DANNY
I embarrassed myself by yelling, "Mommy!" When I saw her step off the train behind a well-dressed and attractive young woman, I guessed it was Helen. Mom was so surprisingly well-dressed. If her face weren't so bruised and beaten up looking, she would look like someone I'd never seen before. She had on new tan slacks, a rose-colored blouse, and an attractive little hat. Helen helped her down from the last step as if Mom were a crippled old lady. She was a crippled young lady, and I felt sure she was still recovering from a severe beating from Ratso for letting me run away. She reached back to help Jacque down the steps while still holding Helen's hand. Helen let go of mom's hand, picked Jacque up, and placed her on the tarmac.
Helen had climbed back on the train to pick up two medium-sized suitcases, and when she stepped down from the train car, I introduced her to Sam and Clair. Clair said, "We've talked so much on the phone, I feel we already know each other, and you know Sam from way back to graduate school, is that right?" I felt a bit stupid for not knowing that, but then how could I have – I needed to learn how to be around ordinary people, especially adults.
I heard Helen tell Sam, "I volunteered to accompany this family to California so I could see you again after all these years. I think everyone who was with me in the rescue would have been willing to do it." She looked around, and I could see that they were a bit of a distance from us, but I could hear her as she whispered, "They are a very brutalized little group. The mother is still limping from the beating she took for letting Danny run away. Oh, and she also 'fell' down the stairs."
I knew it, the cruel bastard "punished" mom for not being like him. I heard Clair ask Helen something about the hospital, and Helen said, "Not right away." Clair wanted to know if Mom should be taken to the hospital right then. Sam said, "I'm hungry, and I'm guessing all of you travelers are too, right?" Susan and Jacque nodded, and Mom frowned and muttered something about being too much trouble. Sam responded, "No, Marge." When Sam saw Mom's startled look, he added, "Danny gave me your name. And I want you to know that I don't think you were much trouble then, and believe me, you are NOT in a lot of trouble now, nor will you be in the future. We welcome you to California, and now I want you to know there is a very nice restaurant just a few blocks away. Would that be okay?"
Susan was surprisingly forward, "Anything, I'm starved. Can we have fish?"
"I was just going to ask if a seafood restaurant was okay. Fishes are seafood, aren't they?" Sam turned to Jacque, who just shrugged her shoulders and hid behind Mom. Susan smiled a little and looked up at him and muttered, "You're funnin' us, ain't you?" Sam nodded and tried to touch her on the shoulder, and she backed away. Both Sam and Clair brought cars to the train station. Since it had been over a month since I had seen Mom and the girls, I chose to ride with them in the same car. We climbed into Clair's car – mom and the girls in the back seat, and I got in the front with Clair.
When we got to Seaport Village, I guessed that Susan had become the spokesperson for the threesome, and I asked Clair, "Who are you, and why are you and Mr. Sam helping us?
Before she could answer, Sam said, "Susan, you can just call me Sam. I like that better than Mr. Sam, but if it makes you feel better, that's okay too. I'm doing it because I like your brother, Danny, and I'm one of his teachers at the school he goes to, and it's the same one I hope you'll go to too. I teach a small group class called human development. The group is called a cohort, and I'm called a Tatar – that's short for facilitator." Susan crinkled her face when she heard 'Tatar' and 'facilitator', and Sam added, 'I lead that small fifth-grade class.' You'll have a cohort, or group, in your grade, too. I know your Tatar, and she's really nice."
We arrived at Seaport Village, a kind of pier on San Diego Bay, with several restaurants. Because it was Sunday, Clair said that it was busier than usual. The receptionist gave Sam a little pancake-shaped thing with a light in the middle. It was supposed to ring and light up when they had a big table for us. We walked around the restaurant on a bridge-like walkway. It was the first time I had been there, and I was as amazed as Suzan was. Jacque and Mom stayed back from the railing for fear of falling into the bay or something. There was a humongous ship across the bay, and Sam told us it was an aircraft carrier. I had read about navy ships in a book back in Flowers, but I never thought I'd ever see any of them. The bay was a fantastic place. Sam's little pancake gadget went off, and we stumbled into the restaurant. Clair very kindly described the various seafood dishes to us. The only one that we knew anything about was catfish, so all four of us ordered catfish and French fries.
After eating, we were joined by Gary, Ella's dad and headed out to the 'new' apartment. Gary, told Mom and us kids we could stay with his family for the first night in California if they preferred. Mom looked at me, and I said, "I'm sure we will be okay in the apartment. Clair said that she and her friend had purchased silverware, dishes, sheets, blankets, and everything they thought they would need to set up housekeeping. But thank you very much." Gary nodded okay. Ella said she would get off the tram at our stop and walk with us in the morning.
Mom seemed to get weaker as the day went on. Clair urged her to go with her to the doctor in the morning, and Mom reluctantly muttered that she would. After we went into the apartment, and mom saw the new wide-screen TV, she showed the most emotion since she had first arrived and saw me. She seemed to be okay with sharing the bedroom with me, and we all went to bed early. I felt more relaxed than at any time since I left Flowers, or maybe ever.
In the morning, after breakfast, I called Bubba Watson in San Antonio. I told him about what happened to Ratso, and he said, "Just what the bastard deserved. Damn him." I told him about how the FBI had handled the raid on the house in Flowers, and he replied, "That's the best damn thing I've ever heard about that bunch." I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was a lot better and that his daughter in Denver had invited him to stay with her family for a while. That lifted his spirits, he said.
Ella and her five-year-old sister, Angie, came to the apartment at the same time Clair arrived to take Mom to an urgent care clinic. That was helpful because Jacque said she had to stay with her mommy, and Clair kindly insisted that mom needed to see the doctor alone, and she would take good care of her mommy. Mom kept unconvincingly insisting that Jacque go to school. I think Jacque was intrigued to find Angie, her exact same size, also going to school with us. Susan, three years older, was a bit scared but was glad that Ella was going with us. Ella took Angie's hand, and Gary took Susan's hand, and I took Jacque's. Seeing Ella's dad joining in the celebration made me think of Ratso. He would condemn Gary as a homo sissy. I didn't have any idea what a 'homo' was, but I knew it was someone horrible. Both girls seemed puzzled by the, for them, humongous mixed-age, mixed-ethnicity group gathered at the playground. Susan softly said to me, "This is the school, isn't it? It is so weird."
The pleasant girl's voice began to address them on the loudspeaker, "Welcome, all you wonderful imagineers, to our second week of classes. This week, our music will be provided by the Sophomore class's Yodelers. We were serenaded with some hip-hop music I'd never heard before, and everyone, including Ella's dad, started jumping and singing. I took Susan's hand, and she took Jacque's, and Jacque took Ella's. I was so glad to see both girls, especially Jacque, begin to enjoy themselves and emerge from their cocoons. I'd have to tell Ella how helpful it was to me to hear that we all needed to be like the butterfly that emerges from a cocoon.
When the singing and dancing stopped, Gary and Angie took Jacque's hands and headed to the kindergarten room. I was surprised that Jacque let them and even smiled a little. Ella and I took Susan's hand, and she gave us a big smile. We were joined by another second-grade girl who would be her guide for the week, as Ella had been my guide last week. Susan said to me, "Wow, Danny, this sure is different from Flowers, and I already like it a hundred times better. Even Jacque began to like the new school. Ella and her family were really helpful. I couldn't think of any family in Flowers that we had gotten to know well enough so that we could ask them to help us.
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