it was early fall. The nights outside were getting colder. Alessa and Lucy huddled together under a blanket, stealing body heat from each other to keep themselves warm. Alessa wondered how they might make it through the winter if they had to remain outdoors all the time in extreme weather. Lucy had not yet spent a winter with the group, and Alessa was concerned about how she would survive the cold. The two were inseparable. Even when a new teenage girl joined the group, Alessa insisted that Lucy stay with her. She was like her own child now, and Alessa had grown very protective of her.
Alessa kept her story quiet, not wanting to share her deep, dark secrets with everyone. She had told the group that her parents hadn’t wanted her anymore and had told her to move out. She was another throwaway child.
One morning as the two went to their usual spot to pee, Lucy cried out that her pee was burning her.
“It will be okay, Lucy,” Alessa reassured her. “We’ll get you some cranberry juice today and it will be all yours. No one else can share it. That will stop the burning. You probably have an infection.”
Lucy’s gaze dropped to the ground. “It burns the way it used to after my daddy would come in my room at night,” she whispered.
Alessa had guessed something unpleasant must have happened to the child but was shocked, nevertheless, to hear her put it in words. “Did you tell your mommy?” she asked her.
Lucy looked at her, undecided, wondering if she should tell Alessa more. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Alessa took her in her arms and soothed her. “It’s okay,” she reassured her, “you can tell me. I had bad stuff happen to me, too, when I was your age.”
Lucy looked surprised. “Really? Well, I couldn’t tell my mom because she already knew. She was there when he came into my bedroom. She would tell me that it was okay and that if it made my dad happy, then I should be nice to him.”
White-hot rage flared up within Alessa. She wanted to rip Lucy’s parents to shreds, to take them apart, limb by limb. She couldn’t believe how messed up people were. She forced herself to be calm and not let Lucy see her anger. “How long did this happen to you?”
Lucy blushed and shrank away. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I guess when I started kindergarten. Then they got caught sniffing some white stuff with this guy I never met. We had to run away from the apartment where we were living because they said the man would hurt us if he found us. We moved into a place with only one room. Then one day, we went to eat. My parents told me to wait at a table while they went to the bathroom. I sat there until it got dark outside, but they never came back. I started walking down the street to look for them and then these weird boys started bothering me. I was really, really scared. That’s when my new family found me. They thought I was lost, but when I told them how my mom and dad had left me at the restaurant and never came back, the group brought me back here. For a long time, the boys from our group would take me back to that restaurant every day to see if my mom and dad had come looking for me, but they never did.”
Both girls were crying and clung tightly to each other. Alessa remembered the terrified seven-year-old she had been when her Uncle Danny had hurt her as Lucy had been hurt. She knew that Lucy was confused, and it would be many years before she understood the meaning of what had happened to her.
“I’ll never leave you,” she assured the child. “We will always be together. Okay, Lucy?”
The little girl looked up at her. “I was afraid if I told you what had happened to me, you wouldn’t like me anymore. You don’t hate me, though, do you? How come?”
“Because the only people not to like are your mom and dad,” Alessa explained, choosing her words carefully. “What they did to you was wrong, and they should be ashamed of themselves. They are bad people and you’re a good girl. None of this was your fault. You’ve been very brave. Do you know that?”
Lucy and she were kindred spirits, and Alessa vowed to herself she would take care of her as if she were her own. With the child having unburdened herself, the two had drawn closer. Given her own horrific childhood experience, Alessa was more capable than most of helping Lucy cope with her past. They talked often about what her parents had done to her. And they always stayed together. Alessa and Lucy picked through dumpsters during the day, looking for useful items or food the group could use. At night they sat and talked with the others by the warmth of the fire they would light inside the ring of rocks. They were all one big family.
Alessa made certain to call Ebby at least twice a week.
Finally, Lucy said one day, “I want to dial the phone to call Ebby.”
Alessa inserted the money in the pay phone and handed the child the number. That was their new thing now. Lucy would always dial the number and talk to Ebby first.
Ebby had not given up probing. She continued to ask Alessa what was going on, but she stuck to her story about staying in the shelter in Norristown and helping to take care of Lucy. Though she had never met the child in person, Ebby had also grown attached to her. She could tell that Alessa was evolving as a person and, she believed, for the better. Her relationship with Lucy seemed to help her deal with her past. Little by little, Alessa’s confidence in herself was blooming.
