It was the dead of night. My mother was working at the diner. Blake was asleep. I climbed down the steep slope of Blake’s property and onto the street. Several blocks away was a convenience store that still had a pay phone. I carried coins in my fist. It had taken me a week to scavenge enough change for a call—a nickel one day, a dime the next—and every night as I burrowed into my sleeping bag, I played it out in my mind: I would dial my grandparents’ number. I need you, I would say. Minutes later, their white car would pull up in front of the store and they’d hold me, they’d rescue me, they’d never let me go.

I reached the pay phone, stood in the neon light of the store. Each coin in my fingertips was a wish. I pushed them, one after the next, into the slot. The phone rang. It’s okay—they’re just sleeping. Rang and rang. Soon Grammy will sit up in bed. Rang and rang. Or I’ll leave a message and tell them where to find me. Rang and rang and rang and rang, until a man waiting tapped me on the shoulder. When he was finished with his call, I tried again. I tried five more times before giving up.

___

Sometimes, not often, my mother and I were alone together.

When will we see them? I wanted to ask her. It felt impossible that they would stay away from us for so long on purpose, impossible that my mother would not take me back to them. Why were we living in a house that was not a house? How had we come to be this way?

When we were alone, I would look for an opening. For something in her face. For her to take me in her arms. Mama, I would say to her. What’s happened to us?

But we’d barely begin to talk when my mother would feel her ear, notice another earring missing. “Help me find it,” she’d say. We’d look through the dirt and the brush and the poppies, across the concrete foundation of the house, through the eucalyptus leaves and their strips of dead bark. We’d search for tiny, precious things and we would never find them.

Once, I was no larger than a fleck of dust but she loved me.

I turned away from her as she touched her swollen earlobe. As she cursed and cried at her own carelessness. As she waited for Blake to come home so she could confess.

He always forgave her. She’d press herself against him, her face full of gratitude and regret. They’d close the curtains to his room as though that kept the sound out. A couple days later, he’d give her another pair to make up for the loss.