Love Rewards The Brave (6 page)

34.

Sitting on the back steps

with my hoodie zipped up

and my fingers poking out of the holes

I cut in the cuff.

I ask, “Benji, you okay? Being here? You seem pissed.”

Pissed at me.

“I have something I wanna talk to you about, later,” I tell him. “After all these people leave. Okay?”

A plan that involves me, you, and mom.

Her getting it together

so we can go back

and have a chance at forever.

But I don’t say that yet, the time’s not right.

“Is it a plan to run away, Lou-Lou? That’s what the money was for. For us to go. Take a bus, or whatever, and leave.”

He’s mad that

Ms. Francine took his bus fare.

His only way to get outta here.

“She’ll give it back when the weekend’s over, Benji. You can trust her.”

And I know that word rolls

down his spine

just like it does mine.

Because

Trust

Means

Something

Different

To

Everyone.

35.

Everyone sits at the big long table.

Pumpkins and leaves

line the center

and they curve

around the glasses

and the goblets

like my feelings

curve around my heart.

I want Benji here

but not like this.

I want my little Benji baby back.

The one who

would laugh as

I blew bubbles

on his belly.

The one who

let me fly airplanes

of oatmeal as

I fed him bites

of breakfast.

The one who

called out

“Lou-Lou ba-ba”

holding up

his empty bottle.

I was just

a seven-year-old girl

trying to break a toddler’s habit

but knowing

his bottle

was one of the only things

that made him grin.

Let me win

him over.

Everyone goes around the table

saying grace

in the way of

giving thanks.

“I’m thankful for Margot being here today,” Ms. Francine says, squeezing her sister’s hand.

“I’m thankful for my wife’s patience this year as I completed my PhD,” says the man across from me.

“I’m thankful for the support of friends and family, as I battled cancer this year,” a lady, Ms. F’s friend from work, chokes out.

Most people are misty-eyed,

but my eyes are wide and white

my turn’s next.

I look over at Benji, whose eyes

say nothing at all.

I look down the table and see Margot

who has eyes that say

everything.

I wonder how to be

thankful

when everything

feels like nothing.

36.

“Go ahead, dear,” Cancer Lady says, expectantly.

Suddenly all eyes

misty

blank

or otherwise

are on me.

So I say the first thing I can think of

thinking it was wrong

the moment it got out

of those purple streaked lips of mine.

“I’m thankful the turkey didn’t burn.”

But no one here thinks it was the wrong thing.

Suddenly everyone’s laughing.

“On that note, dinner is served!” Ms. F announces.

Big heaping platters get passed around

and Cancer Lady never once frowns

at me for eating too fast

or dripping the gravy

on the tablecloth.

She just keeps asking if

I want more

cranberry sauce

or stuffing (the real kind)

and I say yes.

The real reason I’m

thankful for the turkey

not burning

is because this is the first

real Thanksgiving dinner

Benji’s ever had.

Even though he’s trying

so hard to be

ticked off

and annoyed.

Trying so hard to be a

twelve-year-old boy.

I know

that inside he’s happy.

And it has everything

to do with being

here

next

to

me.

37.

“So you just want to go to bed?” I ask.

Now, so early?

Dessert just finished

the other guests just left.

But I guess he has other things on his mind.

Other ways he wants to spend his time.

He goes off to bed.

Leaving me alone downstairs

with Ms. Francine and Margot

who are talking

in the whispered way

that means they have some catching up to do.

I’m not blind enough to miss those cues.

I say

goodnight to them.

They smile and nod

but don’t ask me to stay

to be a part of their time

to be a part of their space.

I head up to bed.

A little let down

at the lack of

catching up my brother wants

to have with me.

I wonder why he’d rather be

alone

on a night like this.

A night that is rare

for kids like us.

For kids who spent years going to bed

hungry

hurt

and broken

down.

This year

could have been

different.

38.

I let myself cry

those tears I usually keep

real nice and tight

in my chest.

I let myself cry

those tears I usually keep

real close inside

where I feel buried alive.

I’m sounding like a broken CD

a stuttering track

muffled sounds

trying to get out

and I can’t let all of it out.

If I do

it’ll never go back in right where it belongs.

It belongs in my heart

pop chart of sing-a-long songs

that nobody can ever hear but me.

If they hear it

they’ll freak out.

Freak out about Benji and me

and our problems

so big.

Don’t want to bother them now.

Let Ms. F have this night with her sis.

I would spend it with Benji if it

were my last dying wish.

So I won’t hold the laughter

I hear on that couch just one floor below

against the women

sitting there because they don’t

owe a thing

to this soul.

If Benji doesn’t want me

wait till I tell him

the truth of

what Terry said.

He will understand my happiness

and my faith in this

broken

fucking

system.

Just wait till I tell him the plan.

39.

Apparently the tradition

has existed since the beginning of mankind.

Friday after turkey day they go and find

a tree to cut down for

Christmas.

“Isn’t it a little early?” I ask. “I mean, isn’t Christmas like a whole month away?”

Margot laughs. “You don’t know my sister!”

I guess I don’t.

I mean, I came to Ms. Francine’s door

step

right after the New Year

‘bout eleven months ago.

I was looking totally

unkempt-

the last foster home

had been a joke.

By joke

I mean a million

toddlers running around

all these kids there

lost

never to be found.

They could

have stayed there longer

you know, me as the

perpetual babysitter.

I filled the role seamlessly

a little too easily

because the foster mom

Jodie Lynn Cratchett

let me do all the work

I spent the first thirteen

years of my life

perfecting.

Taking care of
kids
Benji.

Letting the adults around me keep

regressing

back to the role of do-nothing

douche bags

who are somehow okay

with a little girl taking on the load

of an entire household.

Cinderella?

Man, that bitch has nothing on me.

40.

But we had to leave

that little piece of “heaven”

Jodie Lynn Cratchett

had created.

The house was

too small

too loud

too many
temptations

for a boy like Benji.

A boy who had spent his childhood

watching a man use his hand for abuse.

It came a little too naturally

for him,

I suppose.

In the end

it had really been all he had

known.

When someone makes you mad:

Fight Back.

When someone takes something you had:

Fight Back.

When someone treats you bad:

Fight Back.

And if the way he fought had been a little different

less contact

(the hands-on kind I hate)

or less one-on-one,

maybe we could have stayed.

But, at some point, over those

two long

years

in Jodie Lynn Cratchett’s

care

Benji broke
all the
the only rule.

He was caught in a closet

with a little boy.

Samuel was his name.

Great brown eyes

that will never be the same.

My life has been filled of

Great

Brown

Eyes

Now

Blank.

Benji was doing to him

what my father

had done to me.

Making him sit on his knees,

making him plead.

For

It

To

Stop.