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Q
A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for
3>(p the Degree
' Master of Arts
In
English: Creative Writing
by
Shadia Leigh Savo
San Francisco, California
January 2016
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Q by Shadia Leigh Savo, and that in my opinion this work meets
the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for
the degree: Master of Arts in English: Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.
Chanan Tigay, MFA | Professor of English
Nona Caspefsf'MFA Professorof English
Q
Shadia Leigh Savo San Francisco, California
2016
Q is a novel length, first person narrative of a biracial foster child, nicknamed Q. At age
four, her mother and boyfriend begin sex trafficking Q. After a facial injury at age six,
she is removed from the home. The story takes place over one year when Q is twelve and
thirteen and living in a variety of foster homes and a residential facility. It moves in and
out of her present and past as she attempts to navigate puberty while suffering from post-
traumatic stress disorder and a lack of family and safety.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative
Date
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Chanan Tigay and Dodie Bellamy for their encouragement and
incomparable writing assistance and Da’Shay Portis and Elizabeth Kaida for their
valuable advice.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The Rules.................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: The Therapist........................................................................................................25
Chapter 3: Camp..................................................................................................................... 29
Chapter 4: Angel..................................................................................................................... 36
Chapter 5: Annette.................................................................................................................. 42
Chapter 6: Half-Moons...........................................................................................................53
Chapter 7: Baby Toes.................................................... 63
Chapter 8: I t .............................................................................................................................77
Chapter 9: Outside.................................................................................................................. 88
Chapter 10: Goodbye Group.................................................................................................. 99
Chapter 11: For-Now-Room.................................................................................................117
Chapter 12: Blood Thing...................................................................................................... 121
Chapter 13: The Birthday...................................................................................................... 127
Chapter 14: Navy Seals......................................................................................................... 136
Chapter 15: New School....................................................................................................... 142
Chapter 16: Greg....................................................................................................................152
1
Chapter 1: The Rules
I’ve never learned to say my first name right, but I don’t let it bother me much.
Maconaquea Bea Riley. Mack-con-uh-quay-uh. That’s how I say it when I have to, but I
don’t know if I’m right, probably not. At my 18th placement after I got taken away from
my mom, my foster family told me I couldn’t be Maconaquea anymore. My foster
mother, whose name I won’t remember, told me that Maconaquea was my old self and
that Bea would be my rebirth into the awesome, happy-as-fuck child I had to be in their
home. That was one of my shortest stays, only five days.
When I came to Choate Residential, they kept calling me Bea until one of the staff
who isn’t here anymore asked me why I was called Bea and not Mack-un-quay (she
couldn’t pronounce it right either), but she wasn’t real happy with the truth. The staff
tried to call me Mack-un-quay, Mack-con-uh-quah-uh, and Mank-quah for like a day
before they gave up. I don’t know why they thought that was better anyway, cause it
wasn’t. Another foster kid I lived with at my fourth placement looked it up and informed
me that it’s from the Miami Tribe and means “Captive White One.” For the rest of my
time there, the red-headed kid with the scaly bald patch, whose name I forget, would
surprise me whenever he could by wrapping his arms around me and yell, “You’re my
captive!” So I don’t exactly love my name. And I’m not Native either, at least I don’t
think. I’m not really white either. I’m sort of white, sort-of-maybe black, but mostly
nothing.
Now I’m just Q, which is pretty hard to fuck up. Its fine with me—at least it’s
2
short. I’m pretty sure it’s a foster kid thing to have a terrible name anyway. Two of the
other kids in B House have pretty awful names too, although not as bad as mine. Rosy’s
real name is Rose-Red, which is just skanky. And Rika’s real name is Papreekah, but no
one makes fun of her about it unless they wanna get punched in the face.
Which sometimes Aaliyah does, but she likes getting hurt even more than Ivory.
She always fights the hardest when the staff restrain her, trying to make them hurt her.
But they mostly never do. I think Gretchen would like to though; she’s my least favorite
staff. Her hair is the same scummy, stringy brown as Frank, and her voice is just too
high-pitched; it’s like she always talks in her phone voice. I can see the rage in her filmy
blue eyes. Aaliyah sees it too. We all see it. And Aaliyah acts up a lot more when
Gretchen is on shift; I’m pretty sure she wants to be the one to bring all that violence out.
I really hate when Gretchen is the one to observe my Positive Affirmations. At
least this morning it’s Nikita—she isn’t my favorite staff, but that’s mostly because she
doesn’t belong here. She’s too nice house, too creamy smooth, and always says the
wrong thing. Once in group Rika said that she hates that Isaiah’s black skin is darker than
hers and that Aaliyah’s ginger brown skin is lighter than hers because she’s supposed to
be the most of everything. Nikita told her that she is beautiful just as she is, but since
Nikita is about the whitest person in the world, next to Ivory that is, it basically just
proved Rika’s point. And she is, or was anyway, always saying stuff like that: as if we are
all perfect, good kids just as we are. Don’t make me choke. She won’t last—she’s only
been here a month, and I can already see the slight droop in her shoulders and the fading
3
of the soft light in her pale face that only three weeks ago told Aaliyah she was beautiful,
and meant it. I’ll be surprised if she lasts another month. She’s too delicate for us.
But while I can, I’ll take Nikita any day over Gretchen. Nikita stands in the
bathroom doorway, sort of in the hall so that the other staff can still see her, and looks at
me look at myself. This is one of my least favorite parts of the day. I hate the stupid
mirror. One of the other kids, I think it was Taiomah, repeatedly banged his head against
it recently so at least it’s decently cracked. Not so much to be a hazard, or else they’d
have had to replace it so we wouldn’t use it to hurt ourselves, beyond banging our heads
against it anyway. Something I consider doing almost every morning, but I’m not that
tall, so it would take a lot of effort. I’d have to climb onto the sinks first, and I don’t think
I’d be able to get enough power to really crack it like Taiomah before getting restrained.
One of the cracks in the mirror conceals my stupid flat nose and distorts the bulgy
red scar I nicknamed Vivi that runs from the cut of my mouth to what’s left of my right
ear. But I know that they’re there and so does everyone else. My sooty black hair curls
around my head in giant puffs since the staff let me keep it a little longer than shoulder
length (despite Rule #622) to help hide my ear, but I don’t care. It’s not like it really
matters, I know that since I can’t hide the scar and my repeatedly broken nose I’m never
gonna get adopted. Honestly, I don’t care. No one wants to adopt a kid who looks so
obviously like a foster kid. I’ve been here the second longest, next only to Taiomah. Most
of the other foster kids don’t have their scars in such obvious places; their adults were
smarter than Frank, or they are just better than me at getting their faces out of the way.
4
Mine was ugly to begin with, so maybe it didn’t matter too much.
I’m pretty sure that Ivory is gonna get adopted soon, which just proves my point.
Her name fits her perfectly: she has feathery blonde hair, super big, sneaky innocent blue
eyes, and annoyingly pink, almost reddish skin only kind of tossed with freckles.
Everyone wants the pretty blonde white kids. She’s bat shit crazy too, but I’m sure that
even if the people adopting her have been told that they don’t believe it. The biggest
difference between adoptive and foster parents is that foster parents usually get that we’re
fiibar, while adoptive parents always think that all kids need, even foster kids, is love. At
least until we get in their homes. I’m pretty sure that the first time Ivory strips naked in
front of them and smears herself with her own shit that they won’t believe their eyes. All
they can see now is the baby curls and eight-year-old cuteness that even two years of
being fucked by different men couldn’t erase. At least from her face.
I wasn’t so lucky. Vivi gives me away, no matter what I do. Sometimes I kind of
like Vivi; she may be almost four years old, but she still hurts if I push too hard, stretch
my mouth too wide, or scratch at her. Or if my face is shoved into the carpet when I get
restrained after my taint comes out. Vivi can hear better than the rest of me and likes to
comfort me by reminding me she’s there, just like how my mom used to slap me. My bio
mom that is. But I can’t abandon Vivi no matter what, she’s in my skin, a part of the
taint.
Nikita sighs with impatience and her annoyance breaks into her words. “Q, I
know you don’t love doing these, but you gotta do them, okay? Chyna said you came up
5
with some great ones in session last week.”
I really hate when any of the staff point out that they talk to my therapist about
me—I mean, we all know that they do, but do they have to rub it in our faces? The
answer to that is yes. Yes, they do.
I guess I can’t put it off forever, much as I’d like to. If I never had to say another
positive thing about myself out loud, I’d be a lot happier. Actually, it probably wouldn’t
make much of a difference. But, Chyna, if you’re in my head, I’m thinking about setting
your hair on fire. You know I could do it.
“Whatever. I’m good at reading, kind of.”
Nikita practically rolls her eyes at me but it’s against staff rules so she doesn’t,
“No qualifying it Q, just be positive.”
I full on roll my eyes but continue. “I’m good at basketball, I like my elbows, and
I have a loud voice, which I like.”
I pause, but Nikita continues to stand there, not letting me go.
I sigh. “I’m good at cleaning up.” Not nearly as good as Rosy though. She’s the
only one who isn’t allowed to volunteer for extra Sunday chores because she likes to
clean too much. Sometimes she gets as desperate to clean as Taiomah gets to play video
games past his allowed 30 minutes and won’t stop screaming or throwing things. I can’t
really imagine getting that worked up over the need to clean, but who am I to judge?
Nikita lets me escape the mirror and put my bathroom box away in my cubby, one
of the 10 stacked two to a side right outside the swinging bathroom door, and sends me to
6
breakfast with a wave of her hand. I shuffle off down the hall and around the comer to
wait in line by the kitchen sink to wash my hands for the second time in two minutes. No
one gets to sit at the table without washing their hands in sight of a staff member first.
Rule #423 or something.
Topher, my favorite staff, is in the kitchen cooking what looks like eggs, but may
not be. It’s always hard to tell when everything comes out of these huge cans and boxes
with no expire dates. Not that I’m complaining; at least its food, and I get to eat it, even
when my taint comes out. I’m real glad Topher is here—it’s Wednesday and he’s usually
off today. I crane my head around but I don’t see Gretchen anywhere; she usually works
the Wednesday AM shift. My fucking god, maybe she’s quit. Probably she’s just sick or
something, but I can hope.
“Hey, Q, back up a little, you’re really close to getting in Rosemary’s space,”
Topher throws out, without even looking away from the stove. I automatically back up
and check that I’m at least two feet away. Rule #1: we can’t get within two feet of each
other and we can’t touch each other. Ever. I’m just lucky I didn’t get sent to time-out. But
Topher is pretty laid back, compared to everyone else. He’s one of only two male staff
here, so I’m pretty sure they cut him a lot of slack. I bet it pisses the girl staff off a lot,
not that I care.
I don’t like breakfast very much. I have to sit with Rosemary and Rosy every day,
at least until one of them leaves, and they both piss me off. Rosemary has been here the
fourth longest at six months, but she acts like she’s been here forever and knows
7
everything about everything. At 10 years old, she’s two years younger than me, and she’s
somehow taller then me. I’m not that short, but she’s a freaking giant, and she’s got what
looks like an old man beer gut, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t get it drinking beer,
although I can’t be sure, but she don’t come off like an alki. She’s on one of the healthy
eating plans, so she eats different food then Rosy and me, which I also hate. Rosemary’s
food always looks better; it comes out of much smaller cans and boxes and smells less
old. I think they even have expire dates on them, so they’re fresh. Bitch.
Rosy is like the opposite of Rosemary, even though their names are a lot alike.
I’m pretty sure though that if we were allowed to make friends with each other that they
would be like those freaky conjoined twins. They aren’t allowed to play together
anymore since they were getting sent to time-out so much more when they did. They got
in each others’ space a lot and didn’t listen to the staff hardly at all. I dunno why they get
to eat at the same table, but maybe it’s cause no one has noticed yet. The AM shift staff
are a lot more laid-back than the PM shift and don’t seem to notice as much, and most of
us are getting our first kick of our meds and still coming out of the last haze of our sleep
meds, so we’re slightly less crazy.
Haley is the assigned staff at our table this morning, which is good with me. She’s
pretty quiet herself, so she usually doesn’t make me talk, and she lets Rosemary and Rosy
go off, as long as they don’t say anything inappropriate, get too loud, or don’t eat enough
between sentences. My spot is in between Rosemary and Rosy, probably so they don’t
get too close to each other. I dig into my plate without much thought. There’s nothing
8
special about today that I can tell so far. God, that’s a stupid thing to think, I mean, I’m
basically just saying, Fuck with me God, please fuck with me today.
Haley throws me a look as if she wants to ask me something, her left overly-
raccooned eye lifting a bit. Her fake and bake tanned skin around her eyes and mouth get
all crinkly, which means she’s thinking too hard. I can almost see her bleached hair come
unglued from its bun. But I’m not going to make it easy on her; I don’t want to answer
her, or anyone else’s, questions. I hate when they ask me stuff. It’s not like I know the
good answers anyway. And Haley’s supposed to be the shy one. It’s as if by getting
Topher today, the universe decided to balance by having Haley switch into a different
person just to fuck with me. Goddamn it, and now my stupid throat hurts; stupid nose that
can’t breathe right, and stupid mouthful of food.
“Can’t you just leave me the hell alone?” I hiss at Haley, who doesn’t flinch.
“Time-out, Q. Now.”
I hate this stupid place. I can’t even get a single bite of food before my day’s all
fucked up. I get up fast only because I don’t want everyone watching me, but Haley’s
goddamn lucky that I don’t kick her before I leave the table. As hard as I can, I drop in
the stupid wooden chair that’s screwed to the comer of the wall sideways, and hope for
the zillionth time that it breaks. No such luck.
At least it’s Topher who’s headed over to talk to me. I’m facing the comer, but I
can see him as he lopes across the house all chill and slow, his splattered apron still on.
But then I see the slight downturn of his eyes and the tilt of his head, his rows slipping to
9
the side—he’s avoiding looking at me, which can only mean something’s up, something
beyond me being in time-out. I hate it when they don’t tell me what’s going on. A lot of
the time I overhear stuff, but whatever it is this time, I’m in the dark, my least favorite
place to be.
/^2tsc--------_
“Breathe in and out Q, focus on being in your body.” Topher’s voice barely gets through
the haze of limbs, sweat, cheap carpet, and sickening rage sweeping its way through my
brain and bones. The large hands clamped around my wrists seem looser somehow, as if
no one can hold me. Vivi rubs against the carpet and heat trickles back through my skin.
I have a body.
My body has clothes.
It is Topher holding me down, not letting me move, not letting me hurt him.
Another staff is holding my legs down, but I don’t know who it is. It don’t matter, I’m
not going anywhere.
“Breathe, Q, breathe, find your breath,” Topher whispers, slightly louder to my
not-bad ear this time, and I can feel the mint masking his breath find its way into my skin.
I’m trying, trying so hard, but my nose . . . I hate my nose. I don’t want the floor
to let me fall under, I don’t. All my mouth can feel is old carpet and dried saliva from so
many of us, and a taste of bleach that can’t mask all of our taints.
Now I hear my quiet.
10
My screams of nothing have stopped and I find my breath.
I find it in my chest, going up and down into the floor.
I find it in my mouth, swallowing everything in the carpet, and I find it even in
my nose. My broken, flat, wasted nose. But I find it.
I finish my breakfast quietly at the Isolation Desk. It’s not really in complete isolation,
since my back is exposed to the rest of the living room and the kitchen and the chair faces
the Desk which faces the wall. So many ways to be apart in one room. And I can’t talk to
anyone or move from the Desk unless someone comes and tells me that I can. Except if I
have to go to the bathroom. I can raise my hand if I have to pee, but I can’t do it too often
or the staff get suspicious that I’m really just trying to get up. And they’d be right, at least
most of the time. Sometimes I just have to go more after I get restrained.
I hate the Desk. I don’t mind the not-getting-to-eat-with-everyone-else part, I’m
not exactly wishing I was laughing it up with Rosemary and Rosy, but the Desk is right
next to the Quiet Room, which is haunted. Not that I’m afraid or anything. But whenever
I’m in the Room and a staff is holding the door closed against me so I can’t get out, I’ve
noticed a slight breeze that ruffles my hair even though the Room is completely sealed
and has almost no windows. There’s a tiny plastic window in the door for the staff to look
at us when they have to hold the door shut against us, but it’s so scratched up it’s next to
impossible to see through, so it’s basically stupid. The walls are solid as stone but not as
11
hard—banging my head in there for real long won’t do much more than give me a sick
headache. I’ve never been able to get my head to crack open, although I think Aaliyah did
once. I can’t be sure though, it’s not like the staff sit us down and say, “So Aaliyah is in
the hospital having her head sewn shut because she beat herself so hard with the wall that
she broke it.” It’d be a lot nicer if they did though.
One night when half of us, although not me, blew at once and all had to be
restrained, I heard Taiomah yelling out that some past kid had died in the Room and he
didn’t want to go in there. If more than one of us got to be restrained, usually the staff try
to get Taiomah in the Room. He’s the most violent for the longest, and I think a lot of the
staff are kind of scared of him cause he’s pretty big, and it can take three or four staff to
restrain him sometimes. He’s really tough, but that night I could tell he was freaked out. I
was in my room, and I could hear him go on and on about how the dead kid was gonna
get him if he went in and that he didn’t wanna hear the voices anymore. But then he
stopped, probably cause they finally got him in the Room.
I’m glad I didn’t have to go into the Room this morning. Sometimes I don’t mind,
like when I don’t want anyone to be anywhere near myself and I can’t find my body, but
most of the time I’d rather be able to see a way out, at least with my eyes. Not that I’ve
tried to run away like Isaiah or Rosemary, but that’s just because I don’t know where I’d
go. I don’t know where my mom is. Rosemary talks about her sister sometimes before the
staff stop her and remind her she can’t talk about that stuff with us, so I bet she tries to go
to her sister. I think her sister’s a runaway. Rosemary, however, has never been able to
12
make it off the grounds, and Isaiah’s never even made it all the way to the door. I think
he’d probably try to run away less if he could at least make it as far as Rosemary one day.
Then they’d be equal and I don’t think he’d have to try so hard.
My eggs, or whatever they are, are as cold as my bare feet and not so good
anymore. Rule #982: no shoes or socks at the Desk. Probably so we don’t try to run
away. Not that it would ever stop someone like Rosemary. I don’t wanna eat. I just want
to know what’s going on, but I’ve been here long enough to know that they aren’t gonna
tell me until they want to. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know though, and it doesn’t
stop me from being mad.
Topher finally comes over to me, his apron long ago tossed in the laundry pile. He
must’ve missed the apron a lot today. He has small yellow stains all over the sleeves of
his t-shirt. He tells me to go into Family Room A, so I do. I’ll do almost anything he asks
of me, except when the taint doesn’t let me, which a lot of times it doesn’t. I’m hoping
I’ll finally find out what’s going on, but I can tell I’m not going to like it if he has to
separate me from the other kids. Family Room A, the smaller of the two family rooms, is
where all the kids with the worst problems have their family visits. It shares a wall with
the Quiet Room, so it’s easy to get us over there if need be. The only furniture is two
faded blue Ikea couches that some old funny-speaking Russian ladies donated last
Christmas, one on either wall facing each other. There isn’t a television or anything
electronic in here for us to break. There are sliding glass doors for sound privacy, but this
way other staff can keep an eye on what’s going on just in case.
13
The other family room is way better—it has tables to eat and play games on, and a
television with video games. Most of the family visits happen in that room, unless the kid
is having a bad day, aka they get restrained or end up in the Room. Family Room A is
safer. There isn’t anything for anyone to hurt themselves or anyone else with. At least,
not that I’ve discovered, but I’m not as creative that way as some of the other kids like
Ivory or Taiomah. Both of them always seem to find a way to hurt themselves no matter
where they are if they really want to, just like reverse ninjas.
I’ve never had a family visit. I’ve gotten to play in both family rooms during Free
Time, but the only time I’ve ever visited with anyone in the room is when my caseworker
came all of one time to ask me stupid questions. I hate my caseworker. I can tell she
doesn’t like having to see me, and she always avoids looking at my face unless she thinks
I’m not looking. Then sometimes I’ll catch her grimace at Vivi, her lips pinched tight and
her lipstick having to work extra hard, like Vivi’s offended her just by existing, which
she probably has. I’ve had my caseworker for a while though, almost four years now.
Caseworker years are like dog years, so that’s like 30 something years basically. Most of
the kids here haven’t had a caseworker for more than two years. When Taiomah’s
caseworker last came, she couldn’t even say his name right, and didn’t listen to the staff
when they tried to correct her. She had super ugly bright red curls that looked like they’d
been painted on by one of the kids in time-out, and she kept flicking them out of her face
and scowling.
It’s a rule that the caseworkers with the most makeup and fanciest hair are always
14
the worst. Rika’s caseworker always has really long scary pretty nails with flowers on
them, blood red lipstick, and really big, sparkly jewelry. She’s the meanest I think. When
Rika came to stay, her caseworker told the staff the wrong spelling of Rika’s name and
tried to tell them that they couldn’t call her by anything but her full name because she
was trying to get her used to it. For practice later in life or something stupid like that. I
could hear Haley shouting at the caseworker in the staff office all the way from my room.
I like to remember this cause no matter what any of us do the staff never yell at us. Even
when Rika broke Haley’s arm trying to get at Aaliyah for making fun of her name. Haley
never got mad at Rika, she just got out of the way so another staff could restrain her and
stop her rage.
So Haley must’ve been beyond mad. And she must’ve won, because no one calls
Rika anything but Rika. Except Aaliyah sometimes. Of course, it’s not like her
caseworker’s been back to check up either, so it could be that the staff are just ignoring
the caseworker’s order. But either way, Rika doesn’t have to be humiliated every time her
name is called.
But today Topher surprises me and says that my mom, my bio mom that is, is
gonna call today. It’s weird that he’s telling me. I talk to her sometimes, maybe once a
month. Longer than that if she’s been told she can’t for awhile. I haven’t seen her in over
two years, since she showed up to a visit at one of my placements all coked up and stuff.
Something got broken. I’m pretty sure it was my taint coming out. But she’s still allowed
to call, and it’s been only 23 days since I talked to her last.
15
The staff used to tell me when she had scheduled a call, but she often forgot about
it. I know she’s real busy trying to get a job and stuff, so sometimes she doesn’t have
time. After the first couple months they stopped telling me ahead of time, which sucks. I
really liked having her calls to look forward to when the days get not so good.
I want to ask Topher why he’s telling me, but I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want
her not to call just because I’m curious. Asking questions is usually the way to fuck
everything up, it’s like drawing the taint out, like haha fuck you. So I don’t ask. I just sit
in silence until Topher sighs and lets me return to the Desk to sit and wait. It’s not like
there’s anything else to do.
A z t e c .----------------
Topher knocks on my door during morning Room Time and tells me my mom’s on the
phone. I can’t believe it’s really her—he told me she’d call and she did. The only suck is
that Topher has to listen in on the call since we aren’t allowed to have unmonitored
conversations yet. Someday maybe, but I have to get my taint under better control first I
think so I don’t ruin everything like normal.
Everyone is in their own rooms right now for Room Time, except for the staff
cause they work here and don’t live here like us. Haley and Nikita are in the hallway
making sure no one comes out of their rooms, and the other staff on shift, Ko, is doing
dishes. None of them are looking at me or listening to me, except Topher of course. The
two phones are in front of Family Room A at a tiny round table with two overly small
16
plastic play chairs. Topher picks up one of the phones and nods his head, letting me know
that I can pick up the other.
I pick up the once-black rotary phone and the weight of the receiver sends shivers
of excitement through me—it’s my mom on the other end, and I get to talk to her. It’s the
best kind of day.
“Hi mom,” I get out with a little waver, but Topher pretends to ignore me and
works on charting in one of our logs. It’s nice of him.
“Macky! Sweet girl, how you holding up? How they treating you?” My mom’s
deep, rough smoker voice wobbles like a poorly spun plastic top, and I know she’s flying
high. I know, I always know.
I pray desperately that Topher doesn’t notice, cause if he does, he’ll end the call. I
don’t care if she’s shot up or anything else—all that matters is that she called. I have to
steer her away from the dangerous conversation about how the staff treat me though,
since she’s not really supposed to ask me that kind of stuff.
“I’m good mom, but I miss you.” I badly want to ask when I’m going to be able to
see her, but that’ll end the call for sure.
She giggles slightly as if she’s younger than I am, and I can see Topher pause in
his probably fake charting. Crap. “Mom,” I rush to speak and distract Topher, “What’ve
you been doing? You find a job?”
“Not yet Macky,” she says in an almost normal, un-high voice, “But I’m still
looking. I’m working hard, okay?” The defensiveness in her voice bites through her high,
17
and lets me know I’ve done bad.
“I’m sorry mom, I wasn’t trying to say you weren’t. I just want to know what you
been doing.”
“It’s okay Macky. Anyways, it don’t matter too much. You remember Frank?
He’s back with me and he talks about you, he misses you and . . . ”
I don’t hear the rest—the dial tone blares into my ear like an overused police
siren. Topher cut off the call, but it’s too late. I can’t unhear the words, the name. I grip
the phone receiver like a lifeline, and I won’t give it up.
I won’t.
I can only hear snatches of sentences inside my head, but the words are just fucked up
sound trying to get in.
“We’ve got to get her into the QR, it doesn’t matter how—she’s never gonna get
calm with us holding her right now.”
“Get the phone out of her hand, she’s gonna ruin her good ear with pressing it so
hard.”
No, they can’t have the phone. The phone is mine. If I can keep hold of it, then I
can get back. I know it I fucking know it.
“Switch me out, I can’t hold her—call J House, we need more staff, we’ll drag her
in if we have to, or she’ll tear herself apart.”
18
I can’t feel them, but I hear their sounds. They’re nothing to me. I am nothing to
me. I can’t get out of the Room, I can’t get out of my head, and he won’t get out of me. I
just want him off of me, out of me, that’s all I want. That’s all I want. That’s all I want
but I can’t ever have it.
“Please, let me go, I promise I’ll be good, I promise,” I can hear myself begging,
but I’m not doing it. Someone is making me beg. He is making me beg again and again.
Bony, shot-up naked body in the comer, tiny dirty hands. She won’t look at me, just curls
up and cries and cries, tears pinking up her blood slipping off her arms.
My nose can’t breathe. In the carpet, almost to the concrete, the carpet is so thin,
almost nothing. Pushing, pushing so hard I hear the crack and I feel the burst in my eyes,
in my head, filling up. Almost fall right through the floor so much so much so much
pressure.
Falling would be good so good but I can’t do it, too full without me. Can’t turn
my head, the hand holding me so tight, pushing so hard.
I should be dead, I wish I was dead, I could pretend I’m a corpse but I’m upside
down. Can’t move anything, too hot, too much skin and heavy.
Too sticky.
Salty fingers trail soft, shiver soft, down my arms, heating my body with his
sweat and perma-curved hands.
19
“Oh baby beauty, my baby beauty,” he bites into my ear, crawling in my skin,
“Fight harder, bitch,” but I won’t win, I never win.
Nothing good about the strawberries and mint he breathes on me, I see her eyes
full of burst blood and sweaty wet but they look at him, not me.
Only he looks at me, but I can’t see, just sticky, so sticky.
“V & t _
When I can finally open my eyes again, it’s the Quiet Room’s walls I see and a glimpse
of a not-regular staff holding the door barely an inch open. I don’t have the phone in my
hand anymore, so I know I’ve lost.
I can see red marks on my wrists from being restrained, but they won’t last. I
always know when my skin will remember. But this time I won’t be able to keep the
feeling, the weight of the fingertips. I can’t even remember the weight of myself, but I
can see. My eyes work okay, but I’m not so sure about my not-so-bad ear. I don’t hear
much, but I’m not worried. There’s just no point. The pressure building out and into my
head at least reminds me that this is me, wherever I am.
I open my mouth and I find the use of my lungs with a cracked scream, sound and
breath. The Room door shuts, but I don’t care. The carpet wasn’t able to eat me this time.
This time.
“V & t ----------------
20
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . . one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . . I count my age in my head over
and over again, as fast as I can so I don’t have to see any of them. One of the staff who
didn’t last very long used to tell us to count out our ages when any of us got upset until
one time when Isaiah wouldn’t stop. He just kept counting all day long until I don’t even
know when—he wouldn’t even eat, he just counted. Even when he lost his sound and
breath he kept counting, his mouth opening and closing, his body rocking side to side.
She didn’t encourage us to do that again, but I find it nice. It reminds me that I’m moving
forward, that I’m not just stuck in one age, one placement, one time. I’m moving forward,
however slowly.
“When you’re ready to talk Q, go ahead and move into the comer.” Haley is the
one at the door now, and her voice is soft as cotton. I don’t respond, but I know she
doesn’t expect me to anyway. I’m dead center of the room, spread eagle, trying to make a
snow angel in the stone gray rubber tiles. But I start to feel the hardness in my back from
lying too long and the Room has suddenly become too hot, the air thick with my taint and
screaming. I hate when I come back into my body, I get all stupid aware of everything.
I move into the comer, not because I want to talk to Haley or any of the staff, but
cause I don’t wanna be in the Room anymore. I just wanna be in what is for now my
room, in my bed, with the blankets covering me and the steady thump of the dryer that
shakes my bed from below and that I can sometimes get to match my heartbeat if I
breathe right enough.
21
I count myself for awhile in my head, until finally Haley opens the door farther
and Ko comes in and sits down in front of me. Far enough away that I can’t reach her, but
close enough that we can hear each other over the sound of cartoons in the main room.
Must be Transition Time. Ko’s been here a while, longer than me actually, and she
doesn’t show any sign of leaving. Her head is shaved, but her blue black hair has fought
its way up to poke out a bit. I wish I could feel it, but I know I’m not allowed. I’m pretty
sure she shaved it cause Taiomah managed to pull out a chunk when he attacked her
during the PM shift a few days ago for telling him he couldn’t play video games for the
rest of the night. I’ve never pulled out anyone’s hair, I’m not Rapunzel enough.
“How’s your breathing Q?” she asks in the lilting sing-song voice that she has no
matter what’s happening, and unconsciously gestures with her hands. She’s a big
gesturer, but I like that about her. It keeps her honest; it’s hard to lie when your hands
move wildly without thought.
“Okay.”
“I know this isn’t easy, but I want to hear from you how you’re feeling about
what happened.”
I stifle the urge to roll my eyes, being a smart ass will only get me stuck in here
longer. “I dunno, nothing I guess.”
Ko swipes a speck of non-existent dust off her sweaty, light tan skin and tries to
look me straight in the eye, but I won’t lift my gaze to her. I’m looking at the carpet
bums that criss cross seven times on my right knee and 13 times on my left knee, and I’m
22
focused on the fading bum that I wish so hard would last.
“Do you want to write down what you feel instead?” Ko asks, a low sigh escaping
her bare lips.
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I don’t want to remember what I feel, I just
want to go to sleep.
She puts me at the Desk with a piece of paper and a rather stubby pencil. I’ve
never tried to hurt myself with a pencil before, but lots of the other kids have, so we
never get sharp enough ones to write well with. Not that it really matters, no one cares if I
have master writing skills or anything.
“I want you to write down three things that you feel now, three things that you felt
when you were restrained, and three things that will help you right now. Do you want any
help?” Ko knows that I’m going to say no, but she always asks anyway. They all do, even
Gretchen. It must be in the handbook.
I write my answers without really thinking. I’ve done this so many times that I
don’t have to focus on what happened to come up with something, and unless it’s a weird
day when no one else is acting up and they are fully staffed, no one cares.
sleapy, mad, caulm
mad, confussed, scarred
sleap, room, read
Ko reads my answers and her lips dip down and crinkle roughly, but she doesn’t
say anything. I can tell she wants to since I can’t see her teeth, but I know that they don’t
23
have enough staff right now and she can’t just keep trying to get me to talk when I’m at
least calm and Ivory is in a restraint in the kitchen and I’m pretty sure Isaiah tried to run
away again.
Everyone’s back in Room Time right now since all the staff are busy, so Ko just
waves her hand at me back to the hallway, and Haley lets me in my room and closes the
door behind me. I crawl into bed, and my breathing slows at the squeak of the plastic
mattress and the bedspread covered in trucks. I don’t sleep with a sheet because I always
get all twisted up in them and then I feel like I can’t get out, but the staff don’t care. I
don’t wet the bed like a lot of the kids, so they don’t have to wash my bed all the time so
they let me keep it however I want. I feel bad for Taiomah and Rosemary and Aaliyah—
the staff try to hide it, but it’s hard not to notice when they come out of their rooms
carrying big black garbage bags that we all know has their dirty sheets in them. But none
of us care, it’s just something that they can’t do anything about yet. It’s the line we all
don’t cross, just like no one ever says anything to Isaiah or me when we clog the toilet
cause we don’t work right cause we’re so stretched.
I stare up at the ceiling at the glow-in-the-dark stars that don’t work anymore—
some past kid put them up before I came. But I like them even though they don’t light up.
They’re happy without being too happy. Sometimes it comes inside me harder then
others, but I never forget that I’m not a normal kid. That I have badness in me that I don’t
know how to get rid of. I carry the smell of ashes and strawberries and the taste of sweat
stained carpet with me always. It’s stuck in my nose and my skin that doesn’t match my
24
bio mom’s and sometimes I can smell it and sometimes I can feel it and sometimes I can
see it and sometimes it’s all at once. Sometimes I can push it to the back of my mind, but
it never goes away completely. Some of the staff think that none of us really remember
what brought us here, but they’re wrong. It’s why our bio parents, foster parents, and
adoptive parents don’t keep us. We don’t forget where we came from. Or where we’re
going. Or not going.
But in this moment I can let sleep claim me, and I drift off, comforted by my
plastic mattress, the thump of the dryer below, faded sticker stars, and Vivi’s dull throb
throb that reminds me I’m alive. More things than I know I deserve.
25
Chapter 2: The Therapist
It’s Chyna who finally forces me to talk a little. Leave it to a therapist to talk. Some of
the therapists I’ve had let me draw or play or otherwise get out of talking, but not Chyna.
She’s like a bulldog with an oversized bone. She doesn’t back down, and she doesn’t care
if I yell at her, get restrained after every session, or try to stay mute. I say try, because
I’m usually not very good at that with her.
I think part of the reason that she can break me on a regular basis is that she isn’t
very pretty. Her skin would be too white, but is almost always sunburned. She has lots of
pictures of nature, so I think she spends a lot of time outside. But she must suck at
sunscreen. Her nose is huge; it’s like a bulbous animal of its own on her face—very
round and shiny and crooked and often peeling. It’s a good place for me to focus on, I
hate looking people in the eyes, I can never figure out how long it’s okay to look. I don’t
even know what her natural hair color is since sometimes it’s purple, or red, or bleach
blonde or even green. I wish I could dye my hair like that. She’s a real big woman, and
she’d totally be on the healthy eating plan if she was in the house. I don’t think she’s very
good at picking out her clothes, they always look a little small, and she always seems a
little twitchy and pulled in. But none of that stops her from steamrolling into anything I
try not to say.
“Q, I have to start by apologizing,” she says briskly. Everything Chyna says is
brisk, I bet even if she ever cries that she sounds brisk, not that she would ever do
something so boundary-crossing with me.
26
“Why?” Her nose has a scratch on it today, probably self-inflicted from the itchy
phase of sunburns she once told me about.
“We shouldn’t have let your mom talk to you yesterday, it was a mistake, and I’m
sorry that you were put through that.”
“But I want to talk to my mom . . . I just don’t w an t. . . ” I can’t say anymore, I
can’t say his name. I can’t. “But I don’t want her with him, I don’t, I don’t,” I don’t want
her to be with him. I don’t want him giving her his taint, I don’t want him near her.
There’s more that I don’t want than I do want. But I know I’m selfish and I don’t know
what the fuck anyone needs, it’s not like I’ve ever kept my mom safe or don’t anything
she likes or been what she needs.
Chyna doesn’t touch me, but her hand moves as if she’s about to. “I know Q, I
know.”
“What the hell do you know? Can you take her away from him? I’m supposed to
be there so he don’t touch her, but I’m not there, I’m here!”
“It’s not your job to protect her, I know you want to, but you can’t, Q, you can’t.”
I don’t get what she’s trying to tell me. I mean, she’s my mom, of course I’m supposed to
protect her. If I don’t, who will? But it’s not like I am anyway. I’m here, protected even
from myself. Except in my head. They can’t take my memories and my taint away, even
though they say they want to. Why would they?
I don’t know when I’ll get to talk to her again, make sure she’s safe. Since I ended
up in the Room after talking to her, it probably won’t be anytime soon. I don’t know why
27
I can’t stop the taint from coming out, from strangling me every chance it gets.
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” I finally ask, not expecting or really
even wanting an answer.
For once, Chyna stays silent for more than a second. I want real bad to ask her if
I’ll get to talk to my mom again, but I worry if I ask then it’ll mean that I won’t be able
to.
But I’m not strong enough to resist the words. “Am I gonna be able to talk to her?
To check on her?”
“No . . . not for awhile Q,” Chyna answers, shuffling my file in her lap, the noise
of paper a stupid cover for her avoidance of what I’m asking.
“How long?” I persist, wanting a date, a timeline, anything, just something to look
forward to.
Chyna sighs loudly and blows her hair off her face, but she isn’t nearly as pissed
as I am. “How fucking long, Chyna?”
She continues pointlessly ruffling her papers, my history, forcing me to wait for
her. I hate waiting, not knowing, and sometimes I think she does it just to get me to work
on my ability to wait. It’s stupid. It just makes my breathing worse and then I can get all
angry and my taint gets out. At least with Chyna I know she’ll give me the truth and not
some ridiculous shit answer, or she just won’t tell me at all. I hate being lied to. I’m
always being lied to: how long I’ll be in a placement, when I’ll get to talk to my mom,
that it’ll just fucking stop someday. But let’s be honest here, it’s my fault. Doesn’t mean I
28
like it though.
“A long time Q,” she finally gets out, throwing her hands up in the air, my history
scattering around the office like badly made paper snowflakes—so much white, so much
crinkling. “A judge took away your mom’s contact rights . . . for now. So I honestly don’t
know.”
My fingers dig into my palms, the sharp contact of my uncut fingernails keeping
me from blowing. I breathe fitfully, but I breathe out and in. Out and in. Out and in.
But it’s the “for now” that keeps me from losing to my taint. I’ve had contact
taken away before, and I got it back, so it isn’t the end. I could still save her from him. I
could get free and find her or she could find me and we could get a room without him and
I could get money and she could make spaghetti with me and maybe just maybe not hate
me so much for not being her Angel.
Chyna leaves the papers all over the floor and all I can think is that it’s a good
thing that Rosy isn’t here and that Chyna isn’t her therapist, cause she wouldn’t be able to
handle the mess.
29
Chapter 3: Camp
I hate when we have groups. We all have to sit in this big square on the most hard
couches and be careful to stay exactly in our part of the couch so as not to get in each
others’ space. And we have to listen to each other talk and not say anything rude, or we
get sent to time-out. We have different groups every day, and sometimes we’ve had so
many groups that we wind up doing the exact same one that we did the month before.
Most of the time they’re on things like feelings and stuff, but whenever one of us is
leaving or someone new has arrived, staff or kid, we always have a Welcome Group or
Good Wishes Group, whichever it is. We’ve had both in the same day sometimes, but the
staff really hate that because none of us do well in either of the groups, so it’s like an
extra-fucked day when we have both.
I hate the leaving and new kid groups the most. In a Good Wishes Group, we have
to say the nicest thing about the person leaving that we can think of, and this is really
hard for me. I don’t like any of the kids very much ever, and I’m pretty sure that most of
the time they don’t like me or each other either. Every now and then there is a Rosemary
and Rosy, but even then, whenever the kids get too close, the staff stop letting them play
with each other, so by the time one of them leaves they usually hate each other anyway.
Or if they don’t yet, then they do at the group cause they’re leaving and no one can fuck
things up like us.
In Welcome Groups we have to say something nice about ourselves and that’s
even harder. I used to say that I like the color yellow, but the staff said I couldn’t keep
30
using the same thing, which is just stupid. So now I make up something weird that
doesn’t make any sense, and so far no one’s gotten on my case about it.
I wish we could have a group where we go around and state our diagnoses. I can
mostly guess, I think, what everyone’s are, but I’d like to know how close I am. Some of
them I know for sure cause I overheard the staff during a Staff Meeting Thursday. Our
diagnoses determine where we go, who gets us, and who we can be. I’ve known my
diagnoses since my first foster home—my caseworker told me so I wouldn’t get too
comfortable and expect to be able to stay. I’m Reactive Attachment Disorder and PTSD.
I’m lucky in a lot of ways, cause I’m not Conduct Disorder like Taiomah, Bipolar like
Ivory, Oppositional Defiant Disorder like Rika (and I think Rosemary too), or OCD like
Rosy. Almost all of us have PTSD.
I’ve heard Chyna say to my psychiatrist, Dr. G, that she doesn’t think I have RAD
since I always ask about my mom and I can take a hug pretty well, but Dr. G won’t
budge. They argue about it a lot, although they don’t know that I know obviously. Dr. G
told Chyna once that I will probably stop asking about my mom at some point, I might be
faking the hugs, and I’m unlikely to care about other people. Chyna told her not to give
up on me; this is sort of nice and all, but also stupid. I mean, I honestly don’t care about
anyone.
I can tell today’s group is a Good Wishes Group, even though we mostly know
about them ahead of time. Ivory looks happy and scared, her tiny legs swinging back and
forth, and a somewhat confused smile on her face that stretches her mouth wide and
31
bunches up her eyes, but keeps jerking her body as if she isn’t sure she should be happy
or not. Gretchen sits on one of the couches in the staff leader spot, and the couches are
surprisingly full. No one’s in time-out, at least not yet, or in a restraint, or in the Room.
Leaving and new kid groups always end up with lots of us in time-out though, so I’m not
holding my breath. It’s times like these that I really wish the staff would let us take bets
out, because I’m guessing at least half of us don’t make it through this group, and I could
really use some money.
A part of me wants to do something to get into time-out just to get out of having
to look at fucking Gretchen. The other staff, Will, Ko, and Haley, are sitting in kid-sized
plastic blue chairs just outside the square since there isn’t enough room in the square for
all the staff and all the kids. But if one of the kids attacks one of the others right now,
none of them will get there in time. Ivory had better be watching her back—everyone’s
gotta be hating her pretty bad right now.
Gretchen clears her throat and all the kids but me look at her. I can see them out
of the comer of my eyes as I stare at my knees, the rug bums still slightly red against my
faded skin that never sees the sun.
“Good afternoon everyone,” Gretchen says with fake sweetness, her voice even
higher than normal, and continues without letting anyone say it back—we can’t speak
unless we’ve raised our hands and been called on by a staff, Rule #982. “Tonight’s group
is a Good Wishes Group for Ivory. We would have told y’all sooner, but we just found
out today that her next placement is a go and that she is going to be leaving us tomorrow.
32
Ivory, would you like to tell everyone where you’re going?” I can hear it in Gretchen’s
voice; she’s enjoying the bubbling atmosphere of jealousy and resentment that’s circling
through all of us, except me. I don’t want to get adopted, I don’t. I just want my mom.
“I’m gettin adop-ted tomorrow by a mom, a dad, a chicken, four horses, and a
sister!”
I can feel Gretchen’s gaze on me before she even speaks. “Q, why don’t you tell
the group what it is that happens in this group since not everyone here has been to one.”
I consider refusing to speak, but I quickly give in. I don’t want to be restrained by
Gretchen. I don’t want her hands anywhere near me. “Everyone has to say one thing
they’ll miss about Ivory, something nice.”
“Thank you Q, why don’t you start? And then we’ll go in a circle.” All I want to
do is smack the smugness out of Gretchen’s voice, but I breathe in through my mouth and
resist it. Barely.
“Ivory, I’ll miss playin Uno wit you.” I think I played Uno with her all of one
time, but I remember it as being sort of fun. Until she lost, threw the deck of cards at me,
and tried to follow that up with a chair before getting restrained.
At Gretchen’s nod, Isaiah speaks up, swinging his rows back and forth in a
rhythm he matches his words to. “Goodbye Ivory, I’ll miss playing Chutes and Ladders
wit you . . . and playing video games wit you.”
I glance at Rosemary wondering if she’ll be able to come up with anything—it
was hard to miss how much Rosemary hates Ivory. The number of times she threw shit at
33
her and called her a motherfuckin cu n t. . . they’ll never be besties. “I glad you’re gettin
adopted Ivory, have a happy life.” Way better than I expected, Rosemary must be on
some gooooood meds right now.
“Bye Ivory, I really liked playing double dutch wit you, when we were allowed to
play with the ropes, cept when you hit me wit the rope that one time,” Rika says with
sincerity.
All Rosy says is, “Bye Ivory,” but she’s pretty loyal to Rosemary.
“Have a good life Ivory, I’ll miss eating breakfast with you in the morning,”
Aaliyah says, sounding all formal like always despite chewing on one of her braids, a
telltale sign that she’s gonna blow soon. Aaliyah doesn’t handle kids leaving well.
Taiomah doesn’t say anything, he just gets up and walks to one of the smaller
time-out chairs. Technically we’re allowed to go to time-out ourselves if we feel like we
need to get away, but we’re supposed to ask first. But with Taiomah, as long as he isn’t
biting anyone, it’s considered a good day, so none of the staff say anything, although I
can see them glance at each other, and Will oh so quiet gets up and stands against the
wall closest to Taiomah, trying and failing to look like he just needed to stretch. They
really think we’re so fucking stupid, it’s hi-larious.
“Well,” Gretchen glances at Aaliyah a hint of worry reflected on her too pretty
face, “those were all really nice things everyone. Please go to your room when I call your
name.”
As I walk to my room, I hear Aaliyah scream something but I couldn’t tell if she
34
was just screaming because she needed to hear her sound or cause she was trying to say
something. My hearing ain’t the best.
I hurry to my room before my own taint comes out and joins Aaliyah’s. Frank
gets into my thoughts as I lay in bed, Aaliyah shrieking in the distance. I push hard
against Vivi, the spongy badly trying to chase him away. I don’t wanna think about him
but I don’t mind thinking about Vivi, and they’re tied to each other. She’s my punishment
and my happy, she’s my permanent.
I tried to get away, but I couldn’t. Even with his weak, twisted up hands, I wasn’t
strong enough to fight him. And I shouldn’t have been fighting him anyway, my mother
was there and he could have hurt her instead. But I couldn’t stop myself and I tried
anyway, and then my body wasn’t sinking anymore, it was flying, the air cutting across
my damp skin with moments of nothing running through my mind in mixed up flashes.
And suddenly I wasn’t flying anymore, fragments of glass surrounded me like a pillow,
scolding me for trying to get away, and soothing my tears with the protection only sharp
edges could provide. And then I was no more.
_
I know I deserve it. I shouldn’t have tried to get away, I should’ve tried harder to do what
he wanted so my mom could be safe. But Vivi protected me even though my taint came
out and let me escape. But I left her, I left my mom there. I left her with him. And despite
my failure, Vivi never lets me down, even when she should. She kisses my face,
35
reminding me who I am, never letting me forget what I am.
Aaliyah’s continued screaming penetrates my haziness and for some stupid reason
I find myself giggling. When Aaliyah first arrived at the house, she thought she was at
camp. I guess her mom had told her it was a summer camp, and it took a couple hours
before she figured out that it wasn’t even though it should be so obvious right away, but
she probably had never been to camp, just like the rest of us, so why would she know?
Her mom hasn’t been back since, and sometimes when Aaliyah really freaks out she
starts screaming that she’s at the wrong camp and she wants to go home. It’s not funny
really, but I think whoever started this place probably tried to make it like camp to make
it seem less like what it really is. Not that I have any idea what camp is really like; but I
imagine there’s more singing and the kids get to go outside more and stuff. And in the
movies and on tv they always get to touch each other, like it’s no big deal, cause they
know how to touch each other without hurting. I wish I knew how to do that, but I don’t
think my taint will ever let me.
I know I’ll probably leave at some point, but I also know I’ll probably end up
back here. Or somewhere else like it. No foster family can hold Vivi and me.
36
Chapter 4: Angel
My favorite day of the week is Thursday, cause it’s Staff Meeting Day. All the house
staff, our therapists, and sometimes the psychiatrist, come in for two hours and talk about
what the hell they are gonna do with us. Since they still have to watch us, we all have to
be in our rooms the whole time, and they sit out on the floor in a tight circle of chairs so
that they can still see all the room doorways and see if we try to come out. Consequences
are a lot stricter, and sometimes they send some of us to some of the other houses if one
of us needed to go in time-out.
The whole set-up is hi-lariously stupid. They meet like this so they can talk about
us without us knowing, but we all knew that they are talking about us, and those of us in
the rooms closest to the end of the hall can kind of hear. I spend almost the entire two
hours lying on the floor flat against the door, with my good ear up against the crack at the
bottom. It is an unspoken rule with all of us that whatever we hear we pretend we don’t
no matter what it is so that the staff can go on pretending that we can’t, and end up giving
away more than they want us to know. Information is everything.
I can’t always hear, and sometimes my taint comes out during the AM shift and I
get stuck in the Room or time-out at one of the other houses. I really hate when this
happened on days that I find out after that they talked about me. I can always tell who
they talk about by what changes in our Behavior Programs, which are up on all the walls
for everyone to see so we know exactly what level we are at. But we also know what
level and program everyone else is at too. I know they talked about me last week, after
37
what happened on the phone with my mom, but I wasn’t in the house for the staff
meeting, so I didn’t know what they said. It was like the worst possible day for me to
fuck up, but that’s no shocker.
I can hear real well today though. The washer and dryer aren’t running
downstairs, and neither is the dish sanitizer in the kitchen. All that white noise is on break
like it might be on my side, though I know better then to think stupid thoughts like that.
Rika is up first. I wonder if she is listening as her therapist Quinn talks about how
they have found a couple relatives, but no one “suitable” willing to take her. Her parents
both had custody taken away a while ago and she isn’t allowed any contact with them
ever. I don’t know what happened, but when she gets restrained she still screams out for
her mom, as if expecting her to come help her. I wish I could ask her why, but I would
never be allowed to hear the answer, if she even wanted to give it to me. I wonder if
anyone misses her or if they are happy to be rid of her.
“There’s a cousin who might be willing to take her,” Quinn says just a little too
loud, a little too clear, “but he’s young and has kids of his own. No one wants her around
a bunch of other kids—she’ll just get another failed placement and the other kids’ll get
fucked up—and if she sexually abuses a kid at this age, she might get permanent sex
offender status, besides the obvious that no one wants her abusing anyone else. The
cousin’s very religious, so I think he’s just trying to do what he thinks he’s supposed to
do, rather than what he actually can do and wants to do. I think her caseworker actually
gets this for once, and since she’s already had one failed adoption, she doesn’t want
38
another. So Rika probably isn’t going anywhere for a while . . . Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Will responds almost too quietly for me to hear as the refrigerator kicks
on, “what about the adoption photo shoot?”
“It’s still on,” Quinn says, regret kicking her words, “I tried, trust me, but I
couldn’t talk the caseworker out of it.” I can imagine her rolling her eyes since she’s out
of view of us and can let her inner sarcastic bitch out.
“Seriously?” Will sounds surprised, although I don’t know why. The caseworkers
never listen to the staff. Sometimes I think they do the opposite of what they say just to
piss them off.
“She’s never going to make it through it, and we don’t have enough staff to send
more than one with her.”
“I know, but we don’t have a choice,” Quinn sounds resigned, but doesn’t
volunteer to go with her. Sometimes the therapists take us on required outings when there
aren’t enough staff, but I’ve never heard of Quinn doing it. I think she’s afraid of having
to restrain us, and she dresses way too nice. She always wears heels, so I couldn’t
imagine her trying to run after Rika, and she weighs about five pounds, so she couldn’t
restrain her probably if she needed to. Some of the therapists come down during the AM
shift if there are lots of us in restraints and help out, but Quinn isn’t one of them.
Whenever Rika gets walked to therapy, the staff who go with her always stay the whole
time, so I don’t think Quinn is real comfortable with her, or any of us for that matter. But
I’m pretty sure the internship year is up soon so Rika’11 probably get a new therapist
39
anyway as Quinn will be leaving.
Chyna is a staff therapist, not an intern, so I keep her the whole time I’m here,
which is not normal. In some ways this is good (or I know it should be anyway), but in
most ways it sucks because I can’t trick her as well as Rika’11 be able to mess with her
new intern. Chyna knows my weird things and she can tell when I’m lying or hiding or
just avoiding.
The sound of Chyna’s voice comes floating under the door, and I know she is
gonna talk about me, since I am her only client in B House.
“How’s Q doing?” Chyna asks. Super deep.
Topher speaks up first, “As well as can be expected, but she’s on the edge.” There
are murmurs of agreement, but I just roll my eyes. Such a non-answer, almost something
I would say after coming out of the Room to get out of having to state my feelings and
shit, I’d think Topher would be able to do better.
“I don’t know how she’s going to take this,” Chyna continues, practically
ignoring the answer to her own question, “but her younger half-sister’s adoptive parents
have finally decided that it might be time for them to meet and wants to arrange a visit.”
Everything stops and I suck in a breath, feeling the scratchy carpet fibers cut my
throat, but I donn’t cough. I just hold it in.
Angel. Fucking Angel who got the perfect family and has never met me cause her
stupid adoptive parents thought I’d be a “bad influence,” according to one of my foster
parents. She got the name Angel and a new life and I got a dirty name that no one can
40
pronounce and the taint. If I was a good person, I’d be happy for her that she got away,
that I was able to protect her by being bom first. But I’m not a good person, obviously.
I don’t think about Angel much. She was bom once I was already in the system
and my mom always tells me when we’ve had visits how she wished she’d been able to
keep her because she would have been the perfect daughter, and why did she give up her
Angel so easy? She never says she wishes she still had me—sometimes she’ll tell me
other things. She used to say nice things about me sometimes to Buyers, like how soft my
skin is and how good I could be. Or she just let Frank talk.
I always picture Angel as looking somewhat like Ivory but without the crazy. My
mom has always told me that it was my father who messed up her life, so I thought
maybe Angel was normal, and that I should probably be happy for her and all, but I ain’t.
Maybe Dr. G is right about me, maybe I can’t care about anyone right.
But I’m going to get to use one of the family rooms, the good one, if the visit
actually does happen. For an actual visit. But I don’t really want to meet her—I took care
of our mom, she hasn’t. Although maybe she would have done a better job than me.
Maybe that’s why she hasn’t met me before, cause I failed. Maybe her adoptive parents
only want to have us meet to show Angel how much better she is than me, and maybe
they’ll tell me off for letting Frank back in my mom’s life.
I turn my face into the carpet, so Vivi can find a spot to bum. If they don’t tell
Angel about Vivi ahead of time, I knew they’ll gape at me in the way normal, non-fucked
up people do. They probably will anyway even if they get told about her. The only people
41
who don’t flinch at Vivi are the other foster kids and some of the staff. I’m not the only
one with a fucked up body part, so the other kids don’t care, and a lot of them are
probably just glad they aren’t me.
But Angel doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about me. It isn’t like we arere gonna
have anything to connect over, so I don’t see the point in forcing her to meet me. Just
cause we’re related don’t mean nothing. I might have a bio dad out there somewhere if he
isn’t dead, but he didn’t want me either. So maybe she should just stay away so I can’t
infect her. So I can’t mess her up. So I can’t be a goddamn bad influence.
But it doesn’t matter, it isn’t my choice. Nothing is ever my choice. If my
caseworker wants us to meet, we’ll fucking meet. I bet she’s hoping I’ll be on such good
behavior that Angel’s parents will want to adopt me even though my face is so fucked up
and she can get an award or some shit for reuniting us and Angel and I will play together
everyday and eat together every morning and every night and I won’t hurt anyone and her
parents will let me stay and give me a home and . . . but I’m not a fucking idiot.
42
Chapter 5: Annette
I’ve imagined what Angel would be like a million times—when I first heard about her,
before I was told I couldn’t meet her, I imagined myself taking care of her, talking to her,
as if we were the best friends ever, but she’d let me keep her safe and hide her from
people that would hurt her. I thought of her in the same way I remember Annette.
I—shockingly—had a friend once. I was in regular school, although I couldn’t go
a lot and even when I did I’d get kicked out some of the time. I’d made it to first grade,
barely, pre-Vivi, and halfway through the year at the start of the second semester we got a
new kid. It was before the day had started, but I had walked and it was raining so I’d left
early before Frank or my mom was awake so I’d made sure I would be able to go.
Everyone else was playing four-square in the covered play area, while I was slouched
against the wall, shoeless—I hated wearing shoes at that time, and I took them off
whenever I could get away with it, feet curled underneath me in faded black socks,
clutching a piece of music, Caro Mio Ben, that I’d found on the floor and liked to look at
even though I didn’t have any idea how to read it. No one could see me—a cheap,
multicolored classroom tablecloth covered the table I was under and bunched up against
the carpet. I hadn’t sat there for more than a couple minutes, when a girl I didn’t know
with dark black skin and a burst of pinkish white that sprinkled across the left side of her
face pushed aside the tablecloth. She had on a florescent blue shirt with a cartoon penguin
on it, and penguin barrettes clipped at the base of her bantu knots.
The girl whispered, “What’re you doing under the table?”
43
I almost silently uttered, “Hiding,” through the hair curling over my mouth,
slightly put out that I was no longer alone, but also curious about the new girl. No one
ever wanted to sit near me.
She sat in front of my scrunched up body and asked, “From who?”
“Everyone.”
She accepted my answer without pause and looked at me with wide-open deep
brown eyes that were speckled with a bit of gold. Happy eyes. “Is it okay if I hide with
you?”
“Why d’you wanna hide?”
The girl pouted her mouth a little, but said, “Those girls are laughing at me . . .
cause I don’t know why, something to do with my shirt or my white patches I guess.
That’s what it always is.”
This was something I could identify with, something I could believe. “I guess you
can hide wit me, but you can’t tell anyone bout this spot, k?”
“Okay,” she shrugged her shoulders and looked around the bare, dark and dusty
surroundings of the underside of the teacher’s aid table.
Silence.
I bit my tongue, not wanting to speak, but felt the need to try, something I didn’t
feel often. “I’m sorry those girls laughed at you . . . they like to laugh at me too. One of
them, Claire, made up this game to make me cry even though I don’t cry over and over,
so now I hide during recess so I don’t havta play.”
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“Wha . . . what’s the game?”
I didn’t want to say, but I did anyway. “It’s so stupid. My real name is
Maconaquea but no one calls me that, and when Claire found out, she thought it was real
funny, so she made up a new version of tag, called “Maconaquea,” and I had to be
Maconaquea and tag people, and everyone I tagged became a Maconaquea until they
passed it on to someone else by tagging em . . . but even when I tagged someone, I had to
still be a Maconaquea, since it’s me, you know. So no matter what, I’m always
Maconaquea. Always, and I hate being it. Really hate it.” I could feel the rising shake in
my gut, the digging of my dirty, uncut fingernails into my hands. But the girl didn’t seem
to notice, and just looked at me from the corners of slightly wandering eyes. “That sucks.
Why did you play it? Why don’t you just not?”
“Because then they just laugh at me, and I don’t like being laughed at. Now
you’re probably just gonna laugh at me, but I guess that’s okay. Everyone else does.”
“I’m not!” the girl spit out.
“K . . . but aren’t you new?”
“Yeah, so what?” The girl started to trace her fingers around dirt marks on the
floor, half looking at me, and half staring at nothing.
“You probably don’t wanna be seen with me. You aren’t gonna make friends if
people know you talk to me.”
The girl stopped her hands, and looked back on me. “Why?”
‘They ju s t . . . they just think I’m kinda weird.”
45
“Why?”
“I dunno . . . ”
But the girl didn’t back down. “Yes you do!” she whisper-yelled, flecks of spit
flying around with her anger.
I gave up and said quietly, “Alright, yeah, but I don’t wanna talk about it, cause
then you’ll just laugh at me too.”
She crossed her heart with her right pointer finger, and solemnly stated, “I
promise I won’t. No matter what.”
“No matter what?”
“Yeah!”
“K . . . it’s cause I don’t believe in God.” I looked at the girl with my lips held
tightly together, daring her to laugh, but expecting her to at the same time, and in a small
way I almost wanted her to.
But she kept her word. “You don’t? Why not?”
Surprised, I just babbled out the story. “My mom’s boyfriend Frank works at the
Jimi Hendrix museum, and he takes me with him to work sometimes when my mom
makes him and he doesn’t care enough to fight her on it. But this one time a while ago, I
was sitting on the steps outside the museum by myself, and this man came up to me. He
sat next to me, so I gave him somma my ice cream, and he told me I’s gonna have a baby
in the same way Mary did. I looked at him, he looked at me, and I decided I didn’t
believe in God.”
46
“I don’t really get it.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to. Do you still wanna stay under the table?”
“Yeah. You’re aren’t laughing at me.”
Excited about the change of focus from myself to her, and, going off of the only
thing I could tell about her besides that she was laughed at too, I asked, “Do you like
penguins a lot? Cause they’re all over your shirt.”
“Yeah, they’re my fave animal. I just think they’re cute. I saw some in a zoo once,
and they just seem like they’re okay no matter what happens, y’know? My mom said she
thought they looked like vic-ars with shopping bags, but I don’t really get that. Either
way, they’re super cute. I have em all over my room too.”
“I guess so, but I’ve never seen one—cept a stuffed animal, I think.”
The girl’s eyes opened a bit wider. “Really? Haven’t you ever been to the zoo?”
“Nah.”
She giggled, “Oh, well, that’s okay. Maybe my mom’ll take us sometime, if you
wanna.”
I’d never really been invited to do something with anyone before that I wanted to
do, my own age anyway, and I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to say, so I just
nodded and mumbled, “K.”
The bell rang, causing us both to look around, expecting new faces to invade our
space, but none appeared.
“I guess we should unhide,” 1 whispered unsurely, not really wanting to go out.
47
The girl started to back out of the table, “Yeah, okay,” but paused for a moment.
“I’m Annette by the way.”
“I go by Mackie.”
“That’s kinda strange.”
“Yeah. I know ”
That was the best couple of months ever. Annette and I did everything together and she
never left my stupid ass to play with the other girls even though I would have gotten it if
she had. We played together at school and I went to her place whenever I could. She
never came to my place since my mom said I couldn’t have friends over, but I wouldn’t
have wanted her to anyway. I loved being at her apartment—she lived with just her mom
since her dad was an officer in the Navy and out on tour as she said. Her mom worked all
the time, but had a neighborhood teenager, Brinley, watch Annette afterschool, but the
teenager didn’t much care what we did as long as we didn’t break anything, and
sometimes she’d make us snacks. Annette had her own room and a big blue comforter
that we could wrap ourselves in and pretend to be burritos. We’d run into her room after
school and jump on her bed and just roll inwards, and scream “Burritoyurit!” and laugh
so hard I’d almost always start choking but I was happy so I didn’t care and I’d think
maybe I could just stay forever and ever and we could be sister sisters and maybe she’d
never forget me and we could just stay burritoed and no one would find me. But one of us
48
would get hot after a while and we’d get out and go try and find a snack—Annette always
had the best snacks. Sometimes we’d eat apples and peanut butter or crackers with
mayonnaise and hot peppers—this was Annette’s fave snack because her dad loved it—
and sometimes if Brinley was feeling generous we’d get microwaved pizza pockets with
the cheese that bursts out the sides and I’d always bum my fingers but it was hot and
wonderful and I didn’t care.
She moved away by spring break when her dad came back and got stationed
somewhere else far away where I couldn’t visit, but I still pretended she was there. I
didn’t last that much longer in that school anyway, I missed class too much and fought
too much, so I got kicked out. I pretended that I moved away with Annette and that we
went to the zoo everyday and ate popsicles behind the couch and watched television with
the lights off and looked for ghosts with British accents like her mom who grew up in
London.
But I hadn’t moved away, and since I got kicked out of school I was home a lot
more until I could get enrolled in another school. My mom was so mad at me when she
got the notice she left me with Frank for two and a half and by the time she came back,
flecks of blood and blackened white powder ringing her nose, I wouldn’t have been able
to go to school for a while anyway. I missed Annette with everything in me, though I
knew it was probably best for her to get out of my life, I couldn’t do anything for her that
she couldn’t get better from someone else.
I got re-enrolled in another school, but Vivi came soon after and I lost Annette’s
49
face as I moved through foster homes and schools and social workers and respite
caregivers. But then I found out about Angel and wanted to meet her so bad, but no one
would let me. I couldn’t blame anyone, but I wanted to at least know what she looked
like. Did she look like me? Would she want to hide with me like Annette? The more
people told me I couldn’t see her, the more I wanted to meet her and make sure she was
okay..
When my caseworker, Belle with the Blue-Tipped Hair I think, told me she’d
been adopted, I didn’t have any more questions about her. I knew then that she wasn’t
anything like me at all, but a small part of me still wanted to meet her and know what it
was about her that made her different than me—I didn’t know who her dad was just like I
didn’t know who mine was, but I knew it wasn’t Frank. At least, I didn’t think so. I didn’t
think she would’ve gotten adopted if it was since she’d have the taint like me and no one
would want her then. I was happy for her, I honestly was.
But now knowing I finally get to meet her, I can’t help but think that it isn’t good
for her. I can feel the heat bubble up inside me, the bum between my legs, the prickle of
Vivi. My body knows it’s wrong. The next few days pass by in a complete blur with Vivi
protecting me from my thoughts and the Quiet Room floor learning my face more than
before.
I wake up to a feeling of nothing, dead calm. Angel comes today. I finish my morning
50
routine, eat breakfast silently, watch television during transition time and only get one
time out for getting in Taiomah’s space not on purpose, and play Uno with Topher, who
came in special to supervise my visit cause everyone knows he’s my favorite and despite
my taint no one wants this to go badly. Probably that’s mostly because they don’t want to
deal with touching me or having to do all that paperwork after a restraint, but still.
We sit at one of the small, round kitchen tables, while Hailey works on lunch, and
some of the other kids play games and work on homework at the other tables.
“Aww, Q, I can’t believe you picked blue, you know I don’t have any blue,”
Topher groans big, but smiles, and starts drawing cards.
“Hey, you the one gave me a draw four mister,” I roll my eyes at him and laugh
when I notice he has to draw like a million cards before finally getting a blue card. He
probably has a wild somewhere in there, but he always saves them till the very end. He
doesn’t like to lose, and we take our Uno very seriously. That’s one of the things I like
best about him—he never lets me win on purpose, hell, he doesn’t let anyone win on
purpose, even the kids who lose their shit when they lose. He doesn’t go for the easy way
out.
He spreads his cards in front of his face and pretends to fan himself with just a
small flick of his wrist, all girly like. “Might as well make use of my cards since I have
practically the whole deck, Ms. I-only-got-two-cards-left.”
“What can I say? Uno’s my game,” I smirk at him, and shoot down another card,
“Uno!” I yell out before he can, and wonder if Angel is as good at Uno as I am. If I win,
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I’ll have to add Uno to my list of Positive Affirmations cause I’ll actually mean it.
He puts down a card, and I smack my last card down in victory, “Ha ha! I won!” I
flash a grin at him, ignoring the pounding in my belly and face that’s trying to remind me
of the rest of the day.
“Aww, man, I can’t believe you won!” He fake pouts, but then holds out his hand
for me to high five. “Oh yeah,” I brag, high fiving him. It’s always so nice to have one-
on-one time with a staff, and even though I know it’s cause everyone is worried I’ll blow
with Angel coming and all, I still like it and I’ll take it.
Angel. She is supposed to arrive while everyone is in their rooms for Quiet Time
so if I blow the rest of the house doesn’t have to deal with it, and before I make it to my
room to wait, Ko calls me over to the staff couches, where she’s sitting so she can see all
the room doors and make sure no one get out even though all the doors and windows are
all alarmed anyway.
Everyone else has already been called and sent to their rooms, so it’s just staff
fucking around, doing dishes, picking up trash and rearranging furniture from where one
of the kids had made a fort.
“They’re not coming, are they?” I ask, looking at Ko’s sneakers, wishing I had
Nikes too.
“What? No, sorry Q, I didn’t mean to make you think that,” she says, “I just
wanted to ask you if I could have a hug.”
I look up at her as she stands and lifts her left arm, but leaves it hanging out there
52
waiting for me to make the decision. “Uh, sure,” I mumble, and lightly put my arm
around her waist, as she loosely drapes her arm over my back and gently squeezes my
shoulder. According to the rules, kind-of-hugs, when both staff and kid agreed to them,
aren’t supposed to last longer than three seconds. Rule #27. But Ko doesn’t pull away—
my breathing slows to match hers as I feel her side expand with breath and fall as she lets
it out.
She looks down at me without letting go, “Whether or not they come Q, it’s not
cause of you. You’re worth it.”
I shrug and start to pull away, not wanting to tell her she’s wrong but knowing she
is. “Thanks Ko, I, uh, better get to my room.” I scurry down the hall, wanting nothing
more than to dig my nails into Vivi, but not wanting to let Ko or Angel or Topher or my
memory of Annette or anyone else down, even though I obviously do all the time
anyway.
53
Chapter 6: Half-Moons
Her face is nothing like mine. Sun-lit skin a hint darker than mine, smooth and soft
looking, smattered with freckles instead of puckered, discolored edges. Her skin looks
like it doesn’t smoke, like it protects her body lightly because she might be able to fly
away. She looks so perfect I can almost see right through her. Recently shampooed, dark
brown hair fishtails down her back, resting at the bottom of her shirt, a bright star at the
front. She will have been the first one to wear it—I bet they took her shopping, let her
pick out her own clothes, because they fit just right. Not too tight to show skin, but not
too big either. But her leggings look way too easy to take off—like they might just slip
down if someone pulls just right. No hips and flat nips, baby toes and jelly rolls. Still
baby skinny, belly pooch and tight snatch like Frank used to tell me before he made me
loose.
I just stand there looking at her, her eyes roaming the room—looking at anything
but Vivi—and try to think of something I can say that will be allowed. Probably it won’t
be a good idea to ask her if she gets tingly from watching the rape scene in Norma Jean
and Marilyn, but that’s all I can think of. Of everything I’ve been doing the past few
days, it didn’t even come to me that I should think of something to say— but I never
really thought the girl would show. It kind of feels like I might be lost in my fucking
crazy head and I’ll wake up in the Quiet Room instead of the good Family Room.
Her adopted parents stand behind her, almost-blood red tinted white hands on
each shoulder, fingers curled over and protecting her from me. The man stands tall and
54
gray, wrinkles just lining his cheeks, his neck sagging over his pressed button-up. The
woman is younger than I thought she should be, but her face is too smooth, too perfect, as
if she’s never smiled before. Her blonde hair is in a tight bun, no wrinkles there either,
her skirt suit really, really ironed. They look like they are going on a job interview, not
bringing their kid to meet the fucked-up half-sister.
Topher stands next to me, not touching, having just mostly-shut the sliding glass
door behind us. He bends down until he is eye level with Angel, who looks right at him,
without fear in her eyes. Just a wide open, who are you look that tells me straight up she
doesn’t have the taint.
“Hi Angel, I’m Topher.” He looks over at me, “This is Q. She’s really excited to
meet you today.”
“Hi,” she whispers, not taking her eyes off of him. He’s safer than me.
Topher stands up and holds out a hand to each of the adults. They glance down at
his wrinkled jeans and plain black t-shirt, a spot of egg leftover from breakfast crunched
into the lip of his sleeve like almost everyday, but he leaves his hand out until they both
shake it and keeps an even tone cause nothing fucks with his calm, “Pleased to meet you
both, I’ll be supervising your visit today. Q? Why don’t you say hello?”
“Hey.”
Topher gestures everyone to sit. Angel sits on the faded green couch with each of
her adults on either side of her. They sit at the very edge, as if worried that the dark
patches littering the sofa are going to infect them. I have a sudden urge to tell them what
55
they are from, but I don’t think mentioning kids who wet and shit their pants is the way to
get this started. So many ways to fuck up. I can think more of what I shouldn’t do then
what I should do, so I try to keep my mouth closed enough to not speak, and open enough
that I can still breath. Stupid nose that doesn’t work right.
I sit directly across from Angel and her family on the identical couch, cept the
placement of stains. Topher sits next to me, on a separate cushion, untouching, staying
within the rules but not leaving me alone like a CPS interview.
“Q, this is Mr. and Mrs. Stama, and Angel, of course.”
Nobody says anything.
“We have about an hour—normally I’d sit over in the comer and let you all visit,
but I think since this is the first time that I might sit here for a while. If that’s okay with
you, Q?”
I nod, digging my fingers into the cushion and wishing I am back in my bedroom,
digging into skin where no one can and no one can judge. I chance a look up at Angel,
who is looking at me but looks quickly away. I don’t know what she makes me feel, I
don’t know her. She is already so protected, so safe, and I’m sure she don’t need me or
Vivi.
“So, Angel,” Topher starts when no one else does, “what do you like to do for
fun?”
After glancing at her parents for approval, she speaks almost too quietly for me to
hear. “I do ballet—I . . . I like to dance.”
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Her mother, her other mother, sucks in a breath. “She doesn’t just like to dance,
she loves to dance—she may be young, but her teacher says she’d have already put her in
pointe shoes if her bones had finished hardening. She’s going to be in The Nutcracker
this year—she’s the best in her class, and we couldn’t be prouder.”
I roll my eyes at the straightening of her back and smile that doesn’t touch her
eyes and glance out the window, wondering if it is as cold as it looks—the wind
smacking the orange and red leaves against the window. Although I can’t imagine why
they would want to come in here of all places.
“Young lady, don’t be rude,” her other mother scolds me, bringing the heat to my
cheeks and the shaking to my feet. Bitch.
“Please, Mrs. Stama, it’s not your place,” Topher says, holding up his hand at her
open mouth of objections. The staff know how to command anyone—if they can deal
with us, they can deal with anyone. These fucking people don’t know who the fuck
they’re dealing with.
Topher turns to me and quietly reminds me to be respectful, but that I can have a
break if I want. I shake my head no, just wanting to look at Angel even though my body
wants to hide.
“So . . . ballet, huh?” I say, looking straight into Angel’s bright brown eyes. She
doesn’t look away. She tilts her head to the side, and purses her small lips as if her
thoughts are bigger than her size.
“What’s good about it?” I ask, rubbing Vivi a bit to keep my eyes up.
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“It’s . . . it’s hard, so it’s all I think about. Which step, which way to move my
arm, my foot, suck in my tummy . . . and people always tell me I look pretty.”
The woman pats her knee, “You do honey, you are absolutely beautiful.”
Topher clears his throat and glances down at me, “Q, why don’t you tell them
something about what you like to do?”
It’s like my Positive Affirmations, but instead of a mirror, I get the moms who
pick up their kids from school. “I like basketball, but I haven’t done it in awhile.”
Angel nodds. “Yeah, that’s fun . . . how’d you get that scar on your face?”
The adults all suck in a breath, “Angel!” Mr. Stama exclaims, while Topher starts
speaking in low tones about something I can’t hear.
I look at Angel. It isn’t always so great when people think you’re pretty.
“I tried to run.”
Mr. and Mrs. Starna stand and pull up Angel with them. “This was a bad idea,”
Mr. Stama rumbles out, “We have to go. Angel—move your butt.”
Mr. and Mrs. Stama each grab a little hand and tug her forward, but she turns her
head back towards me, stumbling as they almost run while her little legs don’t move on
their own.
“But, but . . . she’s my sister. I wanna be here, be here with her,” Angel pulls
back, trying to move back toward me, but her parents, her real family, just use their
bigness to make her move, and take her outside, ignoring her words, ignoring me and my
stupid fucking face.
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I sit silently, still and not breathing, as Topher follows them out the sliding glass
door and then the locked front door. I can see him arguing with them through the window
on the small porch—he’s mad. His hands are waving in the air, his mouth is open wide,
but I can’t hear them. I’m not rolling in surprise that I messed this up, I knew I would.
But I want her to be here too. I want to know if the wrong people think she is pretty if her
parents ever hurt her if anyone ever hurts her if she knows how to play Uno if ballet
really makes her happy or if she likes playing basketball or just likes trying to make a
basket if she ate apples whole or cuts them up into slices if her other mother makes her
hot breakfast or she eats cereal or nothing at all.
But I also don’t want to know her at all. She didn’t stick with my mother, she
didn’t have to deal with Frank, or fail my mother. Only I did that. But not really anymore,
since I’m and my mother is somewhere off with Frank needing me to come find her and
take his eyes away. Is he hitting her right now because I’m not there? Does he know I’m
thinking about him, wondering if he wants me there to make me even looser? But maybe
he doesn’t even miss me, maybe my mom is enough but I can’t help her.
Ko comes in to see me and sits carefully down next to me, almost exactly where
Topher was sitting just a minute before. When Angel was sitting across from me. When I
could look at my sister. But she isn’t really my sister, we just have the same bio mother,
but she isn’t even really her mother anymore since she has a new one. A mother who
calls her beautiful. A mother with clear, white skin and straight lines, who probably does
make her hot breakfast in the morning. Traitor thoughts.
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“Q . . . ” Ko begins, and I turn to look at her, away from the retreating backs of
Angel and her fucking clean parents as they practically run across the grass toward the
parking lot, little legs waving just off the ground.
“She’s still my mom! I won’t give up, I won’t!” I scream at Ko’s face, filled with
frown lines and smile lines and no time for lotion, noticing Topher has come back inside
and is standing behind Ko, backing her up, making sure she’s okay, making sure I’m not
fucking hurting her. Which I could.
Ko remains seated, her lines barely visible with the even press of her chapped
lips. I want to choke the calmness from her, to dig my fingers into her delicate neck and
feel the soft skin as it presses in firmly, but with the give of blood and water. But I also
don’t want to touch her at all.
“Q, this isn’t your fault,” Ko states, her eyes blinking normal, “You didn’t do
anything wrong.”
“Of course I did, of course I’m wrong! Don’t be stupid!” I stand up and see
Frank’s face on Topher, noticing for the first time how much he looks like him, with his
dropped lip and barely defined arm muscle. In the slight stubble on his pointy chin. I can
feel it scratch my face, my thighs, and I run toward him hearing my mom wail that I’ve
abandoned her like everyone else. Tophers gone, it’s just Frank, it’s always Frank. He’s
in me, he’s everywhere I’ll ever be.
Ko stops me fluidly and wraps my arms straightjacket style and holds my wrists,
knocking me backwards to sit on the floor against her knees. “No! I have to stop him!
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Please,” I sob, yanking my arms as hard as I can, but she won’t let go. She just locks my
elbows and squeezed my wrists, tight enough so I can’t struggle too hard, but not too
tight to hurt me. She won’t hurt me, even though she should. She should fucking hurt me.
And if she’s holding me then Frank could hurt her, what if Ko gets hurt because I’m bad?
Where is Topher?
“He’s not here Q, he’s not here,” Ko says in an even tone, but I barely hear her.
I know he is, I know it as much as I can feel the breath in my skin, as much as
Vivi is my only constant. He has gone out of sight, but I know he’s gone to find my mom,
to hurt her again. To climb on top of her and squeeze her neck while he fucks her and
grunts that he is gonna get on me next. Or maybe get on someone else next first, make me
watch. Try to get me off without even touching me but he’ll fuck me up next, he always
does, he just likes to leave me for last because I’m his favorite.
“Let me go,” I beg, tears mingling with the snot dripping down my face that I
can’t wipe away, “Please, let me help her. Don’t let him hurt you!”
“Q, we’re in B House, he isn’t here, you’re safe,” Ko states, almost a chant,
“What color are the walls, Q? What color are they?”
I pull and twist, and try to kick my legs, but someone is holding them down, her
back to me, her arms circled around them, not letting me kick, not letting me hurt anyone.
Hailey. Her bleached hair tangling around her once-tight, now messy bun, and the faint
smell of cigarettes I never see her smoke. My eyes are swollen, but I squint as I feel the
press of Ko’s calloused fingers against the tightness of my skin. The rough cotton of my
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clothes. Hailey’s body pushed into my legs, my heels dug into the floor.
“I . . . they, they’re blue,” I choke out, seeing the paint, seeing the scratch marks,
the dents, the spackle, the random crayon marks no one ever has time to get off because
we’ll just make more.
“Yes, Q, that’s right, they’re blue. Do you know where you are?”
“B House, I’m in the, the Family Room, I’m in the Family Room.” I stop the
struggle in my limbs, giving up because I’m too late. I’m always too late. Frank and
Topher are both gone, but I know Frank is out there, waiting.
“That’s right Q, you’re with Hailey and me in the Family Room. Since you’ve
stopped struggling, I want to stop holding you. If we let go, will you try to get away?”
“No.”
“Once we let go, your next instruction will be to walk to the Desk. Will you be
able to do that?”
“Yes.”
“On the count of five, Hailey is going to release your legs, and then on another
count of five, I’ll let go if you are still following directions, okay? Then get up and walk
directly toward the Desk.”
I agree, hoping I get to go to my room soon so I can try to sleep.
I make it to the Desk just fine, and sit in the chair. Ko pulls up a chair next to me,
and I can see red half-moons on her wrists, small droplets of blood fucking with her
usually clear skin. I look down at my own fingernails and see the red rims on the jagged
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edges, her blood screaming at me that I’d hurt her, just like I’d hurt everyone else. It is
always me. I am the taint. I can hear Ko trying to get another staff to switch her out, but I
get up and finally dig my nails right into Vivi, waking her up, exploding my head,
surrounding myself with my own fire so I could bum on my own.
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Chapter 7: Baby Toes
Ko knocks on my door a couple days later early in the morning, waking me suddenly
from a nothing-dream. She opens the door after the second knock, but doesn’t come in.
No one had slept last night with all the screaming since more than half of us blew. I think
it was my fault. Chyna had told me during session when I asked that Angel’s parents
wouldn’t be bringing her back, but I didn’t really need her to tell me. I already knew, just
like I know I won’t ever look at Topher the same way again. I don’t know how I hadn’t
seen it before, but once I had, I couldn’t unsee it.
“Q?” Ko whispers, as the florescent light from the hallway filter in through the
barely open door, lighting up my train track sheets.
It’s still dark outside—I can see the rain dripping down my window, and the
bright florescent hall light, but nothing else.
“What?” I croak out, the rough edge of sleep and no water still sitting in my
voice. “Did something happen?”
Ko shakes her head, “Nah, you’re fine. But we need you to come out and sit on
the welcome couch, ok? Go ahead and put some clothes on first.”
“But I’m supposed to shower in the AM, shouldn’t I shower first?” I sit up and try
to rub my sleep out of my eyes, shivering in the thin cotton of my rainbow striped
pajamas.
“Not today, Q—just change and come out. You ready for the lights?” At my nod,
she turns on the overhead lights, the florescent bulbs buzzing to life, slowly eating the
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dark.
I change quickly. What could I possibly have done in my sleep to have the routine
changed? I put on jeans like always—they are so much harder to get off then anything
else cept maybe a snow suit—and layer a long sleeve and a short sleeve t-shirt. Layers
are my best friends.
I open my door slowly, but there isn’t a creak anyway. They keep the hinges well-
oiled. Well, Taiomah does anyway. It’s his weekly chore to WD-40 the hinges since the
staff have to perform checks on us every 15 minutes at night to make sure we are still in
our beds, and, well, still alone in our beds, and don’t want to wake us up out of our spec-
tac-u-lar dreams. But really they just don’t want us waking up and being crazy. It is a lot
of paranoia if you ask me—our windows and doors are all alarmed, so anytime one opens
it beeped in the staff office and the room number shows up. I know some kids manage to
sneak out and into each other’s rooms sometimes, but I honestly don’t know how. Maybe
I’m just not smart enough, who knows. Or maybe it’s cause I haven’t broken my alarms,
or maybe it’s cause I’m not lucky enough to do it when the staff aren’t in the office.
Probably all of the above.
It doesn’t take me long to figure out what’s happening, and I should have known
already. As Ko comes down the hall to walk with me I see the red flashing lights shining
in the front window in intervals of every three seconds and the EMT, a young white dude
with a clipboard dressed in blue with patches and a ball cap that isn’t a ball cap, I know. I
not completely stupid.
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I keep walking forward, only a slight pause in step to indicate that this is new
information, but I’m only half-awake and I’d like to think a part of me knew it was
coming. Ko stands at my side, slightly behind me, as if waiting for me to blow out, but
I’m too tired to care.
“Do I need to bring anything?” I ask, running my hands up and down my face,
waking up Vivi and my head, wanting to be alert to make sure the EMT don’t have any
reason to come near me.
“No,” Ko replies in a whisper. I can barely hear her over the whirring of the dish
sanitizer and the water running over the dishes Topher is attempting to clean. He doesn’t
even look at me—he just keeps looking at the melamine white bowl, the suds dripping off
the side, and the water unevenly spurting out of the faucet, as he scrubs the same spot
over and over again with the rough side of the blue sponge. But he doesn’t have to look at
me for me to see his face—to see Frank’s face. I know the soft lines of his cheekbones,
shaved clean and neat, are nothing like Frank’s stubble and scratch. I know that his
skinny and brown sloping nose that looks like a park slide with how smooth and upturned
it is doesn’t really resemble Frank’s bent, dirty red and pink nose with hundreds of burst
blood vessels and deep, open pores eating his face. If anything, Frank’s nose looks more
like mine with how broken it is. But his wide soft brown eyes that protrude just a hint
unnaturally from his face as if he is just a bit sickly look just like Frank’s—except Frank
usually keeps his squinted, the pupils crazy large as he put his hands on me, while
Topher’s always remain open and sensitive and calm, even when I am trying to claw
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them out of him.
A s Q tx .----------------
My stay at the hospital isn’t so different from B House, cept I’m drugged out of my
fucking mind so much of the time that the haze is there, keeping me back, but the taint
can’t dig in so hard. The hospital is a huge cement box of adults in multi-colored scrubs
and ID badges that swing rapidly back and forth and just like at the house, there aren’t
enough of them to stop us from hurting ourselves most of the time. But they don’t have to
restrain us as much—they get to use drugs. Whenever I de-comp-en-sate as Chyna would
say, all clearly and each syllable spelled out, I get shot up with something clear and
gooey, my veins harden instantly, and then my whole body shatters and melts into itself. I
lose the ability to move right, to lift one foot up and down and take my hand and touch
my face, but I can’t care less. I fall asleep cause there is nothing else to do. It is actually
pretty nice—I don’t have to think a lot here. I’m supposed to meet with the psychiatrist
whenever I have to get shot up, but I only actually have once in two weeks and I’ve been
shot up way more than that, obviously. He isn’t as nice as the psychiatrist at the house.
Budget cuts and more budget cuts, according to what I overhear from the nurses’ station.
Same as at the house.
Each day I wake up at 8:00am per the rules. It takes awhile as I’m on Trazadone,
which knocks me out pretty good. I’m pretty sure I make my bed and shower and stuff,
but the morning is always kind of a haze since it takes a while for the Trazadone to wear
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off. They adjusted my meds when I first got there, so I’m on a higher dose of it, so I sleep
harder, but I don’t usually find my thoughts until after lunch. My taint tries to come out
in the morning, but the fogginess in my head stops it from coming out. I just yell at
myself inside and don’t hurt anyone. I can’t even scratch myself as hard or get my blood
out as well as my traitor body is weaker. But I can still press Vivi and get her to hurt me,
so that helps for a little while.
Unless my taint fights harder than me and gets out early in the day, I eat with the
other hospitalized foster kids at 11:45am, just like at the house, and I don’t like any of
them either. My first day I sat with Kitri and Ramsey, but none of us said a word to each
other until Ramsey knocked Kitri out of her chair and screamed, “Don’t fucking look at
me you piece of fucking shit, I will fucking kill you!” I didn’t see Kitri look at Ramsey,
but I’d been focused on my mac and cheese and trying to get through lunch without being
spoken to. Ramsey has a large, scaly red bald spot on her pale head that I think she hates,
but it must be new, because otherwise she should know that none of us care about each
other’s scars unless we get loud. We all got them somewhere on us, and Vivi’s a lot more
noticeable anyway.
But Ramsey got shot up and Kitri left the next day. The kids rotate through pretty
quick, but I don’t play with any of them. I don’t get any outside time here, but I had been
getting restrained so much at the house that I wasn’t getting out much there either. I’m
not into video games, so I watch a lot of tv. I get to watch a lot more tv here, and I don’t
have to do my schoolwork, so until my taint comes out and I get shot up like Ramsey, I
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sit on the couch and watch a lot of Disney, and sometimes the nurses let me watch reruns
of the cartoons with kung fit, which are my favorites, but only if none of the younger kids
are watching TV, since we can only watch shows for the age range below us since we
might get “ideas.” Some of the kids do get ideas, but I think that’d happen anyway, we’re
always up to something they aren’t happy about it.
I love the show with the Navy dad and the Latina girl who sneaks overseas with
him to help him fight terrorists, but then makes friends with the Afghani girl and they
teach each other their languages and then help the Navy dad fight terrorists, but they
don’t always know who the terrorists are because sometimes its hard to see who’s good
and who’s evil. I like practicing Pashto phrases, like sahr pikheyr and za la ta sara meena
kawom, even though sometimes the staff get mad at me and send me to time out for
talking because I’m not supposed to be talking in the tv area. I only get to watch this
show like once every few weeks at B House cause there is violence in it or whatever,
which is hi-larious that they think it matters to our crazy but that’s the way it is.
My last day passes the same as the first day, cept I am the one who gets shot up at
lunch. Then the gooeyness. I tighten and break, and somehow I make it into a house van.
Hailey’s driving, which is weird because she hates driving. She never takes us on outings
unless someone else will be with her and will drive. I think she was in some sort of
accident a while back, cause she gets the wide open panic look whenever climbing in the
car and her hands get a little shake shaky, but I guess they are so short staffed that they
can’t worry about what they want. My fault.
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I look back at the hospital, but there is no one out there waving goodbye. I’ll be
back at some point I’m sure, and it’s not like there is anyone there to miss me.
-'tea* _
B House is exactly the same as I left it, no new kids and no disappeared kids. I get back at
night and all I get time to do is go to bed. I wanted to take a shower, but I’m on AM
routines like before, so I can’t. I put on my apple pajamas even though I hate apples and
lay face up in my for-now-bed. The dead stars on my ceiling stare back at me silently, but
I still love that they’re there.
Does Angel have stars on her ceiling or is she okay with the dark? When they go
dark do her parents buy her new ones? I hate that my first thought back is of stupid
Angel, but she’s here now. And I can’t help but wonder if she’s already forgotten about
me and if she’s okay. A part of me hopes she isn’t, the part of me that I hate. The part
with the taint. That gets tingly reading about rape. That hurts people, even Annette.
Especially Annette. The part of me that Frank cracked and holds tight.
You got no hips and flat nips, baby toes and jelly rolls.
His words didn’t really rhyme, but he thought they did. Sometimes he’d keep
saying it over and over again, in rhythm to his hip hip. Sometimes I’d stretch, sometimes
I’d rip, the trickle, thick red that stuck patches on my rubbed chubbed thighs.
No hips and flat nips, baby toes and jelly rolls.
It was the soft, slow touches that were the worst—he wanted me to feel it. To find
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my tingle again and again and again. He’d smile so wide and hard when he felt the shakin
takin, almost code words, but not really.
No hips and flat nips, baby toes and jelly rolls.
When I had too much patch he’d just rub it up and down, sticky and big, grunt
and cough. On my pooch, on my back, on my knees, any which way. I was his. I am his.
No hips and flat nips, baby toes and jelly rolls.
His rough, dirt-streaked fingers lightly pressing against my sides, feather touches,
while he grunts in my ear. “You like my fingers, baby Mackie? My touch? You my baby
girl, this little body only for me, but when I choose to give it out.” He’d smooth his
fingers down and around my shaking skin, so gently I wanted him to hit me instead.
Which he did too, but only when he wasn’t getting enough happy from my snatch and if I
struggled too much or made too much noise.
He is always inside me, even when he isn’t. I can never forget the feel of him
pushing all the way in, how slick it felt, the sharp push, the pressure that filled my belly
and made me feel like I’d eaten everything and had the whole world inside me screaming
and pushing, and I would do anything to get it out, to leave me alone. But I’m never
alone, once he filled me up he stayed, burrowing inside of me, until there wasn’t room for
anything or anyone else except the taint that takes away everything.
----------------
Angel doesn’t know any of Frank’s fingers or parts. Neither did Annette since I wasn’t
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stupid enough to bring her around him.
I asked Annette once if I could see her snatch, wondering if it looked like mine,
but she didn’t know what I meant.
“You know, where you pee from, in your underwear,” I explained. We were
sitting on the floor of her bedroom facing each other, our legs crossed.
Annette giggled and nodded, “You mean va-va-va-gi-na? Where girls make
babies?”
“Yeah,” I looked at her, my face almost straight-lined and my breathing purpose
slow.
“I guess so,” she said, stifling a giggle, “Brinley still watching that screamy
show?”
I opened Annette’s bedroom door and peaked my head out. I could see Brinley
sitting on the couch at the end of the hall, her head bent over someone math textbook, her
pencil erasing furiously while some old white dude separated two black women from
beating the crap out of each other on television. Brinley didn’t even look up—the small
living room sat open, but the hallway was long, and Annette’s door was at the veiy back,
her room tucked into the comer of the apartment.
I quietly shut the door, glad that her mom had fixed the squeak the weekend
before after Annette spent like an hour waving the door back and forth as it squeaked like
a new rubber ducky, mad that her mom wouldn’t take us shopping.
Annette stood up, her fingers smoothing her short blue swirly skirt. “Well?”
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“We all good, she’s not just watching the screamy show, but she got her math
book out, and you know what that means.”
She rolled her eyes and sat at the edge of her bed, her mattress nestled carefully in
a wooden headboard that while it was scratched and yellowed, looked like a beautiful
princess bed with its curly cues and raised frame.
“What do you want me to do?” She asked, her eyes wide open and looking at me
like she’d do whatever I said.
“Take off your clothes,” I said, wanting to see her body, see if she looked like me
or nothing like me.
“Okay,” she agreed, “you gonna take yours off too?”
“I don’t think you want me to.”
“B u t. . . but why you get to see me if I don’t get to see you?” She asked, looking
up at me with her tilted gaze as I stood in front of her, only a bit away.
I shook my head, “I got lots of ugly stuff on my body, it not worth a look.”
Annette rolled her eyes again, her giggle escaping. I swear, that girl rolled her
eyes so much that sometimes I wanted to hold her eyeballs and stop them from going
about it.
“Mackie, you crazy. I got this white stuff all over my face, you think anything you
got gonna be worse? I’m practically a white girl I got so much of it.”
I shrugged, not seeing how to get out of it, but she’d seen some of my bruises and
bums and cuts and swollen skin anyway. Never all at once, but some bits and pieces.
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Annette pulled off her rainbow striped tank top, giggling, and threw it at me. I
pretended to chomp on it and tossed it behind me. Her arms straight down, she crossed
her wrists, hunching forward a bit, a slight shake of her shoulders evident. Her stomach
sloped outward, her pooch round and smooth and unmarked except by her belly button,
which sat on her stomach like a tiny dead baby, curled as if it was still in the womb. The
black of her body made the white on her face, her knuckles and fingertips, her bare feet
with their toes almost curled underneath her, and even a small streak between her barely
rounded chest and almost flat nips, look even lighter. Knowing she wasn’t going any
further unless I lost my too big once-white short sleeved shirt, I pulled it over my head
and dropped it on top of her tank.
Annette looked at me, the whites of her eyes completely ringing the brown, but I
knew what she saw. I held my arms straight down, my fists clenched, wondering what
part of my body grossed her out the most. The fingertip shaped bruises littering my chest
in faded green and purple, the red dead tissue sitting on top of my skin around my slightly
smaller pooch that shot out little tendrils of escape from not being stitched up, or the
almost faded half moons on my waist, from where Frank had held tight to my waist and
dug in to hold me still so he didn’t have to be.
“Mackie . . . you okay?” Annette asked, the giggle gone.
“Yeah girl, I’m fine. I’m just so clutzy, you know it.”
I started to pull off my black leggings, so Annette let it go, and pulled her skirt off
fast, until we both just stood there in our underwear, staring at each other. Her wrists
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once again crossed in front of her, her feet shuffling around, while my knees pressed tight
to each other, hoping she didn’t notice the rash that spread angry red bumps around the
inside of my thighs in the patch, or the matching half moons just below my underwear.
She had a bruise just below her knee, almost yellow, from falling the day before
in the classroom, after one of the popular girls had tripped her. Her slightly ashy skin
otherwise looked bare and clean. She wore white underwear just as clean and bright as
the white on her skin, with little soccer balls all over them. Annette loved soccer—she
played midfield and I had managed to see her in games a couple of times. She would run
so hard, her eyelids squinted down, her nose scrunched up and spread wide, and when she
managed to get the ball, her eyes would widen just a bit as if she couldn’t quite believe it,
and although I couldn’t hear it, I know she giggled from the way her mouth bubbled.
My underwear was light green, the elastic loose and unraveling inwards almost as
if it was meant to be frilly and pretty with lace. Little holes peppered the top, from where
Frank had yanked too hard and his fingers had tom all the way through.
“Underwear?” I asked, excitement not nervousness making my voice wobbly. I
really wanted to see what she looked like, to touch her, to see if she got tingly and giggly
but not scared. I didn’t want to hurt her, but mostly I just wanted to know if her snatch
was pretty. Mine wasn’t.
Annette just nodded, a twitchy giggle slipping out of her lips. But before we could
go any further, we both jumped at the sound of a door slam.
“My mom’s home!” Annette squealed, and we both grabbed at our clothes,
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breathing heavy, and scrambled to put on our shirts, my leggings and her skirt.
“Annette!” Mrs. Shelby yelled out, her voice close, when I noticed Annette’s tank
top on inside out.
I pulled on it, not wanting Mrs. Shelby to hear me, but Annette got it back on
before Mrs. Shelby opened the door.
“Girls,” she said, suspicion lacing her tone, “What are you doing? Why are you
both out of breath?”
Annette just looked wide-eyed at her mother, her mouth shut, her chest heaving.
She wasn’t used to lying to her mother, but even she could tell her mom probably
wouldn’t be happy with what were doing. God, I was such a terrible influence on her. I
was fucking tainting her with Frank, with me, but even knowing this, I still wanted to see
her snatch, since it was too hard to look at my own.
“Hi Mrs. Shelby,” I said normally, “We were just running circles in the room,
trying to see who would fall over first. I lost.” I half-smiled at her as she nodded, rolling
her eyes. Annette came by it honestly.
“Sounds exciting,” she drawled, causing us both to laugh and Annette to finally
loosen up. “You staying for dinner Mackie?”
“Nah,” I shook my head, “I should probably get home, but thanks.” I waved at
Annette and dipped under Mrs. Shelby’s arm before she could ask me if I wanted a ride
home, which I would refuse, and she would argue with me, but I always got my way
cause I would just leave. Unless it was too dark, then Mrs. Shelby wouldn’t let me walk
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out the door, and she’d take me home in her silver Saturn, and I’d swing my legs in the
seat and wish I didn’t have to go home.
I ran home, the itchy bum between my legs scraping raw against my soft leggings,
knowing if Annette was with me she would beat me there and I’d let her.
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Chapter 8: It
Chyna tries to talk to me about Angel in session when I return from the hospital, but I
don’t want to. I refuse to talk about her when she tries, and just sit there, silent and barely
breathing, and count the fake squiggly tiles in the floor over and over again until she
sighs, and moves on to something else or just keeps sighing. After two weeks of nothing,
she gives up. Or “moves on” as she says, telling me that we can talk about Angel anytime
I want, but for now, she is going to stop asking me or waiting me out. I’m glad that I
don’t have to count the stupid tiles anymore, but a part of me loved hearing her name out
loud. Angel. Her name is so beautiful and makes me think of skinny blonde white girls
like Ivory, but without the crazy. Just soft edges and mouth-even smiles, un-jerky knee-
bends and good posture. The type of girl Frank used to tell me he wanted, and so did
everyone else.
But I just shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes, wondering if Annette is more like
Angel than me now, even if she isn’t blonde and white. Since Topher had become Frank I
don’t trust myself to see who people really are anymore. Not that I ever really did, I
mean, I don’t even know how to say my own name. Who the hell doesn’t know how to
say their own name? Angel got Angel like the perfect fucking little white girl she is, and I
got Maconaquea. Or whatever the fuck it is.
Maconaquea, Mackie, Bea, Q, or my personal favorite—straight up, “Captive
White One.” That kid in the foster home who looked it up just to make fun of me would
giggle while he said it too, not cause of the meaning, but cause of the white. No one can
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really tell what I am—least of all me—so I’m just nothing. White white people with red
bumy skin like Chyna make the most assumptions and have the most questions. They
want to know where I fit, how I classify, if I’m one of them or just pretending and not-so-
secretly hoping I’m not one of them. And when I don’t answer, they just do it for me. But
honest is I don’t even know. My mom is white as can be—her skin bums red even
through fog and her track lines show up so dark against all that blotchy vein-spattered
pink skin. But she doesn’t know who my bio dad is, and she’s never been real particular
about who she gets her dmgs from, so my blood could come from anyone.
At least I know Frank isn’t my dad, probably. There’s no way. My skin’s a shade
too dark to be a product of all that mottled almost clear skin. At least, I think. He could be
Angel’s dad I guess, but I don’t think so. She looks too good. There’s no way his blood
could be inside her without her knowing it. But what the fuck do I know? I’ve never even
learned to say my name right, because not even my bio mom haa any idea.
In the months of first grade before Annette arrived one of the girls with a straight part,
bouncy red bangs, chalky white skin, and a curly cue laugh found out my name. My real
name. Mostly. On roll call the first day of school, or my first day as it were, I could
always tell when the teacher got to my name cause without fail their eyes would widen
slightly and try to mouth the name without speaking. I always just rushed to tell them to
call me by whatever I was going by at the time, and it was left at that.
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But bouncy red girl, Claire, saw the roll call one day when sucking up to Mrs.
Stick-Up-Her-Ass, and at recess came to find me with her posse of gum-chewers and
flavored lip gloss traders. Those girls mouth glistened so brightly that it looked like they
were covered in saliva and cum. I wondered if they knew the right way to get someone
off, or if they wanted to.
I almost always spent recess sitting against this tree outside our classroom trailer
that offered too much shade—it wasn’t very warm yet, so no one wanted to be in the dark
and cold offered by the brambly tree that humped the cement up and caused the trailer to
be slightly off-kilter. Not enough to get the administration to move it, just enough that we
couldn’t just leave our pencils on our desks without them rolling off and hitting the back
wall.
I sat in the dark of the branches, my back against the tree toward the front of the
trailer, facing out toward the black top where other kids up to fifth grade played wall-ball
in the covered play area at the far side, four square out in the open to my left, and just
generally ran around and annoyed the shit out of each other around the rest of the
overcrowded, razor wire fenced in area. I liked being able to see what everyone was
doing, even though I didn’t actually pay attention.
When Claire walked toward me, at least four other girls with her, all wearing
skirts and some wearing nail polish, I thought they were headed toward the trailer door. I
continued to practice trying to write cursive letters without much luck until Claire stood
directly in front of me, her arms crossed and her right foot tapping as if I was making her
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wait.
“So, Mackie, hmm?” She sneered, while her slut command giggled.
I rolled my eyes, heat rising up my neck, wanting to slap her fucking face and run
away all at once. “What you want, Clairilla?”
“Don’t call me that!” She yelled, loud enough that the dozen or so kids around
stopped what they were doing to look. I stood up, leaving my stuff on the ground in case I
needed to fight her.
“I saw what your real name is Mack-on-q, what a stupid name,” she laughed, as I
felt the heat explode across my face. I had never heard it pronounced this way, but it
made sense. As much sense as any other version anyway.
I clenched my fists, my knuckles paling with the strain, but I couldn’t find anyone
to hit. There were too many of them, all chanting, “Mack-on-q! Mack-on-q!” and
sometimes “Mack-oh-cutie! Mack-oh-cutie!” and sometimes “Mack-onk! Mack-onk!”
which fast became the favorite. But none of them got even close to how I thought my
name should be said, the way my mom most often said my name when she drew the
whole thing out, right before smacking me for messing something up, Mack-on-uh-quay-
uh. But I didn’t even know, and they didn’t even care. I just stood there and let them jeer
something that sounded like my name at me until finally they got bored with me not
hitting anyone cept myself.
But Claire wasn’t done. The next day she created a new game, and somehow she
convinced me I had to play. I didn’t really have a choice, or at least, I thought I didn’t.
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When she told someone to do something, they did it. No matter what—it was just the way
it was. Every school I ever went to had a girl, or girls and sometimes a boy, like that. All
she did was walk over to me and tell me to play, and I went.
Most of my first grade class gathered under the wall-ball area at Claire’s demand,
twenty-three kids and me, my overalls dragging on the ground, soaking up the rainwater
and wetting my ankles.
“Okay,” Claire began, walking back and forth in front of us, biting her lip in
excitement. “We’re gonna play a new game—it’s like tag, but it’s gotta new name.
Mack-on-q, in honor of our little Mack-on-q.” Startled, I looked at her, shoving my fists
in my pockets, determined to just stand there and pretend like I didn’t care. Like they
weren’t talking about me—about my stupid fake name. I mean, for all I knew it was
actually pronounced that way anyway.
“So it goes like this, Mackie will start as “it” or as “Mack-on-q” as the it person
will be called, and she’ll have to tag people—whoever she tags becomes a Mack-on-q,
and they can only become un-it by tagging someone else. Got it everyone? Got it
Mackie? I mean, Mack-on-q?”
Everyone looked at me, no one laughing, but everyone nodding, agreeing, so I
had no choice but to nod, as everyone started inching away from me.
“Go!” Claire shouted, as soon as she was as far away from me as possible while
still under the shelter from the rain. I looked around as everyone ran away from me, took
my fists out of my pockets, and ran as hard as I could toward Claire. Everyone scattered
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in different directions, but I only had eyes for Claire, and she knew it. I could see it in the
tilt of her mouth, too far up on one side, that told me this wasn’t gonna end up good for
me, either way.
I reached my hand out, barely scraping her shoulder with broken, brittle
fingernails as she tried to run around one of the massive cement posts holding up the
roof.
“Time-out!” She yelled, putting her hands in a t-shape over and over, screaming,
until everyone stopped and started over.
“You can’t call time-out in tag, Clairilla,” I crossed my arms and glared as best I
could, wishing I was still sitting under my tree.
Claire rolled her eyes and gave me her evil-smile—all teeth and fingers tapping
on her hips and no scrunch to her nose like when she was happy for something other than
making my life a fucking misery. “Yeah, but Mack-on-q, this isn’t tag, it’s my game, and
/ call the shots, got it?”
She didn’t wait for me to respond before speaking over the crowd of out of breath
kids who’d congregated around her on demand. I still didn’t know what the hell I was
doing there, why hadn’t I just refused to do what she wanted?
“So, new rule,” Claire began to pace back and forth, bouncing on her feet,
excitement causing her arms to gesture wildly around. “Mack-on-q here tags people, and
those people can tag people and become un-it, but since she’s the inspiration for this
super fun game, she is always it too, got it?”
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“Wait, what?” Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch I fucking hate her.
She licked her lips and wagged her finger in my face, causing the kids around us
to laugh, but only briefly. “Mackie girl, you are never gonna not be it. Or not be Mack-
on-q as it is. You can make lots of it-people, or Mack-on-q people, if you like. But you
never gonna be un-it, ok?”
I started to open my mouth, wondering if I punched her in the face she might
make me un-it, but she t-shaped her hands again and screamed, “Time-in!”
As everyone scattered again, I stood there for a moment, wondering why I should
even bother. But when Claire stuck her tongue out at me from not so far away, I knew I
would try. Because if I didn’t, I didn’t know what would happen, and that was somehow
worse.
So I ran, straight forward, wondering why I cared about anything at all. But I did,
so I ran, and ran.
’'k f c * _
By the time Annette arrived, the game had mostly died down. Claire got bored easily, and
even forcing me to chase people all day got boring, I guess. I mean, I can’t even keep my
enemies interested in me long. But Annette didn’t get bored of me—of course, she wasn’t
here more than a couple of months. So I guess she probably would’ve gotten bored with
me. I wanted to keep in contact with her, and so did she, but her mom wouldn’t let her,
saying she needed to focus on making new friends, and not staying in the past. Basically,
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I could fuck off for all she cared. So I didn’t even get to know her address so I could
write—and she couldn’t write to me since less than a week after she moved, mom, Frank
and I moved in to some apartment with some people since we got evicted.
I didn’t like that place very much. We moved so much that I didn’t really have
any stuff or anything, so I just had the one grocery paper bag full of stupid clothes and
stuff, and when we walked in, a super skinny white man with no shirt and long, matted
blonde hair and track marks and skin pops on his arms came out and yelled, “Welcome!”
throwing his arms up in the air as if we were important and he was allowed to be happy,
but only because we were there. Frank slapped his hand, doing some sort of complicated
handshake, and my mom giggled, but I don’t think she was high. I think she was just
happy too.
I just stood there, clutching my wrinkled bag of stuff, wondering who he was.
We’d never moved in with other people before, except for guys pre-Frank, but Frank was
still here. Super skinny white man came up to me and bent down so he was right close to
my face, cause I wasn’t very tall.
“Hey girl, love this crazy black hair shit you got on your head, your daddy black
or something?” He laughed so hard like he’d made the funniest joke in the world, and
both my mom and Frank laughed with him. I just stared, and hoped he didn’t touch me
but it wasn’t my choice.
Frank grabbed my arm and squeezed, “My girl got so much stuff in her, she don’t
even know it. She’s ridin you know what I mean?” He loosened his touch a bit, and
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stroked my arm with fingers of dry scratchy skin, the way he stroked my chest when he
made me naked and wasn’t angry yet. I tried to pull away, wondering what Annette was
doing if her mother was making her something to eat or if they’d found a new Brinley to
watch screamy shows or if Brinley maybe went with them like I wanted to and maybe her
dad was back from the Navy so he could hug them more, but Frank gripped my arm
harder. “Don’t you wanna show my man here what you got?”
I didn’t answer, ignored the numbing of my arm as he squeezed slowly tighter,
and looked around the room, not wondering anymore why we were here. We were in the
comer apartment of some tall brick building on a street with lots of other tall brick
buildings, trash melting on the sidewalk in the afternoon heat that smelled all the way
into the apartment of sandwiches with expired mayonnaise and bologna, pee soaked
towels, and so many other things that no one should have to smell but seemed to follow
me like dirty footprints.
The floor of the apartment was a dark brown poly carpet that felt rough even
through my shoes, and the only thing in the room was a ripped up grayish white cloth
couch with bum marks all over it, and a table with scrunched up tin foil spread out all
random. To my left was an open door to a bedroom that had a mattress on the floor, no
sheet, and clothes piled all over the floor. To my right were two open doors to bare
spaces of nothing but tom carpet. I thought other people probably lived here too, but
didn’t know where they might be hiding and watching. The kitchen was behind the room
we were in, but it was so small, I didn’t think more than a person at a time could be in it,
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a stove and sink on one side, and a refrigerator and one foot or less of counter space on
the other, open to the room we were in. I couldn’t see the bathroom, but I knew there had
to be one somewhere. They couldn’t have an apartment with no bathroom, I didn’t think.
I’d lived in places where the bathroom didn’t work or was in the hall, but they usually
had one at least somewhere, it’s like a law or something. And one that people seem to
follow.
It was the biggest apartment I’d ever lived in—the rooms were small, barely
bigger than a twin size mattress, but I’d never been anywhere where I might be able to
close a door.
“Girl, stop going off in your head, you hear me?” Frank yelled at me, shaking me
a bit. “Lise honey, go ahead into our room, it’s the one closest to us, got it?”
My mom kissed Frank on the cheek, let her red stringy eyes slide over the top of
my head, and went in the room and closed the door. I wanted to follow her, but I wasn’t
allowed. I wanted her to want me to follow her, but she didn’t. I wanted too many things.
Frank grinned at me, the yellowed smoking stains sweating his teeth, and a piece
of the macaroni we ate for breakfast stuck between the front ones. I hated his grimy white
skin, the blown blood vessels that spread out from his nose like red sharpie lines, and the
way he kept his greasy brown hair long enough to touch his shoulders. Just long enough
that when he was on top of me, I could feel it on my body, as if there were spiders
running up and down my skin playing basketball.
The other man whose name was something like Clem or Axe or White Scissor,
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grabbed my other arm in the same place that Frank was holding me on the other one, and
together we all walked into the room with the mattress, Frank closing the door behind
him, not that it mattered, it wasn’t like there was anyone there who was gonna stop them.
I didn’t resist, I just stumbled forward, wondered if Annette had made new friends yet,
and wondered if it would be awhile before I’d be able to go to school again if I couldn’t
walk too well. But it wasn’t like Annette was there anyway, so maybe it didn’t matter
anymore. The lights in the room glowed so dark I didn’t even have to close my eyes.
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Chapter 9: Outside
Chyna may have let go of Angel in session, but she hasn’t let go of Topher. Possibly my
fault since I brought it up, tired of all the silence and sighs.
“So, Q, do you think, right now, not looking at Topher, that he looks like him?”
Chyna keeps her eyes on me, luckily still blinking, and chews her pencil that she’s
writing about me with.
I roll my eyes at her, trying to keep the image of Frank out of my head—the rosy
shapes in his eyes that almost match his skin, the way the left comer of his thin lips tip up
a bit higher than the right side, almost dimpling, the way his cracked skin seems barely
stuck to his flesh and bones, as if it might just pop off at any moment. I sometimes
imagine what it would be like to peel the skin off his bones like big sheets of crackly rice
paper and see what he looks like inside, to see how much he is hiding. To see if the taint
really comes from him, or if I already had it and he just knew how to find it.
“I mean, I know he don’t, but there’s just things you know? Things I can’t unsee
once they’re there.”
“Like what?”
I shiver a bit and try to just see Topher, just his face, and not Frank’s. Just his
deep all black skin that is nothing like Frank’s pasty white skin. But it is the nose and lips
and eyes—the tilt of his mouth, the slight crookedness of the nose, the redness of the
eyes, that I’m pretty sure Topher gets from lack of sleep and not drugs, but it’s still there.
Or at least I think it’s there.
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“Just the face, okay? I mean, I know he ain’t him, but I look at him and think,
there’s enough similars that it might as well be.”
“But why?”
I swing my legs, desperately wishing I wasn’t sitting here anymore. I fucking hate
Chyna sometime, she just don’t know when to let up.
“I don’t know, okay? I just don’t fucking know.”
“Language, Q,” Chyna scolds me, but only lightly. “I believe you Q, I do. I just
want to find a way for you to feel safe around him. He wants that too. Do you want that?”
I kick the chair a couple times, wishing it was Chyna, but she keeps her eyes on
me, not mentioning it. Having already scolded me once, she isn’t going to do it again.
She’ll let the guilt eat at me instead.
“I want Topher back—I want the face to be gone, I just wanna look at Topher and
see him, but I don’t think I can do that. If I could, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
She puts the pencil down and leans toward me a little further. “I refuse to accept
that. I know you Q, and I don’t think you would have told me this if there wasn’t a part of
you that believed you could separate them again. I have an idea, if you’d like to hear it.”
I hate it when she puts it on me to decide. “Fine, whatever.”
“We could have him come to a couple of your sessions with me if you like, and
we could spend some time focusing on how you see him and it’s possible you may start
to let go of the resemblance and see him the way you did before.” She shakes her head,
“No, that’s not right. You’re not going to see him the same—but different than you do
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now. We’ll try to make him just Topher again.”
My stomach is a bit queasy at the thought of having Topher and Chyna in the
same room—I always felt that Chyna was in this whole other world, of offices, and kind
of nicer chairs, and one on one time. Topher, on the other hand, is big breakfast with
scrambled eggs, kind of hugs, time outs, and eyes in the back of his head. But he is Frank
now too.
“I guess, if he wants to, but I can’t see him wanting to. I mean, why would he
bother?”
Chyna tilts her head and looks like she wants to pat my knee, but of course she
can’t touch me without asking, and who asks to pat someone on the knee?
“V 2 & — .......
Topher agrees to come to my next therapy session, but they are so short-staffed that he
doesn’t end up staying because Rosemary tries to run away, and manages to get outside.
We actually see her fighting her way up the gravel hill, her face screwed up in a scrunch
as each step on her stocking feet get bit by the gravel. Gretchen is running behind her, her
eyes narrowed, her fists clenched—Topher apologizes and gets up, hurrying outside. I
can see him catch Rosemary the moment he leaves the building: he lopes around her,
encircles her wrists with opposite arms and pulls her arms in criss-cross, locking her
elbows, and holds on. She struggles, kicking her feet, and screaming—I can’t hear what
she is saying through the closed window, but her mouth is open so wide I can see the
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glint of silver from her fillings. By the time Gretchen catches up, he has walked her over
to the grass and sat down with her, still locked in the restraint. He shakes his head at
Gretchen, and she walks away, fists still clenched, her pink hands getting whiter. I am
happy for Rosemary that she gets Topher and not Gretchen. For a moment though I had
also hoped that she did get Gretchen, that Gretchen would finally let her violence out, and
then maybe Chyna would see and she’d finally be gone. But that wouldn’t help
Rosemary, and only a part of me cares enough for it matter.
I shudder and look away, back towards my own exit door with the big EXIT sign
that laughs at me in gold letters, which Topher had left open on his way out even though I
can’t leave. Chyna closes the blinds and the peeling door and sits back down.
“What are you thinking, Q?”
I want to tell her about Gretchen’s violence, but I can’t. I know she’d write it
down, and that it would make its way back to Gretchen somehow, and I don’t know for
sure she’d get fired. At least, not yet. “Just wondering if Rosemary was trying to find her
sister again.”
Chyna just nods and moves on, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t really care if
Rosemary finds her sister or not.
-'kjfat---------^
I dream sometimes that Angel will find her way back here to visit and we’ll play shit like
sisters sometimes do like hide-and-seek but not tag. Maybe she’d even let me braid her
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hair, not that I know how, but I might be able to learn. Probably not though, her hair is
probably all slippery and thin, and I bet it would fall out of my hands like water. I
probably shouldn’t touch her anyway, I could make her dirty and maybe her hair would
become like mine. Sometimes I can almost see the glow in the creases of my skin, the
wrinkles on my knuckles, the barely there raised marks that lightened my skin almost like
Annette’s whiteness but not cause I was bom with it, but the faint tinge of red cuts the
edges and never let me forget, at least not now that I remember.
I think about trying to find Angel sometimes too, but I have absolutely no idea
where she could be. She might live out of state for all I know, although I doubt her stupid
parents flew her here to see my stupid ass. I wonder when Rosemary tries to run if she
has any idea which direction to go, or if she is just hoping that by getting off the grounds
she might be able to search her out and make her way to her because they are blood and
because she actually cares about her. I wonder if her sister cares about her as Rosemary
does and if she is trying to find her too. I can’t ask her any of this as much I so badly
want to.
Rosemary is in socks for a while as she is a Run Risk and can’t wear shoes, but it
wasn’t like that has ever stopped her, and this last time she’d been running in socks so I
don’t really see the point. She just has to walk around one level closer to the gross floor.
Of course, when we get restrained our cheeks touch the floor directly, so I guess it don’t
matter. It just feels different. I feel bad for her cause she can’t go outside for two days,
and her therapist has to come to the house to see her. I’m not allowed to go outside a lot
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cause I get restrained so much, and I hate hate hate when I can’t leave the house. There is
actual grass outside, and I love rolling around in it, even though it makes me itchy and
my skin gets raised in hard bumps. But it is so clean and smells so different from
anywhere else, away from all the awful ways our bodies betray us and save us and hold
us.
The counselors try to take us outside whenever possible, but when we are bad, we
aren’t safe enough to go outside. At least, that was something like what Ko said on my
first day. The idea of safe and non-safe are thrown around so much at the house, it is hard
to believe it sometimes. Sometimes I think they are just too afraid to take us outside and
lose us.
But I am allowed to go outside for playtime for the first time since returning from
the hospital four days after Rosemary tried to run. I line up at the door with Rosy and
Rika, bouncing on my heels, the basketball firmly clutched between my hands as I have
to keep telling myself not to bounce it inside or I’ll get sent to time-out. Don’t be a
fucking moron, don’t be a fucking moron. I can’t even be too upset that Gretchen is the
one coming outside with us, since between the three of us there will be too much to focus
on.
I step outside the door, the cold cement hidden from the sun under the overhang
of the roof, grey shingles chipping away but somehow managing to stay on. The cement
ends abruptly into a flat grassy field that feels so big and curved upwards into a small hill
at the base of the Admin building. The different houses, each painted a different color,
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the Admin one the most boring in the same grey as the shingles on the roof cause offices
have to be duller than dull, are littered around the edge of the field, with trees behind us
all, except for a giant uncovered play area with basketballs rims missing the nets and an
old volleyball net that hangs against one side as if it had been tom off at one point and
never fixed. I think it used to be covered because the walls look unfinished at the top as if
a giant troll had ripped off the roof with its bare hands, but it rarely rains anyway so it
doesn’t matter too much.
There is a road that runs behind the Admin building, and some sort of parking lot
back there, but nothing else for miles and miles, except trees and the dirt road that takes
everyone out of here. It might not be that big, but it feels so long and far away that the
actual road might as well have not even been there. We aren’t allowed to go in the woods
when we are outside—they are basically just a giant natural fence, cept sometimes the
kids who try to run get inside. I haven’t known anyone who made it through, but that
doesn’t mean that somebody hasn’t. I’ve always kind of thought of the trees as magical
and scary and awesome—if I got inside, then something would probably want to eat me
up, and I’d probably be happy. Or something.
I love how the trees give the field this offhess that, while often broken by kids
getting restrained outside or just general too-loudness, there isn’t a lot that is scary here.
Not directly anyway.
Gretchen is kind of scary, mostly just being an unknown, but I am outside, the
wind is slight but there and all I can smell is grass and leaves and dirt and nothing that
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has come out of anyone’s ass, and it is so sunny that the trees can’t even block out all the
light. There is warmth on the top of my head through the curls of hair that don’t manage
to cover my scalp, and I feel the loosening of my skin.
We head over to play area, me clutching my basketball, and Rosemary and Rika
carrying nothing.
“So, um, you guys want to play horse?” I ask, surprising myself.
Rosemary just shrugs her wide shoulders, which from her is a strong yes. Rika
smiles at me, which is also weird and rare. I smile back the smile I used to reserve for
Topher, and my mom when she’d hug me, my crooked teeth slightly showing, the left
side tipped up higher, and my eyes wide open. I have practiced this smile in the mirror
many times, as this position hides Vivi as much as possible without being too weird or
creepy.
Gretchen sits on one of the random metal bleachers that is plopped down in the
grass outside the play area as if someone had stolen it and let it roll off the back of their
truck and never bothered to find a good place for it. But she can see us all no matter
where we are in the play area, and the echo is so great that she can hear us too. There
aren’t any other kids from the houses in the play area, so we don’t have to argue about
who gets the hoop and then get sent to time-out for arguing.
“Don’t forget to speak loud enough so I can hear you, and keep your space,
okay?” Or else. Gretchen leans back as if trying to sun bathe with her clothes on, and we
all just nod forgetting about her immediately and run toward the hoop.
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Rika jumps up and down on her feet, her long braided brown hair swinging back
and forth from her back, her white skin almost red with excitement—I don’t think she’s
been outside in a while either.
Rosy just looks bored, her arms crossed tightly, and her eyes looking anywhere
but at us. “So, like, we gonna start or what?”
I shrug just to be annoying, but turn to shoot a basket.
“Hey!” Rosy comes up to exactly three feet away from me and stops. “Who said
you could go first?”
“I brought the ball out, so I go first.” I glare at her but don’t move any closer,
Gretchen’s eyes right on us.
Rosy throws her hands up in the air, “That’s stooopid logic, even for you.”
“Time-out, Rosy!” Gretchen yells, pointing at the little blue time out chair that is
in the comer of the play area. There are bolts in the cement near it, but that time-out chair
got destroyed long before I came.
When we get time-outs for the first time outside, usually staff let us stay outside
and take them there. More than two, then we have to go inside to take them, because our
taint is setting in. The staff are a little more whatever about giving out time-outs outside,
cause they know if they have to order us in early that most of us will loser our shit and no
one wants to have to restrain a crazy kid outside when there are more kids and no staff to
hear.
Grumbling about my stupidity quietly enough that Gretchen can’t hear or is at
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least pretending not to hear, Rosy stalks over to the time-out chair, kicking old tennis
balls left out on her way. Once she plops down in the chair, her arms crossed again,
Gretchen walks over there to talk to her.
I shrug and shoot the ball and Rika doesn’t seem to care. I miss, but it’s been a
while. Rika misses too, but giggles so I don’t worry that she is going to blow over it. I try
a lay-up, but I’m not that tall, coordinated, or have good aim, so it barely even grazes the
backboard. I really really really want to make a shot—it’s like everything might just be a
little better if I can see the ball drop down through the rim, maybe even skim the rim
before spiraling down back to me. I don’t know if I want to make the basket more or if I
want Rika to get an H so I’ll be winning.
By the time Rosy heads back over to us, both Rika and I have tried and failed to
make a basket seven times each. I’m sweating, and I can feel the cheap cotton of my t-
shirt sticking to my back. My breathing has steadily increased, not just cause I’m actually
running and moving around, but cause I can’t get rid of the heat in my head, the pounding
behind my eyes, that all demand I make a basket or Frank might just stroll on by. It’s
Frank or a basket. Just one. More than one would be good too, but I really want to at least
be first, to give myself a reason for having brought out the basketball. To being outside,
to not being inside.
Rosy crosses her arms and stands opposite Rika, both on either side of the basket.
I have the ball in my hands, I can feel the rubber getting slipper as I sweat harder and
harder, as my chest thumps so loud I’m surprised Gretchen hasn’t noticed. I stand right in
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front of the basket, trying to loosen my tight grip on the ball but still keep it in my hands
long enough to throw a shot. It’s a balance I don’t know to do, but I want it so bad.
“Girl, you gonna shoot or what?” Rika asks, her feet firmly planted on the ground,
her hands fidgeting with a loose thread from her Geology Rocks! t-shirt. I don’t want her
to get so bored that she stops playing, but one of us has to make a shot.
I ignore the twinge of bum from Vivi that I get when I clench my teeth too much,
crouch low, and dig into the cement, pushing myself as high as I can go in the air and
throw the ball as straight as I can see. I chant over and over again, “please go in please go
in pleasegoin pleasegoin,” until it strikes the headboard with a loud thunk and falls down.
Without touching the hoop.
I can’t even shoot a fucking basketball. Complete fucking worthless loser. I just
stand there, my hands swinging only slightly at my sides from a light wind, and try to
focus on breathing and unclenching my teeth. And not balling my hands and not clawing
my face and not hurting anyone and not throwing the basketball in the woods and not
screaming and not letting Rika’s giggles bother me and not seeing Frank laugh at me as I
squirm and not seeing my mom walk out the door and leave me with Frank and not
seeing Frank spank my mother with his silver buckled belt with the word “Ace” on it and
not feeling Frank inside me.
But I’m not that strong. Yet.
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Chapter 10: Goodbye Group
“I have some bad news everyone,” Chyna states, forcing me to press my ear even harder
against the crack between the door and the floor, not wanting to miss anything she has to
say about me in Staff Meeting.
“Q is likely transitioning to a foster home in a week.”
The indistinct muttering among the staff at this announcement is nothing
compared to the buzzing in my head. Leaving? Like I really need another failed
placement. Cause obviously it isn’t like it is gonna to work out. Course, it isn’t like it
matters in the end, cause I can’t stay here anyway. I know the talk, I know it costs a lot
for us to be here—the stupid State never wants to pay more for us then it has to, and we
cost too much as it is. The house is more expensive, what with people who actually know
how to deal with our shit. But I guess I don’t care, cause I’ll end up back somewhere else
eventually anyway. And at least I won’t have to deal with Gretchen anymore. But then I
won’t be here when she gets fired either.
“That’s insane Chyna,” Topher says a touch too loud—probably the other kids in
the back rooms can hear him too, so everyone knows something’s up now.
“Like I’m not aware,” she shoots back. “I practically sat her caseworker down and
forced her to read all the Incident Reports that we have on her, but she didn’t care. She
has a foster family willing to take her and they don’t have any other kids right now, so
that’s all she cared about. Not like Melina ever listens to me—or anyone else for that
matter, so unless the foster family rescinds, it’s happening. God, I hope she quits soon.”
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“But what foster family would take her?” Only Gretchen would say that. Truth,
though.
“I don’t know a whole lot about them, other than that they don’t have any kids in
the house right now and that they own a house. Not much basically. But we got to get her
as ready as we can, because it’s happening whether we like it or not.”
Story of my life.
My first foster family couldn’t even look at me. I say family, but really it was a single
mom with two bio kids who were in high school and were never home, although I never
actually knew where they spent most of their time.
But my foster mom, who had me call her Miss Hemphill as if she was my
kindergarten teacher, was almost always home. She had a part-time job writing copy for
some agency of some kind, but mostly she sat around the house and watched television.
Mostly those reality shows with women with plastic surgery and stupid men who try to
spend a lot of money they don’t have and whine when they go bankrupt and don’t win the
lottery and spend a lot of time at casinos but then whine some more cause they never win
there either.
I had just gotten out of the hospital after Vivi got made, and I had this monster
white gauze taped awkwardly around my face that I was supposed to change every day
but didn’t cause it took forever and I could never get it quite right and I didn’t want to see
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her. Miss Hemphill couldn’t look at me without grimacing—every time she actually
allowed her eyes to rest on my face, on the blank white gauze covering Vivi, her freckly
white skin would scrunch up around her eyes and her mouth would hang open in a tight
square, as if I was contagious. Which for all I knew, I was.
Most of the time though she would allow her bright blue eyes to pass over me as
if she was looking for something, nowhere near where I was. I didn’t mind much, I just
walked close to the walls and tried to stay in my assigned room as much as possible,
since neither of her kids were ever there anyway. They had bunk beds and I had a cot set
up in the comer, but it was pretty comfortable. I hadn’t really been able to bring anything
with me, so I just had a comer in the room behind my cot where my clothes, a picture of
me and my mom sticking out our tongues and blowing out our cheeks, a couple pencils
and pens and some scrap paper, an old school discman that I didn’t have any cds for,
because who has cds?, and my stuff from the hospital for my face sat piled on top of each
other like a poorly designed fort.
I hadn’t been enrolled in school yet, and Miss Hemphill didn’t really like me to
watch her shows with her. I had tried to sit on the fake leather couch with her one day,
but over the course of about twenty minutes, she would scoot an inch at a time away from
me, the crinkle of material ripping out each time, until she was pressed all the way into
the other end. I just ended up putting her out of her misery and going to my cot. I
honestly had no idea why she took me if I freaked her out that much, but probably they
didn’t tell her about my face before I came. And I didn’t know yet that the higher need
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we are, the more the state pays to keep us shut up.
I was almost perfectly silent for two days, until I woke up to one of her bio kids
sneaking in through the window, didn’t realize it was her, and threw a metal clock at her
head, sending her to the ER for sixteen stitches, the same as her age. But really, what was
I supposed to think?
That was my first failed placement. Or my second, if my birth placement counts,
which I guess it does. But I am moving on to my twentieth from Choate. After I passed a
higher number of placements than my age I thought about not counting anymore, because
it isn’t like any of them are gonna stick. It’s a rule, once a foster kid has more placements
than birthdays, then we are un-adoptable. I’m un-adoptable in other ways anyway, but
this is a big one. It’s pretty hard and fast, I haven’t known anyone who broke this one.
Some kids might get long-term foster care or something, but even then that is unlikely.
We’re the so beyond fucked up ones that foster parents, caseworkers, counselors, line
staff, etc., bet on what will happen to us so they won’t care too much about what happens
to us, just in case they are in danger of that.
A. Jail/prison
B. Unmarried pregnant teen
C. Drug addict/rehab (constant)
D. Prostitute
E. Dead before 20
F. All of the above
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I asked Chyna once how we get picked, how foster parents get stuck with us.
There’s the headshot. And the file. The file is everything. It doesn’t have all the notes the
staff and my caseworker make or anything, but it has the number of placements and time
at each and why failed, major incidents, diagnoses, medications, school records, and
people okay to contact. I’ve never seen it all. I mean, I’ve seen parts of it in Chyna’s
hands, in the staff hands, and my caseworker’s hands, but I’ve never been allowed to hold
it myself, to feel the wrinkled paper and faded ink. I asked her if I could, but she said no.
Just a straight up no, no negotiation or anything.
But I’ve seen the photo that everyone else sees. I’ve never had an adoption photo
shoot like some of the kids because no one expects me to get adopted, so why would they
put my ugly face on some website trying to encourage anyone when it would fall through
anyway? Failed adoptions are considered the worst kind of failed placement in the
hierarchy of failed placements. It all seems like some sort of Amazon-like idea anyway,
where they can shop for us, well, not us, them, and put the kids in the cart and check the
fuck out. Once the file has been reviewed, that is. Pretty sure they leave out a lot of stuff
though.
But one of my caseworkers a couple years before had taken a photo with her
phone in front of the fake wood door at one of my placements. My hair was a bit longer,
Vivi was redder, and I couldn’t lift the side of my mouth up as well yet. I wouldn’t smile
though unless she promised to let me see it, which she did, but then I wished I hadn’t. I
had turned my head a bit so Vivi wasn’t as noticeable, but she was still there. My hair had
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been in microbraids a couple hours before the picture was taken, but my caseworker
made me take them out before the picture, telling me she didn’t want to play up my
“partial non-whiteness.” Those were her exact words: “partial non-whiteness.” She used
those words a lot, as if it was less obvious, less degrading, more fluffy nice, than to say
she was afraid of my maybe black blood like Frank would say to me. “Girl, your maybe
black blood is the only thing...” And then he’d say something about what was wrong
with me. Not any worse, really.
Removing the microbraids had made me look crazy though, since when my hair is
braided none of it really falls out, all of it collects in the braids, so right after removing
them there is all this dead, detached hair wound around the live hair, and little skin flakes
collect throughout if not shampooed properly, which I’ll be honest, I rarely did. More
dead than alive. So in the picture, my hair looks as if it was about to explode, like a pus-
filled abscess just waiting to be popped, cause my stupid caseworker wouldn’t let me
brush it out. Real smooth lady, real smooth. I can’t believe anyone let me in their house
ever.
■ 'k fc* . .
As per the rules, I set to meet my new foster parents at the house, in the Family Room,
only a few days after I was actually told about it, which was a few days after I’d heard
about it. In the same Family Room I met Angel in. And lost Angel in. It starts the same,
except instead of Topher sitting next to me, it’s Ko.
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I know very little about the people coming except that it is going to be two
women—I overheard my caseworker talking to Chyna about how they thought it would
be better if I was in a house with no men. I’d never been fostered by lesbians before, so
this is new. I’ve been taken in by married men and women, single women, a woman and
her sister, a church group that I probably ruined forever, and once a respite house that had
two married couples, although I’m pretty sure that all four of them were actually one
couple. Pretty sure the state didn’t know that though. I’ve never had a single man, but I’m
pretty sure there aren’t any single men who are foster parents. I’ve never known anyone
who had one anyway.
I see the two women outside in the grass, walking with Chyna, holding each
others’ hands. Gotta be them. Ko doesn’t notice me watching them through the window,
she is furiously writing chart notes, and the women only have eyes for each other. Both
are wearing jeans, but that is about where the similarities ended. One of them has dark
brown, almost black skin, loosely spiked black hair, and has swirly gold earrings that
dangle all the way down to her plain blue t-shirt that hangs loosely on her super skinny
frame. With her free hand, she keeps rubbing her ear above her earring. She’s so nervous,
it’s almost funny.
The second woman stands almost a head taller than her and her skin is probably
white, but she looks really sunburned. She is wearing a purple tank top that is not enough
clothing for how cold it is, and her waist-length black hair is in a thick side braid all the
way down her front to her pouched waist and is swinging back and forth at the end as she
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moves, her oddly squat shape despite her height causing her hips to sway, which moves
her whole body and sends her hair flying. She is just so not-still.
Except for the sunburn, they both look almost flawless, perfect. Smiling, if
obviously super nervous based on how one is still tugging on her ear and the other has
started pulling on her braid. I dig my fingers into my legs, wishing I could dig them into
my face, but I want to meet them here, in the Family Room. I don’t want them to walk in
and have me in the Quiet Room or something. But I can feel the heat rise in my body, the
fuzzy gray in my head getting louder, the feeling of heaviness in my hips, the smell of my
own sweat. Something loud growing in my head.
I take a choking breath and Ko notices, glancing up at me with calm, steady
brown eyes. She puts down the chart for Taiomah and reaches out her hand. “Can I hold
your hand, Q?” she asks.
I nod, still trying to breathe, but I can feel my throat slowly closing, the scratching
filling the air. Her cool, calloused palm slips under my hand, resting on my jeans lightly,
stopping me from digging into that leg.
“Let’s take a couple breaths together, what do you say?” she asks, holding on to
me. I nod again, still unable to speak but wanting to.
“In through your nose,” she murmurs as we both loudly suck in air, “out through
your mouth,” and we release with a whoosh, hers less choppy than mine. We do this a
couple times, and I squeeze her hand back finally. I still feel the weight, the smell of the
fuzziness, but my throat is a little less closed. I forget to breath a lot, I still have that
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problem when I’m really scared. It’s supposed to be natural, we’re supposed to just do it,
but nothing is really natural and easy when the taint takes over. He doesn’t like it when I
breathe.
I look back out the window and Ko slips her hand out and stands up. They
disappear for a moment as they come inside, and I decide to stand too, to try and be
polite. They round the comer and walk toward the sliding glass door that separates the
Family Room from the television room. As they get closer, I watch their hands drop, their
eyes on me, smiles fixed on their faces without teeth, without reaching their eyes. I
almost roll my eyes, they are trying so damn hard. Clearly they haven’t been foster
parents long, if ever before. It’s so easy to tell the ones that have been doing it for a while
and the ones that are new. Same with the caseworkers, the staff here, at the hospital, and
almost anyone kids like me were allowed to interact with. Their nerves are just too
obvious—they haven’t yet developed the calm that allows them to actually be present.
The blank eyes, the ability to not care too much. The ability to bet on how much of a
loser we’ll become.
Chyna opens the door and gestures them in ahead of her. Chyna glances at Ko,
and they say something silently to each other that I really want to know, god, I hate when
they do that. Chyna asks me for a hug, I give it to her for only two seconds and she leaves
without a word.
They stand before Ko and me, not touching each other, not touching me. Their
breathing is almost as awkward as mine, although that’s gotta be partly cause they can
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see Vivi now, live and in person. She’s got a lot more flair in person than in a photo. Ko
clears her throat, “Well, it’s nice to meet you. Q, you want to shake their hands, start
there?” I glance over at her, and she tilts her head, the right side of her face scrunched up
in question with a slight smile curving her mouth. A challenge then.
I stand up a little straighter, take a breath in and out, and stick out my hand as if I
shake people’s hands all the time, as if I like meeting new people and touching them.
“I’m Q,” I mumble.
The woman with dark brown skin and spiky hair gently takes my hand, and a
small tremble bursts through, although I don’t know if it was from me or her. Or both.
“I’m Raewyn, but you can call me Rae.” Her voice is slightly scratchy, as if she used to
smoke but doesn’t anymore, and has a slight shake to it—probably wondering if I’m
going to bite her. But luckily for her, I’ve never been much of a biter, even when I get all
flashbacky. I hate having anything in my mouth.
She lets go after a normal amount of time, not too short, not too quick, she really
doesn’t want me to know how nervous she is. I’d bet my favorite jeans, the ones with the
thickest material and that sit just a little tight around the waist, that she counted out the
handshake in her head so as not to show her fear.
The woman with sunburned red and white skin and the most amazing braid ever
reaches over and shakes my hand up and down, very heartily. I can feel it all the way up
to my shoulder and neck. Too much enthusiasm. “I’m Darsie, just call me Darsie,” she
giggles, her voice a little higher-pitched than I would’ve expected, and with a slight
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southern accent that I bet she’s worked hard to get rid of.
“It’s . . . it’s nice to meet you,” I say not very truthfully, staring at the bottom of
Darsie’s braid.
“Same goes,” they say almost at the same time and laugh. A part of me wants to
laugh with them.
A qbc ^
My goodbye group happens a week and two more visits later, and twenty minutes after
I’ve been in the Quiet Room, but staff break all the rules for hello and goodbye groups,
because “it’s important to role model a healthy end to relationships,” per Ko to Topher,
back when Topher was just Topher, not Frank. Topher doesn’t come to my goodbye
group, but did say goodbye to me earlier in the day, in the morning, after breakfast,
before leaving before I could.
“Ko, can I get a hug?” he’d asked, after I washed my hands after eating, and I’d
said yes even though I didn’t want to touch him because I really did want to touch him.
He’d loped his arm lightly over my shoulder, squeezed gently, and I’d shuddered at the
feel of the indents of his fingers on my shoulder, and he’d let go immediately. He knew,
but he was still nice about it even though he shouldn’t have been. “I’ll miss you Ko,”
he’d said simply, and I’d said nothing. Nothing at all. Until I wound up in the Quiet
Room with Hailey at the door.
That was the only goodbye I really cared about and I’d fucked it up, so I tried to
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get out of the goodbye group, but they wouldn’t let me, and now I’m too tired to do
anything drastic. So I just sit there, in the oversized cushioned chair with hard plaster
arms and look at the faded knees of my jeans, while everyone but Taiomah, who is in the
Quiet Room banging around, sits around and says things about me super grammatically
correctly for some weird reason.
“I’ll miss playing Horse with you,” Rosy says, her legs swinging back and forth,
gently hitting the couch, not quite loud enough to get sent to time-out.
Rika snorts and gets sent to time-out.
“I’ll miss watching telly with you, Q,” Aaliyah whispers, her voice so low I’m not
sure I heard her right.
Rosemary sighs and smacks her tongue. I hate when she does that. It makes my
heart speed up, my head get hot, and all I want to do is pull her fucking tongue out of her
mouth and punch the bloody, gaping hole. But she speaks anyway. “I’ll miss eating
breakfast with you.”
Isaiah is last, before me that is. “I’ll miss you smiling at me.”
Silence, messed up only by breathing and the sound of Taiomah banging on the
walls, the door, himself, until Rosemary smacks her goddamn tongue again.
Clenching my fingers tight into my jeans, I look up at everyone’s faces, and know
only one thing. “I’ll miss all of you not hiding from Vivi.”
^
I l l
Rae and Darsie pick me up from the house in a black Jeep, mud splattered up the sides as
if either they went off-roading a lot, or just never cleaned it, ever. They offer me the front
seat, but I refuse, and sit in the back, looking out the window. I lean my head against the
glass, needing the cold, and look at B House, wondering who will be in my bedroom
next, not that I will ever find out. I might end up back here, but I know whenever that is
that it could be different kids, different staff, and that I won’t get the same room cept by
freak chance, the same bed, the same stars that don’t work.
I see Topher on the porch, restraining Isaiah, whose yelling I can hear almost till
we turn out of the driveway, and I think of Frank.
I don’t talk much my first night, not that I ever talk much, but I eat the lasagna
they feed me even though I don’t really want to, and even manage to say thank you. It is
a pretty big house, bigger than the house at Choate, and there aren’t any other kids, so I
get my own room, just like at Choate. It is two stories high and has four bedrooms, but
one of them is an office for Rae, who is an internet college teacher. I guess she teaches
Spanish language classes from in her office, but sometimes she has to go in too. They’re
kind of talkative.
They don’t fight me when I ask to go to bed early, so at 7pm I find myself sitting
on a twin-sized bed with a new flowered comforter in every color I can think of. I don’t
want to get in it—all the colors feel too much, too happy, too cheerful, too new. The
walls are painted yellow, like urine, and it makes me have to pee. There isn’t anything
hanging on the walls. Darsie had told me they could help me figure out what to put up if I
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wanted, but I don’t have anything I want up. What I want to do is take a giant black
marker and color over the fucking yellow. But I don’t.
Screwed in above the door is a miniature basketball hoop with an actual net, and
sitting in the comer of the room is a mini basketball, bright and unscuffed, regulation
colors even. I want to take a shot, but I don’t know if it is okay to make noise, if the will
get mad at me if I bounce the ball, if I miss the hoop and it hits something and worse
breaks something. So I don’t.
There is a small, white and blue striped chest of drawers that I had put the
clothing I brought in, and a small wooden stool next to the bed that has a light, a box of
Kleenex, and a little picture frame of a hand-painted piece of paper that reads
“Welcome!!!” I want to smash the glass and take the pieces and jam them into my face.
But I don’t.
I take the picture frame and put it in the chest of drawers, in the bottom drawer
that remains almost empty because I don’t have enough to fill it. The picture of my mom
and me lays crinkled at the opposite end of the drawer—I can’t leave it out anymore or
pick it up much because it is falling apart, and I can’t take another because I don’t get to
see her. On the top of the dresser I had some things that I had gotten at Choate that Ko
wouldn’t let me leave behind: a discman and a couple cds that I had gotten for Christmas,
a pack of purple pens and a journal I have never used, Telesa by Lani Young which I
haven’t read yet, an art set that includes paint and crayons and colored pencils and weird
paper that is supposed to dry fast, a remote controlled car that I am pretty sure I broke
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ages ago, a miniature globe, and my favorite things of all, my collection of homies, the
little figurines that come in plastic Easter eggs. I have ten of them, one for each time I
have gone to the mall or a restaurant that has them. I don’t know if all of them are actual
official homies, but it don’t matter.
Topher had got me on to them, asking me the first time he had taken me and Rosy
out for a hamburger, months and months ago, if we wanted a quarter for either the candy
machines or the egg machines. I had never seen the machines with those colorful plastic
eggs and asked him what was inside. He just shook his head, smiled real big, and said I’d
have to see. I hated not knowing, so even though I wanted Rosie’s candy as soon as she
put her quarter in and took out a mini packet of Nerds, I just needed to fucking know
what was in those stupid eggs.
I stuck my quarter in, heard the plop of the egg hitting the bottom of the metal
tray, and pulled out the cracked plastic, a little green leg sticking out of the crack in the
middle of the egg, a black stiletto on the foot, the plastic a little melted as the heel had
flattened at the toe area into a blob. I quickly tore apart the egg and pulled out a green
woman with a black dress, big slits up the sides, and a giant black witch’s hat. Her arms
were hunched up and her nails were curved into points, as if she wanted to grow really
big and strangle my neck. But I loved the feel of the rough plastic, the places where she
had melted and gotten misshapen. She was smaller than my thumb, but she was all mine.
I hadn’t ever read the Oz books before, but Topher read the first part of The Wizard o f Oz
that night to the hall for bedtime, and I knew she was mine.
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Over the months I had collected a sparrow with its wings spread out and one of its
eyes missing, a bald white baby with its fist in its mouth and a flat head, a super
overweight white girl with blonde pigtails and an American Flag that was upside down,
two intertwined figures with bulky muscles and identical light brown skin and no mouths
wrestling, a black cat pawing a squirrel in a kid’s swimming pool, a girl with rainbow
colored pigtails and black skin sticking her tongue out and with the stumps of her arms
fused to her hips, a family of grey wolves on top of each other with the top one standing
on his hind legs and howling at the air, a mailman with a little mustache and half a goatee
since half had fallen off, and my most recent one from before I went to the hospital, a
glow in the dark see through man wearing a suit and tie but holding a basketball.
I like to arrange them into scenes, and sometimes I get in moods where I change
them around every few days, or sometimes even every day, and sometimes I don’t do it
for months, like until tonight. I have already arranged them seven times since I had
entered the room, my for-now room. They had fallen over when I closed the dresser
drawer, so I go about putting them back, all of them in a circle, as if they could hold
hands. But I leave a gap between the witch and the wolves, just the width of my thumb.
It is just so quiet—all I can hear is the rushing in my ears, the low thrum of
electronic stuff, and a random murmur from downstairs. It sound like they are watching
television. I’ve never been anywhere so silent, and I want to fill it, but I don’t.
I throw the comforter off my bed, leave my jeans and t-shirt on, crawl into bed,
ignore that I need to pee, and scratch at Vivi. The sound of my skin flaking off shoots
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through the rushing in my ears, and the little, sharp burns of pain take away the shaking
that had begun in my limbs. Only I can hear it, only I can feel it.
Atfc* _
Tugging at my scalp, a giant hand gripping my head like a basketball, pulling me up,
making me stand. Screaming, so loud, maybe me.
Maybe not. Slippery sweat running down my face, might be saliva, might be cum,
might be blood, might be all of them, stinging my eyes, can’t see. Just blurry shapes, so
many shapes. A dark hand comes closer, the lines of the palm getting clearer and clearer,
so many lines, rams into my face, sending me back into whoever still grips my hair, my
head.
Strawberries, mint, smoke, sweat and spit. In my nose, in my mouth, in my head,
in me, on me, everywhere.
My face into someone else’s slicked, sagging skin, can’t breathe. Thrown down,
all my bare limbs tangled, banged by hard cement floor, sweet cool breathe.
Hands, so many hands, too many shapes, some strangling my ankles, pulling my
legs wide like scissors, fingernails digging into my wrists stretching me out wide, crucifix
arms.
“Ha ha,” someone says, “baby girl Jesus, no good O face.”
One soft hand, no callouses, just smooth skin, slowly, softly drawing shapes in the
liquid on my face, touching my lips, trying to get inside, wants me to taste, to swallow, to
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eat, fry my veins. Trying to struggle, but too many shapes.
Can’t cry, can’t. Can’t open mouth. Full, so full, so heavy, so breathless.
I wake up silent, my face wet, but only from me, no one else, and look for the unglowing
stars, but they aren’t there. Just walls that look dark at night. I take back my breath but I
can feel the vibration in my body, I want to run, to scream, to take the glass in the picture
frame and ram it into my arm. But I don’t, because I don’t know what would happen to
me, what they might do to me. But the shaking gets stronger, keeps going, spread out to
all my limbs, demanding me to do something, anything, until I can’t lay there no matter
what I try to do, how much I try to breathe but quiet so they don’t hear and wake up or
get up and come find me.
I step onto the hardwood floor, the creak so loud in the silence, but the murmur of
the television stays at the same steady level. I go to the dresser, open the middle drawer,
put my arm inside, and use my other arm to push as hard as I can, and then I push harder,
using all my body, jamming my elbow into it, feeling the sharp, slightly unfinished edge
of the drawer push slowly into my skin and fat and little muscle, the tightening of my
veins and tendons, the squeezing, losing the tingling in my hand, until I mute the
screaming in my body. It isn’t as good as blood or bum, but it is almost better than
nothing.
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Chapter 11: For-Now-Room
Darsie had taken off a couple days of work when I came, and we are still in summer
break, so Rae doesn’t have class or anything, so they take me shopping, to the zoo, to the
movies, and try to get me to decorate my room, but I refuse. What’s the point? On the
second day, or my first full day, I had managed to find a razor blade, which I then hid in
the gap in the dresser from where the wood had come apart at the top. Rae and Darsie are
pretty nice, but I don’t know what they want from me, and I don’t want to worry them. I
just try to stay out of the way.
The zoo makes me think of Annette, and how we’d gone to see the penguins with
her mother. Maybe it was then that her mother knew I was no good. Rae and Darsie
asked to hold my hands, but I said no. They stood on either side of me, protecting
everyone from me, but they still looked at my face. Everyone always looks at Vivi. They
kept asking if there were any specific animals I wanted to see, but I just let them choose.
The thing is, I really don’t care.
At dinner after the zoo Rae asks me if there is anything 1 like to do that we could
do together.
I shrug, picking at my pancakes—they are really into breakfast for dinner— and
keep my eyes on the lone strawberry on my plate that I refuse to eat. “Not really,
whatever you guys want is okay. You don’t have to take me out, I can just watch telly or
something.”
“Nonsense, there has to be something?” Rae asks, putting down her fork with a
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slight clatter, making me flinch. I look up into her wide open brown eyes, the black in the
middle just a small pinprick, her gaze not leaving me.
“Not really, I mean, I like basketball okay, but just Horse.”
Rae picks up her fork and keeps eating, “Basketball is fun, we’ll do that some
time this week, okay?”
“Is there anything else that you like? Something for your room?” Darsie asks, still
chewing. I really hate people chewing and talking, it makes me want to punch them in the
fucking mouth. And why do they keep asking me questions?
I try to breathe, but my nose feels clogged and my throat is tight, “Why can’t you
just read my stupid file?”
Rae reaches over to rest her hand on my arm, but I jerk my hands off the table,
abandoning even pretending to eat. “Don’t touch me.”
“Please, Q,” Rae says softly, a slight shake in her arm as she pulls it back, nervous
again if she’d ever stopped, “we’re just trying to make you happy.”
“I’m just gonna go to my room,” I get out before running up the stairs and into the
mine-for-now room, and slam the door closed. I stand still for a moment, despite the heat
and crunching spreading through my limbs and head, waiting to see if they’ll follow me. I
have to be more careful around them.
After counting to fifty and not hearing any steps on the stairs, I take out the razor
blade, grab the kleenex box from the side of my bed, sit on the floor against the far wall
so I can see the door in case they decide to come up, and dig the razor into my stomach
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until my skin pops open and drag down, pressing kleenex after kleenex over it to keep the
blood off my clothes, which I will later flush down the toilet like normal.
I hear a knock on the door and scramble up, yelling, “Just a minute!” and jam the
razor back in the dresser. Shoving the kleenex in my pocket, and making sure my shirt is
pulled far enough way from stomach to not get blood on it nad make it super obvious
what I’m doing, I go and open the door.
Rae stands there, her hands in her pockets, her eyes darting around. “Can I come
in, Q?”
I open the door wide and return to the wall to stay far away from her, but this time
to stand. “Whatever.”
Rae steps in, but stands just inside the door, thankfully leaving it wide open. “Can
you tell me what you’re feeling right now?”
I just stare at her. It’s like she is reading straight out of the foster care parent’s
handbook. I mean, I barely know this woman, like I’m going to tell her my feelings and
shit? This is one of the things I hate most about new placements and new therapists and
new people who are forced to talk to me—everyone just expects that I should just spill
my thoughts all the fucking time. I still have to meet my new therapist, a new teacher
when the school year starts, and a new psychiatrist. Isn’t this why I have a fucking file?
So I don’t have to keep repeating myself?
I don’t say anything, until finally she sighs. “I know this is going to be hard to get
used to, but I want you to know that we really want you here, we want you to feel at
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Chapter 12: Blood Thing
Darsie and Rae love nineties movies like it’s their mission in life to watch all of them at
least five times. We’ve watched Clueless, The Matrix, Friday, Titanic, The Addams
Family, Independence Day, Jackie Brown, and Twister, although I hadn’t made it through
any of them before heading to my room. The night before Darsie’s supposed to go back
to work we watch Mulan—I think they were realizing that some of the movies they’d
shown me weren’t age appropriate or some shit so they’d reversed back waaaaaay too far
but who cares. I can’t sit still like that in this over-quiet room with two people who just
want me to stay quiet and I just end up going to my room like every other night. I’ve still
managed to keep my taint from coming out when they are around and I haven’t hurt
either of them yet, but my body feels as if it is going to shake the fuck apart. I climb the
stairs to my room all quiet, close the door with a soft click, find my razor, slip my black
cotton t-shirt up, and drag it across my stomach, right above where my jeans hit so it
won’t rub against them and leave any blood stains that might lead to stupid questions that
won’t have any happy answers.
The bum feels less nice than I need so I make more. I drag it across my stomach
again. I rip my jeans off and drag it across both my legs, over old white scars and still
soft red scars until the bum takes off the edge and I don’t want to throw everything out
the window anymore. I leave the red droplets smeared across my skin, but I haven’t gone
too deep. I’m pretty good at cutting just right—deep enough for the bum and a scar if I
jag it enough, but not so deep that it’ll keep bleeding for long. When learning to cut, I’d
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cut myself too far many times before and I’d had to sleep in the bathtub naked and cold
and covered in goose bumps all night so I could wash all the blood down the drain
without anyone noticing it. I was always so tired the next day from losing so much blood,
and for days after I could smell the metal—just blood, sitting fresh in the drain hidden
from view, but I hated sleeping naked. It’s just too hard to keep your holes covered that
way.
I’ll have to shower and the soap will sting, but I don’t mind. Sometimes I like
showering cause I can scrub as hard as I want, but mostly I just hate being naked that
long. I pick up my jeans and see a new kind of dark red stain, shaped as if I’d lost a
splotch of strawberry jelly and swirled it around and around with my finger until it was
almost gone. Sinking to the floor, the laminate wood flooring pressing hard against my
butt, I spread my legs and bend down to look at my baggy white underwear, a much
larger stain seeping through the cotton.
I’d forgotten about the blood thing. Frank used to tell me that once I started
getting the blood thing he’d kill me because I wouldn’t be worth anything anymore. He’d
pinch my baby nipples over my shirt and hold on tight. “No hips and flat nips, baby toes
and jelly rolls.” I’d squirm and he’d laugh, squeezing harder, till he’d let go and slap my
chest, “Keep ‘em flat, got it?” I’d nod, wondering how I was supposed to follow that rule.
Sometimes I’d stand in front of the mirror—clothes on, I’d never take my clothes
off by choice in front of a mirror—and wonder how to stop the blood from coming, how
to stop my nips from growing. But mostly I wondered the opposite—I wasn’t sure if that
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actually meant I wanted to die or not, but it seemed okay to me. Until I was ten and met
fifiteen-year-old Shiva at one of my foster placements who’d had the blood thing and
popped out nips, I’d thought guys only liked it young, liked it flat, liked it tight tight
tight. I was so wrong. About the flat part anyway. Shiva would tell me all about the cock
she’d get, how she was so good at fucking that she made lots and lots of money and
sometimes she’d buy me things that our foster mother couldn’t be bothered to get for me.
But why aren’t my stains the same size? Why did some of the blood thing transfer
to my tight jeans, and not the rest? It’s as if they can’t both be from me, and it doesn’t
feel real. Do I really know my body so little that I can’t feel anything coming out? I
always feel it when something goes in. And how did I not feel the dampness spreading
across my underwear and down through my jeans, my layers proving useless going in this
direction.
He knows. Somehow. I can see Frank, the grease from his hair, the narrowed, oh-
shit eyes, the rub of his nose, the rough fingertips, the chewed-on fingernails, the blue
spot on his front tooth, the sloppily shaved beard. He’ll come to find me so he can remind
me of his promise—so he can show my mom how useless I really am.
More out than in now.
“Baby girl, come sit with me,” he patted his right thigh, sitting slouched on a ratty yellow
couch covered in bum marks. Wrinkled tin foil and a small dusting of white powder were
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scrunched under his boot. I’d just quietly walked in the door from school, my backpack
still slung over my skinny, six-year-old shoulder, but I wasn’t not quiet enough. He had
the television turned to a football game, but the sound was off, the only sound in the
apartment the slight crinkle of the foil, his heavy, slowly increasing breathing, and the
noises that filtered in from the street but no matter how loud they are, they aren’t loud
enough.
I dropped my backpack on the floor and shuffle over slowly, wanting to look like
I was obeying, but putting it off as long as possible.
“Girl!” he yelled, “hurry the fuck up before I spank your ass.”
I sort of hurried over, but a part of me would rather have him spank me than
almost anything else he does.
He closed his legs, and I sat down on top, my back to his front, already feeling
him rise against me. He leaned his nose against my hair and breathed, his hand rubbing
my arm gently, his other hand unclipping my overalls.
“Shhhh, baby girl, you know you like it. I know you do, I know you fucking like
how 1 touch you, you were bom for it. I treat you sweet, right? You’re such a fucking
ugly cunt already, but I’ll still fuck you. Because you like it, because you are fucking
mine to do with whatever I want.”
I open my eyes to the urine-yellow ceiling, wondering where Frank is. But he isn’t here,
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it is just me and my blood thing and my newly spilled on-purpose blood. I haven’t spilled
so much blood out of any of my not-self-made holes since I was taken away from my
mom, so it has to mean Frank is coming back for me. I know I’m breaking a really
important rule.
Cold. My bare legs stick to the floor, cold and wet. I just want to lie here and see
if I concentrate hard enough, if I can feel it coming out, sliding out, leaving me. If it
means maybe I’ll feel less full, less taken up.
Rae knocks and walks in without waiting for me to respond, but stops, her mouth
falling open, the pink of her tongue almost sticking out in surprise.
I know what I look like, my arms and legs splayed out like I’m doing a snow
angel, blood trickling bright and red down my thighs, blood and everything else dark and
wet on the white cotton of my underwear, my shirt resting on my cut-up stomach, and my
jeans just a short distance away, as if I couldn’t wait to get them off me.
“Oh my god!” Rae screams, both her hands covering her mouth, her body
automatically moving back a step from my taint.
Staggering upright, I can feel the heat in my body rise up and the breath in my
body get stuck in my throat. “Get out! Get the fuck out! I didn’t ask to be here, I didn’t
ask to come here, don’t fucking look at me!” I grab the first thing I can and throw it hard
at her, the basketball smacking into the doorframe and bouncing off, just missing her. I
can’t even fucking do that right.
I claw my face, waking up Vivi, and run toward the door, toward Rae, who goes
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clattering down the stairs. I grab hold of the door and slam it shut, the boom of impact
shaking the floor a little.
The first time I get my blood thing is also my last day in that foster home. They
don’t want me bleeding either, I guess.
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Chapter 13: The Birthday
I float between hospitals and placements for a while, a nurse very nervously explaining
how to use pads and tampons—no fucking way, thank you very much, I’d rather float in a
pool of blood than shove something into any of my holes by choice—and telling me
about the wonders of Midol, which I never quite got since all it did was give me a stupid
headache.
I stay a few days or sometimes weeks here and there, but I don’t last anywhere
long. By the time I reach my thirteenth birthday it has been seven months and twenty-
three days since I’ve had any contact with my mother. I see my caseworker each time I
transition between placements—although it isn’t always the same one—but she—they are
always a girl—never have any news on my mom. I take this to mean she isn’t dead and
isn’t in jail and is most likely still with Frank. I don’t know which option is better, but
mostly I just want to know. I hate not knowing. Sometimes it seems like she doesn’t want
to tell me, but I know a lot of time she doesn’t know and doesn’t want to just own up to
not knowing. I’m not a complete moron, I know she has lots of kids and it is probably
more time than she has to even know our names.
My birthdays since getting Vivi are almost always the same in some manner or
other. I get a happy birthday from whoever is my current foster parent, and sometimes an
unwrapped gift that comes from the grocery store or if I’m lucky cash. I bet if I’d been
able to be good enough to stay at Darsie and Rae’s they would have done something nice
for me, not because I deserved it, but because they are like that. I feel bad that I’ve
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probably ruined them as foster parents, they didn’t deserve my shit. They deserved a non-
residential kid, who would play basketball with them and watch tv with them and not
want the bedroom door closed. But I fucked them over completely.
Annette would have done something too. The one birthday I had with her—my
last pre-Vivi—she made her mom make me a chocolate cake and she got me a best
friends necklace, a silver chain with a big silver heart split in half for each of us. We put
them on together and promised to wear them always, except in the pool. I didn’t. The
hospital where I went with Vivi lost all my stuff and yeah, I can still remember the cold
metal on my chest, but I also remember the hot skin being pulled from my face as the
heart got caught on what was left hanging from my ear. My fault, I let her down. I know
she must’ve taken it off wherever she was since she must’ve known I couldn’t stay loyal
to her.
Miriam, my current foster parent, does get me something for my thirteenth
birthday. Her house is decent—I get my own room which is rare and I’ve been super
lucky in that way lately because she is short kids, and there is only one other foster kid in
the house, D’Andre, who mostly leaves me alone cause he is almost out of high school
and wants to actually go to college so he studies all the time when he isn’t out working at
McDonalds. My birthday comes the day before I am supposed to start school again at a
new public school, not a special residential school, and when I come out of my room,
rubbing sleep from my eyes, Miriam puts her arm around my shoulders, ignoring my
stiffness in a nice way not a creepy way, and says, “Happy birthday girly, thirteen, it’s a
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big one.”
I nod and tried to move away, but her blue and white wrinkled hands, nearing
sixty, dig hard into my shoulder and pull me back. Her died blonde hair hangs thinly
down her back, brushing my neck, sending shivers throughout my body. Other people’s
hair is so effing disgusting. I could never cut hair for a living, I’d go bat shit fucking
crazy, -er. But I don’t want to be too obvious—Miriam isn’t so bad, but she isn’t stupid
either.
She frowns at me, but her voice is upbeat if a little old and wobbly, “Look girl, I
don’t want you bringing no baby into my house, you got it? I don’t know if you’re
fucking anyone or not, but keep it clean and keep it wrapped, got it?” She hands me a box
of Trojans, extra large, and winks at me. “Use them or don’t, but don’t be bringing no
baby here.”
I stand in the hallway holding the box, feeling the smoothness of the cardboard,
the slight wrinkle where it had probably gotten bent in her bag, wondering why the hell
I’d ever choose to fuck anyone. I know a lot of girls who get fucked a lot as kids fuck a
lot by choice—but even if I wanted to, Vivi is too much even for buyers at this point. I’d
have to wear a fucking bag over my head, and there is no way I’d do that shit. Unless
Frank finds me and makes me, but I think I’m too ugly even for him now. D’Andre
chooses that moment to leave his room, sees me in the hall holding the box of condoms
as if I’ve never heard of them before, and rolls his dark brown eyes. “That bitch give you
condoms? Must be your birthday. Happy birthday kid, now give them up. You don’t need
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to be fucking anyone, got it?”
He grabs them out of my hand, and tosses them in his room, while I nod,
completely honestly. I don’t want to be fucking anyone. Vivi doesn’t want me fucking
anyone.
“But, you ever decide to, then yeah, use a fucking condom, but you shouldn’t be
fucking someone with no extra large, that’s too much piece for you little thing.”
At2bt-------- _
My mom got me the best present when I turned five. I think, anyway. I remember it, but
she told me the story so many times that I didn’t really know if it happened, or she
wanted me to think it did.
On my fifth birthday I was sleeping on a good mattress, on a sort of beige carpet
floor that had some cigarette bums, but nothing big. We lived in a one room studio above
a Laundromat, which was nice, and a public housing office, which was not so nice. Frank
lived with us then, but I don’t remember him on that day. I had my own mattress, my
own soft blue blanket that was full of pills that I liked to pick off when I couldn’t sleep
and didn’t want to get up.
My mom got up that day and lay down with me on the mattress, both of us staring
up at the ceiling, me wondering if she knew how old I was, and her letting me think good
thoughts.
“Happy birthday, sweet Mackie girl,” she whispered.
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I smiled, only slightly crooked teeth showing, and reached for her hand, the cold,
sweaty palm sticking to mine as if she’d never let me go.
When she released me and got up, she looked down and smiled, the missing tooth
off to the side easily noticeable, the damp streaks lining the side of her head and her part,
the oil spilling like dew. “I got you something sweet Mackie girl.”
“You did?”
“Shh baby girl, stay quiet, okay?”
I nodded, wanting to know what she would have gotten me and knowing if I
messed up she might not give it to me.
She reached under her mattress and pulled out a picture of herself holding a baby,
slightly wrinkled, but there was me and her.
She was in a hospital bed, her gown on facing back, the sides pulled up enough
that I could see her skinny white legs, unmarked. Her pale brown hair stuck in pieces to
the side of her head, a little tuft of it sticking straight out to the side as if it wasn’t hair at
all. Her smile was big, her teeth all showing, the crinkles at the comers of her mouth and
eyes out in full force.
The baby—me—was laughing, my head totally bald, not even a wisp of hair, and
my arms and legs all kicking out as if I couldn’t wait to check out the world. I had the in-
case-of-abduction bracelet on still, but it was worn down, like I’d been wearing it too
long but no one had bothered to take it off.
She handed the photograph to me, her hand shaking slightly, her lips tipped up in
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a smile.
“I found this the other day, and I know how you’re always bugging me for photos,
so here you go.”
I took it slowly from her hands and tucked it carefully under my mattress until I
could move it to my small stash of emergency supplies that no one, not even my mom,
knew about, in the jeans I didn’t wear anymore because they got too big.
I was so happy to get it. Even if it didn’t happen, I loved hearing my mom tell me
about getting it—I loved that she wanted to do something nice for me, that she didn’t
blame me for not hanging on to it when Frank made me chew it up in pieces and shove it
inside me.
After losing the condoms to D’Andre, I head to the park down the street. There is a little
pocket park that I sometimes hide at, listening to people have conversations that don’t
have anything to do with me and staring at them because they’d have no reason to notice
me so I can get away with it as long as no one looks at Vivi. I haven’t figured out a
pattern to this neighborhood yet, cept young. I think Miriam is the oldest person I’ve seen
so far. Most of the people appear to be in their twenties and thirties. Kids, no kids. Hot
Topic goth, street punk, Gap, gangsta wannabe, not much actual gangs. No neck or face
tattoos or obvious guns. Rude and pushy, polite and smiley, slow and chill. Trans, hetero,
gay, lesbian, or entirely unknown. Black, brown, white. I imagine that this is where the
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young, semi-young, and queer converge and find a semblance of community. And then
there is me and D’Andre, although D’ Andre might fit in here, I dunno. Mirian definitely
doesn’t though.
I sit beneath a shady tree at the back of the v-shape of the park at the comer, a
book having replaced the box of condoms, and notice a couple of women taking turns on
the one good swing as if it was the middle of the night and they are trashed, although I
don’t think they actually are, I think they just want to be.
One of the women on the swings, laughing loudly and deeply, has deep black
microbaids that are long enough I almost worry that she might get them stuck in the
swing. Her skin is almost as dark as her hair, and her face appears almost too smooth, too
blemish free. She has a flower shaped diamond nose stud and large silver hoop earrings
in her ears. Her features are soft but not really girly. She is wearing a simple black t-shirt
that almost blends in with her skin and jeans, and her body is strong. I nickname her
Diwe.
A woman with light brown skin and a crooked smile on an insanely freckled face
is pushing Diwe, her bleached and died two inch long bright red curly hair bobbing with
her head, her feet bare. Her freckles shine so brightly I figure she must have been laying
on the beach recently. Kali.
“So what happened while I was gone?” Diwe asks, turning her head slightly to
look at Kali, the swing breaking from the semi-straight line.
Kali laughs freely, her freckles shaking with her mouth, “Angel and I hooked
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up—and then broked up.” I squeeze my eyes shut. Fucking Angel. I know she can’t be
talking about my Angel since they are way old, like in their twenties or something, but
how did she manage to take over this? What the fuck?
Diwe’s mouth drops open. “How the eff did I not know this? I was only gone for
two days!”
“It was sort of secret,” Kali says, a note of panic creeping into her voice.
“You look guilty, girl, what did you do?” Diwe asks accusingly.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear it,” Kali says, shaking her head with a touch of a
smile on her face that doesn’t quite wrinkle up to her brown eyes.
But Diwe is a scenty bitch and clearly isn’t gonna let it go. I’m glad, because
damn I want to know now too. What could she possibly have done? Curiosity definitely
will be the death of us all.
Kali cringes but rolls her eyes. “Let’s just say that Angel’s box is allergic to me
and my box might as well have been a map to Atlantis for all the good it did either of us.”
Diwe rolls her eyes as if to copy Kali but grins, laughter spilling out.
Kali raises her hand with an invisible glass, “To boxes!”
“Shit, I’ll drink to that,” Diwe says, scrambling out of the swing, but hitting the
dirt, sending more laughter into the air, almost touching me.
For a moment, I imagine they are drinking for me.
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They leave not long after that, but I can hear their laughter trailing back to me as
they walk somewhere not here. I imagine what their lives might be like, wondering if I
was older and not me if I would fit in with them.
Diwe will be a karate instructor, specializing in throws and floor work—I bet she
runs self-defense classes for free for victims of DV, and spends most of her time sweating
in a black gi, the once thick material thinned out and soft with use. I’d never understand
white gis—only real martial artists wore black, white shows everything, and who’d want
to clean that shit day after day? I mean, blood is not that easy to get out of white. Black
just makes more sense.
Kali will be a bartender who doesn’t drink. Everyone wants her drinks, because
even though she never tastes them, she knows just how to mix them perfect. Her friends
will tease her and other women and men will try to buy her drinks, but she’ll never
accept. Alcohol will never cross her lips, and she’ll never tell anyone why.
A itec ^
I lay in the grass until a group of little kids come with parents and I know I have to go.
Either they’ll ignore me or think I am being a creepster, and I don’t want to deal with the
stares or the whispers or the flat out laughter.
I walk back to Miriam’s, wondering if she knows how I actually get off, and if
any of the women I’d creeped over today have ever gotten off the way I do. Probably not,
they look a little clean.
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Chapter 14: Navy Seals
I always hate the first day at a new school. A couple times I’ve pretended to be a military
brat because that seems better. I’ve spun how my dad is a Navy Seal and I only get to see
him once every two years, but my mom and I—I always have two parents in these
stories—have to move bases for safety reasons every so often. This story works well to
explain away Vivi too, as I’d talk about how one of my dad’s terrorist enemies found us
when he was deployed and attacked me and my mom and that my dad was so devastated
that he killed a whole bunch of terrorists in retaliation, but the one terrorist that had hurt
me was still walking free and he’d made a vow to find him and ruin him, and sometimes
my mom has been a house-bound mess who couldn’t let anyone in the house because she
is too afraid. If my teacher’s heard my stories, they’ve never said anything. Anything is
better than saying you’re a foster kid.
And anyway, it could be kind of true. My mom don’t know who my dad is, he
could be a Navy Seal. He could be off fighting terrorism, and he just fucked my mom on
leave and didn’t know about me, but as soon as he finds out about me he’ll come back
and we’ll live together and he’ll kiss my cheek on Vivi because he won’t mind the
roughness of it and I won’t mind him kissing my cheek and he’ll still have to take
missions because he’s the ultimate badass but I’ll get to stay on base and get taken care of
by other badass Navy Seals who will learn to cook so they can give me something more
healthy than pizza but we’ll end up ordering pizza most nights anyway because they’ll
bum everything and laugh about it and I’ll laugh too real laugh and one of them will put
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me on his shoulders and dance to eighties music while I hold on for dear life while the
rest of them will clean up and I’ll try to help but they won’t let me and then I’ll go to bed
in a real bed and they’ll all sing me a song that they’ve written just for me but they’ll be
so bad at it that I’ll beg them to stop every night before my ears explode but I’ll really not
want them to stop and they won’t because they know and they’ll reassure me that my dad
will come back because he loves me way too much to die and if it happens and he does
die because the terrorist motherfuckers won they’ll get revenge and kill a whole bunch
more of the terrorist motherfuckers in his name in my name in our name and then they’ll
fight for custody of me and win because they are badass Navy Seals and no one messes
with them and they’ll always take care of me and live with me and I’ll keep my bed and
my room and they’ll keep buying me things and buying me girl things at the store with
red faces but they do it they would they would do anything for me anything at all and I’ll
cry sometimes but that will be okay because they will just sing to me and talk about my
dad with me and not let me forget and I’ll have a hard time having a boyfriend because
they’ll scare them away but I’ll have lots of friends because they want to stare at the
badass Navy Seals and so they’ll love coming to the house we all share and they’ll make
sure there is always at least three of them home with me and if they get missions they
have to be gone more for they will say no and it will be okay because they are the best of
the best of the best and no one will want to make them mad because they need to kill
terrorists and no one kills terrorists better than my Navy Seals because they think of my
face and how I got hurt and it reminds them to kill more terrorists and keep killing
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terrorists more and more and more because maybe it might make it better someday and it
does kind of because I know they are trying to make it better for me that they won’t let
anyone else hurt me that they’ll protect me no matter what and that they want to hug me
and make me laugh and give me sandwiches and hot breakfast and that they won’t let
anyone else hurt me no one could hurt me not even Frank because he won’t exist because
it was the terrorist that hurt me and I got hurt for our country for the country that doesn’t
know me but the Navy Seals know me and they have a special name for our group
because I’ll be an honorary Navy Seal because I got hurt serving our country and maybe
I’ll get a letter from the president thanking me for my bravery but I won’t because it has
to be super super super secret because no one can know about the terrorists that hurt
people in their homes so I won’t get a letter from the president but the president will
know what happened and will shake my hand in an underground hospital and thank me
for protecting our country and tell me that I can’t tell anyone what happened because it
would hurt my Navy Seals and my country and I want to help I want to be good I want to
know that I don’t hurt anyone so I promise I won’t tell anyone just like my Navy Seals
promise to stay with me always even if my dad is dead or my dad is alive or he’s both or
he can’t come home because he’s captured alive and might as well be dead because that
would be better than being tortured for no reason or for a reason that you can’t betray
because he wouldn’t betray his country and the president won’t be able to bring him
home because that would mean he’ll have to admit we’re in that country that I don’t
know the name of and we aren’t supposed to be because of agreements with some other
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countries and so he’s lost but my Navy Seals want to go get him but they don’t want to
leave me either cause I’m hurt and they care about me because I’m one of them and they
will always protect me so just some of them decide to go but he dies but it’s okay because
they haven’t left me and I’m not alone but I’m alone in bed now and the president doesn’t
know and the president doesn’t care but he does care because he shook my hand but I
never met him again because he’s the president and he has to run the country but I can’t
tell anyone about the callouses on his left thumb from playing the guitar just like my dead
dad dead dad dead dad who still visits me and who the Navy Seals won’t let me forget by
telling me stories and stories of things my teachers tell me I shouldn’t know and
shouldn’t tell the class because dildos aren’t appropriate things for middle schoolers but
what my teacher doesn’t know is that all middle schoolers talk about dildos purple dildos
swirly dildos giant dildos and the Navy Seals know this because they remember being
middle schoolers and they want to make me laugh and they want to make me have friends
and not just them although I really don’t need any friends beyond them because no one is
better and I get their pins and I wear them on my backpack and everyone at school is
jealous because I have all these Budweiser pins and I’m kind of a badass with my pins
and my terrorist scar that everyone talks about all the time because I’m interesting I’m
kind of interesting I’m the most interesting and it’s okay to talk about terrorists as long as
it’s in awed voices and the Navy Seals take me to school some days in the Hummer the
only thing that fits all of us and no one messes with me because no one wants to be
labeled a terrorist or revenge killed like a terrorist so I don’t get called names like
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Quizface like Quacky Mackie like Tacky Mackie like Wacky Mackie like Maconoquea
and there’s no games about me except what I decide to play because I’m with the Navy
Seals and no one steals my pins because no one messes with me and no one hurts me and
I don’t hurt anyone and no one gets hurt except the terrorists but that’s different because
they’re terrorists and the Navy Seals hunt them for me and we have a ritual after any of
them leave and come back because they’re alive and we celebrate that they’re alive and
they’ve come home to me and we do something normal like have a special eighties song
like Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now play over and over while we drink them drinking
beer and me drinking a 50/50 grape/orange soda mix we call muddy buddy because I love
muddy buddies so they always have muddy buddies for me even though my teachers tell
them it’s too much sugar but they want me to be happy and we raise our glasses that are
always made of glass always always and they let me drink my muddy buddy in a beer
glass like them so we all match and we raise glasses to each other and say za la ta sara
meena kawom cause they like to help me practice my Pashto and cause we all mean it
and we sing and dance badly but we laugh and keep singing and dancing badly and we
make up dance trains and one of them always does the robot because none of us are good
at the robot and we all want to be able to do the robot because everyone should be able to
do the robot but we all can’t and it’s funny and we laugh and laugh and laugh and I
finally fall asleep on the floor somewhere and they carry me to bed and leave me in bed
clothed and cover me with a blanket or two blankets or three blankets if they think I
might be cold and I never wake up cold I always wake up just right or too warm and with
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a soda hangover and a scratchy throat and a stiff Vivi but Vivi doesn’t mind and one of
them brings me my cream to un-stiffen Vivi and one of them gently smears the cream
into Vivi into the creases into the roughness and it doesn’t hurt and the scratchy throat
makes them laugh and they imitate me because they want me to feel at home not to make
fun of me they never make fun of me no one makes fun of me I just laugh and laugh and
laugh and lose my voice but it’s okay because I don’t need to scream ever because they
know when something’s wrong and they would come running running and never stop
running to keep me safe and happy and laughing and I want to make them safe and happy
and laughing too and I get sad when they leave to kill terrorists but I also want them to
kill terrorists and I want to kill terrorists too and they tell me I’m too young and they
don’t want me to be hurt but they know why I want to kill terrorists and they tell me
when I’m older maybe I can kill terrorists and it doesn’t matter that I’m a girl as girls are
strong girls are tough girls can kill terrorists just as good as boys and I’m almost a boy
anyway and even if I wasn’t I could still kill terrorists but not yet because they want to
keep me safe.
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Chapter 15: New School
But sometimes I don’t lie. Sometimes I don’t say anything at all, or a teacher will say
something that people will hear, or I know I’ll be there too long to get away with it, or
there are other foster kids I live with in the school and one thing I always pride myself on
is my ability to keep my lies straight. If I think I can’t keep my lies straight then I don’t
lie. Getting caught in a lie is horrible even if the truth is worse, like when Frank would try
to get me to cum and then he’d make me tell him. “Say the words, girl, say the words and
tell me how good your body feels.” But it didn’t feel good, but I did cum sometimes, so I
don’t know. But if I lied and he knew it then he’d try to do it again and again and again
and that was worse.
So lying right is important. I don’t decide before that first day at the new school,
because I can’t remember what regular school is like. I haven’t been in a regular school
in a while and I forgot how many people are in the halls. I have a backpack that D’Andre
had dug up for me out of his room, that is just a plain black with some sort of faded patch
I can’t read, a spiral notebook, a book D’Andre had lent me, and a pen. I hope I don’t
need a pencil, because I don’t have one. I hoped I don’t need a computer, because I
definitely don’t have that either. I know there are textbooks, but I haven’t gotten those
yet. Whether or not I got a chance to read the textbooks, I don’t care—but I love making
textbook covers. I spend forever on them, making sure I cut the paperbag just right, get
the comers tight enough, it has to be even, and there has to be plenty of room for the
cover to slide in. Most kids love decorating them or stickering them or just drawing on
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them during class when they are bored, but I love keeping it stiff and brown and paper-
rough. I never mark them. I love how they make an old book new and I don’t want to
mess with that.
I get some glances in the hallway, but my hair is long enough that the curls cover
most of my ear and some of my face so Vivi doesn’t just announce herself to the world as
I walk in. But it is so loud that I dunno if I would’ve noticed if someone was talking to
me, or if it just would’ve been lost. The first person who bumps into me I want to punch
in the face but I don’t. I really don’t want to be that kid until I have to be, the first day kid
who already everyone knows to stay away from. I met with the school counselor for
about two minutes but when I just stared at my shoes she sighed and sent me off to class.
I dunno what she was trying to say to me, who cares.
A little early to my first class of the day, I slide into one of the metal desks in the
back row, the cheap brown desktop stuck in the down position, and take out my
notebook, pen, and the copy of Fledgling I’m about halfway through. The other kids in
the classroom are pretty much all on their phones, or looking at a phone together, or
glancing at me as if to say something or not and then laughing. I’d gotten my phone taken
away at the last residential place I was at and I didn’t get it back. I try to keep a burner
phone, but I haven’t gotten the money yet for a new one. I don’t know if they are
laughing at me because of Vivi or because I don’t have a phone.
I ignore them, focusing on the words on the page, but the heat rises in my body. I
can feel the shaking. The teacher walks into the room, a white lady in direct contrast to
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the mostly black and mixed kids in the room, but it doesn’t fall silent or anything. People
keep talking and texting and laughing until the bell rings and she squints her eyes, yelling
for everyone to get quiet and sit down.
The noise level drops somewhat but doesn’t disappear. I put my book down only
because I don’t want her to call on me, but I regret it when it gives me nothing to look at
but the people in the room.
“Okay kids, put your phones away, get in your seats and let’s get started.” I
realize as she is talking and the kids kind of start listening that I have no fucking idea
what class this is. English? Science?
She does roll call, I successfully tell her to call me “Q” before she can stumble
over my name and no one laughs, and the forty or fifty of us crammed into the stupid
desks fall into a stupor as she starts discussing algebra like she isn’t sure if she’s teaching
algebra or trying to make sure we get enough sleep.
The guy in the seat next to me with zagged rows and a crooked nose that looks
not that long ago broken passes me a note. He is on the side with Vivi, so I don’t want to
open it, but that would be worse, I’m not completely stupid.
New girl, you look familiar. You been to Chester’s? —Trey.
I have no idea what Chester’s is and I haven’t looked at him closely enough to
figure out if I know him, but if the possibility is even close, I can’t lie.
Nah, but I been in the area. I ’m Q.
I feel nervous handing it back, like it is going to become a big joke, and someone
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is going to rip it out of my hand but it wasn’t like I wrote anything crazy on it.
He hands it back to me a moment later after furiously scribbling—what sort of
alternate universe have I landed in? I’m still a little shaky, but I don’t think it is from rage
anymore.
Way to be upfront, you ’re hiding something, I know it. I ’ll find out! Doom. Jk, but
I will find out, because I know everything.
I dunno why, but it doesn’t feel doomy. I look over and he smiles at me, the
comer of his mouth tipping up on one side, his eyes slanted down, the pink of his tongue
faintly visible against the white of his slightly crooked teeth and silver braces and black
skin. I don’t know him from anywhere so he probably isn’t a foster kid. And he has
braces, so definitely not a foster kid.
“Q, is it?” The teacher calls, breaking me out of my head, sending the heat in a
rush to my whole body and my eyes looking down. Breathe, just fucking breathe and
don’t let her get in my head.
“What?” I ask, nothing in my tone.
She rolls her eyes. “What’s the answer?” I look at the board but all I see are
numbers and lines. I just shake my head and she moves on, not even bothering to roll her
eyes again. I look down at my desk, but he’s taken the paper back, and he slips it back
over to me again.
D on’t worry, she won’t bite. She doesn’t give a shit about any o f us. Till later, Q
girl.
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I sigh, but don’t write back, it’s obviously a kiss-off. Class gets over and he is
gone—at least I’ll see him tomorrow if not later. Why was he talking to me? Or writing
to me I guess. Maybe he likes charity cases. Maybe he is playing a joke on me, or has
taken a bet, or maybe it didn’t even happened. I dig my fingernails into my palms, get up
and head for my next class—whatever it is.
When I get back to Miriam’s D’Andre’s gone to work or still at school or somewhere
other than here and Miriam isn’t home yet so I head to the park since I don’t have a key.
I’d do homework but they didn’t have any books for me yet, so I can’t do my homework.
I can still picture Trey’s fingers writing my note, and I pull it out of my pocket, glad I
didn’t give it back so I can look at it again. It doesn’t seem like anything weird, but I
don’t know why it wouldn’t be.
I want to cut so bad but I stupidly left my razor at Miriam’s stuck in a kleenex
box, so I wake up Vivi with my fingers instead, sitting just beyond sight of anyone if they
come to the park in the farthest back comer. I know I need to get off or I’m gonna get
worse, but I can’t cause I’m outside. I just lay in the grass for hours, pushing in Vivi as
hard as I fucking can when the bum stops, and waiting. Waiting and waiting.
Finally its dark and Miriam should be back so I head over and bang on the door,
seeing the light in the back on. Miriam opens the door and walks away, leaving me to
come inside and close it. I don’t lock it though I pretend to so Miriam will think I did but
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this way when D’Andre gets back he can get in, since I can’t always hear the door from
my room and Miriam gets angry as fuck when he knocks late and wakes her up but he
works till midnight every night so she should just give him a set of keys already but she
doesn’t trust us, obviously. If we get broken into, Miriam will kick the shit out of me for
leaving the door unlocked, but D’Andre’s worth the risk.
Once in my room I close the door and throw my useless, empty backpack at the
wall, Miriam shouting at me to keep it down, and get on the bed. I rub one off pretending
I’ve never been fucked but finding myself on a thick carpet floor with Trey behind me
telling me he’s gonna give me a shoulder massage but then grabbing my now fat nips and
telling me I like it and I decide I do and he takes off my shirt cause it’ll be easier to
massage but his hand slips and finds itself in my underwear fingers sticking in me and he
tells me I like it so I do and he pushes me forward “It’ll be easier to massage your back if
you lay face down” and then he’s in me fucking me and he tells me I like it so I do and he
tells me he gets to fuck me whenever he wants cause he has to train me to be good and
that I like it so I do.
And I fucking explode.
After going to the bathroom and making sure D’Andre’s back in his room, I go and lock
the door. He never remembers when he gets in, or he leaves it open on purpose, I don’t
know. I pull the homies out of my clothes drawer and look at them for the first time in
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months. I feel kind of bad for abandoning them to the drawer, but I don’t want to think
about Topher anymore. If I saw Topher on the street would he even know who I was?
Maybe cause of Vivi he would. Would he remember my name? So many kids would have
come and left since I’d been there and he might have left too. Staff never stay too long no
matter how good they are. Is Gretchen still there, or did her ass finally get fired? Is
Taiomah still there? Probaby not, he probably got sent to a locked facility but maybe not
those beds are so hard to get, Dr. G would whine and bitch at almost every meeting she
was at that Taiomah was so far down on the wait list and blah blah blah. So he might be
still there, still on the wait list, still trying to kill himself by hitting himself against the
wall of the Quiet Room.
I take out the homies one by one and touch them to Vivi, softly, then put them
back. I don’t want to lose them, but I don’t want to see them either. I say, “Za la ta sara
meena kawom,” to each of them cause I don’t want any of them to feel left out and their
fucked up melted plastic doesn’t laugh at me. I think they’d say it back to me if they
could but they can’t.
Trey doesn’t ignore me the next day like I think he will, but I still don’t know what he’s
after. After a few days he finds me on my way to my comer in the cafeteria where I eat
my free lunch alone as fast as possible before going to an empty hallway and reading the
textbooks I finally got, letting the lock on my locker dig into my spine.
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“Hey Q, you wanna eat lunch with me and D and Avery?” He smiles his tilty
smile and I want to say no but I can’t say no and I know it and he knows it too I’m sure.
I nod and follow him, my orange tray shaking a little. I slide in the end of one of
the small square tables, D and Avery sitting on one side, Trey and I on the other. D and
Avery are both super pretty and basically perfect. This doesn’t make sense at all. D has a
big chest just like her name implies though that probably isn’t where the name comes
from and white blonde hair with black roots just beginning to show. She’s first generation
Chinese-American I learned in one of my classes as she had given her family tree
presentation this week and she’s trying to convince her mom she doesn’t have to get
eyelid surgery yet, but so far she’s losing the battle and her mom is flying them overseas
next month for the surgery, which even with plane fair is much cheaper I guess over
there. Our teacher’s eyes had gone real wide at that bit of info, but she hadn’t said
anything, just nodded as if she knew exactly what that struggle might be like. Yeah, right.
Avery hates my fucking guts, I could tell right away in our Social Studies class, I
think she likes Trey and doesn’t like him talking to me though it makes no sense cause
obviously I’m not a threat. She has short sisterlocks with some bright pink, light brown
skin, and super long arms and legs. She always wears rings all over fingers with bright
stones in different colors but no other jewelry cept for small gold studs in her ears. As I
sit she taps her fingers on the table and looks at my face, staring straight at Vivi as if
asking her what the fuck she dares being in her presence. Well, fuck her.
“I asked Q to eat with us, yeah?” Trey says, his eyes hardening at Avery, but she
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just shrugs.
“Whatever, if you don’t mind having to stare at her, maybe we should switch so I
don’t have to look at it.”
Trey stands up, “Avery!”
But fuck her. I stand up too, step out from behind the table and punch her in the
motherfucking face, see how she likes it. “You fucking cunty bitch, you call me an it
again and I’ll break your fucking neck!”
I can’t breathe, I can’t fucking breathe, goddamn it, goddamn it. D just stares at
me as I stand there, fists clenched like Gretchen but I don’t want to be, and try to keep
breathing through the gasping. Trey froze but then goes and helps up Avery, who is
sobbing like the innocent she is, but I didn’t punch her that hard and she’s barely
bleeding, I definitely didn’t break the bitch’s nose like I should have. Trey looks at me.
No, he looks at Vivi, but he doesn’t say anything as the teachers come rushing over.
I get pulled into the principal’s office, and shocker of shockers I’m expelled.
Miriam will be thrilled. She gets called, while I sit in the office all quiet for once, I’m just
so fucking tired. But Miriam doesn’t answer not that I thought she would so they call my
caseworker who has to come get me. I’ve got a new one since my last one quit or got
fired or killed herself who knows, Jill something or other, and she’s actually pretty nice.
She’s not dressed real fancy or anything, just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She brings me
to her car, a super dirty sort of gold Toyota Corolla that I can only imagine she got used
cause I couldn’t see her picking out a gold car like a grandma.
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I don’t say anything, but that doesn’t stop Jill.
“Q, I talked to Miriam and she said you can still stay for now, but if you do
anything else you’re out, okay?” Her voice is soft and smooth, like I’m a wildabeast and
she can just talk me into submission. Yeah, if only that would work.
I know she’s waiting for my response, but what the hell do I say? It’s not like I do
this shit for fun, and let’s be honest here, I’m not gonna be at Miriam’s much longer no
matter what.
Jill drops me off without getting out of the car cause Miriam comes to the door,
weirdly being home in the middle of the day. I walk inside and as soon as I get in Miriam
starts screaming but doesn’t hit me, so that’s nice. All in all, I think I came out on top,
even if Trey does hate me so fast.
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Chapter 16: Greg
I’m out of school for a long time cause no one wants to try me on. Could be cause I hit
Avery—still not sorry about that—or cause my face or cause I’m just an all around
useless person. I mean, even / wouldn’t take me in, what do I have to offer? I spend most
of my time in the park, sometimes reading, sometimes just lying there making up stories
and histories about people. When Miriam leaves in the morning she kicks me out and
then I have to wander until she gets home. Sometimes I make it all the way to the big
park with the basketball hoops and if someone’s left a basketball I’ll practice shooting
hoops until the sun slides down just a bit and people start coming in so I leave. After it’s
been three weeks and still no sign of school, one of D’Andre’s friends Greg comes up to
me at the big park where I’m just about to leave cause people are starting to come on the
courts.
It’s been a real good day, I’m finally starting to get more baskets in than out,
although my dribbling still really sucks. I’m just not that coordinated. But Greg stops in
front of me, looks into my eyes instead of Vivi, and smiles. Like, actually smiles all the
way up to his hazel green eyes.
I’ve seen Greg around Miriam’s sometimes when she’s asleep and D’Andre
sneaks him in, but we’ve never really spoken, although he usually tosses me a head nod.
He’s like way older, twenty or something, and so tall. He’s over a foot taller than I am
and I have to look way, way up to him. He has very light skin that is just a hint brown so
he’s probably mixed but he’s got his hair done up in super nice Iocs that are just a bit
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showy. He’s wearing basketball shorts, bright white Air Jordans, and a Lakers jersey that
might be real. There’s no reason whatsoever he should be smiling at me.
But I smile back, keeping Vivi as far away from his eyes as possible. I’ve got my
hair pulled back in a half-fro ponytail that’s probably messy as hell, but it’s the best I got.
As much as I hate Vivi being all out there with a ponytail I can’t play basketball with my
hair down anymore since I haven’t cut it since I was at B House. Greg gives me the nod
and tosses me the basketball. I catch it, but almost drop it. I’m such a fucking idiot.
“You want to shoot with me for a while, Q?” he asks, the smile still stuck on his
face.
“Why?” I ask stupidly.
He shrugs, “I saw you shooting and you’re pretty good, thought it might be fun.
What’d you say?”
I shrug back cause obviously I can’t say no, and we play one-on-one, with him
kicking my ass so bad I can’t even seem to get one hoop in. He laughs when he makes a
shot, but then always throws his arm around my shoulder, squeezing me slightly. I tense
up, but don’t pull away. “Don’t worry Q, you’ll get better, yeah? Or, I’ll get worse, but
hey.”
We end the game after half an hour of complete ass kicking but I still had fun,
even if it’s weird to have him touch me. “Some other time?” he asks, waving at me, and I
nod.
The next couple weeks we play almost every day, and every now and then I make
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a basket and Greg goes fucking crazy when I do, telling me how amazing I am, jumping
up and down and hugging me, sometimes grabbing my ass, but it’s nice cause he’s so
excited, like real excited. Like he can’t help but get so happy to see me do something
good. He’s like my real life Positive Affirmation. He helps me improve my dribble too,
since I’ve been doing it wrong forever cause no one has ever actually showed me.
Sometimes when he’s blocking me he gets really close, and he fouls but we’re not
refereeing or anything so it don’t matter. Sometimes he’ll walk me part way home and
hold my hand cause he says he doesn’t want me to fall cause I’m clumsy. This is too true.
It’s crazy that he’s spending time with me at all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if D’Andre
put him up to it cause he’s worried cause D’Andre is awesome like that and I know he
feels sorry for me which is stupid cause I’m no one to feel sorry for.
Greg pops by the house less and less but when he does he doesn’t speak to me
like he does at the courts, he just treats me the same as he did before we started playing
basketball together. It’s confusing, but I just follow his lead. My bio mom used to tell me
that men want women when they want them and only then and we just have to accept
that, cause we need them more than they need us. I never really got that before, but after
spending time with Greg I can see it. I wonder what she’d think of him, if she’d tell me to
stop being a stupid bitch and thinking he’s spending time with me out of anything but
pity but I don’t know what she’d say cause I haven’t seen her in a long time.
Though I know what Frank would say.
But one day Greg asks me when we’re done if I want to come back to his house
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and chill, maybe smoke a little. Frank never let me smoke anything cause he didn’t want
to waste it on me, but I’d seen him and my mom and all the men that came in and out
smoke anything and everything so it’s not like I don’t know how to do it in theory. I can’t
exactly tell him I’ve never done it, cause then he’ll think I’m a fucking baby and he might
stop playing with me.
He walks me to his car, some big black SUV with tinted windows that seems so
big for just him but what do I know about cars? He helps me into the passenger seat,
boosting my butt and straps me in. “I just gotta make sure you’re safe, yeah?” he says,
laughing a little. I’ve never had anyone buckle my seatbelt, at least, not since I can
remember, so maybe it’s nice, I dunno.
I’m kind of nervous, I don’t know where he lives or anything, but it’s Greg.
D’Andre’s friend. The guy who last week gave me his basketball hat cause he said it
would help cover Vivi and he didn’t want me to feel embarrassed. The guy who has spent
so much time helping me improve my jump shot, totally gotten me to actually dribble
right, and who cheers when I make a basket, still, after all these weeks. I can hear Frank
yelling at me to shut myself up and just do what he wants without being so fucking
babyish, and maybe he’s right. I should just be grateful I’m not alone with just Vivi.
“So Q, you going back to school anytime soon?” he asks, rubbing my thigh like
he’s trying to soothe me but it’s not real soothing.
I shrug, wanting to move my leg but not wanting to make him mad. “I dunno, I
haven’t heard anything from Miriam so probably not.”
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“That’s okay, you got me, yeah?” He shines a smile on me and squeezes.
I smile back, “Yeah, thanks Greg.”
He takes me to an apartment building near one of the ones I lived in pre-Vivi, but
even though the outside is shit, trash strewn all over and people everywhere dotting the
cement landscape, the inside of his tenth floor apartment is super clean and has a rather
thick carpet. No one else is here, but I can’t help but feel that other people live here. The
room we enter from the door is a large living room with a big flat screen tv and a large
comer couch that looks like it could fit fifteen people. I wanna know the most number of
people he’s ever had on it, but it seems like a weird question to ask, so I just stand in the
entryway wondering if I should take my shoes off and wondering if my sweaty self is
even clean enough to be in this place. There isn’t any tinfoil left out or any smells of
leftover milk or dirty diapers.
I pick at my jeans, my plain t-shirt sticking to my back. Greg takes off his shoes
and socks so I do the same, sticking my socks in my shoes, wondering if I really should
have taken my socks off, I mean, it’s not like this is my home, but it’s too late now.
“Have a seat on the couch Q, can I get you something to drink?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I reach up and dig into Vivi when his back is
turned, just making sure she is still there. She tingles and I sit at the very end, closest to
the tv, with Vivi turned toward the wall. Greg turns the tv on and puts it to a football
game, I don’t know what teams. All I can feel is him sitting right next to me, not quite
touching, but almost, even though the couch is huge. I hope he can’t smell me. I stick my
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eyes straight forward at the tv, my hands stuck under my legs, still, not sure if this is an
okay position. But Frank always liked me still before he made me move and no one was
harder to please than Frank so maybe this is okay.
Greg hands me a glass of water, which I take a small sip of even though I just
want to drink it all and I put it down on the glass coffee table, which now has a clear,
charred pipe stuffed full and a lighter on it. I can see my mom and Frank inhaling slow
and sighing like everything might be okay and even if there wasn’t any food they didn’t
care and even if the water got shut off they didn’t care and even if they hadn’t showered
in days they didn’t care and even if Frank and his friends has fucked us so hard we were
both bleeding they didn’t care they’d just get so fucking happy. I’m not no hips and flat
nips, baby toes and jelly rolls anymore but I’ve still got the taint. I don’t want to give it to
Greg, but he doesn’t seem too worried.
Greg picks up the pipe and holds it out to me.
“You’re . . . you’re not gonna?” I ask, not really wanting to take it, not sure if
Frank will be okay with it. He might get mad, I don’t know.
He shakes his head, “Nah, I only got enough rocks for you baby girl, it’s okay. I’ll
help you, yeah?” He slowly pushes the pipe up to my face and takes the lighter. He lights
it for me and tells me when to inhale, when to exhale, and I do it, because I can’t say no. I
don’t know how to exactly cept I’ve seen it done lots, and maybe it don’t matter. This is
my mom’s favorite thing in the whole world so maybe it’ll be okay.
I can feel the burst through my whole body, a shake that singes everything and
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lifts up my head, so high so low so hazy.
So nothing. Just a glow, colors bouncing around from the muted tv, and Greg’s
body next to mine.
Greg slides his hand up my leg and leans close, “You like it baby girl?”
I nod cause I know it’ll make him happy. Maybe Frank’ll finally be happy too.
“You know what makes it even better?”
I try to shake my head but it isn’t there just the leg he’s touching and my good ear
he’s breathing into.
“I’ll show you, don’t you worry, yeah?”
I only have a body where he touches. I can sort of see him unbutton my jeans and
I can’t stop him cause I don’t have hands but it’s okay cause it’s Greg, Greg who is
pulling down my jeans and sticking his hand in my underwear and touching me like I
touch myself.
“If you get off before you come all the way back it’s even better, I’m gonna help
you get there, that’s all I’m doing, just helping you, you know?”
I should nod but I don’t know how, but he doesn’t seem to care, he just keeps
rubbing harder and harder and I can feel the heat start meeting the shake the nothing the
everything and it hurts but I don’t care.
“Helping you like this is making me want to get off too, can you blame me? Even
with your fucked up face I still want to help you, yeah?”
He pulls his hand back and there’s nothing again until he pulls me up and pushes