Pammy sighed and looked at her mother, searching her brown face for any signs of what to do next.

Melinda looked straight ahead, watching the cars fly past, the wind ruffling the paper on their six grocery bags full of food. She blinked through the dirty lenses of her glasses, as if she were sitting in their living room and not stranded out on the turnpike with a seven year old and $75 dollars worth of groceries.

Pammy mimicked her mother’s behavior, sighing again and biting her bottom lip, but kept her eyes on her mother’s face. She wanted to know how they would get home because she was getting cold and was already hungry.

The day started off great, Ennis had bought the $75 in food stamps for $30 dollars from Leonard, their neighbor down the road. Pammy liked when Daddy did that, because then she didn’t have to eat beans and rice again. They would have fried chicken and bread pudding, cooked to perfection courtesy of Ennis’ Navy cook days.

It didn’t look like Pammy would be eating anytime soon, because that $30 was the last cash they had and 2 dollars in food stamps wouldn’t get them a cab home to Glassboro 12 miles down the Jersey turnpike.

Melinda looked like she regretted popping off on Ennis at the checkout lane. She didn’t know why she was arguing over some green onions, but it escalated enough that the argument ended with Ennis driving off in their battered VW bug, leaving Melinda and Pammy with the grocery cart full of bags and stranded in Sicklerville.

The bus was nowhere to be seen yet and Pammy knew that it would take them over an hour to get home. She stopped watching Melinda and slumped down on the bench, chin on her chest. She promptly started daydreaming her way to Narnia.

“Pamela, sit up straight! Stop slouching.” Melinda pinched the girl in the side, causing Pammy to sit up, yelp, and then promptly bury her head in her mom’s stomach and sob. She had to get close to her mama, it was the only way to stop the pain in her stomach.

“Stop being a baby, Pammy,” Melinda’s tone was softer now. “You’re too old for that. Stop those crocodile tears.” She turned and held the girl as she stopped crying and calmed down. She continued to blink through her glasses, the lithium in her system causing her to not feel anything too much.

A blue Dodge K car slowed down in front of the bus stop. Pammy stared at it while keeping her arms around her mother’s middle. It was just like the one her daddy said he wanted.

A white man with bad teeth and a little bit of hair combed over the middle of his head leaned over as the window powered down. Melinda straightened up and pushed Pammy to a sitting position.

“You need a ride?”

The way the man’s voice slithered out of his mouth made Pammy’s stomach tighten. She needed food to make it stop.

Melinda’s Miss Ma’am voice came out of her. “Yes, we do. But we need to go to Glassboro and I don’t have anything.”

She stood up and put her hands in the pockets of her pants as if to show how broke she was. Slithery voice man followed her hands and lingered at her pockets, then moved up to her chest.

He smiled through furry teeth.

“That’s okay miss. I’ll just do it to be a good Samaritan, you know? Maybe find a way to lend you some money, too?”

Melinda’s eyes widened as she looked around the parking lot, hoping that Ennis had come back. The setting sun did not shine a light on her husband, however, and she knew he was probably home drinking. She looked down at Pammy.

“Come on.” Her mouth was so tight that Pammy couldn’t see her lips. She didn’t like that look.

Pammy sat on the bench and watched her feet as they swang back and forth out and under the bottom of the bench. Once upon a time the Velcro on her scuffed Barbie shoes held them closed. Now it was some pretty silver tape she found in the kitchen. She could hear the rustle of the bags as the man loaded them in the car.

“Let’s go.”

With all her soul, Pammy didn’t want to get in that car, but her mama was sitting in the passenger seat and that man was getting behind the wheel. She had to make sure Melinda was okay.

The anger was building up in her chest as she got in the car and her heart beat wildy as the man immediately took off. She looked out of the window and watched as the pine trees went by on the road that away from their house.

“This is the wrong way.” Melinda was trying to use her ‘I’m the mama don’t mess with me’ voice with the man.

“Relax. Just out to show you the sights. You know, this is a brand new 1985 Dodge.” He seemed very proud of this fact.

The man looked over at Melinda and smiled again. His right hand came up and tried to brush her neck. Pammy quickly got as close as she could to her mama from the back seat and whispered something in her ear. His hand came down.

“Mama, I want to go home.” Pammy had to hold back the lump in her throat and the tears behind her eyes.

Melinda shot her a look.

“Hush, Pamela. We are.”

They had turned off the turnpike into a clump of trees which surrounded the now dirt road.

The man chuckled at Pammy as he put the car in park. Pammy was slumped in the back seat, hugging her legs and staring at her shoes.

Her eyes closed shut. Narnia was a place.

She opened her eyes.

The man seemed to stretch and his hands went out of view. Melinda looked over and down, then quickly out of the window.

Pammy didn’t know why, but her heart was beating as fast a racehorse. She closed her eyes. Again to Narnia.

“Not here!” It was her scary voice. Pammy didn’t like it. “Not with my daughter in the car.”

“I don’t mind.”

He reached under his seat and took out an envelope. Melinda’s mouth hinged open as she looked at something else on the floor there, but Pammy couldn’t see what it was.

The man handed Melinda some bills and then turned and gave Pammy three of the strange $2 bills that Pammy had seen only once before. Her eyes got wide and she forgot about the lump and the tears. She stared. At the bills and then at Melinda.

Melinda did not look back. She was blinking straight ahead.

“Take it, Pammy!” The scary voice was a weird shriek screech-whisper.

Pamela took the bills and put them on the seat beside her.

“Now. Let’s get to it.”

“I said not in the car with my daughter.” Melinda was now looking at the man. “Lets go out there.” She nodded her head to the woods beyond the K car’s hood.

Mossy teeth matched the scenery. “Okay. Get out.”

Melinda got out of the car with an eagle eye on Pammy and one hand on the open door.

“Be good little girl.”

Pammy stuck her tongue out at the man as he laughed at her.

Melinda seemed to relax a little bit as the man got out of the car. She bent down to the window and saw Pammy was beginning to cry.

“Keep it! Closed.”

Pammy swallowed her sob and nodded. She quickly wiped the tears away.

“That’s my girl. Melinda smiled a little at her and smoothed Pammy’s rough plaits down. “I need to do your hair when we get home. After dinner.” She smiled again and then turned and went with the man into the woods.

Pammy tried to watch them, but soon they disappeared into the leaves. She closed her eyes, but Narnia wouldn’t come.

She laid down and looked at the blue cloth ceiling of the car and noticed the $6 beneath her. All of a sudden, she hated the three $2 bills. She wanted to destroy them. So, she tore them, very slowly and very neatly into four pieces each. The destruction of the money made her feel a tiny bit better and just as she’d placed the bills neatly back where they were before, her mama came back, with the man behind her.

Very quickly, much more quickly than they came up the turnpike, they returned down that same road. Instead of home however, they were back at the bus stop bench.

In less than two minutes, they and their groceries were back there, in the now glooming cold of early evening.

“But you said you’d take us home!” Melinda was pissed.

“I gave you money. Call a cab, bitch!”

And the K car squealed out of the parking lot.

Pammy’s stomach was churning, but it wasn’t from hunger.

“Don’t cry Mama. It’ll be ok. We’ll go use the payphone in the store.” Pammy patted Melinda on the back as she sobbed and picked the leaves out of her hair.

They stayed that way for minutes, until Pammy gasped loudly.

“Looook Mama! It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy!” Pammy was so happy. She loved her daddy.

Melinda looked up and across the parking lot to where Pamela was pointing. It was Ennis.

She quickly wiped her tears and straightened her shirt.

“Get yourself together, girl”

Pammy mimicked her mama and patted herself all over. She pulled the torn up money out of her pocket. She opened her hand and showed Melinda.

Melinda closed Pamela’s hand around the vandalized cash.

“Keep it Pammy. Keep it close.”

She stared into her daughters eyes for what seemed forever to Pammy.

And in an instant the little girl knew what the older woman meant.

“Keep it close. The closer the better, Pammy.”

Pammy nodded as her Daddy pulled up, got out of the car and started loading the groceries in the car.

“The closer the better.”