James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

I’d like to report a missing person, Mrs. Vernon said. Name Darlene Hardison. She started to spell his mother’s name and stopped short. Oh, you do, do you? Mm-hmm. Another pause. It don’t matter about what she do, sir. It’s that she got a young son waiting on her, and he right here. Her voice brightened. Really, now? Would you mind checking your records?

Keeping the phone wedged against her ear, Mrs. Vernon gave someone change, paid full attention to customers for several minutes. A few times she made eye contact with Eddie and raised her eyebrows to say they still had her on hold. Then she said, dejectedly, into the phone, So she’s not down there, huh? She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and addressed Eddie. When the last time you saw her?

Last night, he said, around nine thirty.

Half past nine last night, Mrs. Vernon repeated to the cop on the phone, and froze her face into a pout during a long pause. Friday morning sound like a long time, Officer. Don’t you think — no, I suppose you don’t. At the end of the call, she sighed and said, Thank you for your help, and Eddie could tell she meant Thanks for nothing. He forced his tears back up into his head. Mrs. Vernon gave him a slice of cake in a Tupperware box to save for lunch but it only made him feel better enough to relax his face. The best possible cake couldn’t help.

Even one day to wait for your missing mother is forever. Eddie told a bad friend at school about his mother and the kid said, Every second you don’t do nothing, somebody could be killing her and you’re not preventing the killing of her! During recess a kid called Doody but really named Heath tried to cheat at finger football and Eddie stomped on his foot so hard Doody wept and said that Eddie had broken it even though he could walk fine after five minutes. No teacher witnessed this; no authority heard about it later.

Eddie looked for his mother on the humid, sweaty journey home. When he got back to the apartment, he kept thinking she would call if she could get to a phone. As he searched the rooms, he found that she had left a favorite blouse with gold threads sewn into the piping. His feverish inventory of everything she had not taken proved that she had not meant to disappear, to leave behind the possessions she cherished or anything else she loved. Who had kidnapped her?

Hours passed; the house remained silent. The street seemed quieter than usual, as if everybody knew that Darlene Hardison had gone missing and, worse, that they had hidden themselves to avoid caring. To drown the silence of the phone, Eddie turned up the television. Mrs. Vernon dropped by to see if his mother had shown up, and Eddie said she hadn’t. In Mrs. Vernon’s voice he waited to hear something tell him that he could spend the night with her, but that never came, only a complaint about her own full house and a promise to check in on him tomorrow.

Now, if this go on much longer, I’ma have to call protective services, Mrs. Vernon warned the next day when he visited just before the bakery closed because she hadn’t checked in the whole day.

No, Eddie whined. I can take care of myself. Plus my aunt Bethella lives across town if I need her. I’ve stayed with her before, he told Mrs. Vernon, though he thought at the same time that it would be impossible to contact Bethella. He knew that his mother and his aunt hated each other, and he felt that his aunt hated him because of his mother. No, he could never ask her help again. But maybe he could go it alone. I’m almost twelve, he said.

And you think you grown. Hmm.

I am the man of the house, he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, trying to sound logical and wear a serious, old expression.

I suppose you right about that, sir, Mrs. Vernon said soberly, forcing him, as rapidly as someone dropped into cold water feels a chill, to remember what made that a bad thing. He scuttled out of the store before she could see the shame take over his face or hear him cry.

At 9:30 that night, shortly after the time Darlene would normally leave, he turned off the lights and appliances, slipped out the front door, and locked it behind him. He walked downstairs into the parking lot of the complex, concerned that someone would see him and figure out what had happened or judge Darlene a bad mother for letting him stay out late. Car headlights suddenly shone on him, so dazzling he couldn’t see the vehicle behind them. The beams seemed to expose his aloneness and helplessness, sensations he couldn’t release even after scampering to the sidewalk and making his way to the strip.

He had been driven down parts of the long commercial avenue many times, sometimes when the school bus took a wrong turn or a detour, but rarely at night. Seeing it in this new way filled him with dread. A few sections, mainly the strip malls nearer the highway, supported restaurants and movie theaters. There were no sidewalks. In Texas, having a vehicle meant having a life — if you walked on the shoulder, everybody could see that you’d failed in some way. That you couldn’t afford a vehicle, that your car had broken down and you couldn’t pay for a cab, that you had no friends to call. Maybe you were too weird to hitchhike. Out by the curb, shaggy people with walking sticks and shopping carts guided mangy animals to nowhere. Teens who’d blackened their eye sockets and pierced the bridges of their noses shuffled toward Houston’s underworld. A decaying but popular bowling alley sat across from a lot that contained Mexican and Chinese chain restaurants, and farther down you could find one of those tremendous, shiny supermarkets that stayed open all night just because it could, its clientele growing sparser and freakier as the evening progressed. Whole sections of the road closed after business hours — a cluster of stores that sold antiques, ceramic tiles, and Christian books and supplies lay dormant in shadows, and farther on, beyond a bright gas station, stretched another chunk of avenue where several strip malls had failed and their gigantic unlit parking lots seemed to undulate like wide, deep rivers do at night.

At the corner, near the edge of an empty department-store parking lot, a woman waited at a bus shelter. She leaned against the light box, silhouetted, peering into whichever cars stopped at the traffic signal. This didn’t seem strange to Eddie until it occurred to him that the buses must have stopped running. Initially he judged the woman unfortunate, then ignorant and badly dressed, but as he figured out what she was doing, he saw her ingenuity. She had an excuse, if a lame one, to lurk in this territory. Suddenly he thought of his mother — first he had to rule out the possibility that the woman was her, then reconcile himself to the idea that his mother was no different, which he could not do. But he felt this woman might know his mother, or her whereabouts.

He passed, pretending not to notice her. After walking fifty more yards, he stopped and returned to the bus shelter. He stood away from her, watching her light a cigarette and toss the lit match casually into the street. The woman squinted at him, took a drag, and blew her smoke. The expression she sent his way — brows close together, mouth pursed — made him feel that he had offended her.

No, sugar, she said. Ain’t happening. She leaned out of the shelter and craned her neck in the opposite direction. Mm-mm. You too young.

I’m not that young, he announced. I’m almost twelve.

She took a step back and guffawed, and he saw her sympathy for him break open. What is happening to me? she asked the sky. I can’t believe I thought — she shook her head and sucked on the cigarette again. Good God A’mighty. Eleven years old. And what you doing out—