Mental Math

A dime dropped into her not quite ten-year-old hand. President Roosevelt looked on as though it were an ordinary day. She walked to Mal’s department store – no crosswalks, barely any traffic, but still holding tight to her older sister’s hand. She counted their steps and the ridges on her dime – 118. The dime dropped into the slot of the payphone, falling down, then out into the change cup. The girl reached in, taking hold of poor FDR, who lost his legs to polio and would lose his ear, eyebrow, and tip of his nose to a little girl who thought if she rubbed hard enough, she would get her wish.

Home = 234 West Street. Home = two parents, four children, two dogs, and one cat. Home = four bikes in the garage and one car in the driveway. Home = at least until the end of today.

Home ≠ children waking up in foster care. Home ≠ a mother looking out a hospital window wondering where her children have gone. Home ≠ a dad, two states and a million miles away, refusing his child’s phone call.

A brown grocery bag becomes a suitcase. Family becomes the story she tells herself. Childhood becomes a memory. A nine-year-old girl makes life and death decisions on what to take and what to leave behind, knowing she can’t possibly leave her favorite stuffed animal, even though it is too big for the brown paper bag.

Where the Red Ferns Grow sits on her nightstand with an expiration date stamped on the checkout card. Who would read with her now that her mother is gone? She drops it into her brown paper bag suitcase.

Ashes to ashes. She knows the ending.

Dust to dust. She clutches her stuffed animal as she climbs into the backseat of a stranger’s car and drives away from the only home she has known.