WHEN BETTY CALLED THEM TO SUPPER, JOY RAE CAME out with the makeup still on her face, and she sat down in her customary chair, looking steadily across the room, waiting.
Hey now, Luther said. Who’s this? Look at my little girl.
Betty looked at her and said: Oh, I don’t know if she’s old enough for that.
She’s got to learn, the girl said. Who’s going to teach her if I don’t?
They sat at the table and ate packaged salisbury steak and frenchfried potatoes and bread, with ice cream for dessert, and Joy Rae said very little to anyone while they ate but only looked at them out of her strange new eyes.
After supper when everyone had gone to bed, the girl telephoned Raydell in Phillips and talked to him for a long time. You miss me? she said. Tell me what you’d do if you was allowed to see me. And what he answered her made her laugh.
The next morning Betty allowed Joy Rae to wear the lipstick to school, but it wasn’t until recess that anyone said anything about it. Then three of the girls crowded around her and asked if she had the lipstick tube with her, and she told them it belonged to her big sister. They wanted to know since when had she gotten a big sister and Joy Rae said she had always had one, except she had never seen her before. They wanted to know when they could meet her. Maybe she could do their faces too.
THE FOLLOWING DAY SHE WAS BACK IN DUCKWALL’S wandering the aisles in the late afternoon. When she was satisfied nobody was watching, she slipped a woman’s clasp purse from a display table into the pocket of her raincoat. Then she drifted again through the aisles and after a while she started out of the store. But the lady clerk stepped in front of her. You plan on paying for that?
For what?
That purse in your pocket. I saw you take it. She pulled the purse out and held it up.
Oh. I forgot I put it in there.
You were going to steal it.
Like hell I was.
The hell you weren’t.
The lady called the manager out of his office in the back, a tall stringy man with a hard little paunch. What’s going on? he said.
This girl here stole this purse.
I wasn’t going to steal it.
Yes she was.
Do you know shoplifting’s a crime? the manager said.
I wasn’t shoplifting, you dumb asshole. I forgot I had it in my pocket.
You better just watch that dirty language. And you can sit right there. He pointed to a chair near the door. Call the police, Darlene, he told the clerk.
The lady made the call and the girl sat on the chair and glared and waited. The manager stood over her. After a while a patrol car drew up to the curb in front of Duckwall’s, and a sheriff’s deputy in a dark blue uniform with a leather belt and revolver came inside, where the manager explained what happened. Is that right? the deputy said.
No, the girl said.
What’s your side of it then?
I wasn’t stealing nothing. I forgot to pay, that’s all. I forgot I had it in my pocket.
You have the money to pay for it?
From her coat pockets she drew out cigarettes and matches and a little plastic purse that contained only coins.
He looked at her. I haven’t seen you before, he said. Who are you?
Donna Lawson.
Where do you live?
I’m staying with my mama and her husband on Detroit Street.
Who’s that?
Luther and Betty Wallace.
The deputy studied her. All right, he said. He turned to the store manager. I’ll take care of this.
I don’t want her back in this store.
She won’t be back in this store. Don’t worry.
She better not.
The deputy led her by the arm out to the car and opened the back door and she got in. He came around and got in behind the wheel and backed away from the curb and drove to Detroit Street and stopped in front of the trailer. This is it, isn’t it?
Yeah, the girl said. She started to get out.
Where you going? he said. Did I tell you to get out?
No.
You wait till I tell you. Shut the door.