She glanced at me quickly and asked me to wait until she was finished with the customer ahead of me or else go to another register. That was even better, so I went toward the front of the store and placed the skirt on the counter. The cashier ran it through the register, and I paid her with Cory’s money. Now that I had what I wanted, I wanted very much to get out of the store and away, but I didn’t see Kathy Ann anywhere. Nevertheless, I thought it would be wiser to leave, so I did.
Not more than a minute after I left the store, a tall, dark-haired man in a suit and tie seized my left elbow, squeezing it hard enough to make me wince.
“Hey!” I snapped at him. “What do you think—”
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
“I’m going home. Who are you?” I demanded.
Some customers going in and out paused to watch the exchange, and I thought I would start to scream any moment to draw more attention and frighten whoever he was away, but he surprised me by opening his wallet and showing me a badge.
“I’m the store security man, and you, young lady, are under arrest for shoplifting. Now, turn around and head back into the department store,” he ordered.
“I paid for this!” I cried, and showed him the slip.
He smiled.
“What about what you’re wearing underneath your blouse?”
How could he know that unless they had some sort of camera or peep hole in the changing room? I wondered.
“Do you want me to make you take it off out here, or what?” he asked.
I thought about running, but the small crowd of onlookers had built considerably and was now surrounding us.
“Well?” he demanded.
I turned and headed back toward the entrance of the store. As we approached, Kathy Ann came out.
“Where were you? I’ve been looking all over for you. Why did you go out without telling me?”
“Step aside,” the security man told her.
“What?”
“Go home, Kathy Ann,” I said, “and tell my sister I’m in trouble.”
“For what?” she asked, looking at the security man.
“For shoplifting,” he said.
Her mouth dropped open. The security man put his hand on my back and pushed me toward the store entrance.
He took me to an office at the rear of the store where the store manager waited. He was a small, baldheaded man with deep wrinkles under his eyes and thick, wet lips. I could see from the way he was nodding and smiling that his day had been made.
“You juvenile delinquents think you can come in here anytime you want and just rip me off,” he said. “This time you were fooled, eh.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well? What’s your excuse? C’mon, let’s hear it. Maybe you have something new.”
“I just forgot,” I said.
“Oh,” he groaned, and sat hard in his seat. “She’s not even a little original. I’ve already called the police. We’re going to press charges against you to set an example. We know you kids have been coming in here and pulling these stunts all year long, and we’ve grown sick and tired of it. The only way to stop it is to see to it that when you’re caught, you pay the price, and I don’t mean the price of what you stole, either.”
I was hoping he was saying that just to frighten me. I was afraid, but something in me kept me from milking it. I couldn’t even cry. The rage and tightness I had felt on my way here were still strong.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Puddin‘ Tame,” I said.
“Oh, I see, a smart-ass. All right, we’ll leave it all to the police and the courts. Sit,” he commanded, pointing to a chair.
I looked at it, at the security man and the door, and then sat.
“She had a friend with her,” the security man told the manager.
“And?”
“She was clean, as far as I could tell.”
“Sure, they come in pairs. One distracts while the other pilfers.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “She has nothing to do with this. She wasn’t even with me in that department.”
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Pippi Longstocking,” I said.
He sat back and rubbed his hands together like someone anticipating a great feast.
A few moments later, the door opened and a policeman entered.
“This is our thief,” the manager said. “She’s wearing the stolen item under her blouse. You’ve got your evidence. Book her,” he told them.
“Stand up,” the policeman told me. He took out a pair of handcuffs. This had never happened to me in Ohio. The sight of them did stab me with a cold blade of fear. I know my arms trembled as he snapped the cuffs around my wrists.
“Let’s go,” he said firmly.
Marching through the store again, this time with a policeman right behind me and me wearing handcuffs, I drew more curious faces, some heads shaking with disgust. When we emerged, I looked for Kathy Ann, but I didn’t see her anywhere.
“Move,” the policeman said, poking me toward the patrol car. There was a policewoman waiting beside it. She held the rear door open.
“Watch your head,” she said, putting her hand on top of my head as I leaned in to sit on the caged rear seat. “What do we have?” she asked the policeman.
“She’s wearing a blouse under her blouse.”
The policewoman smiled and shook her head at me.
“Honey,” she said, “you just put yourself in a whole can of worms.”
They got into the patrol car and we started away. I looked back at the people watching from the entrance.
At least I made someone’s news of the day, I thought.
6
Strike One
I had been in a police station before, but I was two years younger then, and although everyone had been serious, I’d had the sense that my youth would provide a parachute. This time when they brought me into the station, I saw no one remotely close to my age. All of the other prisoners looked hardened and experienced.
The policewoman took me into a private room, where I removed the blouse I had taken. She folded it and then brought me back to the desk sergeant, where they took down my name and address. I had a picture ID from my school back in Ohio. Then I was fingerprinted and put in a holding cell with two other women. One looked like she was still coming down from a drug she had taken. The other was talking to her, but I didn’t think she heard a word. I gathered they had been arrested for soliciting sex on the street. I was actually happy they showed no interest in me.
I sat on the bench and waited nearly three hours before Mother darling appeared.
“Robin Taylor,” I heard, and stood up. The policeman unlocked the door. “Come with me,” he said. I looked back at the two women, who were both asleep now, one leaning on the other. In the lobby Mother darling and Cory were standing and talking with the policewoman who had brought me to the station.
They all turned to me as I was brought along.
“I don’t even want to hear your excuses, Robin,” Mother darling said. “Cory and I have guaranteed your appearance in court. Just walk,” she said.
I glanced at Cory, who had a twisted smile on his face.
“Told you not to sin, Robin Lyn,” he quipped as they followed me out of the station.
“Don’t joke with her, Cory. She knows she’s in deep trouble with me. The whole Nashville world can find out I’m really her mother and not her sister,” she said, and I spun on her.
“That’s what bothers you the most?”
“No, what bothers me the most is your not keepin‘ your promise not to get into any trouble here. I told you this was a strange, new place. Luckily, Cory knows one of the policemen, and he helped arrange your release, but now we got to think about gettin’ you a lawyer and that costs money. How could you do this?”
I got into Mother darling’s Beetle and sat in the rear. Cory was driving.
??
?When that girl, Kathy Ann, came huffin‘ and puffin’ up the stairs to tell me you were arrested for shopliftin‘, I nearly fainted with disappointment. They said you paid for this,” she added, showing me the bag that contained the skirt. “Where’d you get the money for it, Robin, or did you somehow fool ’em?”
“I had some saved,” I lied.
“I don’t want you goin‘ anywhere until I say it’s okay, hear me? You stay right around the apartment complex. Hopefully, you can’t get into any more trouble doin’ that. You know they could send you to jail for this? They do send sixteen-year-olds to jail, Robin. You’re just lucky they don’t know about your record in Ohio.
“They keep the juvenile records secret,” she told Cory.
“How many times did she get in trouble like this?” he asked.
“Enough to have her called a kleptomaniac. I had her see a therapist, too.”
“That did a lot of good, I see,” he said.
“Now you see how hard it is to work on building a career and bring up a child,” she told him.
“I’m not a child.”
“You sure behave like you are,” Cory said.
“At least I don’t bust in on people when they’re taking a shower.”
“Oh, save me,” he said. “Next time I’ll do my business in a beer bottle. No, maybe I better not do that. Del might drink it by mistake,” he said, and laughed.
Mother darling laughed, too.
“Oh, Robin,” she said, shaking her head, “with me startin‘ work in a real club tonight, too. Don’t you realize how good our lives could be?”
I folded my arms under my breasts and stared out the window. It was always Mother darling who was disappointed, always Mother darling who had to be protected.
The moment we drove into the apartment complex, Kathy Ann, who was obviously sitting by her window waiting, came charging out of her apartment.
“What happened?” she asked.
“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened,” Mother darling replied. “She was booked, fingerprinted, and given a court date where she could be sentenced to jail. That’s what happened. Go on upstairs, Robin. You sit and contemplate what you’ve done.”
I hurried ahead and went into my bedroom, slamming the door closed behind me. Then I threw myself on the bed, became aware of the stench in the sheet and blanket again, and sat up quickly. I thought for a moment and went to the door. They were sitting in the living room, feeling sorry for themselves. Cory was saying how grateful he was that he never got married and had any children. The ones who should be grateful are the children, I thought, who never had him as a father.
“Can I go down to the laundry room and wash something at least?” I asked.
“What?” Mother darling wanted to know.
“The smelly old sheet on this bed and the blanket and the pillowcase. I can’t sleep on it! It all stinks from cigarette smoke,” I moaned.
“It’s better than what you’ll have in jail,” Cory called back.
“Can I?”
“Just the laundry and back, Robin, and I mean it. You better not run off.”
“Unless you want to keep going,” Cory added, and then laughed.
“I wish I could,” I muttered, returning to the bed to strip it and roll up the sheet, blanket, and pillowcase. Then I started out.
“Don’t you need money for that washing machine and dryer?” Mother darling asked Cory.
“Yeah, you have any change?” he asked me.
“No.”
He reached into his pocket and then he pulled out his wallet.
“You can get change for a dollar. They have a change machine,” he said, and froze, his eyes blinking rapidly as he fingered the bills. “Hey.” He looked up at Mother darling and then at me. “I had eighty dollars in here. Now I have only twenty.”
“Robin, did you take Cory’s money?”
“No,” I said.
“She’s lying. You can see it in her face.”
“Robin?”
“No,” I said. She shook her head.
“I’m so sorry, Cory. I’ll give it to you,” she told him.
“I didn’t take it. You don’t have to give it to him.”
“You see what I’ve been livin‘ with,” she told him.
“I have some money left over from what you gave me,” I told her. “I don’t need anything from him.”
Before either of them could say another word, I left the apartment and went down to the laundry. All I could think was Kathy Ann spent her whole time at that front window because she saw me and came over to the laundry a second or two after I began to load in the sheet and blanket.
“Tell me what really happened,” she said.
“Just what my sister said.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I wanted it and I didn’t have enough money for it. You never stole anything?”
“Not like that,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’d be too scared. I was amazed at how you stole those cigarettes last night. Were you ever caught before?”
“Not often,” I told her. “I should have kept some of those cigarettes. You have any?”
“Sure,” she said, and dug one out of her shirt pocket. She lit one for herself too, and we sat there watching the washing machine churn away. “How is your sister punishing you?” she wanted to know.
“I’m not supposed to leave the apartment complex until she says it’s all right.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
“But she’s going to be busy nights, singing with the band. They have a job or a gig, as they call it.”
“So you’ll sneak out anyway?”
“What do you think?”
“Wow,” she said, and looked at me as if I was some sort of celebrity myself. “Where are you going to go?”
“I have to have a dent in my head fixed.”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t tell you the truth when you asked me how I had gotten home last night. I went to see Keefer Dawson and he drove me here.”
“You didn’t?”
“All right, I didn’t.”
“Wow,” she said again.
Yes, I thought. Wow.
She sat with me until I was finished with my sheet and blanket and pillowcase. Now that she knew more about what had happened, she had a laundry list of questions to ask about my life in Ohio. I told her as much as I could. I wanted her to think I was taking her into my confidence because I had a favor I needed from her.
“You weren’t going anywhere tonight, were you?” I asked her.
“No. Why?”
“Can you do me a little favor?”
“Sure,” she said, excited that I was taking her into my confidence.
“Come up to my apartment to hang out.”
“Oh, sure. I’d like that.”
“And when my sister calls to see if I’m there, if she should, tell her I’m in the bathroom. As long as you answer the phone, she’ll believe it.”
“You mean you won’t be there?”
“No, silly,” I said. “I’ll be fixing my dent.”
She made an O with her mouth and nodded, and then she smiled at me.
“Wow,” she said.
Maybe that would become my new name, I thought. Wow.
After I made the bed with the fresh sheet, pillowcase, and blanket, I joined Mother darling and Cory, who were eating take-out Chinese Cory had had delivered. Mother darling was not much of a cook. I was a better cook than she was, in fact, because I was around Grandma more when she made our meals, and she taught me. “Your mother was never interested in learning any of this,” she said. “All she wanted to do was sing and hang out with nobodies.”
I smiled to myself, remembering that.
“You better sit down and eat ‘fore it gets cold, Robin,” Mother darling told me.
I plopped onto a seat, petulantly. Cory was feeding his face as fast as he could scoop the noodles, chicken, and shrimp into his mouth.
&n
bsp; “You’re really in serious trouble now, Robin. I hope you appreciate the situation and behave.”
I picked up a fork and started to serve myself some food. Cory glanced at me and then burped.
“What she needs is a job,” he said, “but with her history, I don’t know nobody who’d hire her, except a pickpocket.”
“He’s right, Robin. That’s somethin‘ we should think about. You have weeks and weeks yet before school starts here.”
“I can’t look for work if I’m locked up in the apartment, now can I?”
She thought a moment.
“We’ll buy a paper and see what sort of work’s out there and then we’ll see about how to apply.”
“I won’t hold my breath,” I said.
“Damn girl, if you was my daughter…”
“I’d commit suicide,” I finished, and he sat with his mouth open for a moment and then shook his head and got up.
“I’m gettin‘ ready to go,” he told Mother darling.
“Why are you so mean to him?” Mother darling whispered. “Don’t you realize we’d have nothin‘ and be nowhere if he wasn’t helpin’ me? The least you can do is show him some respect and appreciation, Robin.”
“What? He—”
“Don’t start,” she snapped. “If you can’t be nice, then just don’t be anythin‘. Just keep your mouth shut, hear?”
I pushed the food away and pouted.
“I don’t have time to baby you now, Robin. I’ve got to make a career happen. You’re just goin‘ to have to grow up or suffer the consequences. Meanwhile, you clean up,” she declared, and left to follow Cory.
I sat fuming until I heard them come out of their bedroom.
“I’ll be callin‘ you first break I get, Robin,” Mother darling said. “Least you could do is wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” I spit back at her.
After they were gone, I cleared off the table and washed the silverware and dishes. I began to think Kathy Ann wasn’t going to come up to the apartment, but she finally did appear.
“When are you coming back?” she asked.