Three Little Words

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

  At lunch I asked some friends what they were going to write about. One chose getting a Christmas tree with his dad; another had decided on baking holiday treats with her mom; several were going to focus on vacations with relatives who lived up north.

  When I returned to the classroom, tears pricked my eyes as I stared down at my blank paper. Mrs. Brush waved for me to come to her desk. “Did something happen at lunch?” the teacher probed. I shook my head. “Do you need to see the nurse?” I hung my head but did not answer. “Then what’s the matter, dear?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t want to do the winter story.”

  “That doesn’t sound like my eager beaver.” Mrs. Brush called me that when I handed in my assignments first or wildly waved my hand to answer a question. “And why is that?”

  “I can’t t-think of anything I’ve d-done with my f-family,” I stuttered to cover the sob that rose in my throat.

  “Oh, dear,” she said as she realized my humiliation. “You don’t have to put way people in your story. What do you like about winter?”

  “Snow. I once saw it, but there wasn’t enough to build a snowman.”

  “Then why don’t you write about an imaginary snowman?” The teacher beamed.

  The words came quickly, and I still remember them: My snowman is white, my snowman is out of sight. He wears his boots tight as he goes roaming about. The poem went on to describe how the sun melted him away and how he was hiding in an ice chest until the next winter, when it would be safe for him to come back out and play with me again. I drew pictures around the poem and won the contest. Mrs. Brush sent me into the teepee to recopy the poem neatly for the printer. I memorized the whole poem because I figured that nobody would keep it safely for me. And, of course, nobody did.

  My mother was supposed to see us every month, yet four long months passed without any word. Finally, at the end of October, she returned. Mrs. Moss had us wear outfits my mother had sent. Her cleverness about details amazed me. At the visitation office she again sat in the room, listening to every word.

  “How’s my Sunshine?” my mother asked when I ran into her arms.

  “I’m still getting all A’s,” I bragged.

  “I’m in Head Start!” Luke chimed in.

  I noticed a big box in a shopping bag. “Is that for me?” My mother handed over the Easy-Bake oven.

  While I busied myself opening it, she gave Luke his helicopter. “It’s remote control,” my mother told him, “but you have to use it outside.”

  The Easy-Bake oven kit had everything needed to use it, including pans and powdered cake mix. My mother got water from the restroom, and we made our first cake together. Luke kept interrupting the cooking process, so Mr. Ferris helped him unpack the helicopter.

  The cake smelled lemony as it baked. My mother handed her parenting class completion certificate to Mr. Ferris. “There’s only a few more tasks on my list before you can come home with me,” she said to me.

  Mr. Ferris cleared his throat as a warning. “Why don’t we sit over here?” He pointed to another table. I followed, gripping my mother’s slacks. “You are almost in compliance.” He shuffled through some files. “What about substance abuse aftercare?” My mother handed him another paper. “Very good, Mrs. Grover.” He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I have another appointment.”

  “But I drove more than eight hours to get here!”

  He stood as a sign that her time was almost up. “You can schedule monthly visits.”

  “What else will it take before I can get my children back?” she moaned.

  “Just keep up with your case plan. You are making excellent progress.”

  She quickly cut the tiny cake into five bite-size pieces, and we each ate them.

  “Mama!” I said as Mrs. Moss stood to take charge.

  “I’ll be back next month, Sunshine.” As she hugged me, Luke used his head to butt into the embrace.

  “I want my mommy!” Luke wailed in the elevator. A few of the other riders looked at him with sympathy.

  “She’ll be back next month,” Mrs. Moss said in her fake soothing voice. “Until then, you have that nice helicopter, right?”

  As soon as we returned from the visit with my mother, Luke begged to try his helicopter. Since I had used my oven, Mrs. Moss allowed it.

  “I’ll show you how,” Mitchell said.

  Mitchell got it to fly on the second try, and Luke was thrilled. But soon I heard Luke screaming. “You broke it! You broke my helicopter!”

  Mrs. Moss, her wiry hair looking like a Brillo pad, peered out the door of the trailer. “What did you do to him?” she asked Mitchell accusingly.

  Mitchell smirked. “He said ‘hell.’”

  “I said ‘helicopter’!” Luke insisted. “You broke it.”

  “Did not!” Mitchell replied.

  “Hell, hell, hell!” Luke screamed.

  Mrs. Moss swooped down and gripped my brother’s shirt. “I should never have let you play with it.”

  “It wasn’t his fault!” I screamed. Mrs. Moss elbowed me aside and dragged Luke inside.

  Mr. Moss stood by a shed pretending nothing was happening. Through the sliding glass door, I saw Mrs. Moss cram Luke into a high chair. He flailed his arms, but she pinned them under the tray. Tears made wavy tracks down his smudged face.

  “Luke’s gonna get it now,” Mitchell said before hightailing it to the boys’ yard.

  I trembled as I watched Mrs. Moss press Luke’s clenched cheek with her thumb and forefinger, making him look like a fish. With her other hand, she forced a bottle of hot sauce between his pursed lips. As he gasped for air, the hot sauce splattered his face and ran down his shirt. The more he spit out, the more Mrs. Moss poured in. His turn had come. It was almost as if Mrs. Moss rolled dice to decide whom she would torment next. We kids felt relieved when she directed her cruelty at someone else because it meant we were safe—at least for a while. That is why we snitched on one another. Better to be the one not chosen in this particular game of chance. But as much as I feared being punished, it was worse watching Luke suffer and not being able to help him.

  Early one morning I heard Lucy crying in the master bedroom. I went to get her and walked her into the living room. I patted her back and began singing “You Are My Sunshine” very softly. It seemed to soothe her.

  Mrs. Moss came up behind me and took the baby from me. “Do you know there’s more to that song?” She sang the next verse in a whisper and then said, “When Toby’s up, pick out your best school clothes.”

  “But there’s no school today.”

  “We’re having guests, so I want you to teach the girls all the verses to ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

  “Must be somebody’s worker,” I said to Mandy.

  “Yep, she’s baking brownies,” Mandy agreed.

  We were not surprised when a man and a woman arrived for a visit before lunch. They were not any of our regular workers, so they must have been supervisors or licensing inspectors. I kicked a stone across the flagstone patio while Mrs. Moss served coffee and brownies inside. “I’m not going to sing that stupid song!”

  Mandy was taken aback. “What’s your problem?”

  “If it wasn’t for you, we’d be with our parents.”

  Mandy clenched her fingers. “What did I do?”

  “You didn’t tell the truth about what happens here.”

  She started to cry. “Nobody else wants us, and if we leave, they’ll split me and Toby up.”

  What could I say? Luke and I had been apart more than we had been together, but at least we saw our mother. Mandy did not have anyone to visit.

  Mrs. Moss called us inside. “We’ve been learning a new song.” Mrs. Moss acted as if we sang together daily. She waved her arms like a conductor.

  “You are my sunshine …,” we began in unison.

  The words stuck like a chicken bone in my throat. This was my song, our song. My knees started to wobble. I would have given anything to fal
l back into my mother’s arms and be told that she was there now and everything would be all right. I blinked away slippery tears and tried to force my spine rigid, but that made me tremble even more. At the time I believed Mrs. Moss had picked this song because she knew it meant something to me and this was another one of her cruelties. I began to chew a hangnail to suppress my fury, but I stopped when I realized it wouldn’t look like I was singing. Surely Mrs. Moss would punish me if she thought I was ruining her little show, so I forced myself to mouth the words, using the rest of my energy to hold back angry sobs.

  Bundles of Christmas gifts prepared by foster parents’ associations began arriving in early December. A few packages had the telltale shapes of Caboodles cosmetic cases. Someone tore open a corner to check. When Mrs. Moss saw the rip, she called the girls into the kitchen.

  “Who did this?” She gave each one of us her death-ray stare. “If nobody confesses, I am going to burn everyone’s presents in a big fire!” Silence. Mrs. Moss began to toss the gifts into a green trash bag.

  “I did it.” The words sounded hollow inside my head. I hoped she could tell that this time I really was lying.

  “I thought it was you!” She grabbed the ripped package. “You were going to get one of these, but now I’ll find somebody who deserves it.” She looked at the pile. “And this and this … and this.”

  The guilty party was standing there watching Mrs. Moss remove my gifts, and she did not make a peep. It was probably Mandy, but she was so afraid of her own shadow, she would have let everything burn. On Christmas morning Mandy received her Caboodles kit and a lot more gifts than I did. There were some new clothes and we both got Barbie dolls that Mrs. Moss allowed us to keep in the house, but we had to let the little girls play with them too. By New Year’s, Clare had ripped the head off Mandy’s doll, so Mandy confiscated mine.

  “Do you like living with the Mosses?” my teacher asked after Christmas vacation. I guess so.

  She nodded. “Would you please go to the guidance office? They need some help with your brother.”

  When I got there, Luke was crying. He was filthier than usual, with dirt encrusted on his face and ringing his scalp. He also smelled like poop.

  The counselor said, “He had a little accident.”

  “Don’t tell on me!” Luke wailed.

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  “He said he’s afraid he’ll have to drink hot sauce again,” the counselor said. “Is that possible?”

  I looked her straight in the eyes. “Oh, yes. He gets it all the time.”

  That night as we were getting ready for bed, Mrs. Moss was making pudding. The kitchen smelled like bananas and cream. I figured a caseworker would be coming in the morning and was surprised when Simon Parker, a child protection investigator, came to the door a little while later, along with a deputy sheriff.

  By then Heather had moved out, but there were still fourteen of us foster children there.

  “What happened to Luke today?” Mr. Parker asked Mrs. Moss.

  “Oh, that boy forgets to go to the bathroom sometimes.” She clucked as if it was no big deal. “They called me from school to take him home.”

  “Where is he?”

  She looked at the clock. It was almost ten. “In bed. Where else?” She chuckled pleasantly. “Well, he had better be in bed at this hour.” She went to his room and brought him out in his jammies. His hair was still wet. We all had bathed that evening, and Mrs. Moss had inspected us carefully. Now I knew why.

  Mr. Parker walked Luke back to his bedroom. “It’s quite warm back there,” he said when he returned to the kitchen. “And the air circulation is poor.” He glanced at the full ashtray on the table. “The smoking doesn’t help.”

  Mr. Moss, who rarely said anything, spoke up. “I’m fixin’ to put in some circulating fans.”

  “Other than the musty air and it being a bit overcrowded, I don’t see any problems here,” Mr. Parker said.

  “We have a few new sibling groups here on a temporary basis. It’s a shame to separate them, so we do what we can until they can find someone else to take them as a unit.” Mrs. Moss smiled. “Would you like some of my fresh banana pudding?”

  Mr. Parker and the deputy declined.

  “Well, we do our best with what little we’ve got,” Mrs. Moss continued. She pointed to a shelf of children’s videos. “You may find newer homes but not happier ones.”

  Two days later a female investigator interviewed each of us at school. At first I told her everything was fine.

  “We’re all alone, hon,” she said in a corner of the guidance office. “Nothing bad will happen if you tell the truth, do you understand?” I nodded, but I still doubted her. “Do you take a bath every night?”

  “Uh-huh.” A crack in a wall steadied my eyes and prevented me from feeling as though I were falling.

  “Do you help anyone else take a bath?”

  I explained how Mandy and I bathed the younger girls and ourselves in the same water and helped with the smaller boys.

  “Did Mrs. Moss threaten to burn your Christmas gifts?” she asked.

  I was surprised she knew about this. “I always take the blame for the other children,” I replied.

  “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  I seized on this opportunity to complain about my dolls being locked in the shed, and she said she would see what she could do.

  On the bus ride home I asked Luke, “What did you tell the lady who came today?”

  “I said how Mrs. Moss threw a doll at me ’cause I couldn’t keep my arms raised up during a time-out.” He looked worried. “Was that okay?”

  Mitchell, who was sitting behind us, said, “I told her it was because you called her a bitch.”

  Luke spun around and made a fist at Mitchell. “And I also told her that I hit you until your eyes popped out and your head split open.”

  “What else did you tell the lady?” I asked Mitchell.

  “About how Mrs. Moss shoved food down Candace’s mouth till she almost barfed.” He looked out the window. “Anyway, nothin’ I tell will matter because Mrs. Moss told me she has a special paper saying she can keep us in the corner as long as she wants.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m gonna get it when we get home.”

  “We all told stuff,” I said to comfort him. “I bet our workers will be there to take us away the minute we get back.”

  “No, they’ll say it’s my fault. Nobody wants me because of my temper. That is why we’re all there. The Mosses take the ones nobody else wants.”

  “My mother wants me!” I retorted.

  “And me, too!” chimed Luke, even though I knew by that time that Mama wanted only me and that he was going back to Dusty.

  “Anyway,” Mitchell added, “I stuck up for you.”

  “Did you tell her about the Caboodles?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I said you took the blame even though you didn’t do it.”

  This time I really did expect Mr. Ferris to be waiting for Luke and me after school with our belongings in plastic bags. Finally, my dolls and dresses would be freed from the shed and we would go to a safer home. However, just like before, nothing happened.

  Miles Ferris did not visit us again until the end of January. I overheard Mrs. Moss telling him, “Ashley likes to go to school and tell stories about my home and family.” Mr. Ferris arched his eyebrows reprovingly. She apparently took this as a sign that he was on her side and grumbled, “I don’t know how much more I can take from that girl.”

  I was surprised when he showed up again the next week because he usually came only every few months. The visit was brief. On the way out the door he bent close to my ear. “You be good now and don’t make any waves.”

  Two weeks later we celebrated Valentine’s Day at school. A few mothers brought cupcakes and passed out heart-shaped candies with sayings printed on them. I had saved my biggest valentine—the one we were supposed to take home to our mothers—and gave it to my teacher, Mrs. B
rush. She pinned it to the bulletin board. I had no idea that was to be my last week in her class.

  When I returned from school on Friday, I found Miles Ferris waiting for me. This time my belongings were stuffed into a plastic sack.

  “Here, I’ll take that.” Mr. Ferris lifted my backpack.

  I started for the bedroom, but Mrs. Moss stopped me. “I packed everything. You’ve got your toothbrush, underwear, shoes, and all your clothes.”

  “What about the outfits my mother sent?” I asked tentatively.

  “Of course,” she claimed.

  “What about my dress with the hoop?”

  “It don’t fit you no more.”

  I appealed to Mr. Ferris. “Did you get my Precious Moments sleeping bag?”

  “She gave me everything.” He pushed me toward the car.

  I watched as he put my backpack and one meager garbage sack in the trunk. He did not have anything from the shed.

  “What about my dolls and my Easy-Bake oven?” I started to panic.

  Mr. Ferris rolled his eyes toward Mrs. Moss.

  “She has a big imagination,” Mrs. Moss stated.

  “You saw the oven when my mother visited me!” I said vehemently. He was more interested in getting me into the car than dealing with my protests. “Where’s Luke?”

  “You’ll have visits,” Mr. Ferris said in a flat voice. He buckled me in.

  “Please, I need my dolls, my stuff in the shed,” I begged.

  “I’ll get them later,” he said to mollify me, then slammed the door.

  As we pulled out of the driveway, I heard a shattering sound inside my head as if a glass had broken between my ears. My school … Mrs. Brush … my friends … Mandy and Toby … little Clare … Lilly and Katie … and—Luke! I was escaping, but he was left behind. He needed me to warn him, to protect him, to comfort him. And yet … I felt as worthless as the junk in my trash bag. Once again, I was the one being tossed out and thrown away.