I have no idea where I’m going. It’s dark, and I hate being out in the dark with Christian, but I have no choice. I have to protect my son.
Riding away from the apartment, with CJ safely on the back of her bike, Jess finally let herself break down, feeling the abandonment of her mom fresh. Usually, Jess didn’t allow this. This was what her nightmares were for.
In her nightmares, Jess remembered. She remembered not being Jess, the strong and self-reliant person she made herself into, but Jessie, the toddler who was always scared of doing something wrong…always abused, ignored and abandoned.
When Jessie’s daddy was home everything was okay. He remembered important things like supper time, and bath time. Things that her mommy forgot. Whenever her daddy went to work, Jessie felt scared inside. She didn’t know what her mommy would feel like that day. If she would feel lazy and not want to cook or play with her, or if she would feel mean and hurt Jessie just because she wanted to. Her foot still hurt from where she stepped on broken glass one time, and her whole self was sore from being pushed into the wall from a long way away. That was for sassing, Jessie reminded herself. She had to be careful to not do that. Or take anything before her mommy was all the way done with it.
Today, Jessie’s daddy was at work. She got up early and watched his car go down the big driveway. There was snow outside! That made Jessie excited, and she thought of Santa and presents and her mommy being happy all day, as long as Jessie and daddy remembered to keep bringing her more to drink.
Christmas was a special day when Santa brought everybody presents. He always knew what to bring to make Jessie’s mommy happy. Lots of pretty bottles with adult drinks in them. Sometimes she got little bags of sugar, too, that she put in her nose. But she only opened those when Jessie’s daddy was away.
Jessie was thinking of her mommy being happy just like her because of the snow. She found some clothes in the corner of her room and put them on. Her favorite tee shirt with a heart and a teddy bear. Her favorite jeans that had the hole, and her pink jelly shoes.
Next, Jessie went to the kitchen because she was hungry. She looked for cereal, but it was all gone. So she looked in all the cupboards and the fridge. That was almost empty too. She saw one piece of cheese still with a wrapper on and worked hard until it opened. It was a little hard on the sides, but it tasted good, still. There was nothing else, so Jessie climbed onto the counter with the chair she moved there before and got a drink from where the water came out in the sink. All the glasses were dirty and so were the rest of their dishes. The flies buzzed around all the dishes and Jessie was afraid she might drink one with the water, so she stopped and got down.
She went down the hall and checked on her mommy. That was her job when her daddy was away. Mommy was still sleeping so Jessie went back to the fridge and looked for some of the pretty bottles for her mom. Those were all gone, but there was some beer left. Jessie knew from her mommy beer was almost as good, but sometimes it made her mean, too, so when Jessie brought it, she made sure to be extra careful not to trip or be too loud or spill it. Sometimes, Jessie walked all the way down the long sidewalk to the store and taked some of the medicine from the big shelf. Because medicine sometimes helped her mommy feel better when she didn’t have anything else.
After Jessie put the beer on the table by her mommy’s bed where she liked it, Jessie went back to her room and sat very quiet. She didn’t have that much toys because they all got broken when they were bad.
In a while, Jessie’s mom came, and she stood up real fast.
“Hey, Jessie-Lynn.” Her mommy said that and smiled. Jessie-Lynn meant she was doing a good job.
Jessica meant she had to run away and hide. But her mommy didn’t say that, so she stayed very still, so her mommy could see how good she was being.
“I got a surprise for you. Let’s take a ride in the car,” she said, and held a hand out for Jessie to hold.
Jessie grabbed onto it quick and made herself keep being good, so her mommy wouldn’t change her mind and take the surprise away.
The car ride wasn’t very long. When her mommy stopped in front of a big building, she asked Jessie, “Do you want to see a movie?” Then, she smiled again.
Jessie said yes, because she did. There was a cartoon one about a mermaid that she wanted to see a whole bunch. “The mermaid one?” she asked.
And then her mommy did something so nice. She nodded her head yes, and bought Jessie her own special ticket to get in. But that wasn’t the end of the surprise. Jessie also got her own popcorn and a pop.
Jessie’s mommy took her to the door of the movie room and opened it. It was very dark in there, and Jessie wasn’t sure she wanted to see the movie after all.
“Go on inside,” her mommy said, giving her a soft push. It still made Jessie get very stiff in herself to get pushed, even though it didn’t hurt that much. “I’ll be right back.”
So, Jessie made herself be tough and brave like she had to be when her mommy made her be in the dark closet alone sometimes. The movie room was big and there was other people, and nice soft chairs and lights like Christmas. Jessie climbed up in one of the chairs and put her cup in the little hole, and held her popcorn.
She watched the whole movie, sitting very still. She didn’t be loud like the other kids, just in case her mom was watching. When it got over, the big lights came on, and Jessie got up to go find her mommy. She walked around outside the movie room. She stopped by the candy spot where they did before, but her mommy wasn’t there. Jessie went in by the potties and looked in case if her mommy was in there and she was sick. But she wasn’t.
After a long time, Jessie followed some big people outside who held the door. Jessie walked around, looking for the red car that had her mommy inside, but she didn’t see it. The snow made her toes cold, and her teeth hit together, but she kept walking and looking for her mommy.
One time, she stopped outside the spot where she knew her mommy liked it the best. The liquor store. That was the one with all the broken glass on the ground outside and the loud people with the same smell as her mommy. Jessie knew better than to go inside. Even though she never knew why she shouldn’t.
Jessie couldn’t feel her feet when the scary police found her and she got tooken away to a stranger’s house. She didn’t tell the police or that stranger lady her name or any words, because her daddy said never talk to strangers. She screamed when they made her feet get warmed up in steaming hot water.
At the stranger-lady’s house Jessie was a bad girl. She screamed and fighted the stranger very hard when she asked to see Jessie’s popcorn. When she had to take a bath and got all naked, Jessie fighted again because she didn’t like the way the lady was doing sad noises about all bruises on Jessie’s whole self.
Finally that stranger lady learned good enough to leave Jessie alone. That’s because the lady went to sleep. That way, Jessie could peek in all the rooms and the refrigerator. Her forehead wrinkled up when she didn’t see any cans or bottles except pop ones. It made Jessie feel scared inside. She was very far away from her sidewalk and her store. So Jessie found a closet to hide in, and she cried a little, because her mommy was going to be very mad that Jessie wasn’t there in the movie room when she came right back.
After very long, Jessie heard the lady calling for her. Jessie made herself get smaller in the corner of the closet. She was very tired from being awake. When the lady opened the door of the closet, Jessie curled up tight. When she reached for her, Jessie screamed, so the lady stopped reaching.
“Hi,” the lady said in a nice voice that made Jessie mad inside. “Is your name Jessie?”
Jessie nodded.
“Your daddy’s been looking and looking for you. He’ll be here in a little while to pick you up, okay? Do you want some breakfast while you wait?”
Jessie started to feel excited but made herself stop. Adults always tricked her, so she stomped very loud to the kitchen.
Jessie had cereal and ate very fast. Then the lady gave Jessie her clothes back. They smelled clean now, and Jessie put them on. The lady even found big boots to wear over Jessie’s jelly shoes so her toes wouldn’t get cold from the snow.
When her daddy finally got her, he didn’t say any words. When she asked where Mommy was, he pretended he didn’t hear. And when they went home and all her mommy’s stuff was gone, Jessie knew the truth.
She knew her mommy didn’t love her anymore.
--
Jess blinked, trying to figure out where she was heading. First, her only objective had been to get herself and Christian away from the apartment, but now Jess knew she needed a plan. They couldn’t just go riding around the streets at night. That’s what brought them here in the first place. She needed a plan.
Thinking quickly, she headed for campus, where she knew several of the common buildings stayed open a few more hours.
“Are we going to school?” Christian asked quietly. He held his mom’s shirt to let her know he was there. That’s because a man takes care of his mom, and he was a little man.
Breathing deeply, Jess tried to calm down. “Just for a little while. We’ll find a bathroom and clean you up. How about that?”
Jess parked behind the central campus building, so her bike wasn’t obvious, and carried Christian inside. She went downstairs, grateful the little store was still open there. She bought him an adult-small sweatshirt. It was the smallest thing they carried, and Christian needed to get out of his puke clothes.
Like she promised, Jess took him to the bathroom, and set him up on the sink. She helped him out of his shirt and washed him off the best she could with paper towels, water and soap. Then, she put the huge shirt on him.
Christian smiled at her. The shirt was black and had a doggie on it. It was so big it felt like a nice soft blanket. He needed one of those, because he still didn’t feel good.
Jess picked him up and cuddled him. “When did your belly start hurting?” she asked.
“After supper,” he said, resting his head on his mom’s shoulder. It made a good pillow.
Jess winced. “Did you eat Aaron’s chili?”
“I wanted dessert.”
Sighing, Jess made a mental note to keep within sight of a bathroom at all times. Who knew what could have been wrong with the chili? She still recalled biting into his salt-cookies when she was so pregnant she had to waddle everywhere.
Her throat constricted at the memory of the friends she’d left behind - especially Legend - but Jess forced that out of her mind and kept walking, knowing she was going to have to come up with somewhere for them to stay, and fast. The building was going to close soon.
--
Coby had loved playing detective as a kid. He now realized that he hated playing it for real. He and Morgan were in regular cell phone contact. They had left one-after-another minutes after Jess.
Minutes, it turned out, were all Jess needed to completely disappear.
Coby felt his stomach constrict. Now, it had been nearly an hour. The temperature was dropping. Praying that God would protect them and keep them safe, he called Morgan again.
“See anything?” he asked roughly.
“No,” Morgan shook her head, hopelessly scanning the dark streets for a bike with a child-seat on the back. “Keep your eyes open for the bike, though,” she advised. “You want to check campus again?”
Coby shook his head. “We checked campus first thing. We looked all over. There are a million other places they could be.”
“You’re right,” Morgan nodded. “Call me if you see anything.”
She hung up, and kept driving slowly, making herself check and double-check back streets and places she would otherwise avoid. Jess had a rough background, Morgan reminded herself. She could be anywhere.
--
Jess stopped in front of the church they had attended yesterday. She took sleeping Christian from his seat, and tried the door. It was locked, so Jess walked around to the side of the building.
There was a window there.
Carefully, Jess laid Christian in the grass, a safe distance from her. She made sure Bacony was in his arms and put his backpack under his head. Then, Jess went to work.
She found a decent-sized rock and threw it at the window, praying no alarms would go off and alert police of their presence. When she didn’t hear anything, Jess pulled her sweatshirt sleeve down to make sure her hand was protected. Then she turned around, and brought her elbow back, breaking the window open. Jess moved quickly, clearing the glass out of the way. Then, she picked up Christian and their stuff, and ducked carefully inside.
Jess knew from picking Christian up from the kid’s church on the lower floor, that at the bottom of a flight of stairs, there was a leather couch. If she was lucky, the blanket she’d seen would still be there.
Moving carefully, Jess walked down the steps one at a time, feeling her way in the dark. Once at the bottom, she found the couch and laid Christian down on it, covering him with the blanket, that was mercifully still on the back of the couch.
Then, finally, Jess allowed herself to lie down, too. She wrapped her arms around her son, keeping his body on the inside, and shielding him with her own. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, but at least she could rest a few hours before she had to figure out where to go next.
--
It was after two in the morning when Morgan thought to drive by the church they had attended on Sunday together. She had been checking any familiar place she could think of. This hadn’t been the first place to pop into her mind, but now that it was there, Morgan couldn’t stop thinking about it. She drove into the next town, trying to recall the roads Liam took.
When Morgan saw it, and drove closer, she immediately saw the bike. She called Coby, who hadn’t given up either, and was still scouring the nearby neighborhoods for any clue to their whereabouts. She told him she found them and would make sure they came back with her.
Morgan hung up, and walked to the front of the building, and tried the door. She found it locked and made her way around the outside, looking for clues to how Jess and Christian got inside.
The broken window was a dead giveaway.
Morgan made her way through the window, doing her best to avoid the broken glass in her flip-flops. Once she was in, Morgan tried to remember the layout of the church, finally giving up and flipping on a light.
“Jess? It’s Morgan,” she called softly, not wanting to spook them. “Are you guys okay?” She walked to the stairway on sheer instinct and glanced down it. There, on the couch at the bottom, were the two people she loved, and had been searching for.
--
Jess sat up quickly, wiping her eyes. Her heart raced, despite knowing who it was the had come for them. Jess set her jaw. She had no intention of going back. Even with Morgan.
As Morgan made her way down the stairs, Jess waited for her eyes to adjust to the light that filtered down. She could finally make out Morgan, wearing one of Bryan’s shirts, jeans and a hat. If Jess wasn’t mistaken, Morgan’s eyes looked a little red, like she’d been crying over this.
“Go home, Morgan,” Jess said softly, so she wouldn’t wake Christian, who remained sleeping soundly.
“Not without you and Christian. You guys are ohana now.” She sat down on the floor, resting her elbows on her knees. Determination and love showed clearly in Morgan’s tired brown eyes.
Patiently, she watched Jess, appreciating how exhausted she was, and not able to imagine what she had just been through as a mother. Tears tracked down her cheeks, and though the bruises on her face had faded, Morgan was able to see others now, with Jess’s guard down. One sleeve of her uniform was pushed up awkwardly and revealed a more obvious purple mark around her upper arm. And when Jess lifted her shirt to wipe her nose, Morgan winced, seeing healing black-and-blue all over her middle. Her hair was still pulled back from work, but had frizzed out at the sides. She had dark circles under her eyes, and a wariness Morgan couldn’t remember seeing - at least not one directed at her.
Finally Jess broke. “I can’t bring him back there,” she wept softly.
Morgan looked at Christian who was sleeping with his little body sprawled across the couch. He looked pale. Bacony hovered several inches above the floor, as Christian clutched him tightly by one ear. Morgan smiled sadly, seeing his nails still covered in Emily’s green polish. She nodded, waiting for Jess to continue.
“Don’t you think I want to?” Jess whispered, intensity burning in her eyes. “I hate running like this. It sucks. But what choice do I have? I can’t trust anybody.” Jess put a hand to her forehead, blocking Morgan’s view of her tears.
“I think you can,” Morgan offered. “I think you were starting to. And maybe that scared you a little?”
Jess stayed very still.
Morgan scooted a little closer to where Jess was seated on the couch. “Jess, I can’t imagine how much your mom’s abandoning you screwed up your trust in people. But listen to me when I say that not everybody is going to leave you. Most people with any sense in their heads will want to hang around once they’ve met you guys. Even if you have to leave us first to test it out,” Morgan smiled a little.
“No matter what you say, it doesn’t change the fact that Legend disciplined my son in a way that’s not okay with me,” Jess maintained, moving closer to Christian’s feet and bending to pick up Bacony, whose ear had finally been released from CJ’s loving grip.
Morgan leaned back, bemused and a little sad as she watched Jess unconsciously hold Christian’s stuffed pig in her lap, squeezing one leg until her knuckles were white.
“How long have you and Legend been friends?” Morgan asked curiously.
Jess shrugged. “Kindergarten, I guess?” she said, even though she remembered the exact day she’d walked into the class full of five-year-olds and immediately sought out the only one who wasn’t whining or crying or clinging to a parent. When they both got dropped off at the same stop, they realized they lived across the street and one house down from each other.
Morgan nodded. “You guys ever fight?”
“Yeah, of course.” Jess could remember countless fights, big and small. Suspicion clouded her eyes suddenly. “Don’t even think about equating what she did to some childhood fight. It’s not like that. She hurt my child,” Jess said calmly, though a fire was burning in her eyes.
“I won’t,” Morgan promised, getting to her feet. “But, have you ever hurt someone else’s child?”
The question held no judgment, but it brought Jess up so short that she stood abruptly and paced to the opposite end of the hall, where she sat alone with her head in her hands. She saw her own mistakes.
She had hurt Legend countless times growing up together, from the first day they met. Jess had developed the unfortunate habit of beating up any kid who took something she wanted. Legend was her first victim at school. Since her own dad was busy working, and only ever saw Jess alone, he wasn’t aware of her problems with other children. It wasn’t until Jess spent time at Legend’s house and got a talking to from Legend’s parents that Jess learned there were other ways to get what you wanted, and as she got older, she learned from them how important it was not to follow in her mom’s footsteps by hurting people.
How Joe and Jody could take the time to teach right and wrong to a kid like her, who regularly beat up other kids, including their only daughter, was beyond Jess. She knew she herself had made countless bad mistakes with Christian. Before he was even born she had stayed in the abusive relationship with Christian’s father, putting herself, Christian, and Legend in danger countless times.
Legend had plenty of opportunities to turn her back, but she hadn’t. Jess glanced down the hall.
Morgan had moved to fill Jess’s spot on the couch, and was cradling Christian in her arms, speaking softly to him. All while he remained peacefully asleep.
Jess learned everything she knew about being a mother from Jody. She learned about raising a respectful and self-sufficient son from Joe. When her own dad disowned her, they had taken her into their home, after a bad stint trying to live with Christian’s father. Jody had taken her to doctor’s appointments. The entire family had been at her labor and delivery. Jody acted as labor coach, and Legend as moral support. Joe had cut Christian’s umbilical cord.
When it came down to it, Legend had only been doing what she had always done since the day Christian was born. Being a mother to him when Jess wasn’t able to.
In her heart, Jess knew Morgan was right. She was scared of trusting them. And it wasn’t fair of her to cut her best friend - sister, really - out of her life, when all she had been doing was looking out for Christian in Jess’s absence.
“Point taken,” Jess said simply, wiping her eyes as she walked back.
Morgan shifted Christian’s weight in her arms and reached up to give Jess a hug.
“We love you. We want you with us. I hope you’ll stay around long enough for us to prove that to you,” Morgan said, kissing Jess’s forehead.
Jess nodded, sniffing. “I’ll try,” she promised.
--
After asking Morgan for a few minutes with Legend, Jess quietly let herself into their room. She found Legend wide awake, despite the fact that it was now pushing four o’clock in the morning.
Legend’s pajamas were rumpled, and her eyes were bright with tears.
Jess hesitantly sat on the bed beside her, breathing a small sigh when Legend didn’t immediately force her to move.
“I’m sorry,” Jess apologized. “I know you were just trying to do what you thought was right.” She took Legend’s hand and held it. “I still don’t agree with what you did, but I shouldn’t have freaked out like that and left.”
Legend nodded tightly. “I should have known you wouldn’t be okay with me swatting him. I just reacted.”
Jess nodded, squeezing Legend’s hand. “I guess we should go over acceptable punishment options one of these days…” she yawned. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you’re stuck with me, at least for a while…”
Legend reached over and hugged Jess hard, “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” Jess reassured. “I should go, so Morgan can get in here and get some rest.”
“Good night. I love you.” Legend said, not able to break the habit she made after putting Christian to bed a few times.
Jess lingered in the doorway an extra minute. “I love you too. More than you know,” she said before walking away.
--
Returning to her room, and her sleeping son, Jess felt the weighty responsibility of having to teach one of those mom lessons she wished Jody was around to help her with. What did you do when your child stained people’s comforters with nail polish and paint and broke their cosmetics? Jess knew she didn’t have the money to offer to replace anything he damaged. She sighed, and snuggled closer to Christian, knowing that could wait until tomorrow.
They would be here. They had time.
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