After that, I lived in the mall. Found safe places to hide from security guards, came out at night or during the rush hours to dine off an abundance of leftover fast food, had my pick of T-shirts, jackets, and all manner of clothing left behind, read abandoned books and newspapers. I had turned from genie to Ms. Tarzan. Periodically I’d watch from various vantage points as Danny prowled the mall hoping to find me. You may remember apocryphal tales of Mall Girl, sightings of which were first reported at Westwood then quickly spread throughout the city’s other malls. Eventually everyone came to believe the whole thing was ex nihilo, spun from vapor to whole cloth, no more than a self-serving stunt. The journalist who first reported these tales and devoted weeks of her column to following up on them, Sherry Bayles, was summarily fired. Lack of journalistic integrity, the paper cited. Later, when she was working as a substitute teacher, more or less by simple chance we became friends. She’s the only one I ever told about my days in the mall. Endearingly, she did no more than smile and nod.
My Edenic time at Westwood ended after eighteen months. A newly hired security guard gave credence to the stories and lay in wait for me long after his shift was done. I was biting into half a leftover hamburger I’d fished out of one of the trash containers when he came up behind me and said, “I’d be happy to buy you a whole one.” His name was Kevin, a really nice man. He bought me that hamburger, complete with fries and shake, on the way to the police station. There, a Mrs. Cabot from Family Services picked me up.
So the second—third? fourth?—act of my life began.
Next morning I woke up in what they call a holding facility. Whatever they called it, it was an animal pen, thirty or forty kids all stuffed in there. One of them came snuffling around my bed like a pig after truffles around 3 a.m. and left with a bloody nose, down one tooth. At 8:00 they gave me a breakfast of underdone, runny eggs with greasy bacon mixed in and carted me off to see a social worker.
She said her name was Miss Taylor. “The report states that you’ve been living on your own in the mall. Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’re eleven?”
“Almost twelve.”
“You told the admitting nurse that before this, you spent two years in a box under someone’s bed.”
Miss Taylor was sitting behind a desk in an office chair. She rocked back and forth, staring at me. When she rocked back, she went out of sight. There she was. Gone. There she was again.
“The nurse thinks you made that up.”
“I don’t make things up.”
“You also said that during that time he repeatedly abused you.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Ignoring me, she went on: “That he touched you in inappropriate places, put his member in you.”
“His penis, you mean.”
“Yes. His penis.”
“Sometimes he did. More often it was other stuff.”
I’d made her out to be just another office zombie, but now she looked up, and her eyes brimmed with concern. You never know when or where these doors will open.
“Poor thing,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?”
“Sweetheart—”
“My name’s Jenny.”
“Jenny, then. Adults are supposed to care for children, not take advantage of them.”
“Danny did take care of me. He brought me sundaes. He fed me, he cleaned my box twice a day. Took me out when he came home.”
Tears replaced the concern brimming in her eyes. I had the feeling that they habitually waited back there a long time; and that when they came, they pushed themselves out against her will.
She tried to cover by ducking her head to scribble notes.
Three days later, Mrs. Cabot showed up again to escort me to what everyone kept calling “a juvenile facility,” half hospital, half prison. (Daily my vocabulary was being enriched.) The buildings were uniformly ugly, all of them unrelievedly rectangular, painted dull gray and set with double-glass windows that made me think of fish tanks. I was assigned a narrow bed and lockless locker in Residence A—a closed ward, the attendant explained. Everyone started out here, she said, but if all went well, soon enough I’d be transferred to an open ward.
That was the extent of my orientation. The rest I got onto by watching and following along. Each morning at 6 we had ten minutes to shower. Then the water was turned off, though there weren’t enough showerheads to go around and even when we doubled up, some girls were left waiting. After that we had ten minutes to use toilets in open stalls before being marched in a line through a maze of covered crosswalks to the dining room. Captives from other residences, boys and girls alike, would just be finishing their breakfasts. We waited outside like ants at a picnic. Once the occupying forces were mustered on the crosswalk opposite, we entered.
