Valerie giggled as several flies found her eyelashes.
“Hey, flies!” demanded Mistie. She flicked her hand at Valerie’s face, sending them in a whirl. Mama had spray she could put on the kids to keep the flies and bugs off, but she had forgotten, and Mistie knew it wasn’t time to go back and ask for it.
Outside, it wasn’t quite as hot as it had been in the afternoon. It was still light, and the sun was visible beyond the railroad track, sitting atop a distant warehouse like a cat on a fence post.
Mistie put Valerie on the spin-around and pushed it slowly in a circle. Valerie giggled and tried to stand up, but flopped over and laughed again. Then Mistie pushed off and jumped aboard, and the sisters went round and round, looking up at the clouds, watching them spin, too.
The garbage truck came up beside the playground with a hiss and a sound of scraping metal. Some of the little boys stopped to watch, but Mistie only looked at it, then back at Valerie, who was heading for the sliding board.
“Hot, Valerie!” Mistie warned. “Don’t burn your legs!”
The garbage truck’s steel arms lifted the three Dumpsters in turn, the contents dropping into the huge maw on its back. Then the driver climbed out and opened the gate to the playground and strode to the back door where the extra bags and cans were strewn. He complained loud enough for everyone to hear, though it didn’t seem like anyone cared much.
“Put the trash where it belongs next time! I don’t get paid extra to lug this stinking crap to my truck!”
One of the teenaged baby-sitters, under the tree with a boyfriend, said loud enough for the trash man to hear, “You come when you’re supposed to it wouldn’t get all overflowing like that!”
No more words were exchanged. The garbage truck wheezed and thumped, then drove away.
Mistie went to the sand box while Valerie sat on the bottom of the slide and tried to catch a fly. The sand box was fun, except when one of the stray cats of the neighborhood used it as a litter box. Mistie found a cracked plastic shovel and she began to make a castle. The sand at the top was dry and didn’t stick together, but the sand underneath was damp from old rains and stuck together really good. Mistie dug up the wet sand and used her hands to claw all around to make the castle moat. She’d seen a T.V. show where a queen lived in a castle and the castle had a moat around it, full of snakes and snapping turtles and other things with teeth. It was a funny show, a cartoon, and the prince was so clumsy he kept falling into the moat and the queen kept pulling him out with her silk curtains. After the moat, Mistie formed the castle. A bucket would have been good to use, one little girl who played in the sand box a lot had a bucket but she’d taken it in. Mistie had to use her hands. But patiently she scooped and patted, pausing on occasion to pick a stone from outside the sand box to decorate the walls. Some dandelions grew in a grassy path by the sandbox; Mistie popped off the yellow blossoms and covered the top of the castle with them. She sat back on her heels and smiled.
“Valerie, look!” she said, turning toward the slide.
Valerie was not on the bottom of the slide. Mistie hopped to her feet, brushed sand off her knees and her bottom, and glanced around. She didn’t see Valerie.
“Valerie?”
She trotted over to the slide and looked at the ladder, but her sister wasn’t there, neither was she sitting in the shade beneath the slide.
Mistie stomped her foot. “Valerie, quit hiding from me!”
Up the bank behind the playground, a lazy freight train ambled by, clacking and clicking. Mistie called over the noise to the baby-sitter under the tree.
“Have you seen Valerie?”
The baby-sitter waved her over, unable to hear over the noise. “What did you say?” said the girl, squinting in the sun. Her boyfriend had his arm around her waist.
Mistie felt funny now. Her mouth was dry and her chest felt like someone was jumping up and down on it. “Have you seen Valerie?”
The baby-sitter took a drag on her cigarette and passed it to her boyfriend. “Valerie? That little girl with hair like yours? No.”
“She’s my sister.”
“So?” said the boyfriend around the smoke. “You lose your sister, that’s your problem, not ours.”
The baby-sitter shrugged like she agreed with the boyfriend. Mistie spun on her toe and looked at all four corners of the playground. Amid the few other children, there was no Valerie.
Then she saw the open gate. The garbage man had come for the trash, but had left the chain-link gate wide open. Mistie ran for the gate, laced her fingers through the wire and stared at the lot where the Dumpsters and the cars were parked. “Valerie!” she called. “You get yourself back here or we’re gonna get a whippin’!”
Valerie didn’t jump up, laughing, from behind a car. She didn’t peer, grinning and giggling, from behind a Dumpster. Mistie went out in the lot, her heart pounding now so hard she could hear it in her ears and feel it in her neck. The lot was hot, still steaming from the afternoon sun; starlings pecked at the dust and squawked at each other.
“Valerie, damn it, come here!” Mistie used her Daddy’s word. Daddy could get Valerie to behave when nobody else could. But Valerie didn’t come.
Mistie walked across the lot to the grassy embankment. The train had gone on, leaving only its echo. Mistie grabbed hold of brittle bank-side chicory and pulled herself to the track. “Valerie!” She was sweating, and her hair was flat against her neck, but under her skin she felt a quick, passing chill, like the ones she got the moment she hopped out of her evening bath.
Up the line there was a curve where the track rounded to the right behind a five-story cold storage building. Down the line it ran straight for a pretty long ways between rows of other apartment buildings toward the center of the city. Mistie walked up the center of the track, trying to pace her steps with the awkwardly-spaced wooden slats. She’d never seen things from this vantage point before; the playground seemed smaller, its grass more spotty and brown. At the bottom of the other side of the embankment, a stream trickled over rocks and broken glass. There were small houses on that side, each with their own fenced yards, clotheslines, doghouses.
“Valerie!”
Mistie held her arms out for balance and walked toward the curve in the track. Mama was not just going to spank them, she was going to take away T.V. for a long time, and Daddy was going to yell really loud and maybe jerk Mistie’s hair like he did before. Maybe Daddy would call the police to come put the two girls in jail. Daddy said police did that to bad little girls who didn’t do what they were told. Mistie’s eyes welled up at the thought of jail.
She heard a child giggle, and she stopped in her tracks to look down in the direction of the sound. It was a little boy in his backyard, teasing his puppy with a stick. Mistie said, “Shut up!” to the boy.
“You shut up!” called the boy.
Rounding the curve, Mistie could see the track stretching straight again, reaching out to the end of the city. The embankment was taller here, sloping sharply a good twenty-five feet, and covered with gravel instead of grass. The rear lot of the cold storage building was littered with cans and papers and what looked like little balloons. Rusted trash barrels stood upright and lay on their sides. The building’s windows were cracked and some were missing the glass entirely. A pile of old clothes lay against one of the upright barrels near the foot of the embankment.
Mistie lost her footing on the slats and stumbled, then caught herself before slipping on the edge of the embankment. She wiped her nose then sneezed in a sudden whirlwind of dust. “Valerie! Mama’s gonna be so mad! Where are you?”