Surviving Valencia

“Huh?” He looked around nervously, like I was going to get him in trouble.

“Watch, I am entering your van on my own free will. Let’s go.” I tried to open the passenger side door but it was locked. I had heard about this in school. Kidnappers only have one working door to really trap you once you’re inside. No problem. I walked around to his side and opened the driver’s side door. Inside was crammed full of everything from empty drink cups to big cans of paint and brushes. A little dog sat on the passenger seat, wedged between all the garbage. He barked when he saw me.

“What are you doing?” yelled the man, red faced and sweaty. “Get out of my van right now!” He stood five feet away from the van, seemingly afraid to get near me.

“Where am I supposed to sit? Is there room in the back?” I asked.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Will your dog bite me?”

“Get out of my van right now or I am going to call the cops on you.” Sweat was pouring down his forehead in rivers.

He wasn’t very good at this. Maybe I was his first victim.

“I can fit on the seat by you if your dog will let me hold him. As long as he won’t bite me. He’s a little cutie. Aren’t you, boy! Is it a boy? Good dog!” I got in, squeezing myself onto the passenger seat and cuddling the dog who was getting comfortable on my lap. He licked my face. “You probably didn’t think this would be so easy, did you?” I said to my kidnapper.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Go home to your mom and dad, little girl!” he said, reaching inside the van and honking the horn.

“I’m twelve,” I informed him.

“Help! Help!” he yelled.

“Help? You’re not a kidnapper, are you?” I asked. The dog looked up at me, searchingly. I could not bring myself to move.

“Get. Out,” he whispered hoarsely, pointing out towards the park, its tire swings and teeter-totters now receding in darkness. I shifted, sliding the dog off my lap, and wriggled out of my seat. Sighing, I stepped down from the van. Boy, did I feel stupid.

The man jumped in and slammed the door, then locked it with a disgusted swat of his fist. His dog looked at me, barked one, lone chompy bark, and the van took off down the street.

I watched the taillights getting farther and farther away until the van turned onto Fennimore Street and was gone. I pulled the straps of my tank top back where they belonged and, with nowhere else to go, went back home.

I wrote to Donny Hadbrack every day. His letters stopped coming after only a month. How could he go on with his life and forget our relationship? I couldn’t even fathom it. I decided his mother must have gotten in the way, or some other girl.

Four years later when I got my driver’s license, the first thing I would do was to drive the three-hour trek to his house. Even after all that time, he still stood out as the nicest guy I had ever met.

I was listening to R.E.M. tapes and my heart was pounding. I decided I wanted to lose my virginity NOW. I was so sure it would happen that I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought my first matching bra and panty set, and switched into it in the parking lot.

It turned out that Donny lived in just a regular brown house with dented aluminum siding and fake bricks on the front. I saw him looking much the same, shirtlessly riding a yellow lawn tractor. He was picking his nose and singing along to some headphones he was wearing. “Girls, girls, girls!” he sang over the noise of the lawnmower. I watched as he flicked a booger out onto the freshly mowed lawn, then dug in his other nostril for some more.

This meant I needed to find a new boy to love. Damn it.

He didn’t see me so I just drove by and kept going right on home, back to Hudson.

Chapter 30

Starting seventh grade was completely different from starting sixth grade. I could not tell you what I wore because I no longer cared about clothes or being popular. I mainly stopped caring about clothes from necessity. When Valencia and Van died, my parents relinquished most of their duties as my caretaker. The brief nightmare of them asking about my grades and chaperoning dances fizzled. They just decided they were done being parents. My back-to-school clothes from the summer before were my newest clothes, and they were all getting too short. Valencia’s clothes and even my Christmas jeans were gone, donated to St. Vincent’s. But now I could do as I pleased, since they barely noticed me.

I stayed in my room a lot watching my little TV, alone in the flickering blue haze. I made elaborate stir fries in the kitchen, once nearly starting the house on fire, while my dad dozed on the porch and my mom strapped on her ankle weights for one of her three hour power walks. I joined every club our junior high school had to offer so I could avoid being at home.

My neighbor Rhonda Newcomber was in every club too, and her parents drove me home. I could tell Rhonda didn’t like it. She was an only child and was used to it just being the three of them. Her parents were nice but asked me too many questions about my family. Do you miss your sister and brother? How are your parents holding up? Do you have any other brothers or sisters? Now, Valencia and Van were twins, right? Rhonda just looked out the window.

People still treated me like an outcast, but the deaths of Van and Valencia elevated my status from outcast-you-spit-on to outcast-you-just-whisper-about. Sometimes I liked my new position of being just a little bit removed from the other kids in my grade. Then I would remember what it had taken to put me there and I would hate myself for being evil. I guess that is why I began making the offerings.

It wasn’t something I planned ahead of time; like a lot of things in life, it just kind of happened. I was staying in from recess one day, working on a book report, and I saw an open backpack over by the pencil sharpener. So I went over and took a look inside while I sharpened my pencil, and there was a baggie with a gold bracelet inside. The funny thing is, I knew there was going to be something important in that backpack. Fate led me to it. I don’t know if it was real gold. It looked like something Valencia would like. I took it for her and buried it behind the lilacs in my parents’ yard. There seemed to be a truth and purpose in what I was doing, not unlike how I imagined religion would feel.

In September of 1987 I was sitting in the kitchen, working on my homework. Geraldine McCray, the mother of Valencia’s high school boyfriend, had just died a few weeks earlier. Her obituary was attached to our refrigerator with a magnet shaped like the state of Nebraska.

“Why did you put her obituary on our fridge?” I asked my mother.