Free Words by Ginny L. Yttrup

in at recess that day and worked on problems she wrote on the board for me. Then the next day, during lunch recess, she taught me how to write haiku poems. She taught me about syllables and how to count the beats. You have to know what syllables are to write haiku.
    I put the Robert Frost book down and get up and go into his room and take a pen off his nightstand. Then I go to the kitchen and rip a piece off one of the grocery bags I've saved. I take them back to my mattress and lay down on my stomach. I put the paper on the floor in front of me and as I think about the first line, I tap out the syllables on the mattress.
    I hide in the dark
    The wind howls outside my door
    He always finds me
    Satisfied, I fold up the piece of paper as small as I can and then tuck it into the hole in the mattress.
    By the time I got to the fifth grade I already knew all about poetry. But the Robert Frost book is hard to understand. I pick it up again and flip through the pages. Most of the poems don't make sense to me, even when I look all the words up in the dictionary. Mr. Frost writes a lot about trees and leaves and the weather, but it seems like the words he uses mean something else.
    I can't concentrate on the poems either so I give up and just sit and stare at the walls and think about things.
    Mrs. Stanford was tall, like the lady I saw. Maybe that lady's a teacher too. Or she could be a ranger. Maybe that's why she was up here. Rangers drive Jeeps, I think. But they wear uniforms. She wasn't wearing a uniform.
    I get up and go to the kitchen to turn the radio off so I can hear him if he comes back. Then I make that scrambled egg he said I could eat yesterday. I'm so hungry that I want to eat the scrambled egg in one bite. Instead, I try to make it last, make it seem like more. I take tiny bites. I feel each bite on my tongue. I chew slow so the flavor reaches my taste buds. I think of a word that I added to my box this week: sa·vor—verb 1. to perceive by taste or smell, esp. with relish. 2. to give oneself to the enjoyment of: to savor the best in life.
    I savor each bite of my eggs.
    I bet Emily Post likes that word too.
    When I'm finished—my stomach is still growling.
    I go from the kitchen to the front window and peek through the crack between the boards. I know what I want to do, but what if he comes back and I'm not here? What would he do?
    He says I'd be in trouble. But what kind of trouble?
    I think of the worst possible thing he could do to me. It's the thing he started doing to me after we moved here. He only did it when my mom was gone or when she was asleep. He told me it was our special secret and that if I told my mom, she wouldn't love me anymore. He said she'd be jealous and then she'd leave.
    Sometimes I think maybe that's the real reason she left. She must have known. If that's the reason, then she probably won't come back. She probably won't love me anymore. Ever.
    I hate it when he does it.
    The scream, a low howling, starts in my head.
    I cover my ears and this time, it stops.
    Then I wrap my arms around my middle and bend over trying to relieve the ache in my stomach. As I do that, a new thought comes to me: If that's the worst thing he can do, then I might as well do what I want, because he'll do it anyway. He always does. Almost every day now that he doesn't have to hide it from my mom anymore.
    He could shoot me too, with his rifle. Maybe that's the worst thing.
    No.
    The other thing is worse.
    I look down at my clothes. I'm still wearing the K-Mart jeans and T-shirt. These are my best clothes, even though they're not my favorites. Emily Post says:
    Clothes do more than add to our appearance; they are our appearance. The first impression that we make upon others depends almost entirely upon what we wear and how we wear it.
    I brush some dust off the knees of my jeans. This is the best impression I can make, not that I'm actually going to meet her.
    I turn and look at the door.
    I hesitate.
    And then I