Stories

Side Stepping / By Marie Barnard

Is he ever coming back? Why did he leave me here? I am scared and my stomach is doing flip-flops. I bet Mom is worried about me. He promised he would be right back. I think he has forgotten. The music "barks' at me when the doors swing open and there's a "sour odor" on the men who come out. They have something wrong with their legs - they walk funny. I will never forget the corner of Crystal and Fifteenth Street.

I am eight years old and it is unusual for me not to be walking home from school without one of my brothers. They ran off and left me. I'm kind of a "dawdler." I also like to walk alone and make believe I am an only child. Having eight brothers to bother with is quite a chore. I was skipping along when I heard my daddy say, "what are you doing walking by yourself. Sit here and wait for me. I'll not be long." My daddy enters the doors of the "local saloon" and whatever he does in there must make him forgetful.

Let me see - maybe I could count to ten and then he will remember me, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. I will hop on one foot for awhile. I will hop on the other foot. I will turn circles. I can stand up. I can sit down. I could stand on my head - no, I had better not try that. My dress would fall over my head and my mother said I was never to show my underwear. She always made my underwear to match my dress.

He surely knows how tired I am. I should be in bed by now. I want to go home. I want my mom.

But I have to wait for him. None of us disobeys our father. It seems like lots of people ask me what I am doing sitting here alone. I just tell them my daddy told me to wait for him and they go on their way. It has been a very long day and it's getting dark. I'm hungry. If I could go into that building - they surely would have a bathroom that little girls could use. But I know it is forbidden.

When I grow up, if it was necessary for me to go into one of those saloon buildings, I would not leave my children sitting on the steps. I would take them home first and then come back to do "whatever business" you did in there. It seems very unnecessary to leave someone as little as me sitting there in the dark to worry for such a long time.

I feel frozen to the steps when my daddy finally comes out. He's happy. He looks down at me and says, "oh honey I forgot about you - we best be getting home." It was still a long walk. I can feel my curls drooping and my knee socks falling down around my ankles. I wish daddy would carry me for awhile, but he does not offer. I can barely keep up.

I bet my Mom will give us something to eat when we get home unless she is too sick from worry. My daddy is slowing. He is walking funny too. I keep on side stepping.