by C. B. Stagg
My nightmares still played on a loop in my mind almost the second I fell asleep, each one becoming more sinister and sordid than the one before. But I had every intention of being brave and sticking them out. I’d tried to stay at home, in my big, cloudlike bed… but each night, I woke myself up screaming and shaking. I was thankful Jill and Bennett’s room was downstairs and on the other side of the house. As far as I knew, they never heard me fight the ghosts haunting my dreams. If they ever discovered how broken I truly was, they’d give me up for sure.
Jase once said, “You can take the girl out of the nightmare, but you can’t take the nightmare out of the girl.” Boy, he’d hit the nail on the head with that one.
After a few unsuccessful attempts at sleeping alone, I went back to sneaking into Jase’s room. At some point, he surrendered, because one night I showed up to Jase only on one side of the bed, instead of having to wrestle him for space. He’d turned down the covers on the other side and left a bottle of water on the nightstand. He’d also moved the alarm clock to ‘my’ side. He knew I’d be there, so each night he had it ready for me.
Jase Pearson was the best friend a girl could ever have, and I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve any of this.
“Everything smells so good, Jill. I hope one day soon you’ll teach me how to cook.”
I’d gained at least five pounds in the month since coming to live with Bennett and Jill. That woman was a kitchen magician, and I was hoping to soak up as much of her talent as I could before my time was up with the Hansons.
“Thank you, sweetie. Can you stir those beans over there while I put the sweet potatoes in the oven?” I’d been piddling around the kitchen with her all morning, making small talk and being her official ‘taste-tester’, much to Bennett’s dismay. In truth, I needed all the distraction I could get. Jill’s parents were coming, due to arrive any minute, and I was in knots.
Ten minutes later, just as I was placing the buttery rolls into the pretty basket Jill had prepared, the doorbell rang. I froze.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. Come on in. I have someone I want you to meet in the kitchen.” She and Ben had been keeping me a secret, hoping to surprise her parents, who’d flown in all the way from Georgia for Thanksgiving. They usually spent the holidays with Jill’s brother because he had children and Jill and Ben didn’t. This year, Jill had insisted they break tradition.
I watched as Jill entered our cozy kitchen, followed by two elderly people who dripped of money and class. From her multi-carat earrings and diamond drop necklace, to his perfectly pressed suit and brand-new leather shoes that appeared to have just been removed from the box that morning. “Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet Becky.” Her smile almost split her face in two as I walked forward and shook both of their hands.
Beverly Walker looked me up and down, face pinched tight as if she’d smelled something offensive and it made me want to jump out of my skin. Her husband wasn’t much better.
“Well, Jill, this is a surprise,” her mother cooed as Bennett walked in the back door. “I didn’t know you’d hired help.” She turned to face her daughter. “Is she a live-in, or does she just come a few days a week? It certainly seems as if you could take care of the house and cooking all by yourself, seeing as you only have a husband to care for.”
Jill’s face fell. I bore witness as her wide grin from seconds before cracked into a million pieces and shattered to the ground.
“Beverly!” Bennett boomed with a fierceness unlike anything I’d ever heard escape his lips. He moved behind me where I stood stock-still, running his hands up and down my arms, which were now covered in goose bumps. “Becky is our foster daughter. She lives here with us.”
“Ahh, Jill? Bennett?” Her father’s deep baritone voice rang out through the quiet kitchen, visibly startling me, “I think we need to sit down and have a little chat. Do you think you could find… the girl… somewhere to go so we may speak privately?”
I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my shoes, not wanting to stay, but unable to move. Jill gathered me into her arms, and whispered, “Head upstairs to your room, sweetheart. We’ll be up in just a few minutes after we’ve taken care of things down here.”
Looking back and forth, processing, caused a slight hesitation in my actions. “Well, go on, girl. You heard them. You’re not a tree.” Mrs. Walker laughed at her tasteless joke, but I didn’t stick around to hear it. Instead, I nodded and scurried off like the roach Jill’s parents thought I was.
I flung myself onto my bed and burst into tears, but even my sobs weren’t loud enough to drown out the conversation happening just below me in the living room. My chest felt hollow and tears stung my eyes. I knew it was only a matter of time before our differences became too great. The clock was striking midnight, and my whole world was about to amount to a pile of pumpkins and rags.
Bennett’s voice drifted up the stairs. “How dare you come into our house and speak about Becky that way!”
“Now, you two need to calm down,” her father responded. “Jill, your mother was just a bit… surprised, that’s all.”
“Yes, of course, dear. What did you think my response would be, walking into your home and seeing a little colored girl in your kitchen?” Her voice screamed privilege and judgment, in complete contrast to their selfless daughter. “Now that we know she’s just a charity case you’ve taken on, it makes a lot more sense.”
Charity case? Really?
“So, do you give her room and board in exchange for housework, cooking, and the like?”
Oh. My. God. What was this, 1950?
“MOTHER,” Jill’s growl made me consider going to the top of the stairs in the event she decided to throw a punch. “That precious little girl is our daughter. We are her parents.” The tears in her voice clawed at my heart. “To think we would expect anything in return for giving her the love and care she deserves is ludicrous, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for even thinking it, let alone saying those words aloud.”
“Come on now, Bennett. You can’t be serious.” Her father was as loud and clear as if he were standing right next to me. “I’m running for the US Senate next year. My platform is based around family values. Jill, how do you expect me to explain that my daughter, my baby girl, has a little black child living at her house, referring to her as her daughter no less? The press would have a field day with that.”
His chuckle, and the one soon after by his wife, sounded sinister after such harsh words, and I wished more than anything for a giant hole to open up in the ground and swallow me up.
“Harris, Beverly,” Bennett was speaking again in the calm, cool manner to which I’d become accustomed. “I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave. You have come into our home and disrespected our daughter. That is something neither of us will tolerate.” His bold statement was followed by the shuffling of feet and emphasized by the opening and closing of the front door.
Once I was certain the elder couple had driven away, I tiptoed down the stairs to find Bennett holding a sobbing Jill in his arms, whispering softly in her ear. When I turned to go back to my room, a stair creaked, blowing my cover and catching the attention of both Bennett and Jill. As they moved toward me, I all but flew into their arms, and they held me between them while the emotions from the day flooded out of us all.
As our tears slowed, Bennett broke the silence. “Well, my two beautiful ladies spent the whole morning cooking up a feast. I suspect it’s high time we go indulge in a little Thanksgiving gluttony, don’t you?” We walked into the kitchen to share the meal made in love, but we were missing the air of celebration the day had started with, and I felt responsible for that.
“I’m sorry that happened.” Sincerity fueled my words, but as soon as they were out of my mouth, both Jill and Bennett had me in their arms again.
“No, no, no, Becky, you don’t ever need to apologize for being you. They’re the ones with the problem.”
Jill nodded, agreeing with Bennett.
&n
bsp; “But they came so far to spend Thanksgiving with y’all, and I feel like I ruined everything.” Waterworks threatened again, and I sounded like the scared child I was.
“No, Becky.” Jill shook her head. “They ruined everything, so to hell with them. We are a family, the three of us, and if they don’t like it they can just go… suck an egg!”
Bennett nodded in agreement, and then we sat down to a cold Thanksgiving dinner. It was my first, and it was the most perfect dinner I’d ever had.
Until Christmas rolled around.
Bennett had never shared much about his childhood. In the weeks I’d been around, he never mentioned parents and I could find no pictures of them in the house. So when he told me we’d be having two extra guests for Christmas dinner, I cringed inside, praying it wasn’t another visit from the ‘oh so pleasant’ Mr. and Mrs. Walker. But Jill assured me that wouldn’t be the case.
“Bennett had a difficult childhood,” Jill shared one night while Bennett was out in the garage, tinkering. “He lost his parents when he was incredibly young and ended up in foster care.” My tears came hard and fast as I finally understood the strong, yet unexpected connection Bennett and I shared.
“As you can imagine, he was angry and aggressive. He bounced from home to home before he finally ended up at a place called Piney Woods Ranch. It’s a home where troubled youth, some being fosters, live, work, and go to school in a very structured environment.”
I laughed a little—not because the story was funny—but because Bennett was the antithesis of aggressive and angry and it was appalling to me he was ever the person she was describing.
“He’s definitely not like that now. What happened?”
“Well, I think he’s the person he is today because of three things. First, Rosie and Doc were the couple he lived with on the ranch. They were incredibly loving, but led with a firm hand, which he admits was exactly what he needed. Then he joined the army at eighteen and was one of the first to invade Kuwait. War, as you can imagine, changes a man.”
I nodded, absorbing all the layers that made up my foster father. “Wait. You mentioned three things.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I did. I’d like to think the third thing was me.” She sighed, and I wondered if she was daydreaming about meeting the love of her life. There’d been no one in my life to model a functional, loving relationship until the Hansons, but watching them and seeing the way they looked at each other, they were all I needed. I’d be lucky to have a love half as true as the two people I was starting to think of as my parents.
“So, you saved him then?” She thought for a moment.
“No, I think we saved each other.”
Rosie and Doc arrived on Christmas Day with plans to stay only a few days. Unlike the couple I’d met at Thanksgiving, these two people were everything I imagined grandparents would be and more. Rosie was an older Hispanic lady and was about as wide as she was tall, but her larger-than-life personality more than made up for her small stature. Doc, however, was well over six feet tall and had not an ounce of fat on him. He was wrinkled and weathered from hard labor, but when I saw the way he looked at Rosie, Bennett, Jill, and even me… I knew as hard as he was on the outside, he was a marshmallow on the inside.
Right before Christmas, I had gotten my driver’s license, an exciting event for any teenager. On Christmas morning, as I unwrapped my very last gift, all eyes were on me. The excitement in the room was almost visible. In the small box was a key, and before even completely processing the purpose it might serve, I was pulled up by my arms and ushered out the front door.
Sitting in the driveway was an older model, teal green Mazda Protégé with a great big gold bow on top. It had a few bumps and bruises and standard transmission, which I didn’t know how to drive, but it was mine and I loved it.
As soon as I sat in the driver’s seat, the other three doors opened. Jase plopped down in the front passenger seat, while Casey and my dad sat in the back. “Buckle up, boys,” my dad joked. “You’re taking your life in your hands with this one behind the wheel.”
As it turned out, he was right. I rolled about ten feet into the road before I abandoned ship. Jase swapped spots with me and pulled my little Green Bean back into the driveway, with a promise to teach me how to drive a clutch before we went back to school in January.
Between Bennett and Jill, and my new grandparents, I was spoiled rotten with love and attention. Christmas had never been a happy time for me, but with Jill and Bennett, I felt like I was in a dream. It was exactly what I imagined a family Christmas would be and I was in absolute heaven—living in the two-story house at the end of the cul-de-sac—all because of the kindness of one boy.
Chapter 18
Jase
I’D BEEN HOLDING MY BREATH, knowing she would walk in at any minute. “Where have you been? You’re l-ate!” Becky shed her robe and climbed into bed beside me. “Don’t get too comfortable. I have something for you.”
“Jase.” I popped down and grabbed the large garbage bag I’d been hiding under my bed. “I thought we agreed on no gifts.”
“No.” I set the bag down and started digging around for what I wanted to give her first. “I asked you not to get me anything. I said nothing about gifts for you.” She pouted, and I held up my hand. “This may seem random, but I promise, it’ll all make sense soon.”
She nodded as she settled back against the headboard. First, I handed her an orange Nike box.
“Open it.”
“They’re shoes. Really nice shoes. And how did you know my size?” She pulled them out and looked at them closely. “Wait, there are socks in here. Thick socks in this one and thinner ones in this one.” I nodded, then handed her a tall, pink box.
“A Barbie.” She opened the box and pulled out the doll. “Oh, Jase. She looks just like me.” I nodded again, then handed her a book.
“Braids for Dummies?” I nodded.
“Yeah, I read it a few times through, but it’s impossible to learn how to braid unless you have a head of hair in front of you, so I’m going to need to set up an appointment, so I can get good at it.” Her head tilted slightly, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “Oh, and these go with that one.” I handed her a clear makeup bag full of colorful hair bows. She’d spread the gifts out on the bed, looking at each one, trying to connect the dots.
“I’m not done. This is next.” I handed her an empty milk container, similar to the ones sold in the cafeteria, but all the milk was gone. In its place was a rolled up piece of paper. “It’s a receipt. I put $50 on your lunch account.”
“But, why?” I shook my head and continued emptying my bag, handing her a picture I’d taken a few weeks before of her sitting between Jill and Bennett. “Aww, I love this.”
“One more.” I handed her another framed picture, this time of just herself. I’d taken it one afternoon when she was out playing basketball in Casey’s driveway. Her face was red from exertion, head thrown back in laughter, probably at some goofy thing Casey said or did.
“What am I missing?” She was looking again, at the items strewn about the bed, so I pulled out her essay from months ago.
“I wanted to make your wishes come true. The shoes are for your feet, so you’ll never have to be uncomfortable again. If they’re too big, just use the thicker socks and when they become just right, switch to the thinner ones and we’ll get you more.” She stared up at me, eyes wide. “The doll is because you never had one that looked like you. It took a while for me to find, and it’s not perfect, but it’s close.” She smiled and looked down at it.
“I learned how to braid, or at least I tried, because you never had anyone to do that for you. I’ll learn, I promise, and then you can use the bows to match your clothes. I put money on your lunch account so you can always get ice cream and strawberry milk. When you run out, I’m sure someone on this circle will refill it.”
I sighed. “The picture of you with your family is to remind you that you have one… a family. Th
ey love you, Becky, for the amazing person you are. And the picture of you is because my wish for you is that one day you’ll no longer want to be someone else. You’ll look in the mirror and see the beautiful girl I see. Because, Bec, it breaks my heart to think that you don’t love yourself.”
“From my essay.” When I met her eyes again, tears were streaming down her face. “Thank you.” She wiped her face. “I spent my life wishing for all those things when I should have just been wishing for you, huh?” I nodded, and she rose to her knees and crawled to where I stood on my side of what I now thought of as ‘our’ bed.
“Thank you for all this,” she whispered, as she grabbed me around my neck and hugged my body close to hers… a perfect fit. “But the best gift I ever got was your friendship.”
Chapter 19
Becky
Summer, 2000
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER, just as we finished up our junior year of high school, the three families on the cul-de-sac got together for a barbecue. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence as we’d gathered together on more than one occasion to grill hotdogs or burgers, usually around holidays or special occasions, like birthdays. However, this one seemed more important, almost ceremonial.
Never before had I seen it done up like an actual party. The meal was being hosted in my backyard this time. Bennett had strung outdoor lights in a crisscross formation over the back porch, and he’d been smoking a brisket for what seemed like days. Jill had baked an enormous sheet cake for the gathering, and when the neighbors started arriving with homemade sides instead of our usual chips and dip, I became suspicious. And as we all sat down to brisket, ribs, baked beans, and potato salad, Bennett stood and got everyone’s attention.