Three Little Words

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

  7.

  orphan by decree

  “Are you taking me to my mother?” I asked Miles Ferris as he drove. He kept his eyes on the road and did not reply. “Why isn’t Luke coming with us?” Still no answer. “Why don’t you ever say anything?” I snapped.

  “And why don’t you ever tell the truth, young lady?” he spit back. “The Mosses run one of our finest foster homes, and you were trying to ruin it for everyone.”

  My head exploded with a kaleidoscope of colors. For a second my mother’s face radiated sunshine yellow, then it flared into orange and then bright, burning red—the color of fire, the color of hate, the color of my hair. I was a fire child, a furious child, my gut clamped over a molten core radiating my hostility. Mrs. Moss might have gotten away with it this time, but not forever. To quell my feelings of hopelessness and anger, I chewed on the side of my thumb until it was raw. Someday my mother and I would show up and demand the release of Luke and our possessions—and then that witch would be sorry!

  As we drove on, I slumped into my seat. Slowly, the red receded, and blurry blues surrounded me. By the time Mr. Ferris dumped me at the Lake Magdalene Children’s shelter, my mood had faded toward gray. The residential campus, which took kids who had no place else to go, had small houses clustered around dismal, sun-parched lawns. I moved into Shelter Three.

  A counselor unpacked my plastic bag. “That’s all you have?”

  “Oh, no, but they didn’t let me take everything,” I said, because I still hoped there would be a way to get my precious possessions from the sheds.

  “We have a clothes room where you can pick out whatever you like.”

  “Do I have to share my outfits?” I asked.

  She gave me a funny look. “That’s not allowed here.”

  I smiled for the first time that day.

  Then she noticed my hands. “My word, girl, what’s wrong with your thumb?” My biting had left it looking like raw hamburger. “You wash that with soap; otherwise, it will get infected,” she said in a voice more maternal than angry.

  Dinner in the shelter was even better than lunch at school because I could have as much as I wanted. Best of all, the beds had clean sheets with a fresh, floral smell and the air was deliciously cool.

  The girls in my shelter were all older. My roommate, Ella, was fourteen and had a baby who lived with off-campus foster parents. Some of the most difficult kids lived in a dormitory, which also contained a padded restraining room. Fortunately, the staff hardly ever reprimanded me. When a caseworker visited, my counselor told her, “She’s not a girl, she’s a little lady.”

  I remember watching Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” video on MTV. The older girls would mimic the backup dancers’ routine. “C’mon, Ashley,” Ella urged, “you gotta shake your booty, girl. Shake it!”

  The girls snickered when they heard me sing along with the lyrics. “You don’t know what that’s about,” Latoya, one of the toughest girls, teased.

  “Do too.”

  “Okay then, what’s an anaconda?”

  A staff member called out, “You’re all going to be late for school!”

  “What’s an anaconda?” I asked the counselor when they were gone.

  “A big snake, why?”

  I attended the Dorothy Thomas Center, the on-campus school. Since most of the students were transient and many had behavior problems, the curriculum was designed more to keep us out of trouble than on grade level. My best friend in class was Tyler. He wore box-frame glasses and had unruly brown hair. One afternoon he asked if I wanted to join the softball game that was about to start.

  Someone called out, “But she’s a girl!”

  “Maybe she could be in the outfield,” Tyler yelled back.

  “I’m a really good pitcher,” I bragged.

  “Oh yeah? Prove it!” A lanky boy turned, spit in the sand, and then tossed me a ball.

  After a few hard throws and catches they decided I knew what I was doing, but I did not have a glove. When it was my turn to pitch, Tyler, who was on the other team, came up to bat. I threw the ball a little softer so he was sure to get a good hit. Wham! The ball flew straight back to me. I caught it bare-handed, then dropped it like a hot potato. I jumped up and down holding my hand. My left pinky angled to one side.

  “I’m sorry,” Tyler said. “I didn’t mean it!”

  The nurse told me to ice it and it would be fine. It hurt for several weeks. It still sticks out at an unnatural angle and has a bump on the bone. It probably had been broken and should have been set.

  Tyler and I wrote notes to each other, and I kept his replies under my pillow. One night I dreamed that I came to school and found his chair empty. The teacher told me he had left, and I could not believe he had not said good-bye. I woke in tears. That morning he saw me heading for the cafeteria and caught up with me. “Hey, guess what?” he blurted. “I’m being released today.”

  “Released to what?” I asked.

  “I’m going home.”

  My bad dream had come true! After that, I tried to force myself to dream that I was being released to my mother.

  Once I was out of the clutches of Mrs. and Mr. Moss, I complained about them to anyone who would listen, and there were plenty of sympathetic ears at Lake Magdalene. Even though I do not remember instigating the investigations, the Mosses later claimed that I had called in nine “false” abuse reports using the hotline number. I have no recollection of ever making a single call, although I did answer questions from teachers and guidance counselors, and they may have called. The one time I was most injured, Chelsea, not me, made the complaint.

  The day I was moved to the shelter, Luke went to live with Stan and Lola Merritt. Mr. Merritt was a pastor with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and his wife was a nurse. Luke was distraught and kept asking for me, but luckily, Lake Mag was less than two miles from where they lived, and the staff allowed me to visit him at the Merritts’ home.

  On one of the first trips Mrs. Merritt asked me how I liked the shelter. “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Better than the last foster home?” she asked.

  “Anything is better than that dump!”

  “Why is that?” she queried in her ladylike voice.

  “Because of what they did to us.”

  “What do you mean?” she probed. I ran down the list, from the hot sauce to the squatting to the beatings. “One time Mrs. Moss pulled me off my top bunk by the hair, and a bunch of it was yanked out by the roots! Then she kicked me while I was on the floor.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  I covered my face with my hands because I did not want to mention my bed-wetting, which had stopped immediately after I left the Moss home.

  Mrs. Merritt did not press me. “Did they hurt Luke, too?”

  “He got it worse because he didn’t follow the rules.”

  Luke had told her similar stories, but she had not known whether to believe him.

  A few nights later the counselor on duty at the shelter woke me. “Somebody wants to talk to you,” she said softly.

  The silhouette of a uniformed police officer loomed in the doorway. My mind raced over the last few days. What had I done that was illegal? I had borrowed a pen from my teacher, although I was certain I had returned it. Was someone else blaming me to save his or her own skin?

  “Hi,” the officer said. “What’s your name?”

  I was too sleepy to find a distant focal point. Yawning, I answered his questions about my date of birth and grade in school.

  “How long have you been at Lake Mag?”

  “A few weeks,” I said, still trying to prod my sleepy brain.

  “Where did you live before this?”

  “With Marjorie and Charles Moss.”

  “Is that a foster home?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think of Mr. and Mrs. Merritt?” he asked.

  “They’re nice. Did you know they are vegetarians because Seventh-day A
dventists don’t eat meat and they worship on Saturdays?”

  He laughed at how chatty I had become now that I was more alert. “What about the Mosses? Were they nice?”

  I froze. For a moment I felt as if Mrs. Moss might be listening outside the door. Then I heard one of the older girls laughing at a TV show in the distance. Mrs. Moss was nowhere around, and Luke was safe too. “They were the most horrible, disgusting people!” I said. “They hurt my brother. They poured hot sauce down his throat and almost drowned him in the bathtub. You should ask him about it.”

  “I just came from there,” he said. “What about you? Did they hurt you, too?”

  I went through the list of horrors so fast that I had to catch my breath. I saw the counselor hovering in the doorway sipping a soda. “You okay?” she asked. I nodded.

  “Did they ever take you to a doctor for your injuries?” the officer continued.

  “Yes!” I told him about my cheek. “But the stupid doctor believed what Mrs. Moss said about me falling and didn’t check further.” The officer wrote down everything I said. “Tell that doctor to ask better questions.”

  “Okay,” the officer said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Don’t let them hurt more kids.”

  “I’ll try.” He closed his notebook. “You go back to sleep and don’t worry about a thing. You’re safe here.”

  According to Florida law, dependency cases are supposed to be brought before the court every six months. For some reason, the lawyers had overlooked our case for more than two years. By then the judge had changed our goal from reunification to termination of Lorraine’s and Dusty’s parental rights.

  I didn’t know what was happening, only that I was getting another visit with my mother. And since I never left Lake Mag except for visits with my mother or Luke, I was bursting with excitement when I was told I would see them both. Mama brought us Easter baskets, stuffed animals, and new clothes. Luke played by himself with a small basketball set while I showed off backbends. There was the usual chitchat with the supervising worker, a woman I had not seen before, although this time it had an edgy tone.

  “Have you started counseling yet?” the new worker asked.

  “I told the judge I would,” my mother snapped.

  “Don’t forget the testing and psychological report.”

  “You’re just hassling me because you don’t approve of my lifestyle.”

  “When are you going to tell him?” The worker nodded toward Luke.

  “I said I would!” my mother hissed under her breath.

  I did not realize that she had voluntarily signed away her rights to my brother. Before we left, our mother took Luke aside. She crouched to his height.

  “Luke, I want you to pay attention, okay?”

  He nodded solemnly and tried to press himself against her. She held him off a bit. “I—” She wiped her tears with the back of her free hand. “I won’t be seeing you for a very long time.” She stared up at the caseworker, who nodded encouragement. “Maybe never.” She coughed. “See, you belong to Dusty, not me.”

  I exhaled, because even if my mother did not want Luke anymore, I knew she would always come back for me. In any case, that was the last time my then five-year-old brother ever saw our mother.

  Clueless as to the importance of what had just happened, I returned to Lake Mag and displayed my new wardrobe to Ella. “Which should I wear tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Who gives a shit?” she replied.

  I laid out the yellow shorts and the striped shirt at the bottom of my bed. In the morning I picked up the shirt. All the buttons were scattered on the floor. I stormed into the common area. “Who ripped off the buttons to my new shirt?” I screeched.

  “You shouldn’t take out your anger by destroying things,” a counselor said.

  My face burned like a griddle. “I wouldn’t destroy something from my mother!”

  “You can sew them back on yourself.” The woman handed me a needle and thread. “Then maybe you’ll find better ways to seek attention.”

  I cried in outrage. Why had they assumed I had done it? I had no idea how to sew. With shaking hands, I threaded the needle and figured out how to stab it through the buttonhole, but it came right out the other side. After a few more tries I tied the thread around the button. The result was slightly uneven, although once I buttoned the blouse, it was presentable. I hated the girl who did it. This was another confirmation that nobody—besides my mother—cared for my feelings or for me.

  A few days after saying farewell to Luke, my mother asked to see only me. I remember sitting on her lap in Mr. Ferris’s office. She combed her fingers through my hair. “Guess what, Sunshine? I have a good job and a nice house. I’m living with a lady named Babette, and she has a son whose name is Drew.”

  “How old is Drew?”

  “He’s six.”

  “When can I live there with you, Mama?”

  “As soon as—”

  Mr. Ferris cleared his throat to warn my mother not to cross an invisible line. “The judge will decide where you will live,” Mr. Ferris said in the mushy voice I had come to despise. He turned to my mother. “Mrs. Grover, please remember the rules about discussing these matters in front of your child.”

  “But I am supposed to tell her about Luke, right?” she asked in a more deferential manner. He waved his hand like a king giving dispensation. “Sunshine, remember when I told you that you are mine and Luke is Dusty’s?”

  I held my breath. The shell around that once-perfect egg that held my childish faith was more fragile than ever, and I feared she was going to say something hurtful. “Well, Dusty isn’t always a nice man when he doesn’t get his way. He might even harm me if I tried to keep Luke. So I moved back to Florida to stay away from him and get you back.” She paused. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I’m going to live with you and Drew and his mother, but Luke isn’t.”

  “I hope so.” She glanced at the caseworker for approval. “Soon as I get permission from the judge.”

  “And Luke will go to live with Dusty?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know about that.”

  I pressed my face into my mother’s blouse. She smelled like a smoky chicken nugget. Mr. Ferris showed her some papers, and she signed them while holding me.

  I shuddered. She patted my back. “Soon, Sunshine, soon.”

  A worker transported me to Dr. Howard Black for some tests. I was happy to get away from Lake Mag, although I protested. “Why do I need to see a doctor? I’m not sick.”

  “He’s not that kind of doctor,” the woman said.

  Dr. Black had a serious face that seemed to be hiding a smile. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’ll be eight and a half next week.” I crossed my legs and straightened my back.

  “Why are you living at Lake Mag?” he asked.

  “Because they blamed me for causing trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble was that?”

  The seal on his diploma, which was precisely aligned on the wall with his right ear, made for the perfect place to concentrate my attention. “Telling about how the Mosses punished us.”

  “How did they punish you, Ashley?”

  I went through the list and he made notes, but I could not tell whether he believed me or not. “You told other people, right?”

  “Oh, yes—my teacher and the policeman and Mrs. Merritt.”

  He nodded. “Do you like Lake Mag?”

  “I’d rather live with my mother.”

  “What was it like when you were with her?”

  “It was okay, except when Dusty was around—he’s Luke’s father. See, Mama is afraid of Dusty, so she had to give Luke to him.”

  “Do you want to be with your brother?”

  I stared down for the first time. “Oh, yes!” I covered my lapse by yawning, so the doctor gave me some drawing games.

  The best part of the session was looking at pictures and making up stories, l
ike I had when Adele took me to the therapist in South Carolina. There were many sad pictures about other children who had mean parents or who could not live with the one they wanted or who had lost toys.

  “Ashley, do you know the difference between a truth and a lie?”

  I returned my attention to the diploma seal and then nodded.

  “When you told me the story just now about the lost child, was that the truth?”

  I found his question insulting. “I made it up after looking at that picture.”

  “Was that a lie?”

  “No, it was a story.”

  “What’s your favorite story?”

  “The one about Alice in Wonderland and also the Little Princess.”

  “Was what you told me about how you were punished in foster care a story too?”

  “No, that really happened.” I stared him down, and he blinked first.

  When our time was up, he shook my hand and wished me luck.

  A different worker drove me back to the shelter. She asked me if I was happy at Lake Mag. “I can live there until my mom gets things together,” I replied. “You see, her girlfriend—her name is Babette—is becoming a foster parent, so this time it’s all going to work out.”

  The Merritts arranged frequent visits for me and Luke at their home, which was a tidy, five-bedroom house not far from Lake Magdalene. Their two daughters, Leah and Betsy, were away at college. They also had an adopted son, Matthew, who was about twelve; Luke; and a foster baby named Keisha.

  One afternoon as Mrs. Merritt drove me back to Lake Mag, I started singing.

  “Where did you hear that song?” Mrs. Merritt asked.

  “MTV.”

  “What else do you like to watch on television?” she probed.

  “Movies, especially scary ones!” I bragged. “We saw Children of the Corn last weekend. The whole field started moving like this”—my hand made a wavy motion—“and a guy came out with a huge curved knife and—”

  She cut me off. “That’s enough.”