“Ask first,” I say. There’s no door to the kitchen but they’re not supposed to cross the invisible line unless given permission. They’re not supposed to open the refrigerator or get a cup of water. I think about a border-crossing documentary I watched a few nights ago and how a man claimed he didn’t believe in borders, how stupid I thought that was. It didn’t matter if you didn’t believe in them—other people believed in them.
I pass out graham crackers and plastic tumblers of Kool-Aid and we go outside while Monique feeds the baby. I try pushing three of them at once, but Diamond is angry because I’m not pushing her high enough. She becomes more and more upset until I finally give up and go inside and get a chair, sit by the door with my book.
She throws her body to the ground while I ignore her, and then she comes over and climbs into my lap.
“Why do you have to get so dirty?” I ask, brushing her knees. She twirls a finger around a strand of my hair. I wait for her to yank but she just twirls and twirls and I think about the first time I took her home, parked the van in my driveway and introduced her to my husband. We sat on the couch and ate cold pizza.
“Ooh, that nasty,” she says, grabbing the book out of my hand. On the cover, two people are making out in the backseat of a car. They are thin and young and beautiful and the picture somehow implies that passion requires these things, that the rest of us are going to miss out.
“It’s not nasty. They’re just kissing.”
“You nasty,” she says. I kiss her forehead. My boss stands in the doorway and asks if she can see me for a minute.
“Sure,” I say, lifting Diamond off my lap. I follow her back to her office, a Styrofoam to-go box open on her desk: fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans, a soggy-bottomed roll on top. She eats a wing as she tells me how much money it’s costing us to keep Diamond. “Each month, the state gives us less for her care,” she says. I look at pictures of her grandson, the framed certificates on the walls. She wants me to start collecting my own certificates—there’s a weeklong food service conference next month where I will learn how to weigh and measure, what constitutes a serving of protein. Where I will make friends with cafeteria ladies from all over the state.
“I found her a home where she’ll be the only child,” she says. “The woman’s specially trained to deal with problem children.” We both know Diamond isn’t the kind of child anyone can be trained for, but I don’t say this. She puts a wing down and picks up a thigh.
I find Diamond in her room, sitting on the bed she doesn’t sleep in.
“You’re leaving,” I say. “We have to pack your stuff.”
I fold her shirts and dresses while she kicks her toys into a pile. I haven’t seen a single suitcase since I’ve been here. I think about organizing a suitcase drive—people would get behind it. I hand her a garbage bag and she tosses the toys in, each one slamming the floor, while I stack her clothes into the other bag as neatly as possible. When we’re finished, I look around the room. The eight rooms in the shelter are identical but decorated with different lamps and bedspreads, different pictures above the beds. I can’t imagine anyone else sleeping under her ladybugs.
We sit on her bed and she runs her hand up and down my arm like the black girls do sometimes, imagining what it feels like to have white skin. Nothing special, I tell them—hurts the same, bleeds.
“You pretty,” she says, digging her nails into my arm. I don’t say anything so she digs harder, her eyes all pupil.
“Thank you.”
“No, you ugly.”
“That’s not nice.”
“I’m kidding—you pretty, you pretty,” she says.
“Stop.” I push her hand away.
Diamond is preoccupied with ugly. She wants to know if she’s ugly, if I’m ugly, if the baby full of scars and fungus is ugly. I tell her we are all beautiful. I tell her we are children of God.
“Come on. You need a bath.”
As soon as I turn the water on, she’s naked and stepping into the tub. “It’s cold,” she says, cupping her vagina.
“It’s going to take a minute to fill up.”
She sits and stretches her legs, knees locked. “I want bubble bath,” she says, but there’s no more bubble bath and I’m not allowed to buy any more because it’s not essential. Bubble bath is the good ole days, I tell her, and those are over, but she hasn’t known any good ole days. I soap up a towel and hand it to her; the water turns gray as she slops it over her body.
“When’s the last time somebody washed your hair?” I ask. She shrugs. “I know it wasn’t last night, or the night before, because I bathed you.” She shrugs again and holds her nose. My coworkers don’t like me to wash her hair because all I can do is brush it back into a bushy ponytail, but they don’t want to bathe her; they don’t want to deal with her. I feel like I’m in a marriage and we have too many children and all we can do is catalogue our efforts and it all seems like too much, like more than anyone could ever expect, and we’re being grossly taken advantage of.
She swishes her head from side to side. Her hair doesn’t want to absorb water, not like mine. I squeeze some shampoo on top and soap it up and she wants me to play with her but I just want to get her out and dressed so I can do meds and clean the kitchen, so I can relax for an hour before the next shift comes on.
She stands and bends over, makes her anus pulse.
“Very nice,” I say, “lovely. Now get out.”
I bundle her in a towel and hold her like my mother used to hold me, when she called me her little papoose and rocked me before bed. I sigh and she sighs in response and I’m reminded how smart she is, too smart for a seven-year-old.
I unlock the pantry and open the medicine cabinet, shake Diamond’s bottle of Adderall to see how many are left. I started taking them occasionally—though the occasions are becoming more and more frequent—because it makes the time go faster and nobody counts; we just refill the prescriptions when they run out. Along with the Adderall, Diamond takes half a yellow pill that melts on her tongue, a tiny white one she swallows with water, and a spoonful of a pink refrigerated liquid. I’m pretty sure the pink one is for her cough, though I haven’t noticed her coughing. The kids always seem to be taking medicine for problems they don’t have.
Diamond sits in my lap while I pass out small cups of water and pills. We were given a book that describes the medications—side effects and proper dosage—and the director said we’d be tested but I knew we wouldn’t so I didn’t bother to learn them. Had there been even the vaguest possibility of a test, I’d have studied.
There’s a knock at the door and we look at each other. A few minutes later, I’m buckling her into the backseat of a blue sedan.
I sit next to her while my boss talks to the woman. “You’ll be back,” I say, though maybe she won’t this time. Maybe she’ll flourish under this specially trained foster mother. Maybe this woman will adopt her and she’ll go to college and make good grades and have a lot of friends.
I hold her hand and we sit quietly until the woman gets in her car and looks back at us. I don’t know her name, though I’ve met her a dozen times. The social workers are all pleasant and cheaply dressed and we only see them when they’re shuffling the kids around. Like the girls, I ignore them unless I need something.