By Donna Hruska

Listen to Donna narrate this story!

“Mom, Susan’s running away!” my oldest son grinned at me as I pulled in the driveway. “She’s mad at Jennifer and says she’s moving out.”

She was too. She had already packed her suitcase with her swimming suit and red patent leather shoes, a story book and the crib blanket she still slept with when she was out of sorts, even though she is five years old and has been out of a crib for years. She would have left before I arrived but she had slammed the bedroom door and it was so swollen with humidity that she couldn’t get it open.

I stopped to put the meat in the refrigerator before I went up to her, recalling a time when I had threatened to run away. I had been five years old, too, when I threw my clothes into an old suitcase with a broken latch. They’ll be sorry, I fumed. Wait till they see how lonesome they are without me. Then they’ll wish they hadn’t been so mean.

I never got out the door, perhaps because I didn’t have anywhere to go. My younger sister, Judy, actually left when she was five. I can still see her stalking down the weed-grown sidewalk with her black cardboard suitcase in hand, her dark sausage curls bouncing angrily. She knew exactly where she was going—to Aunt Carrie’s house because Aunt Carrie fixed the kind of beans she liked. Judy only walked six blocks from home before she had to turn back. She wasn’t allowed to cross the railroad tracks and Aunt Carrie lived on the other side.

I smiled as I remembered my Mother’s answer when someone in our house was running away. “I’m sorry you’re going. You will write to us sometimes, won’t you?” It is an answer echoed in all the proper child care books, designed to take the steam out of a contrary child.

I pushed open the stubborn door and found Susan sitting on her suitcase, elbows on knees, defiant chin on her fists.

“I’m not going to live with that dumb Jennifer any more,” she declared. “She’s too bossy and mean.”

“I don’t know where you’ll go,” I said.

“I’m going to live at Barbara’s house.”

“Oh,” I answered.

“Barbara’s mother lets kids eat all the candy they want. She doesn’t care if you get cavities.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye to see how I’d take that.

“That’s nice,” I replied.

“I’m never coming back,” she said.

“In that case you’d better sit on my lap for a moment before you go.”

I was finding myself unable to be as nonchalant as my mother had been.

I was astonished at how she had grown. She didn’t fit. She was too gangly to slip into the hollow of my arm as she used to. How long had it been since I’d held her on my lap and rocked her just for the joy of being together? I couldn’t remember.

In that moment I knew that packing a suitcase was a plea for a special kind of love. It was no coincidence that little girls decided to run away when they were suddenly all arms and legs, sharp elbows and knobby knees. Remembering my own five-year-old thoughts, I knew what the right words were.

“I hope you won’t go,” I said, starting to rock. “I’d sure be lonely. Who’d help me set the table? Who’d go with me to run errands?”

“Jennifer could.”

“It wouldn’t be the same. I’d rather have you.”

“Well, I probably won’t be here,” she said uncertainly.

“And Daddy,” I continued. “Daddy would probably cry if he came home and you were gone.”

“He would?” Her blue eyes widened at such a thought.

“Yes, and Jennifer wouldn’t want to sleep in here by herself…”

She settled her head back on my shoulder contentedly.

“…and Chuck wouldn’t have a little sister to babysit with,”

I continued, as the rocker creaked a soft lullaby.

“…and Brian…”

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Donna Hruska
2711 2nd Private Road
Flossmoor, Illinois 60422

Approximately 700 Words

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