After that, my survival strategy was to mind my own business and stay out of trouble.
As I was having lunch with Sabrina in the dining hall, she nudged me to look in the direction of one of the staff tables. “You know who they are?” I noticed a man and a woman chatting with Mary Fernandez and some Lopez Cottage primaries.
“New staff?” I guessed.
“Shoppers!” Sabrina said under her breath.
“What are they going to buy here?”
“Us.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re a family looking for a kid. They are pretending they aren’t watching us, but see if you can totally tell who they’re checking out.”
“Nadine?” Sabrina nodded. I asked her, “Have you ever seen anyone who seemed interested in you?”
“Not yet, but I’ll know when it happens.”
“Me too,” I replied with confidence.
I began to pay attention to the mating dance of adoption. The staff told prospective parents something about a child, then permitted them to observe her or him during meals, campus events, sports, or talent shows. Which of the bystanders would I want as parents? My ideal mother would look like Ms. Sandnes, and I would not have minded Mr. Todd or Mr. Irvin for a father. And I wouldn’t care if my parents were Caucasian or African American either. I liked the women who wore tailored slacks or shorts, pastel tops, trendy loafers, and quality earrings, like Mary Miller’s. The men who dressed in golf shirts with the horse logo seemed the most well-to-do.
If a family picked you, they gave you their album. Some contained a few snapshots of their house and family members. Others were elaborate scrapbooks depicting trips to Disney or the Grand Canyon and included formal portraits of relatives. I liked the ones that showed every room in their house. After a day or so, you would meet your family and your official period of visitation began. The chosen ones returned from restaurant meals and overnights hand in hand with their new “mom” and “dad.” Eventually, they drove off into the sunset with their “forever families”—or so they thought. Many came back. Sometimes it was weeks after placement, sometimes years after the adoption finalization had taken place. Workers called this a “disruption,” as if it were temporary, though few children ever returned to the same adoptive family.
I remember when Ms. Beth sent for Daphne after school. Her brother and sister, who lived in other cottages, went as well. When she returned, she was carrying an album. My chest felt like it was filled with lead. Why her? There were three of them and only two of us. Her sister was just as problematic as Luke was, and I was not only younger than Daphne, but I had better grades. It was not fair!
Then Scott starting visiting with a family, leaving his two brothers behind, including Ryan, who was my favorite guy on campus.
“That’s terrible,” I said to commiserate with him.
“I want Scott to have a chance.”
“Maybe if they like him, they’ll take you, too,” I suggested.
“Not many people want three teenage boys.”
I worried that someone would want Luke and not me. I always assumed I would be the one rejected because that is what had happened before in foster homes. But for the first time, I realized a separation could be permanent.
After Will and Leroy joined Ms. Sandnes’s family, I had to share her time with two troubled boys.
“I have to get some poster board for my science project,” I told Ms. Sandnes one day while she was restraining Leroy.
“Can’t you see I’m busy now!” she snapped.
I went to my room and lost control. I started pulling out hunks of my hair. Finally, Ms. Sandnes checked on me. “Ashley, let’s talk about what’s bothering you.” Ms. Sandnes rubbed my back. How could I tell her that I wanted her all to myself?
Mary Fernandez started a photo album for me containing the pathetically few pictures I had managed to accumulate over the past nine years. She pointed to one of Grandpa feeding the chickens. “Tell me about him,” she urged.
“I don’t remember him very well.”
“What happened the last time you saw him?”
I tried to find a place to concentrate my vision, but my eyes ached. “I’m tired.” I slumped in my chair and then blurted, “He was shot.” Tears welled up faster than I could corral them.
During family work Mr. Bruce showed us the photos the Mosses had taken the day we went to the beach. Luke erupted like a volcano. “I hate those people!”
Mr. Bruce asked him, “What do you think should happen to them?”
Luke had been running around the room slapping the walls as he passed. He leaped on the couch. “Marjorie Moss should go to the electric chair!” He continued jumping on and off the couch as though it were a piece of gym equipment until the session was over.
Many of the residents, including Luke, attended Parkhill School on campus, which was designed for children with behavioral or emotional problems. Others, like me, attended public schools. I was in the gifted program at Dickenson Elementary School. In October the other pupils elected me Student Council representative for the fourth grade. Ms. Sandnes was thrilled. “Next year you could run for president!” she said.
“Do you think I’ll be here next year?” I asked. Since I had never completed a full year at one school, this was good news—except it also meant that maybe the administration did not think anyone would adopt me.
Although I rode the bus with several other Children’s Home residents, I sat as far away from them as I could. One afternoon while standing in the bus line, I noticed two girls staring at me. Both were fifth graders. The blonde had French braids; the other had short brown pigtails. They both had on floral-print dresses with lacy socks folded down over shiny Mary Janes and looked like child models in doll commercials. The blonde approached me hesitantly. “Are you really from that orphan place?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“You brush your hair, and your clothes even match,” the other girl replied.
The blonde asked, “What’s it like living in an orphanage?”
“There’s always someone to play with,” I replied. “And we have a big gym, a pool, and lots of field trips.”
The next day they sought me out on the playground and brought others to hear about my life in foster care. I had a stockpile of Moss horror stories that kept them entertained for weeks. Soon others chimed in with their own woeful tales. One of the girls said that her mom had run off with the mailman. A boy admitted that when his father got drunk, he beat him with a belt. Several divulged that their fathers slapped their mothers. After someone disclosed that his father was in jail for possession of marijuana, I bragged, “My uncle is in prison for murder.”
To keep my audience enthralled, I developed a comedic routine featuring “funny” lines about my life. “Every time my mother came around, she was with a different man.” I paused for effect. “The last time she brought a woman!”
I really got them interested when I told stories about living with my grandfather. I went into detail about driving fast and playing chicken in the beat-up car with no doors and seat belts. “I thought I was going to die!” I said theatrically. “But I only busted my lip.”
When I had earned my place as the center of attention, I launched into the tale of Grandpa’s gunfight. I made popping sounds with my mouth, then staggered around. Falling to the ground in slow motion, I got shrieks of appreciation.
I had just read a book about Egypt and was determined to be Cleopatra for Halloween. I made a list of all the accessories I would require, including a black wig and a golden armband shaped like a snake. Ms. Sandnes found hand-me-downs for the other kids and spent most of her budget on me since she knew I wanted the costume so badly. Because of security concerns, we could not trick-or-treat in regular neighborhoods, so the staff drove us to dorms at the University of South Florida, where student volunteers decorated their doors and stocked treats as a community service program. Just like kids all over the country, we ran around collecting as much candy as we could,
but we had to do so in this phony situation. Then we were herded back to the cottages, where the staff locked away our loot and doled it out later.
In November the Merritts showed up for my tenth birthday. Mrs. Merritt had crocheted a vest for me and made a pillow from one of the latch-hook projects I had made at her house. Luke, Mary Miller, and our therapists joined us for cake in the conference room. Luke ripped open my presents, tasted the icing before the cake was cut, and as he blew out my candles, he spit all over everything—spoiling every aspect of my party.
At the end Mary Miller said, “I have another surprise for you.”
We went out to her car, and she lifted out the bike I had left with Mrs. Chavez. Then she handed me a brown box. “I’m sorry it isn’t in better shape.” I opened the lid. Inside was my Easy-Bake oven. The original carton was soggy and smelled like the Mosses’ moldy shed. The packages containing the cake mix were mildewed.
“What about my dolls and sleeping bag?”
“Mrs. Moss claimed that this was all she could find.”
I returned to my cottage fuming about Luke’s behavior, my ruined oven, everything else that Mrs. Moss had kept, all my other possessions that had been left behind in various foster homes, and even the bike, which had rusted in the rain. I also wondered whether my mother remembered what day it was.
A few days later we had my cottage birthday party. Ms. Sandnes picked out gifts from among the donated clothes and toys in the storage unit. She bought me another cake studded with icing flowers and adorned with my name in green letters. Everyone gathered to gobble the cake and ice cream. It was the same party we had every few weeks for one or another of the cottage kids, so I did not feel particularly special.
For months, though, the excitement built around Christmas. In October the staff had given us forms and told us to list anything we wanted.
“What’s the limit?” I wondered.
“There is none,” Sabrina told me.
“What are you asking for?”
“Lots of clothes, a music box like yours, a bike—”
“You already have a bike.”
“You can get one every year,” she said, as if explaining something to a toddler. “The lists are given to our sponsors—really rich people, even companies—and they go out and buy us everything.”
For the next few days we would watch television with our lists on our laps. Every time a commercial would come on, we would scribble the toy on the form. I asked for Barbie dolls, children’s beauty and nail supplies, stuffed animals, a new bike, and Rollerblades. The staff doled out money for us to buy gifts for a few special people. I purchased something for my teacher, my brother, and Ms. Sandnes. On campus the big event was the Christmas Cantata, a musical program put on by the residents, followed by fancy food served in the cottages. We all wore our dressiest clothes and were on our best behavior because sponsors and outsiders—who might be prospective parents—visited.
Christmas morning was a feeding frenzy. We all dove into the huge stack of packages, grabbing anything with our names on it. Sabrina had been right. We each received most of the items on our lists—and more. Foster parent groups provided some of the basics, and our sponsors bought the big-ticket items. Everything was from “Santa,” so we did not know who had contributed what. Kids ripped open their boxes, checked the contents, tossed them behind their chair, then attacked another. Paper, cardboard, and Styrofoam piled up in drifts around us. As we reached the bottom, the other kids’ faces registered an is-that-all-there-is? expression. By the end of the day half the toys were missing parts, broken, or trampled. Even though I tried to take more care with mine, some of my gifts disappeared into the tangle of wrappings.
“Where’s my French Barbie?” I shouted into the living room.
“Sabrina has it,” Daphne said.
“I wrote down French Barbie too!” Sabrina claimed.
“Did not!” I screeched. I gathered up as much as I could and took it to my room, but by the time I got back, Will and Leroy were playing catch with my softball and had already smudged it. I was disgusted and wondered why I couldn’t live with a regular family and have a nice, quiet Christmas like everyone I saw in holiday specials on television.
Living in an institution with a myriad of regulations, it was impossible to lead a normal life. When my school had a fund-raiser, I was determined to sell enough to win one of the prizes. Ms. Sandnes squashed my plans to go door-to-door in the neighborhood. “Sorry, it’s against the rules.”
That afternoon I grumbled in therapy. “You could show the brochure around campus,” Mary Fernandez suggested.
I started with Mr. Bruce, who placed an order. He offered to accompany me on my rounds. By the time I returned to Lykes Cottage, I had made one hundred fifty dollars in sales, enough for one of the better prizes. I gave the envelope filled with checks and cash to Ms. Sandnes for safekeeping before I went to change into play clothes.
When I returned, Ms. Sandnes looked ill. “Ashley, did you take the envelope back to your room?”
“No, you put it on your desk.” My pulse quickened. “Is it missing?”
“I’m afraid so. I was gone just a minute or two.”
Nobody found the envelope and the deadline to turn in the order forms passed. I was more upset about accepting everyone’s money and not having anything to show for it than not winning the prize. A week later someone noticed that Daphne, who had not moved in with her adoptive family yet, had used a twenty-dollar bill when they went to a store. Eventually, she admitted to taking the money and made a halfhearted apology to me.
I held in my fury for a few days. On the way back from the gym after a soccer game, Daphne kept trying to trip me. My seething started in my gut and exploded through my fists. I punched her above her eye. I expected I would be punished, but I did not care. To my surprise, no one ever said anything about the incident.
Isabel, the other redhead in my fourth-grade class, was my best friend. She invited me to her home often, though I was never permitted to go—not even for her birthday party. Because campus residents could be unpredictable, they always had to be accompanied by staff. I pestered Ms. Sandnes for a visit so many times that she finally agreed to take me on a playdate.
Isabel’s mother was tense because I had come from “that place” and needed supervision. The four of us sat in the living room staring at one another until Isabel asked, “Want to see my birds and guinea pigs?”
The room smelled like cedar chips, and animal cages and tanks lined the walls. Isabel handed me a fuzzy guinea pig, which I petted until I noticed the raisin-like poops on its fur, then hurriedly gave him back. Because Ms. Sandnes had to be on duty at the cottage, we had to leave after only an hour. That was the first—and last—time I visited with a friend until I went to my adoptive family.
I had come to The Children’s Home expecting to be gone in a few months, but a year passed without anyone adopting us. I saw a few kids leave … and some returned because it had not worked out. I figured that I probably would be there until I was eighteen, but at least I was not at the Mosses’ or with some of the other creepy parents I heard about. I decided to take it day by day and forget about everything—and everybody—else.
9.
let’s make a deal
In August, I started fifth grade at Dickenson Elementary. For the first time in my life, I was no longer the new girl. The school selected me as a safety patrol, and Mrs. Trojello, my teacher in the gifted program, encouraged me to run for Student Council president. This required speaking in the auditorium to all the students at each grade level. I asked Mr. Irvin for a hunk of accordion-style computer paper. When it came time for the candidates’ speeches, I stood behind the lectern and let the paper cascade off the stage onto the floor. “Dear Santa,” I began. “I would like a new bike, some Barbie dolls, a radio, and—whoops.” I let a few more feet of paper tumble forward so it looked like a massive document. “Unless our principal has turned into a jolly old man, I have the wr
ong speech!” The first graders burst out laughing, and I hoped the gag would be as successful with all the classes.
The results were announced over the intercom. “And your new Student Council president is Ashley Rhodes!”
Ms. Sandnes glowed when I told her the news. By dinnertime the whole campus knew I had won, and I received congratulations from every member of the staff I encountered.
Neither Sabrina nor Daphne said a word to me.
“Here comes the brownnoser,” Leroy said, rubbing the tip of his nose.
Although his words stung, it was more important to me to get recognition at school than from the campus kids because I did not respect their opinions.
Still, I was hungry for attention. I was in my gifted class when I started hiccuping, which made the others laugh. I forced more air into my throat so the hiccups would become more obnoxious.
“Go get a drink of water and come back when you have those under control,” Mrs. Trojello said, and then asked me to stay after class.
“Ashley, I know where you live, so I can guess you’ve had some tough times,” she began. I thought she was going to lecture me about my past not being an excuse for poor behavior. Instead, she went on to tell me that she had come from a rough background herself and knew what it was like to struggle without support at home. Mrs. Trojello handed me a book. “You have a lot in common with Anne of Green Gables.”
Reading the book, I began to see what she meant. Lucy Maud Montgomery could have been describing me. It also reminded me of Annie, the most famous girl orphan. I remember thinking that all three of us had red hair, sunny smiles, plucky dispositions, and names that begin with A. But perhaps Mrs. Trojello also wanted me to see that some stories—like her own—had happy endings.
At least twice a year we attended adoption picnics. Even though there were carnival games and hot dogs and burgers on the grill, the real purpose was to display the merchandise: the children nobody else wanted. Some of the “shoppers” were discreet and stood at a distance; others were chatty—even pushy. One prospective parent even poked me! A chubby lady ran her fingers through Luke’s hair and said to her husband, “Isn’t he cute as a button!” Then she turned to Luke. “We’d love to adopt you!”
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