Three Little Words (11 page)

I laid out the yellow shorts and the striped shirt at the bottom of my bed. In the morning I picked up the shirt. All the buttons were scattered on the floor. I stormed into the common area. “Who ripped off the buttons to my new shirt?” I screeched.

“You shouldn’t take out your anger by destroying things,” a counselor said.

My face burned like a griddle. “I wouldn’t destroy something from my mother!”

“You can sew them back on yourself.” The woman handed me a needle and thread. “Then maybe you’ll find better ways to seek attention.”

I cried in outrage. Why had they assumed I had done it? I had no idea how to sew. With shaking hands, I threaded the needle and figured out how to stab it through the buttonhole, but it came right out the other side. After a few more tries I tied the thread around the button. The result was slightly uneven, although once I buttoned the blouse, it was presentable. I hated the girl who did it. This was another confirmation that nobody—besides my mother—cared for my feelings or for me.

A few days after saying farewell to Luke, my mother asked to see only me. I remember sitting on her lap in Mr. Ferris’s office. She combed her fingers through my hair. “Guess what, Sunshine? I have a good job and a nice house. I’m living with a lady named Babette, and she has a son whose name is Drew.”

“How old is Drew?”

“He’s six.”

“When can I live there with you, Mama?”

“As soon as—”

Mr. Ferris cleared his throat to warn my mother not to cross an invisible line. “The judge will decide where you will live,” Mr. Ferris said in the mushy voice I had come to despise. He turned to my mother. “Mrs. Grover, please remember the rules about discussing these matters in front of your child.”

“But I am supposed to tell her about Luke, right?” she asked in a more deferential manner. He waved his hand like a king giving dispensation. “Sunshine, remember when I told you that you are mine and Luke is Dusty’s?”

I held my breath. The shell around that once-perfect egg that held my childish faith was more fragile than ever, and I feared she was going to say something hurtful. “Well, Dusty isn’t always a nice man when he doesn’t get his way. He might even harm me if I tried to keep Luke. So I moved back to Florida to stay away from him and get you back.” She paused. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I’m going to live with you and Drew and his mother, but Luke isn’t.”

“I hope so.” She glanced at the caseworker for approval. “Soon as I get permission from the judge.”

“And Luke will go to live with Dusty?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know about that.”

I pressed my face into my mother’s blouse. She smelled like a smoky chicken nugget. Mr. Ferris showed her some papers, and she signed them while holding me.

I shuddered. She patted my back. “Soon, Sunshine, soon.”

A worker transported me to Dr. Howard Black for some tests. I was happy to get away from Lake Mag, although I protested. “Why do I need to see a doctor? I’m not sick.”

“He’s not that kind of doctor,” the woman said.

Dr. Black had a serious face that seemed to be hiding a smile. “How old are you?” he asked.

“I’ll be eight and a half next week.” I crossed my legs and straightened my back.

“Why are you living at Lake Mag?” he asked.

“Because they blamed me for causing trouble.”

“What sort of trouble was that?”

The seal on his diploma, which was precisely aligned on the wall with his right ear, made for the perfect place to concentrate my attention. “Telling about how the Mosses punished us.”

“How did they punish you, Ashley?”

I went through the list and he made notes, but I could not tell whether he believed me or not. “You told other people, right?”

“Oh, yes—my teacher and the policeman and Mrs. Merritt.”

He nodded. “Do you like Lake Mag?”

“I’d rather live with my mother.”

“What was it like when you were with her?”

“It was okay, except when Dusty was around—he’s Luke’s father. See, Mama is afraid of Dusty, so she had to give Luke to him.”

“Do you want to be with your brother?”

I stared down for the first time. “Oh, yes!” I covered my lapse by yawning, so the doctor gave me some drawing games.

The best part of the session was looking at pictures and making up stories, like I had when Adele took me to the therapist in South Carolina. There were many sad pictures about other children who had mean parents or who could not live with the one they wanted or who had lost toys.

“Ashley, do you know the difference between a truth and a lie?”

I returned my attention to the diploma seal and then nodded.

“When you told me the story just now about the lost child, was that the truth?”

I found his question insulting. “I made it up after looking at that picture.”

“Was that a lie?”

“No, it was a
story.”

“What’s your favorite story?”

“The one about Alice in Wonderland and also the Little Princess.”

“Was what you told me about how you were punished in foster care a story too?”

“No, that really happened.” I stared him down, and he blinked first.

When our time was up, he shook my hand and wished me luck.

A different worker drove me back to the shelter. She asked me if I was happy at Lake Mag. “I can live there until my mom gets things together,” I replied. “You see, her girlfriend—her name is Babette—is becoming a foster parent, so this time it’s all going to work out.”

The Merritts arranged frequent visits for me and Luke at their home, which was a tidy, five-bedroom house not far from Lake Magdalene. Their two daughters, Leah and Betsy, were away at college. They also had an adopted son, Matthew, who was about twelve; Luke; and a foster baby named Keisha.

One afternoon as Mrs. Merritt drove me back to Lake Mag, I started singing.

“Where did you hear that song?” Mrs. Merritt asked.

“MTV.”

“What else do you like to watch on television?” she probed.

“Movies, especially scary ones!” I bragged. “We saw
Children of the Corn
last weekend. The whole field started moving like this”—my hand made a wavy motion—“and a guy came out with a huge curved knife and—”

She cut me off. “That’s enough.”

The Merritts asked to become my foster parents. On Memorial Day weekend, I moved in with them. I shared Keisha’s room with her, while Matthew and Luke each had their own. Mrs. Merritt worked as a pediatric nurse some nights, so we had to be quiet during the day if she was sleeping. After the cruelty at the Mosses’ and the boisterousness of the shelter, I relished the serene environment.

The first morning at the Merritts’, I heard Keisha stirring and went to tend her. Mrs. Merritt came in tying her robe. “What are you doing?”

“She’s wet,” I said.

“You can’t change her diaper,” Mrs. Merritt responded.

“I did it all the time at the Mosses’.”

“In this house I am the mother and you are the child,” she said so adamantly that I stiffened and fluttered my gaze to a corner before she could attack.

“If you think Keisha needs something, call me or Dad.” She noticed my lower lip quivering. “You aren’t in any trouble. Keisha has a medical problem called diabetes. That means her body doesn’t process sugar normally, and so we sometimes have to give her a quick dose of medicine or something sweet like ice cream.”

Needing ice cream quickly hardly sounded serious. Whenever Keisha showed worrisome symptoms, the Merritts acted as if it was a life-threatening emergency, which made me feel left out. On the other hand, Luke was so happy to be with me again, he shadowed me. When I wanted privacy in the bathroom, I had to kick his shoe out from the door. “Luke,” I wailed, “stop pestering me!”

At mealtimes he sometimes pinched me under the table. I would jump and he would laugh, annoying the Merritts. He was worst at bedtime.

“Brush your teeth right now or you’ll get a time-out,” I warned. He made a raspberry, spitting toothpaste all over the mirror. I tried to wipe it with toilet paper, but I only smeared it more.

Mrs. Merritt took me aside. “Luke is your brother, not your child.” She used a teacher’s voice. “Do you understand?” I shrugged. “It means that I will tell him when he has to do things and what the consequences for not doing them are.”

“But he only listens to me!”

“Was he listening to you in the bathroom?” Mrs. Merritt studied my face to see if I had accepted her point. She tilted her head from side to side as if she knew about my force field and was trying to find a way to penetrate it.

“Obviously not,” I said to appease her, but she was wrong. If this did not work out, they could move us someplace worse and probably separate us again.
My
job was to see that that did not happen.
She
was the one who could pick up the phone at any moment and ask that either one of us be taken away. I crossed my arms and stared back.

“Now do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said to get her off my back.

“Okay, now you can have your bath.”

I grinned. Ever since the disgusting baths at the Mosses’ and the quick showers at Lake Mag, my idea of heaven was soaking in a tub of fresh, bubbly water. Mrs. Merritt shook her head. “I’ve never seen a child who liked a bath as much as you do.”

A week after I moved in with the Merritts, we traveled to Michigan to attend Leah’s college graduation from Andrews University. I admired the long expanses of lawns mown in precise lines and the huge, graceful trees. Leah, Betsy, and their friends looked like models in shampoo commercials. Best of all, we were treated as if we belonged in their family.

Still, I knew I did not fit into their world, which was governed by ritual and prayer. If we were good on their Sabbath, we were rewarded with an ice-cream or a Disney video.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked after church.

I was trying to do my required reading and ignored him. He reached for the cover. As I held the book behind my head so he could not get it, something boiled up inside me and I grabbed the back of his head and yanked his hair. He ran sobbing into Mrs. Merritt’s arms.

“Why did you do that?” she asked me.

“He was being a jerk!”

“We don’t talk like that in this house,” Mrs. Merritt said.

“Why don’t you just get rid of me?” I blurted. “I hate it here anyway!” It would be easier if they threw me out before I really wanted to stay. Why had I allowed myself to relax? My nails had even grown out, and Mrs. Merritt had complimented me on them. I deliberately bit them off one by one.