Free What She Left for Me by Tracie Peterson

thinking about the night before. “I thought it was scary when the police came.”
    “Call them pigs. That’s what my dad calls them. He says they’re no better than a bunch of stinking animals.”
    “But why? I thought we were supposed to love everybody. My mom said that the world would be a perfect place if everyone would just love one another and let each person do their own thing.” To Eleanor the contrast of responses was confusing. How could they treat some people—like those in the government—poorly but respect others and supposedly love everyone?
    “But the pigs don’t want us to do our own thing,” Sapphira countered, as if Eleanor should already know this. “My dad says we’re a threat to them, so they have to try to put us in our place before we try and overtake them.”
    “But if we’re loving everybody, why would we be overtaking anybody?”
    “Beats me.”
    Eleanor came to the shallow creek banks. “Allan! Tommie! You’re supposed to come home now.”
    Moans from the four- and six-year-old followed, but Eleanor was not moved. “Right now!”
    “I don’t wanna,” the older Allan protested.
    “Momma said to come right now. There’s work to be done.”
    Eleanor knew other people in the community who barely did anything, but because her father was a doctor, he insisted on two things: one was that the family keep clean; the other was that they grow herbs for his healing practice. Both required a fair amount of work. Sometimes Eleanor resented the additional responsibility. It seemed Sapphira never had to do much of anything. She didn’t even have to bathe, which was evidenced by her matted hair.
    Rounding up her brothers, Eleanor turned to Sapphira. “Can you come over later?”
    “Oh, for sure. I think my folks are going somewhere tonight. I’ll come over when they leave.”
    Eleanor nodded. “My mom said something about a party, so maybe they’re all going to the same place.”
    With her brothers trotting off toward home, Eleanor considered the things she had heard and seen in the last twenty-four hours. She couldn’t understand why people were so cruel to each other. She didn’t understand why the police—or “the pigs”—should care if people smoked pot and used LSD. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere or hurting anybody. It didn’t make sense.
    By late afternoon Eleanor had worried herself half crazy with the issues at hand. She was relieved when her mother suggested she take a bag of herbs to her father’s clinic. The worn-down trailer was on the opposite side of the small hippie community, and it provided Eleanor a bit of time to put together in her mind exactly what it was she would ask her father.
    She opened the trailer door without knocking. That’s the way it was for most every place in the commune, be it houses or businesses, although in truth there weren’t many of the latter. Freed people didn’t seem too inclined to spend their days in long labor. Eleanor often wondered how people got their money, but she figured part of it had to do with drugs. She knew several people raised pot; still, it hardly seemed enough to support the community.
    “Dad?” she called out from the front office area. Her father had always given her strict instructions to never come into the back rooms, as this was where he examined patients.
    “Hey there, Ellie girl,” her father said, emerging from the back room with a guy Eleanor knew only as Coon. “Now keep that cut clean, and it should heal just fine.”
    “You still want me to work on your carburetor, man? You know, like to pay for this?”
    Eleanor’s father seemed to contemplate the situation. “Give your hand a rest for at least two days, then you can look at my van. It’s not like we’re planning a trip anywhere long distance.”
    Coon laughed in a snorting kind of way and nudged his elbow at Eleanor. “You plannin’ any trips, little sister? Gonna run off with your boyfriend?”
    Eleanor shook her head. “I