Kammi

by Susan Cameron, copyright 2014


Kammi was cute. No, Kammi was quite possibly the most beautiful thirteen-year-old girl I had ever seen. She had silky ebony hair, startling eyes -- can't remember, were they blue or green? -- the lashes were as black as her hair and almost an inch long, and I'd never seen a kid that age with such flawless ivory skin before. She had the slim but budding figure of a future Victoria's Secret model, and my heart almost burst with pity when I first saw her. A girl who looked like that was going to get caught in the cross-hairs for sure.

She walked into the video arcade with a few of the regular girls, the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who came after school every day. The youngster and Sharlene headed for the pinball games, the kid as stuck to Sharlene as if they were bungee-corded together. The other girls wandered over to my counter to get change and say hi. "Have you met Sharlene's new puppy yet?" asked Jackie, and they all giggled.

"What's the story?"

"Her name's Kammi. She ran away from Orangewood, and she's latched onto Sharlene for some reason."

"How did she end up at Orangewood?"

"Her dad was raping her, and she got taken away from him."

So, yeah. She'd already been caught in the cross-hairs and blasted. "Where is she staying?" I asked.

"Sharlene's mom's couch? I don't know."

Sharlene and the kid came over and joined us. "This is Kammi," said Sharlene. "Kammi, this is Sue."

"Hi," said Kammi, glancing at me, then staring at my half-eaten lunch.

"Want some fries?"  She did. She eyeballed what was left of my burger.

You know how it is, right? You know you shouldn't feed the stray cat, because the next thing you know, you have a cat, whether you intended to or not. But I do feed the stray cat, I do feed the stray dog, and I do not always call animal control, and I did not call Orangewood or the police.

I said, "I don't have much iced tea left. Here's how things work here. I send people to McDonald's to get my refills or to buy me food. I give people money to play the games with when they come back. But I'll buy you one of the dollar burgers instead if you go get my iced tea." So off went Kammi, and now I had a part-time puppy.

The girls looked after Kammi. Her father had told her the sex was all her own fault, that she was too beautiful for him to resist. Now she had safe places to sleep, and nobody's parents asked too many questions, but it wasn't a sustainable situation, and there was no plan, so I came up with one when the whole crew was in one night.

"Look," I said, "you need a better way to go. Don't you have any other relatives besides your father you can stay with?"

"I have a grandma I stayed with when my dad got arrested."

"Let me give her a call, Kammi. Let's see if she'll take you in again."

Kammi gave me her grandma's number, and I talked with her grandma. It seemed that her son, Kammi's daddy and rapist, had made bail. Kammi had been locked up in Orangewood; daddy was a free man for the time being and living with -- his mom. Kammi's grandma assured me, "My son wasn't the first one. She was no virgin or anything." I hung up the phone and wiped my hand on my jeans. Time for Plan B, and this one would require everybody backing me up.

"Kammi, there's a home for runaways called Casa de Bienvenidos."

"I'm not going to any home."

"Let me finish. I will drive you there. I'll stay with you while you listen to what the counselors have to say."

"But I don't want to stay in a home."

"Let me finish. If, after you listen, if you decide you don't want to stay, I'll bring you back here. I promise. I swear it."

So that's how it was. I got my friend Ruth to take over at the arcade, and Kammi and I went off to the shelter. The counselors and I worked on her for two hours, worked through the denials and anger and crying, and called her on her bullshit, too, because anybody living on the streets comes up with bullshit to feed people in order to get by, to get over, to play people, to get pity, to ultimately get their own way. We broke her down, but in the end, we failed. She wanted to go back.

As Kammi and I walked into the arcade, the girls greeted her with frowns and scolding. "You should have stayed, Kammi. This is just stupid. You don't belong out here. What are you going to do? You need to be in school, you need a good place to stay..." and they all wandered off together except Jackie, who said, "We weren't sure if you were going to dump her there and take off."

"I thought about it. But I also thought, adults have been lying to her all her life. I won't do it."

Jackie nodded and looked at me. "Don't think we don't notice what you've tried to do for her. We appreciate it, even if she doesn't," and off she went. I was too choked up to respond.

In the end, Kammi was picked up by the cops and taken back to Orangewood, but the word went out that she was adopted by some rich people in Anaheim Hills. I hope it was true, and I hope her new daddy was a real father to her, or that her new mommy killed him if he wasn't.

People come into our lives, then leave. We know, at most, a page or two in the book of their lives; they may take up only a paragraph or a page in ours; but those pages, brief as they are, do exist, and in the re-reading make us say, "I wonder what ever happened to...?" Kammi would be about forty years old now, if she's still alive, if she came out the other side -- and all I can say is, I hope she did.