As if we were doing something wrong.
Ms. Amber Adler continued to come every six months or so. In the days leading up to her arrival, Joseph, with my help, would give Miriam those pills. Like clockwork, Miriam would start to feel better and get out of bed, and we’d air the Miriam stench right out of the house. I’d get to cleaning, and Joseph would appear with a brand-new dress, and he’d sit me down at the kitchen table and give my hair a trim, and by the time the caseworker appeared in her junker car with her too-big Nike bag, the house would smell lemon fresh, Miriam would be acting more or less normal and hanging on the refrigerator door would be some fabricated book report Joseph typed up, my name printed at the top.
“Did you write this?” Ms. Amber Adler asked, clutching the paper in her pretty little hand, and I lied, “Yes, ma’am.”
Of course I never wrote any book report. I never went to school. But Joseph looked at her as if it were the God’s honest truth and said how my reading and writing were coming along okay, but there was still the issue of my disorderly behavior, and Amber Adler would pull me aside and remind me how I was oh so fortunate to have a family like Joseph and Miriam, and that I needed to put more effort into my conduct and show a little respect.
The caseworker continued to bring letters from Paul and Lily Zeeger, and from my Little Lily. Big Lily told me how Rose (Lily) was growing up so big. How she wanted to grow her dark hair longer and longer, how she’d recently cut bangs. How she had so many friends: Peyton and Morgan and Faith. How she loved school, and what a brilliant child she was, and how her favorite subject was music. She asked: did I play any musical instruments? Did I like to sing? She’d tell me that Rose (Lily) was a natural musician. She wondered: is it a family trait? As Lily got to reading and writing herself, she would send me notes, too, scribbled on stationery with a simple tree branch and a red bird on front. The stationery had her very own name printed across the front: Rose Zeeger, and every fall, tucked inside, was a brand-new school photo. My Lily was always happy, always smiling, and in those photos I saw how she was growing older, looking more and more like our Momma every day. When I looked in the mirror myself, I didn’t see any traces of Momma, but I saw them on Little Lily, in those photos that Joseph forced me to tear to shreds once the caseworker had driven away.
“I started to feel relieved for Lily,” I tell Ms. Flores.
“Why is that?” she asks.
“Because Lily was happy with the Zeegers. She was happy in a way that she never would’ve been if she’d have stayed with me.”
I thought of Joseph doing with Lily what he did with me, and just the idea of it made me want to bash his head in with the frying pan, the kind of thoughts that more or less started filling my mind as I grew from an eight-year-old child to a fifteen-year-old girl, one who knew with absolute certainty that Joseph had no business coming into my room.
“Why didn’t you tell the caseworker about Joseph?” asks Ms. Flores, adding, “If what you say is true,” implying that it was not.
I look away, refuse to answer. I’ve answered this question before.
“Claire,” Ms. Flores snaps, her tone dry. And then, when I don’t answer, she goes on, looking at her notes instead of me, “As far as I can tell, Claire, you didn’t do a thing to remedy your situation. You could have told Ms. Adler what you claim Joseph was doing to you. You could have informed—” she peeks back at her notes to make sure she’s got it right “—Matthew. But you didn’t. You chose to take matters into your own hands.”
I refuse to answer. I lay my head on the table and close my eyes.
She slaps a blunt hand against the table and I jump; the guard jumps. “Claire,” she barks. I will not raise my head. Will not open my eyes. I imagine Momma holding my hand. Hold still and it won’t hurt so much. “Young lady,” she says, “you had better cooperate. Ignoring me will not help a thing. You’re in a lot of trouble here. More trouble than you can possibly imagine. You’re facing two murder charges, in addition to—”
It’s then that I lift my head up from that table and stare at her, into Ms. Louise Flores’s gray eyes and at her long silver hair, the scratchy cardigan, the wrinkles of her skin, the big teeth like a horse’s. The gray brick walls of the small room come closing in around me, the sunlight through the one window suddenly in my eyes. A headache arrives, without warning. I imagine a body, blood, bowels unintentionally let loose on the floor. The front door, open. My legs wobbly, like Jell-O. A voice telling me to go. Go!
And I think: two?