Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail about the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that her parents will not look for her there. They might look in California or Florida, but not Detroit. On her second day in Detroit she meets a man who drives the biggest car she has ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she has ever felt before. She was right all along, her parents were keeping her from all the fun.
The good life continues for a year. The man with the big car – she calls him Boss – teaches her a few things that men like. Since she is underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks at home but their lives now seem so boring and provincial she can hardly believe she grew up there.
After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the Boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around!” he growls, and before she knows it she is out on the street without a penny. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word – a teenage girl in downtown Detroit at night can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens. One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, everything about her life suddenly looks different to her. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. Something jolts a memory and a single image fills her mind; of May in Traverse City, when a million Cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows of blossoming trees chasing a tennis ball.
“God, why did I leave?” she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. “My dog back home eats better than I do now.” She is sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world, she wants to go home.
She calls home three times but only gets the answering machine. The first two times she hangs up without leaving a message, but the third time she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it will get there about midnight tomorrow. If your not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.”
It takes about seven hours for the bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time, she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk with them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
On the bus her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes for her to decide the course of her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lip stick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips and wonders if her parents will notice – if her parents are even there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There in the bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters, and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great-grandfather to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the wall of the terminal is a computer generated banner that reads, “Welcome Back!”
Out of the crowd of well-wishers steps her dad. She stares out through the tears in her eyes and begins the memorized speech: “Dad, I’m sorry, I know…”
He interrupts her, “Hush child. We’ve got no time for that. You’ll be late for the party. A banquets waiting for you at home.”
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That's how much God loves us! I made a DVD using this story and these pics. You should be able to find it on the church website or my Facebook.
Paul
