“I wonder why people like that even take in foster kids,” I said. More or less talking to myself out loud.
They both laughed.
“Because they get money from the government for every one they take in,” one of them said. I never knew which one because they sounded a little bit alike and I never turned my head.
“Well, that solves a lot of mysteries,” I said.
It’s funny how many times when something seems impossible to explain, it turns out money is the part you weren’t getting. You know, once you finally figure it out.
Dinner was spaghetti with almost no sauce. She gave us a lot of it but, holy cow, there was almost no sauce. It was like she just waved a jar of sauce over the pasta without really pouring.
Roger didn’t even bother to show up, just stayed in the living room watching TV, and the lady didn’t even turn off her electronic cigarette or take it out of her mouth.
Then I looked up and saw that the five-year-old, the real daughter, had hot dogs and baked beans for dinner. Two hot dogs on those nice, soft white buns, with ketchup and mustard, and this big sea of baked beans all over her plate. I was amazed that a kid who was only five could eat all that, but Lisa was kind of plump so I guess she was putting away a lot of food on a regular basis.
That’s when I started to get mad, and I never stopped being mad after that, because what kind of person takes money from the government to feed a kid and then gives them nothing but cheap white flour for dinner and pockets the difference while they have to watch your real kid get real food to eat?
But I ate all the spaghetti, because I was hungry, and because there was something to be said for having your stomach full of food, almost no matter what kind of food it is.
The whole thing really came apart at bedtime when I found out she was going to lock me in, so that’s when it hit me that I might be better off the way I’d been living before. I mean, the street was bad in a lot of ways, but at least I was free to try to make things better for myself if I could think of how to do that.
But I still figured I would try to tough it out for the rest of Bodhi’s ninety-day jail sentence.
She told me to go to the bathroom before she locked me in, and I did, but just knowing I couldn’t go again made me feel like I needed to.
I didn’t really sleep much at all, just sat there on the edge of my cot, rocking back and forth. There was a bare light bulb over my head that came on when you pulled a string, and I left it on because when I turned it off for a minute it made me feel like the walls were moving in on me.
I was staring at this little bundle of stuff that was everything I owned, that the social worker had given me. A brush and comb, toothbrush, washcloth, pajamas, bar of soap, all rolled up in a towel. I wasn’t wearing the pajamas, because I had never gotten out of my clothes, because I didn’t really feel like I was going to bed. Just mostly rocking there on the cot, getting panicky.
At least the lady had washed my clothes, so that was something, but I felt like she did it for herself and not for me. Like I might be bringing some kind of cooties into her house. But maybe I’m reading too much insulting stuff in. It’s hard to know.
I felt like in a minute there wouldn’t be enough air to breathe, even though there was a pretty big space under the door. Big enough that I knew there actually would be air, and that it was only a false feeling that there wouldn’t be, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.
Then all of a sudden somebody banged on the door and I just about jumped out of my skin.
“Turn off the light,” Lisa yelled, and I knew it was her, even though she hadn’t said a word around me before, because her voice sounded five. And because she would be the only one who could see my light coming out under the door into her bedroom. “It’s keeping me awake.”
I turned it off and tried to lie down on the cot but I ended up sitting up again and rocking, trying to convince myself that the walls weren’t getting closer.
It was a long-ass night.
In the morning I didn’t go to school.
I pretended to, but then I ditched, and used my bus pass to ride all the way down to the county jail near where Bodhi and I lived. I knew where it was because people we knew from the street got put in there from time to time. Not that we knew them well enough to go see them or anything, but word gets around and we knew where it was.
Now, getting there from Sherman Oaks was a whole other thing. I had to ask a lot of bus drivers a lot of questions. Took me all morning, but I got there.
Then, just as I walked in the door of the jail, I got a bad feeling because it hit me that maybe they would ask my age and why I wasn’t in school.
So I walked out again and stood on the street for a minute and tried to work that out in my head. I had ID, sort of, so if they asked for any I could probably squeak by. I still had my wallet, which I’d managed not to lose since I left Utah, and it had a Social Security card and my school ID in it, which had a picture of me and everything.
I walked in, and right up to this round desk with men and women in uniforms sitting behind it. And I just acted like I knew exactly what I was doing. There was a sign that said visiting hours were Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., so I figured so far so good.
A lady with nice, neat braids all over her head asked if she could help me.
I said, “Yes. Thank you. I’m here to visit Denver Patterson.”
Everybody behind the desk laughed, except for one guy who I think just wasn’t paying attention.
“The Bodhi Tree,” one lady said.
“Why is that funny?” I asked them, sort of all of them at once.
“He’s just quite a character,” the lady who was helping me said.
And, well, hell, I couldn’t argue with that.
She gave me a form to fill out, and I had to give my name and address—which was interesting, because I all of a sudden had one—and I had to show ID.
“This is from Utah,” she said, looking at my school ID.
“Yes, ma’am. I just moved here.”
For a minute she just stared at my ID, and I was waiting for her to ask me why I wasn’t in school. But then she just handed it back to me and buzzed me through a door into another room, sort of deeper into the jail.
At first I thought maybe she just didn’t care, but then I decided that kids drop out of school at sixteen, which she knew from my ID that I was, and maybe they think that’s a terrible idea, but there might not be too much they can do about it, law-wise.
I sat at this table in a big room with a guard in the corner and about ten or twelve tables, but there was nobody else there visiting, which seemed really sad.
Then I looked up and a big, noisy metal door was being opened, and Bodhi walked in. He sat down across the table with me and gave me the biggest grin. His face was shaved clean, and I didn’t know if he’d done it as a change of pace or they made you do it in there. And he had this look on his face like it was all a big game—being caught by the police, being stuck in this place. Life in general. That was a very Bodhi way to be. Nothing really seemed to set him back much.
“You okay?” he asked, with that crooked little thing going on with his face.
“I guess so,” I said. It was also a very Bodhi thing to worry about how I was doing when he was stuck for three months in jail. I think it had only been a couple of days since he got picked up, but that was hard to imagine, because the night I’d found that baby felt like years ago. “What about you?”
“This’s as good a place to be as any,” he said. “I was just worried about you on the street by yourself. What about the baby? You get her back home okay?”
“Yeah. I did. But then the police stuck me in a foster home.”
“Oh crap,” he said. “Did not see that coming.” We sat quiet a minute, and I could almost sort of see him thinking about things, like maybe there were real wheels turning in there, like the old saying goes. “So how is it?” he asked. “Is it okay there? You
gonna stay?”
“Not sure,” I said. “It’s not very okay, no. But I’m going to try to stay till you get out.”
“Okay. But here’s a tip, in case you change your mind. You know all that money I was stashing for a place to live? Well, it’s not that much money, but I think I should have a little over two hundred dollars in there. My wallet is in some paper packing stuff at the bottom of that plastic barrel. You know, just to the left of the crate. If things get bad for you, just go get it. Spend it all, I don’t care. It’ll never be enough for a place, anyway. I was fooling myself. I should’ve given it to you for food.”
It meant a lot to me that he said that, because I always wondered why we couldn’t eat better based on how much money he was able to save. But I felt like it was his money and he got to decide, and it wouldn’t be right to ask about it. I always figured it was because Bodhi barely ate—he was just one of those people who could live on dirt and air and do fine. One meal a day suited him and didn’t slow him down. Nothing did, ever.
“Why did you steal if you had two hundred dollars?” I asked him, and then I wished I hadn’t, partly because it wasn’t really my business and partly because I already mostly knew. It was part of his nature.
“If I’d had to buy food, you know how much I would’ve saved up? Zero. That’s how much. Don’t you ever get mad, Molly? Doesn’t it ever make you mad that they have everything and we have nothing and they’re just waiting for a chance to lock our asses up because we needed something to eat? Doesn’t that piss you off?”
I thought about five-year-old Lisa eating hot dogs and beans in front of us.
“It’s starting to,” I said.
“Good. Then go take that money and lay low and try to make it last till I get out and I’ll come and find you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Nice to have a fallback plan, anyway.”
I didn’t have any specific thoughts on how likely I was to fall back, but my new foster home seemed like a place with a lot of trapdoors and cliffs.
Chapter Thirteen
Brooke: Ready
I stepped into the kitchen with the baby on my hip, and my mother hit me like a falling sandbag.
“I called David,” she said.
“Why would you call David?”
“Because you obviously didn’t plan to.”
“Oh,” I said. “I just forgot. What with everything that was going on. Why didn’t you just remind me?”
She never answered the question. For the second time in only a few days it struck me that maybe she didn’t know, either. She had chosen the most confrontational path through the world, and it had become her way. But she truly didn’t seem to know why.
“When is the baby going back to day care?” she asked. Hard voiced and loud. Veering the complaints in a different direction. Classic Mom move. Hit a dead end? Crank the wheel, punch the throttle. Keep driving.
“When we’ve been to the therapist a few more times and I feel like we have a better sense of how she’s doing.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so . . . ,” she began.
“I’m sure I will,” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“I was just going to say that if you ask me, she’s doing fine and you’re the one with the problem.”
I gave up getting through the kitchen and up to my room. Which had been my original plan. I sat down hard at the kitchen table with my mother. And sighed. And Etta wrapped her arms more tightly around my neck.
“I think it’s a combination of the two,” I said. “But . . . so what if you’re right? I don’t get a few days to make an adjustment after a thing like that?”
“You’re the grown-up,” she said. She was deeply into her harping voice. It felt like a sharp tool, digging into me. Searching for something she could use to dig even deeper. “You’re supposed to screw your head back on and keep going. She counts on you for that.”
“So . . . in other words . . . just bury it and pretend it never happened? I think it would be better for Etta if I took the time to make my peace with it.”
She waved me away with one dismissive swoosh of her hand.
“Oh, that’s nothing but a load of New Age claptrap,” she said.
“I’m going up to my room.” I lifted myself and Etta out of the chair. It wasn’t easy without using my hands for leverage. She was getting big. “I’d appreciate being allowed to deal with this in my own way. I’d appreciate not being criticized at a time like this.”
I headed for the stairs, but she was not done. Which came as no surprise.
“You quit your darned job,” she called after me. “You were living under my roof before, but now you’re living under my roof and not even saving up to move out. Just living off me like a minor child. I have a right to say what I think of your actions as long as you’re living under my roof.”
I stopped. Turned around. I was getting mad, and Etta knew it. I could feel her shifting around. Getting ready to start fussing out loud.
I breathed out my anger. For her sake.
“Thank you,” I said to my mother. “Thank you for taking care of us and letting us live here until I can get this sorted through and do better for Etta and myself. I do recognize the generosity of the thing, and I appreciate it.”
In addition to the fact that it was true, and I’d meant it, it was an old last-ditch method I used with my mother when all else failed. She seemed to have no mechanism for relating to kindness. She had no comeback for anything suitably divorced from combat.
When Etta was asleep for the night, and I thought it was late enough to catch Grace Beatty at work, I called her on my cell phone.
“Beatty,” she said when she picked up.
“It’s Brooke,” I said.
“Oh. Brooke. How are things going over there? How’s Etta?”
“Well . . . ,” I said. Then I pulled in a deep breath that she could probably hear. “My mother says she’s doing fine and I’m the one who can’t handle what happened. And, much as I hate to ever say this about my mother, she might be right.”
“Got a good counselor?”
“I do.”
“Ready to have another go at thanking Molly?”
“Yes. I am. That’s why I called.”
“Good. Good for you. I’m going to hang up and call her social worker, and I’ll call you back with a phone number and address.”
I could have called and said what I needed to say. I didn’t.
In the morning I took Etta and drove over there in person.
I had taken out another credit card and put a new battery in my car, and I was driving again. But still, I could have stayed home and called.
The reason I didn’t?
I kept thinking about what that police officer had said to me. The uniformed cop who drove Etta and me to the hospital. He said that homeless girl loved Etta. That he could tell me that for a fact.
I thought if that was true, she might like to see her again.
I purposely braved rush hour traffic to get to Sherman Oaks before eight in the morning. Because I knew if I waited longer, she would probably be at school.
I took Etta out of her car seat in the back. The new car seat. One more charge on the new credit card.
As I did, I said, “Let’s go see Molly.”
“Molly!” she cried out. “Molly, Molly, Molly!”
It hit me that Molly might have already left for school. In which case getting Etta all excited like that would prove to be a serious mistake.
The apartment building had outdoor stairs and hallways, and doors that faced out onto the street. I knocked on the door of apartment B. At first, no answer. Though I could hear a flurry of activity on the other side of the door. It sounded like a herd of baby elephants running for cover.
Then, just as I thought no one ever would, someone answered the door. It was a woman of about forty with curlers in her hair. She looked tired and worn down.
Also upset about being tired. She had an e-cigarette dangling from her lips. To say she did not look happy to see me would be a laughable understatement.
“What?” she said. “I’m trying to get the girls ready for school.”
“I’m here to see Molly.”
She snorted a laugh that sounded derogatory. As though it had been truly stupid of me even to consider such a plan.
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta said from her perch on my hip.
“Yeah, I’d like to see Molly, too,” the woman said. “Nothing pisses me off more than having to call a girl’s social worker and tell them she’s gone. But that’s what I had to do last night, when Molly didn’t come home. I’m surprised nobody bothered to tell you.”
“She ran away?”
“Looks like it. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”
“Do you have any idea why?”
She stopped with her hand on the door. Clearly disappointed that she didn’t get to slam it yet. She sighed deeply.
“I could make you a wild guess, yeah. I disciplined her. Kids don’t like that if they’re not used to it. These kids, they been running wild forever and they’re not used to having to answer to anyone. Me, I reintroduce them to discipline. Some take it, some don’t.”
“What did she do wrong?”
“Skipped school. I called the school to see if she was there for her first day, and it turned out she never showed. So when she got home, I waited to see if she would fess up. She didn’t, so I let her have it.”
She started to swing the door again. I stopped it with my left hand. My right hand was holding Etta onto my hip.
“Let her have it? As in, struck her?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I got kids to look after,” she said.
Then she put her hip to the door and closed it against my will.
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta chanted as I carried her back to the car. She no longer sounded excited. She was brokenhearted now. It made my chest hurt to hear her tone.
She chanted it again as I strapped her into her car seat. And again as I started up the car. “Molly, Molly, Molly.”
Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel Page 13