Pretty Baby

But by the time Joseph and Miriam arrived, Lily was already gone.

 

Lily only lasted about three weeks in the home. After Momma and Daddy died, we were sent to some group home for orphaned kids like us. Orphans. That was a word I’d never heard before. There were eight of us living in that house with a whole bunch of grown-ups who’d come and go. There was a couple, a woman and man, who lived there with us all the time, Tom and Anne, but others passed through: everyone’s caseworker, who all seemed to be different; a tutor; some man who was always trying to mess with my head. Tell me why you’re upset, Claire. Tell me how you felt when your mother and father died.

 

It wasn’t a bad place, in hindsight. Later on, after living with Joseph and Miriam, the group home seemed like a palace. But for an eight-year-old girl who’d just become an orphan, it was about the worst thing in the world. No one wanted to be there, but especially not me. Some of the kids were mean. Others just cried all the time. Those other kids at the group home were taken away, given away or just flat out rejected by their folks. The fact that Momma and Daddy died was somehow or other a good thing; it showed that someone actually loved us, actually wanted us in their lives.

 

Lily was adopted, which was the be all and end all of life for an orphan.

 

Orphan. One day I’m just a little girl from Ogallala, and the next, I’m an orphan. There was a whole lot crammed in that small word: the way folks would look at me with pity in their eyes, would stare at my cheap, undersized clothes, which some charity dropped off for us, donations from kids who’d outgrown them though they sure as heck didn’t fit me, and say oh as if to say that explains it.

 

That explains the sad look in my eye, the quick temper, the tendency to sulk in a corner and cry.

 

Paul and Lily (yup, that’s right, Lily) Zeeger were the ones who adopted Lily, my Lily, little Lily. Sweet little Lily with her ringlets of black hair, black like Momma’s, the pudgy little hand that clasped my finger, the chubby cheeks and unselfish smile. The one I was meant to take good care of before Momma died. I eavesdropped on their conversations with the caseworker, Paul and Lily’s conversation with her: the irony of that name, Lily, whether or not it was destiny. “But of course,” said Big Lily, a beautiful blonde woman with turquoise jewelry, as if she was talking about a dog, “we’ll need to change her name. Can’t hardly both be called Lily,” and the caseworker agreed, “Of course.”

 

I threw a fit. Screaming. About how Momma gave Lily that name and they had no right to change it. I grabbed Lily and ran, through the house and out the back door, desperate for a place to hide. I ran into the woods, but with Lily in my arms, they caught me easily. The woman who ran the house, Anne, stole Lily right from my arms, saying, “This is just the way it’s got to be.” And Tom scolded me: “You don’t want to upset her, now do you?”

 

I saw that Lily was crying, her chubby arms reaching past Anne for me, but the woman kept walking, away, away, away, and Tom was holding me though I squirmed and kicked and chances are I bit him. I remember him screaming, and that’s when he finally let me go.

 

I tore into the house, searching every nook and cranny for my baby sister. “Lily! Lily!” I was screaming, crying, calling out her name so many times the word no longer sounded right in my head. I pushed my way into the other kids’ bedrooms, into bathrooms that were in use.

 

And then I saw it, out the window: the silver minivan pulling away down the drive.

 

It was the third to last time I would ever see my sister.

 

They renamed her Rose.

 

They weren’t bad people. That I’d come to realize later. But when you’re eight years old and you’ve just lost your folks, and now your sister’s been taken from you, too, you hate everyone. And that’s just what I did. I hated everyone. I hated the world.

 

“Tell me about Joseph,” says Louise Flores.

 

“I don’t want to talk about Joseph,” I say. I lay my head on the table sideways, where I can’t see her eyes, and ask, “How’d you find us anyway?” picking at the dry skin of my hands, watching the way they bleed.

 

“How’d we find you?” the woman repeats, and I catch sight of a curl of her lip out of the corner of my eye. She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like me one bit. “That was dumb luck,” she says, the dumb, I’d bet, being me. “But if you’re asking how we found the baby, well, that was a tip.”

 

“A tip?” I ask, lifting my head to see her, the satisfaction that fills her eyes. You really are dumb, aren’t you? those eyes say to me.

 

“Yes, Claire, a tip. Short for tip-off. A phone call from an individual—” she starts, and I interrupt with, “Who?”