My Abandonment, page 18
There is no one to report Father missing except me. I miss him but he is not exactly missing. Out walking I search and search and I find caves and go inside them. I ask around even at school if people know about parties in caves and they say, "Caroline, we don't need a cave." Still I am out there in the hot summer and in the cold months when the snakes wait half-numb and stiff in the paths for the sun to thaw them. I range and wander. I find caves and take ropes to them, lanterns and flashlights to walk through the damp lava tubes as wide as a hallway in a shopping mall that then tighten down to where I can hardly squeeze through. Then they open up again, wide and echoing. I hear water. Bats hang leathery, complain as I pass. I don't call his name, I'll know when he's close.
Winds blow underground. They lead you to new openings, they show you the sky, suddenly bluer and brighter than you remembered.
I know my way around this wilderness. I know the landmarks on a map and I know my own landmarks. Still so often I will find the dark slot of a cave one morning and go home for water and rope only to return in the afternoon to find the cave gone, no longer where I left it.
I believe that there is movement always beneath the surface of the ground. The hollow spaces that are caves drift beneath us, carrying with them whatever they hold. A cave will sometimes meet another cave and merge with it for a time and then pass on through. The burrows of snakes and moles are taken in, their walls gone to air, the little animals dropping surprised to the cave floor. Trees' roots grasp at nothing, anxious until the dirt returns.
Caves drift smoothly beneath us without any sound. Father is missing, he is not missing. He is beyond the reach of snow and sunlight. He stays close to me, following where I cannot see but can only sense him in that darkness below. In the soles of my bare feet I can feel him say my name.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Adrienne Brodeur over and over again. Jim Rutman, emphatically. Tina Pohlman, then and now. Everyone at Harcourt, for the risk and the work. Deep thanks for time and space to Caldera and to Reed College. A debt to the amazing girls who made this story possible: Opal Whiteley, Elizabeth Smart, Caroline X. And Ella Vining, always.
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Peter Rock, My Abandonment
