Free Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen

the world seemed less uncertain. Both of us, I think, could imagine that we were still where we belonged. Or had once belonged. Maybe Robertdreamed of everyday life, dreamed of those mornings when he’d come downstairs to the sunshine splashed across the linoleum in the blue-and-white kitchen in Brooklyn, on one of those mornings when Daddy was eating bacon and eggs, pushing his food around the plate with a half piece of toast, and Mommy was standing at the stove with not a mark on her.
    “No offense, Mom,” Robert has said several times, trying to make things the way they used to be, “but you look better without glasses.”
    Both of us flinched when the phone rang. The sound seemed so loud, so strange in the quiet room, and we stopped as though we were playing “Red Light, Green Light,” and whoever was It had wheeled around to catch us moving. But I was paralyzed, not so much by the sound, but by the look on Robert’s face. It was transfigured by a combination of hope and fear so strange and strong that it made me want to look away, the way you look away when someone’s weeping. I did not know who was on the phone, but I knew who Robert imagined it was.
    “Answer it, Mommy,” he finally said.
    There was the sound of background noise: the screech and honk of a public address system, the sharp bing as coins hit the insides of a pay phone, the insect clicks as the phone recognized and accepted the payment. Clang, clang, click: I knew who was on the other end. Patty Bancroft always says she fears any attempt to trace her women. That’s what she calls them, her women, as though she oversees a harem, or is a madam in a bordello. My body must have relaxed at the noises, for when I looked up at Robert I could see by his face, blank again, that he knew it was nothis father on the phone. “Christ, does that kid know how to read you,” Bobby had said sometimes. Sometimes I thought he was jealous, when he said that.
    “We’ve arranged a job for you, Elizabeth,” Patty Bancroft said, as someone called a flight in the background.
    “Beth,” I replied.
    “Pardon?” said Patty Bancroft.
    “Beth. Beth Crenshaw.”
    A silence. “All right, then,” she said. “We’ve arranged a job for you, Beth. As a home health-care aide. Unfortunately you can’t work as a nurse without a nursing license, and that was difficult to arrange. This was as close as we could get. The wages aren’t bad. No benefits, sorry to say, but it’s the best we could do. They’ll call tomorrow.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “I wondered. I’m going a little crazy here, with nothing to do.”
    “You must be patient,” she said. “We know how to do this.”
    “I don’t even know my own phone number,” I added.
    “Well, that was an oversight.” She read the numbers to me slowly. “Don’t give it to more people than you must,” she added.
    Secrecy, Patty Bancroft had said when she came to speak at the hospital, was the hallmark of her organization. No stray piece of paper, no phone number, no newspaper clipping, could give her volunteers away as they spirited women out of their own homes and into the anonymous America where Robert and I were now living. Along the main stretch of highway in Lake Plata, or what I’ve seen of it without a car, is a Burger King, a storage place, a drive-through bank, a Taco Bell, a House of Pancakes, an enormous supermarket with a salad bar just inside the automaticdoors, a Toys ‘R’ Us, a Kmart, and a Home Depot. The only way I’m certain we’re in Florida is the license plates on the cars; otherwise it might be September in Colorado or California or either of the Carolinas. Generic America, 97° and sunny. “Thank you for stopping at Burger King,” says an older man with a Spanish accent when I take Robert out for lunch every Saturday, hoping that the sameness of the bun, the burger, the decor, the logo, the greeting, will make this strange and unfamiliar life feel less strange, more