“I wish, though, I wish it could be true,” she whispers, even lower, and her eyes on me are so intense. We are not talking about her dream now. “Do you think your mama would ever be a foster?”
“I don’t think they let people who went to jail be fosters, is the only thing,” I say.
It is far from the only thing. But it is the only thing that it feels safe to say.
“But they’ll let her have you back, so she can’t be dangerous to kids,” Candace argues.
But I am Kai’s, by right, I want to say. I was born to her, and we share blood and history. We got a judge who made exceptions and bent rules based purely on the force of the bond he saw between us. And who the hell are you?
It’s true, but it’s a truth that would burn and blister if I let it touch Candace. I don’t want to remind her of all the ways that we are different. Chief among them, I belong to somebody. I say nothing, until Candace answers herself.
“Anyways, I was mostly wondering if she would like it, not if they would let her. Like if she was that kind of person who would want more kids.”
This subject is too dangerous. I change the conversation. “You know we’ll still see each other, you and me.” I am feeding Candace the same spoonful of crap Joya tried to serve up sweet to me. Still, I have to try. Candace owns a weapon that can only be used once, but if she’s losing everything anyway, what’s to stop her?
Kai must never know I am the one who made the 911 call, that I cost her her freedom. And Dwayne, too, whatever that was worth. He mattered enough for her to ask me if I had gotten any letters from old friends, three calls in a row after I sent the poem. He never wrote me back at all. The fourth call, she didn’t bring it up, so I asked, What happened, with, you know, that poem about Rama and Sita? There was a long silence, and then she said, Rama who? I don’t remember any Rama in our story. She never mentioned Dwayne again.
“But what if you live far though?” Candace asks, plaintive.
“Kai will get a car, or a boyfriend who has one. She always did before.”
Candace leans in even closer and talks fast, low, her words a nervous tumble.
“I was thinking, though, what if I ran away. There’d be a fuss right at first, but no one would stay bothered about it. They’d be looking for me at my mama’s anyhow, and after a while, they wouldn’t look at all.”
I see where this is going, and I talk fast to nip it down before it sprouts. “You’re a kid, Candace. People freak out about missing kids.”
Candace and I both know this isn’t wholly true. Kids like Candace don’t get the kind of press the missing children of middle-class or rich folks get. On the other hand, Candace is blond and big-eyed and thin—all the things TV likes. There could well be a little stir.
She says, “I won’t cut out right away. I’d make Shar and Karice be my friends, until everyone forgets about you and me being tight. Then I’ll run away and hide until they quit looking. Then I’ll come to where you are.”
I have to work so hard to make my face stay bland and kind. Inside, I recoil from the intensity of pleading in those lamp-like golem eyes. I want to pinch some sense into her skin. Her plan is impossible, a fantasy, but Candace is not very connected to how the world works when it doesn’t line up with her wishes.
“We’ll have to think about that, Candace. Kai’s parole officer will be coming by our place. Parole officers can show up anytime, and you have to let them in. If they see you, they’ll send her back to prison, and then you’re back here, anyway.”
Candace pulls her bottom lip in and munches at it. After a little thought, she says, “Yeah. But so are you. Maybe forever. She wouldn’t want you back, after that. If they took her to jail again, and it was your fault, I bet she wouldn’t even come back for you. She’d be so mad.”
Oh damn, she is crafty. She is pressing on the blackest bruise I have inside me. I make myself smile. “I’m not saying no. I’m saying we need to think it through. Be slow. And anyway, I bet we can work it out for you to visit, for sure.”
“How long of visits?” Candace asks. “How soon?”
Just then, from downstairs, I hear the sounds of Kai’s arrival. The knock. The clap of Mrs. Mack’s old-lady shoes on the linoleum as she goes to answer the door.
I should stay here, at least another minute. I should reassure Candace, soothe her. But I hear Kai’s voice, her present voice, not crackling through a bad connection while I press the old phone against my ear. I hear her living voice lighting up the room below me. I can’t help it. I scramble over Candace, my knee jamming into her stomach so that all her air puffs out. I launch off her as if she is an object. I run. I don’t even look back, bounding down the stairs to see my mother.