hotel room we broke into. Or the superheroes in comic books I found in the trash. Or the Road Runner in my favorite cartoon.
In real life, I’m more like the Coyote. Bumbling. Conniving. An absolute failure at everything I do. I feel like the Coyote when he falls off a cliff and splats on the ground below in a puff of dust.
But not when I’m in Dutch’s world. Her world is so vivid. So tangible. Things happen that I can’t control. If I could, I would make Dutch’s new mother love her. And I would make Dutch love me, so it’s probably good I can’t control it.
Instead, I go see her every chance I get. To feel her light on my face. To see the shimmer in her eyes. I lie back and fall into her world for hours at a time. Earl gets mad. Tells me to snap out of it.
But he’s never been to her world.
I used to ask Earl every day if I could go to school. He always said no. Said we move too much. And, boy, do we. Sometimes, I get to know a few of the neighborhood kids when we move in. Some I like. Some I don’t.
I have to prove myself again and again. The girls want to kiss me. Several of the boys want to kiss me, too. The older girls have something else in mind. Their eyes roam to my mouth. To my shoulders. To my stomach. But that only makes the older boys mad even though their eyes roam, too. It’s a pretty even split between desire and absolute hatred.
I got in my first fight when I was five. Three boys from middle school tried to bash in my face with a rock. The leader was crazy as hell. Which figures. He’s going to hell for shooting a man in the car next to him at a stoplight, but not for several years.
The actual fight didn’t last long. They tried to hold me down while the leader balanced the rock over his head. I pushed one’s face with my hand. Elbowed the other. And simply kicked one of the leader’s arms. The rock crashed down onto the top of his head, and that was that.
He was in the hospital for two days. The boys told the cops I attacked them. Thankfully, I was five and they were eleven and twelve. I told them my dad wasn’t home. I didn’t lie. Earl is not my dad. I’ve known that for a long time. He cowered in our apartment while I told the cops he ran to the store. While they were talking to the other parents, Earl threw our stuff into an old suitcase and a laundry basket and we hightailed it out of there. We’ve never been back to that apartment. We’ve never been back to that side of town.
The apartment we’re in now, we got only because Earl flirted with the landlady. He even dated her a couple of times. I heard them having sex. They both faked it, and the relationship fizzled fast. But we have a shiny new apartment, complete with a washer and dryer that stack on top of each other. The dryer doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I’m just grateful for the washer. We’ve never had one actually inside the apartment.
Earl is always happy when we have a new place. But happy is not always good. He cooks for Kim and me. Dotes on us. Sends her to bed. Calls me to him.
I think he knows Kim and I are leaving soon. He starts locking us in again. Doesn’t let us walk to the store or go to the library. But we’ve learned to sneak out of most of the places we stay at. There’s always a weakness in the structure. Always.
When I was a kid, we had a house once with an access panel in my room that led to the attic. In the attic was a vent. I could push the vent aside, crawl through, jump down onto a pile of logs, and make my way to the library. Not quite as good as school, but close. As long as I was home before Earl, I was good. The couple of times I wasn’t, I paid a hefty price. But it was still worth it.
7
As I’m growing up, I feel myself being drawn to Dutch more and more. Lured. Usually, I go to her. I watch her. But sometimes her emotions are so