Where Are Your Parents
I grew up in the Lincoln district of Tacoma in the early nineties, and when I started asking around about the number, I expected a few people to vaguely remember it. Instead I filled a notebook. These are excerpts from conversations with eleven people, all of whom grew up within about two miles of each other. Names are first names only, at their request. I’ve left the number out. You’ll understand why.
DANA, 44: It was a babysitter thing first. That’s how I heard. You’d be at somebody’s house, the parents would be out, it’d get late, and the babysitter would go, “You want to know where they are?” And she’d dial it on the kitchen phone and hold it out to you.
RAFAEL, 45: Seven digits. Local. It ended in four sevens. Everybody knew that part even if they didn’t know the rest.
DANA: It wasn’t scary, at first. It was almost a comfort thing. Because it was always right.
KRISTIN, 43: A woman answered. Not a recording. Or if it was a recording, it was a recording that knew you. She’d say your name. She’d say, “Hi, Kristin.” And then she’d tell you.
RAFAEL: It was like a traffic report. Very calm. “Your father is on Pacific Avenue, northbound, at the light by the tire place. He’s got the radio on the oldies station. He’s tapping on the wheel.” And then: “Your mother is in the passenger seat. She’s asleep.”
KRISTIN: And they’d come home twenty minutes later and you’d ask, “Were you on Pacific?” And they’d be like, how did you know. And you’d ask, “Was Mom asleep?” And she’d laugh and say, “Who told you?”
THEO, 46: I called it probably thirty times between fifth and seventh grade. My mom worked nights at the hospital and my dad was not around a lot. I’d call it to know she was okay. “Your mother is in the third-floor break room at St. Joseph’s. She’s eating a yogurt. She’s reading a magazine about boats.” She hated boats. I asked her about it and she said, there’s a boat magazine in the break room, it’s the only one, how do you know that.
DANA: The thing is, you didn’t think about where it was coming from. You were ten. It was like the weather. You didn’t think who’s doing the weather.
MINH, 44: I thought about it. I was a nerdy kid. I went to the library and looked it up in the reverse directory, the one that let you look up an address from a number. It wasn’t listed. I asked my dad, who worked for the phone company, Pacific Northwest Bell, whatever it was by then, and he said there was no such number. He tried it from the kitchen. I watched him. He hung up very fast and wouldn’t tell me what it said.
MINH: He told me years later. He said the woman said, “Your son is standing right behind you in his socks.”
KRISTIN: There were rules. Every kid knew them. I don’t know who made them up.
RAFAEL: You don’t call when they’re home.
KRISTIN: You don’t call when they’re home. You don’t ask about anybody but your own parents. And you don’t ask a follow-up question.
THEO: That one was important. You let her tell you. You don’t ask her anything. You say thank you and hang up.
DANA: There was a kid, Brandon something, who lived over by the park. The story was he called and asked where his mom was and the woman said she was at a friend’s house, and he asked which friend, and the woman was quiet, and then she said, “You don’t want to know that, honey.” And he said yes I do. And she told him. And his parents got divorced that year.
RAFAEL: That’s a true story. I knew Brandon. I don’t know what she told him. He moved to Olympia.
MINH: The calling-when-they’re-home thing was the one everybody was scared of. Nobody I know ever did it. The rumor was if you called when they were home, she’d tell you where they were in the house. And that it wouldn’t be where they actually were.
ANGELA, 47: I did it.
I was twelve. My parents were both downstairs watching TV, I could hear it. I was upstairs. I don’t know why. To be bad. I called on the phone in my mom’s room and the woman said, “Hi, Angela,” like always, and then she said, “Your mother and father are in the basement.”
We didn’t have a basement. Lot of those houses don’t. We had a crawlspace.
I said, “No, they’re in the living room.” I could hear them. Jeopardy was on. And the woman said, “They’re in the basement, Angela. They’re standing at the bottom of the stairs. They’re waiting for you to come down.”
I hung up. I went downstairs and they were on the couch, both of them, eating popcorn. And they looked up when I came in.
And for just a second, it was like they’d been waiting a really long time for me to come down those stairs.
That’s all. That’s the whole thing. I didn’t call it again.
THEO: It stopped working sometime in the late nineties. You’d call and get the disconnected tone. The three beeps. I tried it in college once, home for Christmas. Three beeps.
DANA: My theory is we got too old for it. It was for kids. Kids who were alone in houses at night waiting for somebody to come home. That’s who it talked to.
KRISTIN: I don’t like thinking about who would want to talk to kids like that. Who’d want to keep track.
MINH: My dad thought it was a person. A real woman, somewhere, a shut-in with a lot of phones. I asked him how a shut-in would know where his car was on Pacific Avenue. He said, “Exactly.”
That’s where my notebook ended, for about a year. I put it away. I have a son now; he’s ten. We live in Tacoma again, not far from where I grew up. His father and I split up when he was six, and I work two evenings a week, and two nights a week he’s home with a sitter, a nice college kid named Priya.
I’m adding this part because of last month.
I came home from work at 9:30 and Priya was on the couch doing homework and my son was in bed, and when I went in to kiss him goodnight he was awake. He said, “I knew you were almost home. You were at the gas station by the freeway. You bought gum.”
I had. I asked him how he knew.
He said a lady told him. He said there was a number that the kids at school call. He said it was fine, he only called it when I was out. He knows the rules.
I asked him what number. He wouldn’t tell me, and then he did. It ends in four sevens.
I sat on the edge of his bed. I wanted to be angry and I couldn’t find it. I asked him how many times he’d called. He said a lot. I asked him whether she was nice. He said she was always nice. He said she always knows exactly where I am.
Then he said, “Except one time.”
I asked him what he meant.
He said, “One time when you were out I called and asked where you were and she said you were in the kitchen. Standing by the sink. In the dark. She said you’d been there a long time and you weren’t moving.”
He said, “I went and looked, and you weren’t there. So she was wrong.” He said it like he was being kind to her. “But it was weird,” he said, “because when you came home, I asked where you’d been, and you said work, and you put your keys down, and then you went in the kitchen and stood at the sink.”
I don’t remember doing that.
I don’t remember doing that at all.
He’s not allowed to use the landline now. I took it out of the wall. I’ve told Priya to keep his tablet in the living room. I haven’t called the number myself. I keep telling myself I don’t want to know whether it still works.
That isn’t really true. I want to know, and I want to ask a follow-up question, and the rules are very clear about that.
But I’ve been waking up at night. Not every night. Some nights. And when I wake up I’m already on my feet, and the house is dark, and my hands are on the cold edge of the kitchen sink, and I’ve been there for a while, I can tell, because my feet are numb.
And I’m listening. And upstairs, faint, I can hear my son’s voice, talking to someone, very quietly, asking where I am.