Looking for X Read Free

Allan. It’s full of trees and squirrels and people who sleep on park benches. They may all be named Allan, but I doubt it. Anyway, anybody can use the park, no matter what their name is.
    I didn’t see X on any of our usual benches, so I headed into the giant greenhouse in the center of the park. She was sitting on a bench in the huge entrance room, hunched into her gray trench coat, as usual, looking down at her feet instead of at the plants around her. Her blue suitcase was on the ground, tight between her feet.
    X is pretty old. She has short white hair, and her face is full of wrinkles.
    I sat down on the other end of the bench and putthe sandwich between us. Slowly she reached out and pulled the sandwich toward her. While she ate, I talked.
    X is like the twins. She listens to everything I say, but hardly ever says anything herself. Sometimes she answers a direct question, but it makes her look so uncomfortable that I don’t ask them very often.
    â€œThere’s a social worker sitting at our kitchen table,” I said. “She’s got three heads, and claws, and she smells bad.”
    X nodded as she pulled her sandwich apart and looked at it closely. She trusted me, but she liked to be careful.
    â€œI hate social workers,” I continued. “They talk to Tammy as if she were a bad mother.”
    â€œIt’s not just me,” Tammy once told me. “They talk to all people on welfare that way. It’s because we take money from the government.”
    That may be true, but some things are just for Tammy. I’ve heard social workers say, “I see from your file that you used to be a stripper. Hmmm.” Then they sneer at Tammy as if they were waiting for her to apologize. She never does, though.
    X stopped eating, and I realized I had stopped talking. She feels more comfortable if I talk while she eats. I think it helps her feel invisible, because while I’m talking, I’m paying attention to otherthings, not to her. If you’re being chased by the secret police, invisibility is useful.
    I started talking again. Since we were sitting under a tree from Brazil, I told her about some of the strange animals found in the Amazon jungle. I exaggerated a bit — there isn’t really a five-hundred-pound frog — but X didn’t seem to mind.
    X and I left the greenhouse separately, as always. I headed toward the library. I don’t know where X went.
    It felt funny being out on my own on a weekday. I always had one of the boys with me, their harness strapped to my wrist, their hand in mine. It felt weird to be alone, but it felt good, too. I felt free.
    On the way to the library, I stopped by an Italian restaurant. It had a menu posted outside. I stood and read the menu. I was hungry. I’m always hungry. Tammy feeds me, of course, and I get food at the lunch-and-breakfast club at school, but I’m always hungry anyway. Sometimes my hunger is so big I feel that I can eat everything I see — dogs, cars, park benches, newspaper boxes — just swallow them whole.
    I read over the menu and decided on a ravioli dinner, with a side order of chicken and a double dessert. It would cost as much for one meal as it cost us to buy groceries for a whole week.
    Someday I’m going to have enough money to beable to walk into any restaurant in town and order whatever I want, and keep ordering and eating until I can’t eat anything more.
    In the library I spent an hour looking at the big atlas. I never go into the library when one of my brothers is with me. They make too much noise, and they bother other people. The librarian asked me not to bring them. I wanted Tammy to complain, but she said she has too many other things to worry about.
    Through the library window I saw the social worker leave my building. Social workers always look like they’re dying to wash their hands when they leave our neighborhood.
    I went home.
    Mom was sitting in the living room