How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

  The girl on the top bunk leans down. She has large dark eyes. She says, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” takes out her wad of gum, sticks it on the underside of her bed.

  I spend a lot of time that night staring at all the lumps of gum.

  34 days, 10 hours

  TWO DAYS LATER, A guard comes to get me out of bed. “You got a hearing,” she says. “Judge time.”

  The bathrooms are scary here, so I’ve been holding my pee at night. I can’t hold it anymore and she lets me duck into the bathroom. There are curtains and not doors on the stalls. I have to wait in line, but I keep my elbows close to my body and my eyes down on the damp tile floor. Everything stinks.

  Another guard drives me and five other girls to a courthouse in a van.

  Not-Karen meets us in the lobby and takes us through the metal detector. The courtroom doesn’t look like what I’ve seen on TV. It isn’t stately, like in those fancy law shows. In fact, it’s kind of dumpy. It’s long benches and some tables and a tall, plain desk for the judge. It looks like a place you go to give blood or something.

  Not-Karen takes my elbow and leads me to the front of the room. The judge asks me if I am Grace Maria Tolliver and I say, “Yes, that’s me.” She pages briskly through a file of my crimes and looks at me sternly.

  She has a voice like her throat is full of gravel. “What’s gotten into you? Where are you going? You are headed down a dangerous path, young lady. You could have killed someone. That’s no joke, do you understand me?”

  When she says that, I think of my dad. I guess I truly am his daughter now. Maybe all his weaknesses thread through me, too. It isn’t just a DNA coincidence of avocados and comedy. There’s malice and stupidity and a whole lot of other shit, too, I guess.

  The judge says things like pending appointment of counsel, pending family services investigation, until such time as placement can be determined, until adjudication.

  Not-Karen says things like mother’s death, no priors, clean record. Bereavement. But she sounds almost bored, like she doesn’t care, and I guess, really, why should she? She’ll probably see fifty other kids like me this week. Maybe even just today.

  Returned to the juvenile facility until counsel…

  My eyes blur.

  I’m disappearing.

  Not-Karen sighs and closes her folder.

  The judge asks me if I understand, and even though I don’t, I nod that I do, because nothing even matters anymore.

  34 days, 12 hours

  THE GIRL THEY CALL Wee-Wee looks nervous and that makes you nervous.

  She’s in the hallway after you get processed and the guard sends you through the door. You are supposed to follow the schedule now, a piece of paper handed to you, a list of things you need to accomplish if you want to use the phone, take out books from the library, have a visitor.

  Remanded to

  For a period of

  Until such a time as

  You feel cold, so cold inside, like your heart has been wrapped in cloth very tightly.

  Wee-Wee motions to you. She shakes her head.

  Her voice is urgent as she pulls you closer, her breath hot in your ear. You can barely understand her.

  Just drop. Cover your head. Don’t scream. Curl up tight.

  She keeps looking back at the double doors, the ones that lead to the dorms, where all our bunks are. Suddenly, there is shouting and screaming behind the doors.

  You say, Wha—

  But there isn’t any finishing because the doors burst open and a stampede of girls appears, followed by fierce-faced guards, and Wee-Wee is pulling you down to the ground.

  Cover your head. Don’t scream. Curl up tight.

  A horde of girls stomp over you and Wee-Wee, kicking and punching as they move to the front doors of the hallway, the ones that lead to the lobby. Alarms begin to sound as they break through.

  Shoes in your face, against your cheek, down the length of your back.

  You can feel so many things being crushed down in you.

  Just like in the hospital, the night your mother died, you think, This can’t be happening.

  But it is.

  Next to you on the floor, Wee-Wee’s eyes are leaking. Her lips shake.

  Effluviam, you think. Maraschino.

  Out loud, you whisper, Perpendicular. Entropy. Magnolia.

  Wee-Wee stares at you, shoes whizzing by her face. What are you doing?

  Ampersand. Sussuration.

  Wee-Wee whispers, Lava. Sara Lee.

  The lights go out but the alarms stay on, and the words keep coming, from both of you, long into the night.

  40 days

  THIS TIME, IT IS Karen who picks me up. She’s waiting for me after I come out of processing, wearing my bloodstained dress, the stains now washed to a grim, thin pink.

  She gives me a sad smile.

  “A lot’s happened, I guess,” she says softly.

  I nod.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  * * *

  • • •

  In Karen’s car, she hands me a cold hamburger in plastic wrap and a plastic bottle of soda. “Here, eat. I’ll fill you in as we drive.”

  I hold the soda bottle between my knees. The burger tastes like cardboard, and I can only manage one bite. I lost what was left of my appetite in Ignacio. It didn’t seem worth it to eat, after a while. Like Wee-Wee said, the line for the psych was long, and the nurse was often out sick.

  After the riot, Wee-Wee said, “Sometimes bad feelings just build up. You’ll get used to it. That word thing, that was cool.”

  I didn’t get used to it. But I wondered about the girls who did.

  Karen tells me I’m going to a group home for juvenile girls.

  “The home is monitored,” she tells me. “Most of these girls have been in juvenile detention and this is their first step after leaving. If they complete their stay without any infractions, they can go back to foster, or home, wherever they were before. Some of the girls might become emancipated. The house leader teaches life skills, like keeping a bank account, getting a part-time job, how to manage schoolwork and emotions. All in all, it’s not the worst place you could be.”

  “When can I see Shayna?” I ask slowly. I’m almost afraid to know. “Did you find her?”

  Karen shakes her head. “I don’t know, Grace.” She pauses. “She’s not returning my calls right now, which doesn’t help our case. I did see the 911 call report. I wish I’d known that beforehand.”

  She pauses. “It could be that she’s not ready for this. We might have to start investigating other options.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that for right now, the state is your parent. Eat your burger. You don’t look so good.”

  41 days, 22 hours

  THERE’S A FEATHER ON the doorstep of the group home. It’s gray and white and placed right in the middle of the step, too carefully to be an accident.

  Karen and I step around it gingerly. “Pretty,” Karen says.

  She rings the doorbell. A sign says, Visitors must have prior approval. A video camera is mounted above the doorframe.

  A smiling, cheerful Black woman opens the door. She sweeps back her hand. “Welcome,” she says grandly, like it’s a castle.

  “I’m Teddy. You must be Grace Tolliver. I hear you prefer Tiger, so Tiger it shall be.”

  The house is a sprawling brick ranch, six bedrooms, two girls to a bedroom, three bathrooms, with a schedule on the door of shower times for each girl. There’s a schedule in the kitchen, too; we help cook each meal. Some girls set the table and clean up. As Teddy walks me around, she explains that the girls like to cook things they remember from home: eggs and toast, baloney sandwiches, macaroni and cheese.

  Teddy says, “Nanette makes the best Navajo bur
ger I have ever tasted. Her fry bread is to die for.” She kisses her fingers.

  Teddy says, “Children need to learn skills. Cooking, cleaning, schoolwork, simple things to get by. You can cook for yourself, keep a clean house, get good marks in class, those are just little things that make you proud. You don’t need a man to make you feel proud of yourself. I teach my girls to take care of themselves. A messy life leads to messy decisions.”

  There are eleven girls. Teddy passes by a room with a television and I count them, sprawled on the couch, on the floor. Some of them look up at me. Some don’t.

  This place doesn’t seem as grim and gray as Georgia’s or as light as LaLa’s. But it isn’t Ignacio Ortiz, either. Or something way worse.

  It’s not my home, either, but I’m guessing that’s not an option anymore.

  It’s funny. I feel like I should cry, because this is very bleak, but I can’t, because I don’t have anything left. I literally have nothing left. I’m just a moveable object, like Leonard and Sarah.

  I’ve become a kid chess piece.

  Thaddeus was lucky. He found a home.

  Teddy hands me a pile of clothes and tells me to go change. She says, “You start in my house with a clean slate. To me, you are the most wonderful girl who ever lived. You’ve done nothing wrong, ever. I believe in you.”

  She leans close. Her breath smells like peppermint tea. “Don’t make me a liar. That’s all I ask.”

  I nod and say okay, even though I don’t mean it.

  * * *

  • • •

  I got to the house after dinner, but Teddy made me a plate anyway, and I sit in the kitchen, dressed in too-loose blue jeans and a T-shirt, pushing chicken nuggets and peas around. She sits with me, doing paperwork. She glances up. The other girls are still watching television. Pretty Little Liars. Reruns of Buffy. Cake really liked those shows.

  I wonder what she’s doing in Massachusetts, at her music camp. If she even knows what’s happened to me.

  “You’re like my babies were with food, nudging it around your plate. You act like a baby, I’ll treat you like a baby. You can leave this table when you eat seven peas, two nuggets, and drink six swallows of milk. You are skin and bones, you know that?”

  She pauses. “Do you have issues with food? That I should know about? I didn’t see that in your papers.”

  Your papers. Like an animal from the pound. A file. A number. A girl with no face.

  “I’m just not hungry,” I tell her. “It hurts to eat. I was in a car accident and then there was a riot at the center. I got kind of banged up.”

  “Yes. And you lost your mama.” Teddy breathes in through her nose, deeply. “That’s very hard. But she would want you to eat. Your mama would want you to live, do you understand that?”

  I eat two peas and nibble a chicken nugget.

  “There. That’s a start.”

  She puts her glasses on and looks at the papers again. “Your mama would not want you to be driving drunk down a road in a stolen truck, would she?”

  I shake my head.

  There are sayings all over the kitchen. On posters. On oven mitts. On coasters on the round table.

  Forget the mistake. Remember the lesson.

  If it doesn’t open, it’s not your door.

  Open your mind, open a book.

  I haven’t read a book in what seems like forever.

  Teddy says, “Then don’t. From now on in life, ask yourself, would this make my mama happy? And think real hard about it. Because if the answer is no? Then don’t do it.”

  She takes a sip of her tea. “I should put that on a T-shirt, shouldn’t I? Make a million dollars. You can go watch television with the other girls now.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After four days in the group home, I get used to the routine. Every day I do math, English, and spelling at a long table in the basement with the other girls. Teddy tells us, “Even though it’s summer and school’s out, learning is not over.”

  Some girls roll their eyes.

  There are some girls who seem nice, girls that seem mean, and some girls that are eerily, quietly broken, girls for whom this is going to be the nicest, kindest place they’ll ever live.

  One girl, Fran, tells me, “The weird thing is how attached everyone gets to Teddy. I mean, girls get let out and reoffend just hoping they’ll get sent back here, you know? Fucked up.”

  Fran is matter-of-fact. She makes the best macaroni and cheese because she uses a lot of butter.

  I fold a lot of T-shirts and plain white underwear and blue jeans of all sizes.

  We journal in composition books and try not to cry.

  I’m moving on autopilot.

  Some girls get to make phone calls and I strain to figure out who they might be talking to. A girlfriend or boyfriend? Mom?

  Cake is still at music camp. I wonder if I’m allowed to call her, or if she would even talk to me. Maybe I could call Thaddeus.

  Teddy tells me I don’t have phone privileges yet. Privileges take seven days.

  The chart on the wall says you earn your phone calls and “days out.” Some girls get to leave the house for two hours in the afternoon. They come back with bags of candy that Teddy spreads out on the table.

  “Share and share alike,” she says, sliding each of us a candy, one by one.

  One day mine is sweet and tart, lemon-flavored, which is my mom’s favorite kind of candy flavor, and the taste in my mouth reminds me of her so much I walk away from the table quickly and go into the bathroom, even though it isn’t my scheduled time, turn on the sink water, and let the hard yellow drop fall from my mouth. I watch it clatter in the sink, wondering when anything will ever be normal again.

  51 days, 15 hours

  ONE DAY, LONNIE COMES to get me in the study room.

  “Boy out front,” she says briskly. “Teddy says you got ten minutes in the main room.”

  Thaddeus is sitting on the couch, his hands on his knees, a wall of girls with crossed arms staring at him. Marisela bobs her head up and down. “This your man?” she asks me.

  I laugh, not because it’s impossible, but because I’m so happy to see him.

  Thaddeus shakes his head. “Oh, no, no…”

  Marisela says, “She’s not good enough for you, then? You would be grateful for a girl like her, boy.”

  Teddy comes in, herding everyone out. “Ten minutes,” she says. “And I’ll be watching. No body contact.”

  I sit next to him on the couch. “How did you find me?”

  “Karen. I begged her. You look…not good.”

  I shrug. “It’s fine.”

  We look at each other sadly. There’s too much to say and not enough time.

  “I’m leaving,” he says. “I’m going to Phoenix. I got a job at a Best Buy up there.”

  “Phoenix? But why?” My heart drops.

  He takes a breath. “I’m gonna go up there and I’m gonna get custody of my sister. I have to have a steady job, a place to live, take parenting classes. And then I’m gonna file for custody. I’ll get it. My mom’ll give her up. She’s too far gone. I can tell you right now when I move there, she’ll start leaving Jax with me so she can go score and then…she just won’t come back one day.”

  He starts to cry, which scares me, because he’s Thaddeus.

  We can’t touch, and even if we could, I still remember what he told me about being touched, that because he was beaten, it’s hard for him. His shoulders shake.

  “That’s really good,” I say, trying to be positive. “That’s awesome and perfect.”

  He nods, swipes at his cheeks. “Yeah, and after that, I’m going for Leonard. I know where he is, I found out. It’s not great. I can do this. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.”

  I l
ook at the doorway. No Teddy.

  I slide one hand across the couch cushion.

  Thaddeus looks down.

  He slides his hand across the cushion until just the tips of our fingers are touching.

  53 days, 12 hours

  WHEN TEDDY TELLS ME I’m leaving, I assume I’m going to another house, probably the first in a series of houses, until the day I turn eighteen, when I’ll be thrust out into the world, friendless and penniless, like all the girls here talk about. “You’re just shit out of luck at that point,” Marisela had said once. “Out on your ass.”

  Cake and Thaddeus will be just a dream. My sister and dad will fade into the background.

  I don’t even say anything, just nod. I’m a blank slate at this point, bereft and lonely. I’ll go wherever they tell me to go.

  She points to my clothes. “You can keep those. That dress you came in with? My God, that dress oozed pain. I could barely hold it, Tiger. Whatever the story is behind that dress? You are ready to write ‘the end,’ my girl.”

  She looks at the wrecked dress in her hands. “How long did you wear this tattered thing?”

  “I can’t remember now,” I mumble.

  “What on earth would make you do that, Grace?”

  I don’t know how to say it. It all seems far away now, why I didn’t take the dress off. “She wanted me to,” I manage.

  “Who?” Teddy’s voice is gentle, but insistent.

  “My mom. She bought it for me…before she died. And I hated it.”

  Teddy frowns. “It’s okay not to like the clothes your mama picks out for you. That’s a story as old as time.”

  As long as I live, I’ll always think that I must finally be cried out, and as long as I live, I’ll always be surprised that somewhere inside me, more tears are being manufactured, because here they come, splashing on the lap of my jeans.