I found her in the woods. As I glanced out my glass French doors downstairs, I saw a figure sitting against a tree in the outskirts of the thicket of woods at the far end of our property. The day was wet and blustery cold, but my feet were warm in my sheepskin lined boots. What was she doing way out there on a day like this one? I knew I wouldn’t rest until I went to see.
My father and I waded through the water-logged fields in our attempt to reach her. He had told me that our water well was only ten feet below the surface, and it was easy to see why in this constantly saturated Pacific Northwest.
She raised her head at our approach, but still didn’t move as I’d expected she might. As we neared I found she was younger than she appeared from afar, perhaps only 14, her size deceivingly lending years to her appearance. She was dressed all in black, her face sporting multiple piercings and her hair jaggedly cut and hanging across one of her bloodshot and watery eyes. Her face was blotchy with spent emotion, her heavy black eye-makeup leaving tire tracks down her cheeks.
I tried to make myself look non-threatening, then remembered I didn’t have to try in my light jeans and purple plaid shirt.
“Hi, I’m Randi,” I started.
“Ok” was the response I was greeted with.
This was going to be more difficult than I’d anticipated.
My dad made an attempt. “I’m a pastor at a church down the road, and we just saw you through the window and wanted to make sure you were ok, or see if you needed anything.”
“No, I’m not ok.”
Silence. “Oh,” I said.
On a whim, I decided to invite her in to warm up, and have something to eat with me downstairs.
“No.”
No further words immediately followed.
In the end, we found out only this – she lives in a neighboring house, she hates her family, and she didn’t want to come inside or talk. Later I heard that her parents have been known to ask their own children to feed their drug addictions, as they share a supplier.
I left the offer open and pointed to the glass doors leading to my place, then, with nothing left to say, we told her to stay as long as she wanted and began the trudge back through the marshy grass. I childishly fought the urge to lace my fingers with my dads, just out of sheer relief that he was such a nice person.
The nameless girl stayed there on the wet ground against the tree for another hour, then slowly stood up and wandered back towards the road. I watched her go, wondering what could have driven her to the cold safety of our woods.
I breathed a prayer of thankfulness for my own family, never remembering a time where I felt I had to hide at the neighbors.
Every day since, I’ve found myself glancing out towards the trees, hoping she may have come back.
She never has.
I drove through a cloud and straight into the sun on the way to work today. The open pastures were lit with gold, and the snow on the distant mountains gleamed in an unsubtle white mimicry of the glow. My thoughts wandered, and I shut off the repetitive Christmas music and switched to an AM talk show about the economic decline of our nation. I passed beneath the trees and watched the light shining through the barren branches create a natural barcode on the asphalt.
The trees gave way to the town hall, the church, a small neighborhood of houses. I noticed one of them had a bicycle on the roof, and I vaguely wondered how it had gotten there. Kind of like the girl in the woods. A group of crows crowded together on the barren branches of an ancient oak tree, forming a multi-beaked, feathery curtain of shiny black. I saw again my mother standing on the foggy porch steps as I pulled away from home, bird seed flying as if in slow motion in a million directions like colorful rain from her outstretched hand and onto the ice. I should have known her desire to see everyone well-fed wouldn’t end with college kids.
Once I arrived at the school, my students were lurking in the hallways outside my classroom, suspicious looking grins on all their little faces. I unlocked my door to high pitched giggles, and found that they had secretly placed a small, lighted Christmas tree in the corner of my room. The tree was plastic, and where it was perhaps once cone-like in shape, it now resembled the box it had been shoved in for the past year. It smelled of it as well. The lights were mashed and the poor “branches” were bent in all the wrong directions, and nowhere near a natural looking green. I looked at the kids. They were looking at me. I made my squeals match theirs.
My concentration was interrupted throughout the day by thoughts of my broken hearted family member; his sad eyes, his unusual quietness. We had raided each others’ stash of CDs in silence, now partners in the hunt for new and unfamiliar music. His 6 CD changer had been constantly full of her mixes – though I don’t know why she bothered with so many of them now. What she had let him believe for so many years to be round trip compilations that began and ended with her, perhaps she had known even then were only for a one way trip. I crawled through my trunk and under my car seats to find more of mine for him.
My thoughts trailed to my parents, and how they were currently dealing with what must be every parent’s dream: not one, but two kids living at home who were fresh out of 5+ year relationships within two months of each other.
Remind me to give them an extra good Christmas present this year.
What does all of this have to do with the girl in the woods? Not a single thing. Sometimes I wish my writing actually had a point. Sometimes I wish my thoughts did.
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