hundred dollars.
Okay, so that was a lot of money. So what. I regularly arranged to transfer thousands for him. I could transfer the five-five from the four accounts with my name on them into my secret account and withdraw the cash; traveler's checks leave traceable numbers.
If the bank would give it to me. Five grand is a lot for a kid to ask for.
It was the summer before my senior year, Mom and Dad kicked around the idea of whitewater river rafting in Idaho. It was an eleven-day adventure with a long day’s drive on either end, conflicting marvelously with my rehearsals for Cinderella. I faked a loathing to give up my parts as various rodents and partygoers and arranged to stay with the girl from ballet, Cecile, who appeared to have as few friends as I did.
Thirteen days. Including a stopover in Seoul, the flight to Hong Kong ran about twenty hours. I would need two days in Hong Kong, to arrange a safe-deposit box for the money and to buy a ticket to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, to any city where one small girl was easily lost. Not long after they hit the rapids, I'll be deep in the Southeast Asian jungles. Fuck me then, pal.
It was the day before they left. A call in my professional little-girl voice confirmed availability on the next day’s flight to San Francisco. You have to show ID for international flights, but not for domestic. I hung up, called back, and in my regular voice, used a false name to reserve a one-way ticket. I would pay at the airport. Later, if they checked passenger lists from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, they wouldn’t find my name. Three hours after landing in San Francisco, the real me would leave for Hong Kong on a different airline. There was a chance that someone would remember me. Dark glasses and a hat. From wherever I flew after Hong Kong, I would go overland, train or bus. Jeff said they didn't record people at the borders. A stamp in your passport and you were on your way.
Even if they managed to track me down, they couldn't prosecute. I was not an adult.
It was the longest day of my life, and it continued. I borrowed Mom’s car. Ballet thought I was at work, work thought the same about ballet, and my parents were idiots. Meanwhile, I conducted my own dress rehearsal.
$450 was number I had in mind. $450. I was trying to see how much a kid could request without bringing in the FBI. Dressed in a newly pressed Evan-Picone pantsuit, I made the withdrawals in person from two of Dad’s accounts, transferring identical sums from two others into my secret account. Twenty minutes later, I withdrew every penny. With part of the money, I bought a really good backpack. The rest went into the library fund.
New total: $6,337.
I stared at the pile of cash in my hands. I could go on this.
I wanted to hurt him.
Them.
It was the night before. I called Cecile from a pay phone, groaning, “Believe this. Mom finally wore me down. I'm going on this lame trip.”
“No way! Madame will totally recast your parts!”
“You tell my mom that.”
I heard a fellow seventeen-year-old's grunt of commiseration. I said, “Lemme talk to your mom.” Changing tones, I thanked Cecile's mom for offering to let me stay.
“That's sweet, dear,” Cecile's mom said. Another focused adult. One wondered how they tied their shoes. Cecile's mom handed me back to Cecile.
“Make sure to tell Madame I'll be out of town for two weeks,” I said. That should take care of any calls, “Why aren't you at rehearsal?” from the studio tomorrow morning.
Cecile made one last attempt to keep me from ballet disgrace. “You're blowing your chance to get anything good in Nutcracker.”
I was on the verge of never seeing anybody, not Matt, not my fish, ever again, and Cecile cared about Nutcracker. I paced the meager footage of the phone booth. What if the banks wouldn't give me the money? There was a big difference between withdrawing $450 and over a thousand.
That's why three different banks.
What if I got caught?
I slammed my palm flat against the glass wall. I was getting out. That night, I endured him by putting my mind on an airplane. It was the last time. I was already out. I just had to get there. In the morning, I hovered near the phone as they loaded the car, even though it is way too early for the studio to call, checking on me.
They drove off just after seven. Zooming to my room, I stuffed the backpack with the Lonely Planet’s list: underwear, swimsuit, jeans, shorts, three T-shirts, a sweater for cold nights, sneakers, and a lightweight jacket. Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, tampons, razor. For the plane, sandals and a nice dress. I carried the load through the garage to the car, so the neighbors couldn't see me, and drove to the first bank. My stomach jumped like a gerbil.
“Merde,” I whispered in French, the way ballet girls have for good luck for centuries.
It was 9 a.m. sharp. The bank was cool and relatively busy. Having watched it for three years, I knew that they usually had a small rush right when they opened. That is what I wanted. In the movies, when the bad guy was about to do something bad, he acted like he knew it all and had no time to waste. I tried this routine with the teller, leaving him not a lot of time to fuss over my request for fifteen hundred dollars. “Hundreds will be fine.”
“Miss, you should really take this as a cashier's check.”
“Sorry, no, can't wait.”
9:20 a.m. From a pay phone, I arranged to transfer one grand each from banks numbers two and three to my secret account, and was on my way downtown to bank number four. This was a bigger bank, one I figure wouldn't raise a pulse over a fifteen-hundred-dollar withdrawal. I figured right.
Before heading to my secret bank, I stopped at the Westin Hotel on Fifth Avenue. I told the concierge, “I've checked out, but my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon. Could I leave my backpack while I do some shopping?”
“Certainly. Your room number?”
After all the checkouts I've studied, and I didn’t plan for this. I could take the backpack home, but I didn’t want to be carrying luggage when I took the bus to the airport. A neighbor might see. The concierge’s hand moved to the phone on the desk in front of him.
Rage slammed through me, a bull I saw in the Basque country years ago. This little shithead of a guy was not coming between me and getting out. “No,” I hissed as if he had done something to offend me. “It's not like that. You're wrong.” Taking advantage of his confusion to say, “Forget it, just forget it,” I grabbed my backpack and stalked out.
Courage deserted me on the corner. I marched blindly up the busy street, half of me not knowing what I was doing and half seeking water to wash down the vomit taste at the back of my mouth. A Burger King. Entering the French-fried air, I saw that the dining area opened into a bus station. Well, then. I rented a large locker for the backpack and decamped for the secret bank.
It was 10:45 a.m. Later than I wanted. The morning rush was over and the lunch one hadn't begun. After looking at my withdrawal slip, the teller asked me to step over to her supervisor's office. Trying to appear casual, I did, certain they were leading me into a room full of FBI agents. The supervisor, name tag said Shelly, examined the request.
“This is a bit unusual.” Almost imperceptibly, Shelly glanced at the signature on my withdrawal slip. “Jennifer.”
My excuse had been ready for months. Pronoun carefully chosen. “We do this all the time. Shelly.”
“We are not accustomed to giving this much in cash to someone your age.”
“I transfer larger sums on a regular basis. For my dad. He's whitewater rafting, okay? They left this morning. This came up last night. He told me to handle it.”
The more I talked, the more suspicious she looked.
“We do this all the time,” I concluded, and finally just shut up.
After a breath, Shelly said, “Your account showed similar activity yesterday—”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“—but for a much smaller amount.”
There was another pause.
She asked, “Is there any way to have this go by wire transfer?”
“That is not what he wants.”
“Can I at least have you take a cashier's check?”
“It has to be cash.”
“Why?”
“In all honesty, I really couldn't tell you.”
I had to smile to myself at the sincere way I delivered that one. Shelly took it at face value. I got my money and got home.
12:20 p.m. Late. Wearing a blue Ralph Lauren dress that I thought made me look grown-up, I set the car keys on the kitchen table, next to a note dated the day of their return.
There is a late rehearsal tonight and an early one tomorrow morning, so I’m staying at Cecile's. I'll be home late tomorrow night. Can't wait to hear about your trip.
Jen
I stopped one last time in front of Spunky’s bowl, armed with a timed-release food tablet. My fat little fish stared as if she knew.
Matt would feed her. He had to.
The mess of fish food on the counter. The cabinet door left open.
My hands ran down the familiar coolness of her round home. I glanced at the clock.
There are those who sink and those who swim. I was barely dog-paddling.
Matt would feed her. I took the bus downtown, collected my backpack, pulled out dark glasses and a big, white hat, and caught the airport shuttle. In the hour before takeoff, I squinched into my seat, pulling the hat further around my ears, and concentrated on not screaming. I was the first one in my boarding group on the plane. A fog-related delay in San Francisco forced a three-hour wait at the gate. They were halfway across Washington state and moving farther east every minute. They had no reason to be suspicious for at least fourteen days. Or maybe they just wouldn’t care. I sobbed. Two kids across the aisle stared. I rushed to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and flushed continually as I cried. People probably thought I was bulimic. Ballet girls did it all the time.
My reflection, in the austere metal stall. Eyes puffy, nose runny, but my face, strong and sure. There was beauty there I only associated with Patrice. I washed my face and returned as calmly as possible to the waiting area. Within minutes, my flight was called. I held my breath until lift off. The last thought I had before passing out was: I did it. I got out.
