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

Copyright by Shadia Leigh Savo

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

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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

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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.

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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?”

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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.

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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

71

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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home here.”

All I want to do is punch her in the fucking face. But I don’t.

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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

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me down over the side of the couch. My face pushed in so Vivi is hidden and lost and he

fucks me until the high is gone and I’m nothing and no one but a body with no name.