Kate's second encounter with Sadie

The bat was on the floor under a pile of trash behind my seat. I twisted around and inched it out. The crunching from the back continued, but the wood felt solid in my hand so I was a little less frightened of what I’d find. A little.

I nudged my door open, slipped to the pavement, and crept around behind the jeep. The misty air cooled my hot, pulsating face. Crouching down beneath the window, I snuck my thin fingers up and grabbed the rusty back door handle. The street was silent; I’d frightened all the children away with my fit. It was just me, The Beast and the demon inside. On the count of three I’d swing the door open and face it. My mother had always encouraged me to tackle my fears. At least I think she had.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. I took another for good measure. You can never have too much oxygen right before you die. I counted to three, raised the bat, and swung the door wide open.

Then my world got weird.

She sat scrunched up on the floor of The Beast munching an M&M and stared back at me with enormous green eyes. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in her. I was stunned. It was like looking into a mirror as a child.

She glanced at the bat behind me, still raised and ready to swing. I brought it down and used it as a cane.

“I’m Sadie,” she said, like she wasn’t camped out in the back of a stranger’s jeep. She had a teeny voice to match her teeny body.

“What are you doing?”

“Eating emem’s.”

“Why are you in my jeep? Your dad’s really worried about you, you know.”

She searched the floor for more M&M’s, found an orange one and popped it in her mouth. I suppose I should have stopped her, the five-second rule no longer applied, but I wasn’t in the mood to play mommy.

She peered into me like she was studying my soul, then asked in her vile little voice, “Why awe you sad?”

“Listen, little girl--“

“Sadie.”

“Whatever. I’m taking you home now.”

“My mommy eats chockyit when she’s sad too. But she doesn’t thwow it.”

Right. I wasn’t about to be psychoanalyzed by a two-year-old tater tot with a speech impediment. Her little pink lips curled up into a grin. She must have been older than two. More like twenty or thirty-two.

“All right, let’s go.” The bells on her jacket tie strings jingled when I lifted her out of the back and put her on the ground. Her mother probably sewed them on thinking they’d help her keep track of the future little Jackie Joyner, like the jingle bells people attach to miniature dogs so they won’t squish them by accident. I got the impression her father would have preferred her to be bell-less.

“Sadie, where do you live?”

She stood in front of me, arching her head back to keep track of my eyes, and advertised a gaping hole on the left side of her mouth when she smiled. I didn’t see the top of another tooth sprouting so it must have been a fresh loss. Before I said anything else she stepped forward and hugged me. Why the hell would anyone do that? I gave her a couple polite pats on the back, then removed her from my legs.

She jingled around me to the passenger side, stood on the running board pipe, opened the door and climbed up onto the seat, as if to answer any question I might have had about how she got in earlier. She turned and took the seatbelt in her tiny paws and with a little effort coaxed it down across her body. The seat was her throne. It was so big, or she was so small, that only her feet dangled over the edge. She looked like a doll. A meddlesome little Raggedy Anne who was quickly becoming a liability.


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