I tucked it against my side reflexively, as if steeling for a blow. “Just a sparring injury—”
“Don’t lie. Don’t tell me the truth if you’re not ready to tell me the truth, but don’t lie. You’re all I’ve got, Flora. You lie to me . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Like you said. Four hundred and seventy-two really bad days. I get that.”
I stared down at my left hand. The white bandage spotted red. And I felt ashamed. Genuinely ashamed. But not enough to talk.
After more than a year with Jacob, maybe I simply didn’t have that much shame left.
“Crash here?” Sarah was asking. “I don’t feel like being alone tonight.”
“Sure,” I said, willing myself not to pick at the bandage anymore.
Sarah closed up her computer. We’d done this drill before, especially in the beginning when her nightmares had been at their worst. She got out the extra blankets and pillow. We took turns brushing our teeth in the tiny bathroom. Pajamas for her, oversized T-shirt for me. I crashed on the sofa. Sarah tucked in to her single bed.
In the dark, I could feel the bandage on my left hand again. And just beneath the surface, a wooden splinter, embedded deep.
So much time in the beginning. Alone in a coffin-sized box. Where I stabbed my fingers into the crudely bored air holes, and played with the slivers in my fingertips simply to have something to do.
Pain then, sharp and grounding.
Pain now, exquisite and familiar.
The ways I have healed. The ways I’m still broken.
I wondered where Roxy Baez was right now. Was she sleeping, collapsed from an exhausting day? Or even now plotting her next steps?
But when I finally fell asleep, I didn’t dream of Roxy. As I still did too often, I dreamed of Jacob Ness. He was smiling as he closed his clawlike fingers around my shoulders. Then reached down and slowly lifted up my bandaged hand.
Gotcha, he said. You and me will be together till the bitter end.
And we both knew he was right.
Chapter 27
Name: Roxanna Baez
Grade: 11
Teacher: Mrs. Chula
Category: Personal Narrative
What Is the Perfect Family? Part V
Where is this perfect family? How can you find them? Can you please help me turn mine into one? Especially after the state has torn us apart?
My sister cries. All night long. I hold her, I try to comfort her, but then I cry, too. Nine months after arriving at Mother Del’s, I don’t know how much longer we can make it. So many days of stress, so many nights of terror. I’m the big sister. I’m supposed to be strong and capable. Take care of your little sister. How many years of my life have I heard that? Then, take care of your baby brother.
I’ve tried, I’ve tried, I’ve tried.
Now Manny is gone and Lola is clearly dying. Not on the outside but on the inside. She has become a shadow person, going through the motions, till the end of the day when she drags herself upstairs to the babies. She cradles them in her bony arms. And cries even more.
The community theater had been her refuge. But after the night with the whiskey bottle, Roberto and Anya started showing up. Turns out, Anya always wanted to be a star. And Roberto is her number one fan. You will give her this role, he instructs us. You will teach her these lines. You will do exactly what I say. Or else.
I spent the entire night in the ER holding my eight-year-old sister’s hand as they pumped her stomach and treated her for alcohol poisoning. While counting the bruises on her arms and staring at the gaunt outline of her ribs.
I’d told myself we were doing all right. I’d told myself we’re fighting the good fight.
I’d been living a lie.
Now, no matter where we go, what we do, Roberto is there. Bigger, stronger, with that smirking grin on his face. You will do exactly what I say.
So I do. For Lola’s sake.
Will it always hurt like this? Will there never be a time when we feel loved and safe and secure? When we can laugh like other kids? Giggle over stupid things, goof around in the halls?
I go to school as an outsider. Spying on every kid I meet. Is that what a real eleven-year-old looks like? Maybe if I could dress that way, or have those friends, or stand up straight when I walk down the halls . . . But I don’t have any of those things. I can’t do any of those things. I’m only me, with one backpack, two changes of clothes, and a gaping hole in my chest.
No matter how strong I try to be for Lola’s sake, I’m just an overwhelmed kid, too.
I hate my mom. I know I shouldn’t. She has a disease. The social worker says so, the CASA volunteer agrees. Our poor mom, working so hard to get her life back together.
Well, don’t you think she should’ve thought of that before she had kids?
We still meet with her once a week. She chatters about her job, support group, how great she’s doing. Just a matter of time before we’ll all be a family again. Manny snuggles on her lap, head against her shoulder, as if no time has passed, nothing has changed. He can live in the moment. But Lola and I . . . We stare at Manny. We drink in the sight of our baby brother, whom we miss so much. While trying not to move too much or say too much that might give away our latest aches and pains.
“You are both so beautiful,” our mother coos at us. Which makes Lola and me wonder if she sees us at all.
Later, taking us home, the CASA lady, Mrs. Howe, will study us more closely. “How are you doing?” she’ll ask with her schoolteacher stare. “What do you need?” But Lola and I never say a word.
Ask any foster kid. The adults are the ones who got you into this mess.
I hate my dad. I don’t even know who he is. Just some white guy who gifted me with dull brown hair and hazel-green eyes. I don’t want his hair, his eyes, his lighter skin. My father gave me ugly genes. Then he went away so that my mom could drink herself into a hole and there’d be no one to save us.
Will it always hurt like this?
The babies cry, night after night. We pat their backs. We make soothing noises. We lie to them. We tell them they’re safe and the world is good and there’s nothing to cry about. Then we hope we get out of here before the babies grow old enough to know how much we’ve wronged them. Before they realize we’re nothing but bigger babies ourselves, and just as alone as they are.
Why do people have kids? Why bring us into the world if you don’t have at least a little bit of yourself to share? We don’t need much. Just love, shelter, a kind word every now and then. You’d be amazed how little would make us happy.
I look around at this awful place, and it’s misery everywhere. Forget the Island of Misfit Toys. Mother Del’s is the Dumping Ground of Unloved Kids. We’re all so lost. Even Roberto and Anya. I hear them both crying in the middle of the night. And sometimes, I spy Roberto in Anya’s room, both of them curled up together, clutching each other desperately. No more evil smiles or shifty glances. Just two sad kids. Anya never even knew her own parents. She’s always been alone.
From what I can tell, it’s one of the reasons she hates us.
Mike loves me. I can tell by the way he watches me. The small gifts he provides. Our shared moment in the catwalk before Roberto took the theater away. But I don’t love him back. I can’t. All of me belongs to Lola, to trying to figure out a way to get her through one more day, one more night.
It can’t always hurt like this. Can it?
Someday, I’m going to get out of here. I’ll study hard, go to college, get a good job, then find my own place that no one can ever take from me. I’ll never touch alcohol. Never latch on to some loser barfly. I’ll make a real family. With a husband who stays, and kids who can depend on me. And I’ll tuck my children into bed every night, telling them they are loved and safe and wanted.