Near Miss

Beyond the cracked, dirty sidewalk and the telephone pole littered with dead layers of flyers in a faded rainbow of colors, and just past the patch of uncared-for grass, there stood a twelve-foot high concrete block wall. At the foot of the wall rested a small shrine complete with the expected candle stubs, dead flowers, and one lone, soggy teddy bear. A phrase in spray-painted graffiti covered the concrete blocks; enthusiastic, looping blue letters scrawled against the peeling paint – Rejoice in All Things!

Hannah could not take her eyes off the phrase, unable to reconcile the inappropriately cheerful command with what the shrine stood for. How was a person supposed to find the energy to rejoice at the site of devastating tragedy? She dropped her eyes at last and gazed at the remains of the shrine.

The pink teddy bear was unbefitting of the scene now that it was well past the first flush of newness, now that its fake fur was matted and sodden, now that it’s beady, glass eyes were cracked and razed from overexposure to the weather. The ruined stuffed animal, once destined to be a child’s dreamiest bedtime companion, was nothing more than a waterlogged, leering, mud-splattered she-devil crouched at an altar of decaying blooms and melted wax.

After sending up a hasty prayer for forgiveness over what she was about to do, Hannah made her decision. The plastic roses could stay, the candles with enough wax left to ensure a few minutes of hopeful burning could stay, but that teddy’s reign was over. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Hannah picked up the dripping, clammy, deceased teddy bear, the dead flowers, and the blackened candle stumps and carried her pickings over to the trashcan. She stuffed the entire sorry, unwholesome mess down, cramming wet acrylic fur past fast food bags, discarded cans, and half-eaten, rotting leftovers, her face distorted with repugnance and her nostrils pinched to reduce the impact of stale odors rising up to meet her.

Hannah wiped her hands down her jeans and glanced quickly around to check that no one had seen her act of desecration. As with any site that drew forth outpourings of emotion, people had heightened opinions about the shrine and each believed their opinion to be right, especially when a young child was involved.

The last sighting of Cherry-Lynn Jennifer Morgan was on this corner seven days ago. Cherry-Lynn was a round-faced, happy eight-year-old with bangs and freckles; a scraped-kneed, snaggle-toothed schoolgirl with her socks bunched around the tops of her stained sneakers and a giggle that would make anyone smile.

Cherry-Lynn, wearing a sparkly pink unicorn sweat top, was last seen happily throwing a tennis ball up against this very wall with her neon orange and yellow backpack from the Dollar Store carelessly discarded by the high wire fence that bordered the basketball courts. Little Cherry-Lynn, with her whole life laid out in front of her, was last seen alive with her feet on the exact same patch of asphalt on which Hannah now stood.

The girl’s disappearance, for reasons vaguely hinted at but not uttered outright by the smart-suited reporter with the impenetrable, unmoving helmet of TV hair who stared importantly down the lens of the television camera, did not reach the ears of the 911 operator until around 10.30 pm on the day she went missing.

Hannah knew this important information because her mother, Terri Compton, was the dispatcher who took the breathless, panicked call from Cherry-Lynn’s mother. Terri, trained to remain soothing yet authorative in the face of uncontrolled panic, had done all the right things. She’d dispatched a police car, raised an amber alert, and spoken calmly and reassuringly to Cherry-Lynn’s mother until help arrived.

For the past 12 months, Cherry-Lynn and her mother had lived only two doors down from Hannah and Terri. Terri would wave cheerfully at Cherry-Lynn’s mother whenever the two women’s paths crossed but she never approached her, never passed the time of day, never asked the other woman inside the apartment for a coffee. Terri, her lips pursed into a tight cat’s bum of disapproval, told Hannah that Cherry-Lynn and her mother were not quite the right type to associate with and it was best if they kept to themselves.

Hannah said she was unsure what quite the right type meant but Terri refused to elaborate. As far as Hannah could see, Cherry-Lynn and her mother’s lives ran on a parallel line to Hannah and Terri’s lives. Both families lived on the same street, both mothers were Single By Choice, and Cherry-Lynn was only three years younger than Hannah.

Cherry-Lynn and Hannah had spoken on occasions over the past year. An eight year old and an eleven year old don’t generally have a whole lot in common but Hannah felt sisterly towards the young girl. She would tell Cherry-Lynn not to fool around with her friends too close to the curb, to look both ways before crossing the street, and to watch she didn’t trip over her shoelaces, but that was about as far as it went.

On the day of Cherry-Lynn’s disappearance, Hannah had uncharacteristically spoken to the child for several minutes. However, racked by guilt, Hannah had not disclosed this information to anyone. Frightening images, gleaned from movies, of solemn, mean-faced cops grilling subjects for information in poorly lit, poorly furnished interview rooms swirled around Hannah’s brain and she had kept her mouth firmly shut. As Terri often said, everything in life was a choice.

Cherry-Lynn, there one moment and gone the next, was now the word on every neighborhood child’s lips. Cherry-Lynn’s name was spoken reverently, in hushed, wide-eyed tones, as if she were already dead and buried. The bogeyman had visited West Street to confirm every parent’s oft-repeated warnings.

The popular consensus among Hannah’s friends was that the bad guys had chosen Cherry-Lynn due to her fondness for chatting to whomever she took a liking to. Everyone knew you shouldn’t talk to strangers and Cherry-Lynn’s awful fate was a sure confirmation of that. However, as everyone also knew, Cherry-Lynn did not know any better.

Cherry-Lynn, unlike Hannah, did not have a mother who worked as a 911 dispatcher, a mother who knew who the right type was, a mother who made sure that Cherry-Lynn had somewhere to go after school, a mother who cautioned against speaking to people you did not know. Cherry-Lynn’s mother hadn’t taught her what she should do.

But despite the damning whispers and unsavory rumors, Hannah thought Cherry-Lynn’s mother was a fascinating creature. Cherry-Lynn’s mother was curvy and voluptuous, thicc as Hannah’s friends would say, and she always had at least one slouching, sly-eyed boyfriend knocking on her door. Cherry-Lynn’s mother, with her long, flowing honey-blonde hair, full lips, and knowing eyes was exciting and intriguing. Cherry-Lynn’s mother did not care what people thought of her. Hannah thought life would be a whole lot easier if everyone adopted that attitude.

Rooster, the tall, skinny neighborhood boy with teenage acne-riven skin who spoke to the TV reporter, had mentioned Cherry-Lynn’s mother in his TV interview. He had shifted his basketball under his arm and waved vaguely in the direction of her apartment, saying that he saw Cherry-Lynn and her mother regularly on the street. Yes, he said, he regularly saw both of them going about their ordinary business and no, he had no clue as to what could have happened to Cherry-Lynn.

What the TV reporter had not noticed but Hannah had noticed at once was the way that Rooster’s eyes darted towards the house at No. 27. She had plainly seen his eyes as they flickered towards the dark, scowling frontage of the building and then just as quickly flickered away again.

No. 27 West Street was the kind of house that encouraged people to step off the sidewalk or hurry to the other side of the road when they passed. No. 27 West Street, with its shuttered windows and decaying boards, was a house perfectly suited for the bogeymen of this world. No. 27 was the kind of house that might suck a little eight-year-old girl in and never let her leave.

On the day of Cherry-Lynn’s disappearance, although no one knew this, Hannah had stopped to talk to the little girl as she crossed the street on this this exact corner. Spoken to the living, breathing Cherry-Lynn as she chanted 1,1,1, 2,2,2, Bogey Bogey Avenue in time with the thump of her tennis ball against the chipped paint of the wall. Hannah, smiling as she passed at the nonsense rhyme, laughingly told Cherry-Lynn not to go near No. 27 where the bogeyman lived and to be sure not to stay out too late. Then she had walked on without looking back.

And now look at what had happened. Cherry-Lynn was missing, presumed snatched, and her permanently grinning face would probably appear on a milk carton one day. Cherry-Lynn’s mother would sink into the ravages of despair before taking up with yet another unsuitable, sly-eyed boyfriend and moving on. Weeks and years would pass, people would forget, and it would be as if Cherry-Lynn had never existed at all.

Hannah, furious with herself for not doing more to save Cherry-Lynn from her dire fate and sad about the mess her shrine had become, made a solemn vow to return here each afternoon for the next few weeks. She would appoint herself as caretaker and guardian of the site, she would bring fresh flowers, and she would continue praying for Cherry-Lynn. It was the very least she could do, even if Cherry-Lynn and her mother were not the right type.

Three days later, an automobile pulled up and parked beside the concrete wall. The driver opened the door but she did not get out. Although her face was in shadow, there was something about how she rested the weight of her hands on the steering wheel, something about her silent composure, which caused Hannah to sigh.

Hannah hesitated, unsure whether she should approach the vehicle or pretend she hadn’t seen it. Terri’s voice rang stridently in her ears. Don’t talk to strangers. Come straight home. Call 911 if you see anything suspicious. Look what happened to Cherry-Lynn. You don’t want the same thing to happen to you, do you?

Hannah threw her conflicted thoughts to the wind and made an impromptu decision. A choice that might change everything. On trembling legs, she approached the car just as the woman took her arm back inside the vehicle and went to turn the key in the ignition.

“Hi. I knew Cherry-Lynn. She was one of my neighbors.” Hannah’s voice sounded forced, overtly cheerful to her ears. Out of place here at this altar of mourning for a little girl who never really had the chance to live.

The woman sighed, a long, sorrowful sound, and dropped her hand from the ring of keys dangling from the ignition. She stared straight ahead for a long moment and Hannah, now taking a doubtful, unsteady step backward, wondered if she had heard her at all. Hannah took the opportunity to assess the woman. She was older than Hannah had first thought, with deep lines around her eyes and a sour tilt to her mouth that scribbled out any lingering signs of beauty.

“I know Cherry-Lynn, too.” The woman sighed again before finally turning to face Hannah. Hannah was startled to see Cherry-Lynn’s mother’s knowing eyes boring into her own. “I’m her grandmother.”

“I’m sorry.” Hannah searched her memory for an any recollection of Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother in TV appearances, or of her photo in the slideshow of stills behind the TV reporter’s desk, but she was sure she had not seen her before. Not ever. As far as Hannah knew, the extent of Cherry-Lynn’s family was her mother and her mother’s endless stream of no-good boyfriends.

Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother was still talking about her granddaughter in the present tense, as if Cherry-Lynn was not already dead and buried. She spoke of Cherry-Lynn’s ready grin, her dancing feet, and her genial personality. Cherry-Lynn, according to her grandmother, did not take after her mother. Hannah nodded mutely, wondering if she should tell Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother that she’d removed the teddy bear and the dead flowers because they were no longer worthy offerings to Cherry-Lynn’s memory. However, Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother had something hard and bitter at the corners of her eyes that made Hannah decide to keep quiet.

“The girl’s mother. Do you have much to do with her?” Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother abruptly changed the subject, looping back onto a question that Hannah somehow knew was there from the beginning. Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother reminded Hannah a little of Terri, with her analytical mind and her need to make plans, and Hannah was glad she knew what to expect from the woman. Knowledge was power and knowledge meant she couldn’t be taken by surprise.

“She lives two doors down from us. My mother says hello sometimes.” Liar, Hannah. Hannah saw Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother glance at No. 27 and she hastily corrected her. “Not that house. We live on the other side of Cherry-Lynn and her mother.”

Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother pursed her lips, reminding Hannah again of Terri and her multitudes of disapprovals, as she drummed her long-nailed fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “My granddaughter tells me the neighborhood children are afraid of that house. She said a bogeyman lives there.”

Hannah nodded eagerly, glad to talk about a subject that she thought herself an expert on. “An old man died there once. They didn’t find his body for years. My friend Cody said he saw his shadow walk past the window on Halloween night.”

This story did not seem to impress Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother. She stared right through Hannah and Hannah imagined she was able to read the graffiti phrase on the wall behind her. Hannah swore she could feel her hard gaze steering its determined, relentless way through Hannah’s skin, bones, muscles, and veins.

“Well,” said Hannah as she shuffled her sneakers against the gritty surface of the asphalt and rubbed her sweaty palm down the side seam of her jeans, “I guess I should be going. My mother will be wondering where I am. It was sure nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Your mother looks out for you? That’s good to hear. These streets aren’t safe for young girls. More mothers need to be aware that safety begins at home. Some mothers need it spelled out to them.” Some of Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother’s words echoed Terri’s own oft-repeated phrases and Hannah was suddenly anxious to be gone. She never had been too fond of lectures.

With a curt nod of her head, Cherry Lynn’s grandmother returned her manicured hand to the ring of keys and the car engine burst into life. “Keep yourself safe and mind your mother.” The vehicle pulled away from the curb, turned right at the corner, and disappeared from sight.

Hannah remained where she was until the shouts of the boys from the basketball court and the steady bounce-thump of their basketball roused her. She bent to adjust the tiny bouquet of sunshine yellow dandelions she had picked on the way home from school to lay at the shrine before turning for home.

The next day was Saturday, Terri’s day off. Terri, in a rare burst of congeniality, told her excited daughter they might spend the day together at the mall. Hannah, borne along on a tidal wave of affection and greed at the chance to spend an entire day out shopping with her mother, forgot to go to tend Cherry-Lynn’s shrine.

Terri woke up with a cold on Sunday and moped around, acting like a cantankerous, grizzly bear with a sore head and a far distant cry from the jovial, giggling mother of yesterday. Hannah kept her distance, swept up in her mother’s dull mood, and did not visit Cherry-Lynn’s shrine.

On Monday evening, just before Hannah got up from her mellow resting place on the stoop, she imagined she heard Cherry-Lynn’s laugh drifting along on the lifting, lilting breeze. Guilt-ridden, she pulled a twig with two dangling acorns attached from the old oak tree beside the house and took her almost-floral gift across to lay it on Cherry-Lynn’s shrine.

On Tuesday, as Hannah crossed the street to walk past No. 27, she thought she caught the brief flutter of a corner of the filthy, yellowed net curtain that hung in the front window. She looked and looked again, before putting her head down and hurrying on. Everyone knew it never paid to let on to the bogeyman that he’d been seen.

On Wednesday, Hannah was almost certain she saw a small, round face pressed up to the grimy window of No. 27. A face with freckles and bangs. A face with a small, downturned mouth and wistful eyes. Hannah hastily looked the other way. She also made the important decision not to tend Cherry-Lynn’s shrine any longer. It was not as if anyone had noticed her careful caretaker-ly duties.

On Thursday, a solitary tennis ball caught Hannah’s eye as she hurried past No. 27. The ball, its yellow felt worn flat and stained with brown mud in a number of places, stared blankly back at her from the front step and Hannah, with a shiver, imagined it was the eye of a Cyclops. She quickened her pace, feeling the stare of the ball prickling at the tender skin between her shoulder blades.

On Friday, Terri informed Hannah that Cherry-Lynn had been found alive and well. Apparently, Cherry-Lynn’s grandmother had taken it upon herself to stage an intervention and remove the child from her unsuitable environment but would now be returning Cherry-Lynn to the custody of her mother. The matter was domestic and certainly not villainous or evil. Storm in a teacup. Waste of taxpayers’ money. I told you those type of people can’t be trusted.

Cherry-Lynn came back on Saturday with her cheerful grin subdued, her dancing feet dragging, and her neon orange and yellow Dollar Store backpack hanging limply from her shoulder as she followed her mother up the grimy, leaf-covered steps to their apartment. Hannah watched silently, peeping around the corner of the wall with Rejoice in All Things! scrawled upon it, feeling unbearably sad for the girl and her dimmed light.

However, when Hannah passed the corner on her way home from school on Monday afternoon, Cherry-Lynn was back on the corner. She grinned at Hannah without pausing in her chant of 1,1,1, 2,2,2, Bogey Bogey Avenue as her tennis ball thumped against the chipped concrete wall. Hannah grinned back and waited for Cherry-Lynn to stop throwing her ball. She leaned in close and told Cherry-Lynn that all the neighborhood children had thought she was dead and buried. Cherry-Lynn nodded, wise beyond her years, and said Yes, it was a very near miss. Then she turned back to her game and Hannah skipped on home.

The End