A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

real quick. There’s still blood on the knees of my pants and I ain’t
bathed in weeks. My breath and my underarms is raunchy. I keep my
arms down so the woman can’t smell what I smell when I lift them
up. The little girl is still saying hi.
“Are you hurt?” the woman asks. She doesn’t wait for me to tell
her ’cause she can see for herself that I am. I’m hurt bad all over.
“You’re hurt,” she says. “You’re bleeding,” she says, pointing at my
feet and then my knees. “Right there. And there. How old are you?”
she asks, and when I don’t answer right away, she starts rattling off
numbers. “Eleven? Twelve? Fourteen?”
I nod at fourteen ’cause I’ve got no idea how old I am. Fourteen is
as good an age as any.
It hurts to stand or walk, ’cause my feet on the underside is all torn
up. My legs are sore and my belly aches.
The woman is still staring at me. She’s got yellow hair like the sun.
She smiles at me, but I can tell that it’s not a real smile. It’s a worried
smile. The woman don’t know what to make of me, though soon she
ain’t looking at my face anymore ’cause she’s looking at my hands
and my arms and my knees and my feet.
I like the sound of her voice. It’s soft and kind. “Are you lost,
sweetheart?” she asks me, her eyes coming back to mine. I say
nothing.
“Do you live around here?” the woman asks.
I shrug my shoulders. I open my mouth to speak, but my voice is
just barely there. I got to stop and start over a time or two. “I don’t
know, ma’am,” I say, ’cause truth be told, I got no idea where I live,
other than that the house is blue. But I couldn’t find that blue house if
my life depended on it.
“You don’t need to call me ma’am, honey,” she says. “You can call
me Annie.” But of course I can’t do that ’cause when I don’t say
ma’am I either get a beating or I get starved. “You’re really lost,
aren’t you? What happened here?” she asks, meaning those scars
on my arms.
I just stare dumbly when she asks. I don’t say nothing but I feel
tears pooling in my eyes.
The woman asks, “Can I call your parents for you? Do you know
their phone number?”