esperanza

George

I watched her struggle to finish the soup."Is that why you jumped when I said 'murder' earlier? You felt like George Kelly was murdered by the wrong way driver?" I asked when I felt sure she would not likely have a repeat trip to rid herself of the food.

She began leaking tears slowly. She wiped two away with her fingertips, then let the others travel along the tracks on her cheeks to drip off her slender jaw and into her plate. She shook her head but didn't speak.

I felt like the criminal.

But something about the story still bothered me. "Did you hear his name on the radio? No, wait you couldn't have, they didn't know who he was until this morning and by then you were hiding in a ditch...."

"Nothing makes much sense to me about last night," she said. "But, hey, I'm young now! I've got problems, but George is dead!" Then she really turned loose with weeping, staggered to her feet and tried to head for the restroom again.

I moved ineffectually to help her but found myself standing outside the ladies room feeling foolish and cruel. "What the hell did you say to
her?" Francine asked at my elbow.

"She saw a wreck on the highway," I said.

The waitress wasted a meaningless glare on me and headed into the restroom to try to comfort the runaway girl.

Runaway, for that was surely what she was. Maybe she had left something out of her story or just made most of it up. Maybe she had been with the trucker long enough to hear the details of how George Kelly died or maybe I wasn't the first ride to pick her up today. But one thing I felt certain of, now. She had runaway from home.

I wondered why; kids runaway for lots of reasons. I glanced at the phone. I wondered too, why had she called George Kelly's widow, if that was really who she had called. And why she had picked Kelly as a name to claim for her own.

Francine burst out of the restroom, moving fast. "You leave her alone!"
she snapped at me, heading for behind the counter.

"Francie!" One of the other waitresses wailed, "You got tables! Food up!"

I certainly wasn't going into the women's restroom after the girl who called herself Kelly, but what was I to do? Turn her over to the police seemed logical, underage runaway girl, I could be in serious trouble for even giving her a ride. No one trusted grown-ups around children anymore.

Francine dealt with her duties, disappeared in the back momentarily and re-emerged carrying a cheap plastic handbag. "Girl lost all her stuff," she said as she disappeared back into the bathroom.

I waited at the table where I had coffee. I didn't want to turn her over to the cops. I'd heard to many stories of what happened to kids caught in the gears. What I wanted to do was talk to her parents, find out what they were like, why had she run away? Would they take her back, did they deserve to get her back, would she go back? If they would even talk to me....

She came out of the bathroom, carrying the little black handbag, being led by a smiling Francine. Her face had been washed, and her hair combed again. But, she did look different and it took me a moment to realize that she wore make-up now. Lipstick in some pink frost shade, eye-color in green and maybe something else. She looked more grown-up and more like a little girl at the same time.

I smiled at her and she dropped her eyes, blushing furiously. Francine
interposed herself but turned to talk to -- Hope? Kelly? I guess I would keep calling her Kelly -- the girl. "Now you just keep that bag and those cosmetics, honey. You don't worry about it, Julie doesn't work here anymore and hasn't been back in months and it's just ordinary stuff. But don't it make you feel better to look pretty, to have stuff of your own?"