Lena by Jacqueline Woodson

cops looking for us? Our daddy probably got cops all around looking for us.”
    Marie was quiet.
    â€œYour father’s gone, Lena.” She was almost whispering and even in Miz Lily’s quiet house, I had to hold the phone real close to hear her. “ We’re looking for you.”
    â€œWhat do you mean he’s gone? Where’s he gone to?” I felt hot all of a sudden.
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    â€œI don’t know,” Marie said. “They rented your house to somebody else. Every time I walk by it, I wonder about you and Dion. I was so sick with worry. I kept trying to tell myself you two were all right. That you got away from your father.” Marie sniffed. “I found that paper you left behind.”
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    â€œThe one with our names?”
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    â€œYeah,” Marie said. “It’s taped to my mirror. I look at it every day and think about—I miss you!”
    Before I left Chauncey I wrote Elena Cecilia Bright and her sister Edion Kay Bright lived here once on a piece of paper hoping somebody would find it and think about us. Remember us.
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    â€œI’m glad you was the one that found it,” I said. Your father’s gone. Your father’s gone. Your father’s gone. The words kept repeating themselves in my head. Once, me and my mama went grocery shopping. I was real little but I tried to lift up this big jar of spaghetti sauce anyway. I dropped it and it broke. That’s what I felt like now—that broken jar of sauce—busted open.
    I sank down against the wall until I was sitting on the floor.
    â€œLena . . . ,” Marie was calling.
    â€œYeah?”
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    â€œI told my father, Lena. I told him everything.”
    I swallowed. “What’d he say?”
    â€œYou mad at me for telling?”
    â€œNo, I ain’t mad. I just—everybody in Chauncey know?”
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    â€œI didn’t tell anyone else. Just my father.”
    â€œWhat’d he say?” I asked again.
    â€œHe said I should have told him before you left—he called a lot of different places but people kept telling him he had to be related to you and Dion if he wanted some information. He was going to make believe he was your father but I told him you and Dion weren’t supposed to be living with your father. He was real upset about it. I think he feels bad that he wasn’t nicer to you and Dion. He said the social service people keep telling him that all they could do is put a search out for you. And when they found you, they’d—”
    â€œThey’d separate us,” I said. “Just like they did the last time.”
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    â€œThey said they’d try to find a home for you and Dion. My daddy calls them every day—to see if anyone’s found you two. Where are you, Lena?”
    Your father’s gone. Out of our lives—forever and ever amen. Me and Dion’s leaving hadn’t made him worry and search all over for us. It’d made him free to move on. Maybe I’d never believed a hundred percent that it was just me and Dion left of our family. But I believed it now. I used to say that blood didn’t mean anything but now I was thinking that blood did mean something. My daddy was real messed up but he was all we had. And now we didn’t even have that raggedy thing.
    â€œMy daddy really gone, Marie?” I whispered.
    â€œYeah. People at the agency told my father they put a search out for him too but no sign yet.”
    â€œPeople disappear all the time. You hear from your mama?”
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    â€œNo.”
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    â€œMaybe she’s somewhere with my daddy.”
    Marie laughed, then sniffed again. “Lena, I thought . . . I was scared. I read the newspaper every day looking for signs of you and Dion.”
    â€œIt rained sometimes,” I said. “Those nights it was real cold and felt like we could never get dry. I don’t ever want to sleep outside in the rain again.” Your