Things Are Already Better Someplace Else by Jody Hobbs Hesler

All you did was use the toilet. Then clear away the blocks Beverly had left scattered in the entryway. You didn’t want anyone to trip later, coming inside. You left her with her sidewalk chalk out in front of the duplex. Singing one of her wordless songs. Silence was your first clue, even before you recognized the car swerving off down the road.

Your Beverly is a smudge of a child. A shadow of herself, but powdery pale so she catches what light there is and shimmers in it. When her daddy pulled up to the curb, she must have figured he wouldn’t see her. When was Bucky ever looking for her? She’s his own child, but you have to force him to watch her nights you work late. His mama’s your only other choice, but she won’t say yes unless you ask him first. 

At least she lives close to him. One of the million reasons your marriage didn’t last past squat, but for Beverly she gives a damn, and she’s never drunk or dangerous like Bucky. She might return Beverly to you, reeking of soap she bought from some fancy store at the mall, that smug smile saying she judged you never bathed her on your own. Because you use unscented soap. The only kind that doesn’t pock her skin into hives. Whenever old witchy Wilma drops Beverly back off, you have to plop her in a warm water bath first thing, to soak those perfumey soaps off her, stop the hives before they pop. 

At least she doesn’t ignore the child the way Bucky does. Sometimes Beverly eats dry cereal for supper by herself at his place. When her daddy finally rolls in from a friend’s house two doors down or the bar across the street, she pretends to be asleep instead of hungry since half the time he cooks for her he forgets, walks away from the pan until something catches fire. You’ve told her, just go down to Granny Wilma’s if he’s not there to feed you dinner or if he walks off with a pan on the stove, but Beverly shakes her tiny little head with the wisdom of a ghost and lets you wonder why. If you had anywhere else to send her, you would. You wish you could send her straight to Wilma, even though she seethes when you call her on the phone.

You have to call her now, though, because that was Bucky’s car squealing away from the curb, and now Beverly’s nowhere to be found. Every last stalk of sidewalk chalk lies tiddlywinks by the curb. Her half-empty juice box sits by the pile, waiting as much as you for the child to slink back into view. 

Wilma says into the phone she hasn’t seen Bucky since yesterday and her voice has the crisp sound of something about to break. She knows you wouldn’t call after him in all your life if not for Beverly. Knows he doesn’t pay support, and you don’t have enough food. Knows he doesn’t do you a single bit of good. Out of some warped brand of loyalty, she still blames you for starting the fights, before and after you left. You’ve seen her fill a doorway to stop him from barreling through it, though. To stop him from barreling smack into you. Sure, she spits your name like a thing caught in her teeth. Thinks you grew out of a mud pit with manners you’d expect of a pig. Well fuck her, but thank God for her, too. Probably resents you most for not leaving sooner. She begot a monster and blames you for waking it, for keeping it awake.

Beverly’s no monster, though. A breath of wind, she is. A breath of wind with the scent of honeysuckle on it. A breath of wind and a little bird song. And after her daddy’s car tore off up the street, she’s gone.

          “Wilma, he took her,” you say.

          “What do you know? You always think the worst.”

          “I got good reason.”

          “Yeah, well.”

          “I saw him, Wilma. I saw his car, and then she was gone.”

         “When was this?”

         “Just five minutes ago.” 

The line itself seems to hum or stutter, then, “Probably she just ran and hid when he pulled up.” She does tend to fade in and out of a scene. Hears her daddy coming and glides in front of a porch column, leans into it as if she’s part of the building, and he stomps past her, shouting your name, and his latest string of fuck yous and all the dumbass things he thinks you’ve done to make him look bad. How it’s your fault his latest boss let him go. Your fault his best friend never comes by to see him anymore. Your fault the neighbors shrink back from him like he’s walking roadkill. You haven’t seen the people he accuses you of turning against him since your last fight that day you finally braced Beverly to your chest, packed two grocery bags full of her clothes, and walked out. The two of you slept on the sofa in your friend Nathan’s basement apartment for a full month until your face healed and you could go out looking for the next job. 

          “Ran off like she always does, baby,” Wilma says. “She always hides from her daddy.” She never calls you baby unless she’s scared. Once, at the hospital – you lost count of hospital trips – you woke to Wilma begging you, Please, please, please, baby, wake up. Wake up again, baby, and also, Please, please, please, God, take his daddy out of him, letting you picture her, in some past time, with somebody sitting by her bedside, praying she’d wake up. 

You tell her about the chalk and the juice box and the sweep of wind that rolled up the hillside after the car was gone. The cold sweep of wind that pricked goosebumps up your arms.

         “Don’t go thinking that way now,” she says.

You call the police, and a car zips up the street with siren lights circling, circling, like buzzards, and you don’t want to think that way, either. They ask you questions. Where he might go. What he might do. Like you would’ve called them if you knew already. 

They ask if you have a protective order, and you try to explain the divorce documents. Back then, Beverly was hardly three years old and you were still learning how to juggle the job at the Citgo Shop & Go plus two nights a week tending bar at the Funky Monkey down by the railroad tracks. You downloaded something online and met once with lawyers at a legal aid clinic. You couldn’t afford anything more complicated, but it’s all set up so he’s only allowed to have Beverly when you’re at work. 

         “Why does he babysit for her if he’s so dangerous?” one asks, poking his holstered hip your way and staring down his nose like Wilma does. 

         “It ain’t babysitting when it’s your own kid. She’s his kid.” You tell them Wilma goes over there anytime she can, but she works at the post office, sorting mail, evenings sometimes, mornings. She can’t always be there the whole time. 

They ask, “Where were you when it happened?” 

        “Bathroom. For one second.”

You used the toilet, swooshed the blocks out of the doorway, but you don’t tell them how you thought about stretching onto the sofa to claim five seconds of your own time, tired from the late shift the night before and the trouble Bucky gave you after, for wrangling Beverly out of his house to sleep in her own real bed and not wedged into his bristly cigarette-stinking sofa cushions. But you didn’t sit down, only rushed back out to the yard in time to notice the silence and glimpse Bucky’s car disappearing in the cloud of dust it kicked up going so fast. 

          “What happened lately that he might be angry about?” Like Wilma, What’d you do this time? 

         “That man is angry all the time.” 

          They ask, “Why not just schedule your hours so you and Wilma can share?”

          “What kinda jobs you think I have? You get to pick what hours you work? And are you writing anything down right now? That bastard took my daughter. Are you going to stop asking me questions and go look for her?” 

Because you can’t tell if they plan to do more than pride themselves on knowing what’s happening to you could never happen to one of them. How they’re too upstanding and kind-hearted to be such a twat to their women, or their women are tougher than you and wouldn’t take that kind of shit anyway. Well, you don’t know what you’ll take until you survive it, do you? 

Feels like a hundred hours they stand there asking questions, and it’s like all of you are swimming in molasses. One officer flips his card into your hand so you can call if Bucky turns up again. 

          “If he turns up again? What do you think’s gonna happen?” They give you statue faces and drive away.

She’s been gone five minutes, ten minutes, five hours. Cell phones across America screech out warnings and descriptions of Bucky’s car and of your little girl and her unicorn t-shirt with the Spaghettios stain at the edge of the pale blue neckline. Her blue sneakers and white ankle socks. How her tiny fingernails are flecked with pink polish, only a few tattered strips of it leftover. 

You picture your bosses and neighbors and people you work with hearing the warning and ignoring it, figuring it’s no one they know, nothing they can do. You picture Beverly in the back seat of Bucky’s decrepit Mustang flying past their ignorant windows, face and hands pressed to the glass, wishing with all her might to be back at the sidewalk, scraping chalk rainbows onto the cement, her mama beside her. 

What else can you do but pace the house, inside and outside. Drum your fingers on your thighs, your temples, the front steps. You page through texts on your phone for one you might’ve missed. The police said let them handle it, they’d do all they could, whatever that might be, and night’s coming on and Beverly needs her supper and a warm bath with the unscented soap, and you picture those sickly fake cherry-scented soaps in gas station bathrooms, and how far will he go? Where can he go?

The knock on the door lifts your spirits so high your whole body follows. Thinking it’ll be one of the police officers holding Beverly by the hand. Shook up and tearstained but whole and home. But it’s Wilma, looking ragged and sleep-wrecked, as if it’s been ten days already instead of six or seven hours. 

You step outside, waiting for her to blame you. To say, You know he don’t like you questioning his parenting. You challenge him on something and it’s just the same to him if he proves you right or wrong. He’s gonna prove something, either way, and that’s why, according to Wilma, everything you’ve ever said to him is wrong. 

You pool up all your patience to look her in the eye. Bottom line, Beverly’s hers, too, and just as gone from her as she is from you. You sit down on the front stoop and pat the space beside you. It’s a warm night, before mosquito season. Darkness fell when you weren’t looking and now stars blink through the blackness, reporting some kind of message from a zillion miles away. Maybe, Things get better. Maybe, Things are already better someplace else. Maybe, You’re just a speck of dust on the back of the world and nothing really matters anyway. On a good night, they tell you, Everything’s a star that shines. You’re a star that shines. Your little girl the brightest star of all.

Now Wilma sits beside you, body rigid as live wires. She’s never been one to soften, even for Beverly. She laughs with her, a smoker’s rasp, and rolls a ball her way. Buys her little teddybears with velvet hearts sewn on. But her body stays stiff, vigilant. You hope you won’t be the same way, twenty years past Bucky. You hope your body forgets how to steel itself for a blow.

           “You think he means to come back?” she asks, with you hoping to hear she was sure he was already on his way. Hoping she’d tell you, He’s done a load of stupid shit but wouldn’t hurt Beverly for the world. It would’ve comforted you no matter if she’d used her meanest voice and said again, The only girl he ever hit was you. At least it’s true he’s never hit Beverly.

          “I don’t know,” you say, and your head bowls forward in your hands. Sobs ratchet out of you and you think Bucky would throw back his head and cackle if he could see you, sharing a step with his mama, expecting she had more feelings than a fish washed up on shore. My mama’s a cold ass bitch, he told you, same day he mentioned seeing his daddy knock her unconscious when he was a kid. She woke up bleeding from her forehead and went after the man with a hatchet. Dropped it long before she caught up to him, but still Bucky won’t forgive her.

Wilma inches closer and frames an arm behind you. “We’ll get her back,” she says. She repeats it a few times, and by the last time she’s certain. “We’ll get her back, and that motherfucker won’t see her again.”

You let Wilma rub circles onto your back. Let yourself believe her. You don’t care if she calls you ditch-trash again or blames you next time Beverly brings head lice home from daycare or if she never listens about what kind of soap Beverly’s skin can manage. You cry until the tears run dry, and hope in the end the two of can stay as strong and angry as it takes to keep him away. If you’re lucky enough, this one time, for him come back.

 Jody Hobbs Hesler lives and writes in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her fiction, essays, and book reviews appear or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, The Petigru Review, CRAFT, Pithead Chapel, The Rumpus, Gargoyle, Raleigh Review, [PANK], and elsewhere. She teaches at Writer House in Charlottesville, Virginia.