A Chance in the World
Page 10
Again—that beautiful silence on the other end. After years of manipulating teachers, psychiatrists, police officers, and social workers, Betty had finally met someone she could not bend. “Fine,” she said.
“Glad we understand each other. We’ll be by in thirty minutes. Have his things ready.” He hung up the phone.
We got into Mike’s car to make the trip back to the Robinsons’. Our ride was strangely quiet given the uncertainty that lay before us. Both of us knew that any words of comfort, however well-meaning, would ring hollow.
Mike broke the silence.
“Steve, are you sure you don’t want to press charges against them?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to do that.” What Mike didn’t know was that several years earlier, I had sat in a courtroom as a juvenile court judge considered the Robinsons’ petition to become my legal guardians. The Robinsons had dictated the script in advance, including what I was to say and how I was to react. While I felt I had little choice but to play my assigned role, I still held out hope that someone would see through my charade. That didn’t happen. The gray-haired, bespectacled judge granted the Robinsons legal guardianship of me, and I erupted in tears. Courtroom spectators waiting for their cases to be heard thought I was crying tears of joy and began to weep as well.
No, I thought to myself now. No more courtrooms determining any part of my fate. But I did have one request.
“Mike,” I said, “Please make sure that they can never take in any more foster children. You have to promise me I’m the last.”
Mike nodded, conviction mingled with sorrow flashing onto his face. A few minutes later, we were sitting in his truck outside the house on Arnold Street. “You ready?” Mike asked.
I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.” And I was. I wanted to face them, wanted them to know that I wasn’t afraid of them anymore, wanted them to understand that I had finally beaten them.
When I stepped out of the car, the neighborhood was eerily quiet. No dogs barking, no cars moving up and down the street, no children playing. It was as if the neighborhood, silent for so many years, would be quiet one last time, ringside patrons for the final showdown. Parked at the curb was Willie’s yellow and brown station wagon. The tink, tink, tink of the car’s engine settling told me he had recently returned home and was inside waiting.
We went single file up the porch stairs, Mike first. Blue-gray pigeons, their wings beating and voices cooing, settled on the garage roof where I’d clambered a few hours earlier. Rustina came out of her doghouse and cocked her head at me quizzically. Garbage was still strewn about the front yard. I won’t be cleaning that up. My days of cleaning up their messes are over. A small dose of satisfaction ran through me as I pondered how long Betty had watched from the window, waiting for me to reappear. Reaching the top step of the small cement porch, I stepped out from behind Mike so that we stood shoulder to shoulder. He glanced at me and rapped loudly on the screen door. Lisa opened the door and went back into her room. It was the last time I saw her.
We stepped into the kitchen. Willie leaned against the counter, still dressed in his brown hunting gear, a lazy suspender dangling from his shoulder. His orange cap lay on the counter next to his car keys. Behind him was the brown jar I had stolen countless cookies from. His arms were crossed against his chest, and he was furious. He didn’t acknowledge Mike, but he kept his hawkish gaze fixed on me.
Mike entered the living room where Betty was sitting. He was holding the papers that would release me from their custody. Reggie was nowhere to be found. Willie and I stood five feet apart, and he stared at me long and hard, trying to get me to look away, as I had done so many times in the past. If he was troubled by my appearance, he did not show it. I did not take my eyes off his. You will look away before I do, I thought. The silence was deafening. “Why didn’t you wait until I got home?” he finally demanded.
“For what?” I asked, with every bit of contempt I could muster. “So they could lie to you again, and then you would beat me some more?”
“Nobody touches anybody in this house but me,” Willie said.
“Look at my face,” I said, addressing him in a tone he had never heard from me before. “He’s always beat on me. And so did you. A lot of times for no reason. But no more. You’ll never touch me again.” I clenched my fists, my body shaking with anger. “You tell Reggie that I can fight back now and he’d better remember that, if he ever sees me.”
“So you’re a man now, huh?” Willie asked.
“I’ve been a man a long time now. You just never noticed.”
I walked past him and into the living room. Mike was standing over Betty, telling her where to place her signature. She didn’t read what she was signing but grew angrier as she signed each page. I watched as those pages turned, as my freedom crept closer and closer.
“Do you have your things, Steve?” Mike asked.
Before I could answer, Willie, who had followed me into the living room, interjected: “He can’t take nuthin’ outta here until he pays fah all the things he has broken while he’s been here. By my count, that’s about a thousand dollars.”
I was incredulous, as was Mike. He didn’t acknowledge Willie’s comment but turned to Betty. “We talked about this, Mrs. Robinson. I thought you said we weren’t going to have any problems.”
“Let them have it, Mike,” I said. “They never got me anything worth keeping anyway. But I am taking my books.”
“No, you’re not,” Willie snapped. “Those books belong in this house.” Years later the irony would sink in. This illiterate man, who had whipped and beat me in frustration as I tried to teach him to read, was demanding to keep my books. At that moment, though, I was too angry to see it.
“No, they don’t!” I shot back. “You people took everything I loved away from me. Made me quit anything I was good at—you even tried to take college away. Mrs. Levin gave me those books. You’re not keeping my books.” I turned to Mike, trying to fight the tears of frustration that had suddenly overcome me. “Mike, I will do whatever I have to do. I want to be rid of them, but now I will take them to court and tell the judge everything they have done to me over the years. And I pray to God he sends them to prison.”
Willie and Betty Robinson looked at me in stunned disbelief. For the past eleven years, I’d been nothing more than a discarded child, one they’d believed possessed no voice or vision. They didn’t recognize this transformed person standing there with clenched fists, seething with fury and defiance. And it certainly never occurred to them that I had been there all along.
There was a long silence, and in that quiet I could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock. The refrigerator suddenly hummed to life, its low grinding suddenly louder than it had been. No one moved. Then it dawned on me that I was doing what I had always done: waiting for their permission. “I am going down to the cellar to get my books,” I announced.
I walked into the kitchen, opened up the red basement door, and walked down the stairs, past the grime-stained window that had occasionally provided some light. The familiar smell of must rose to greet me. As I neared the bottom of the stairs, I suddenly froze, startled by sounds of movement farther into the cellar. My breath slowed. The cellar was pitch-black, and my books were farther back, in a green garbage bag tucked away in one of the corners. The furnace came on. As a young boy, I had run from that beastly sound; more recently, I had always turned my head in its direction. But now I did not move. I stared into the darkness, trying to discern shapes and movement.
Another sound, closer to the stairs now. Was that shallow breathing? I pivoted toward the sound, and in that moment I knew Reggie was down here in the cellar, waiting for me.
I again felt the paralyzing fear that I wouldn’t be able to leave the house on Arnold Street with my life. In orchestrating my release, I had violated every Robinson Rule in the book; there was no way they would let me go that easily. This concern, though, was replaced by a torrent of pulsing rage.
“Come on, then!” I yelled, crouching into a boxer’s stance. “Come on out and fight me.”
But I knew he wouldn’t accept my invitation. He’d always been a coward who would never confront anyone on even terms. The sounds of breathing, joined by shuffling feet retreating farther into the cellar, confirmed this for me.
“Coward,” I barked into the darkness.
I grabbed the garbage bag and ascended the stairs backward, giving me a full view of anyone trying to attack me. I left the bag of books in the hallway leading to the front porch.
When I returned to the living room, Betty was still signing the papers, her trademark red blotch of fury emblazoned upon her forehead, matching the tattered red housecoat she wore. Willie sat in his usual chair, again staring daggers at me as I walked in. I kept an eye on his hands, concerned there might be a knife or gun in them.
I watched intently as Betty signed pages of my release. She got to the final page, poised her pen above the signature line, and then stopped, drawn to the typed date to the right of her name. It said December 30, 1983—two days later. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion and then clarity as she realized that my departure had been imminent. She snapped her head up.
“You were planning this all along,” she said, her voice rising an octave. Mike and I said nothing to this, our silence the only answer she needed. Her ballpoint hovered for a moment and then attacked the paper as she signed her name with ferocious strokes of the pen.
“That’s the last page, Mrs. Robinson,” Mike said tersely. He extended his arm, and she brusquely shoved the papers into his hand.
“You ready, Steve?” Mike asked. I nodded my head yes. Freedom was now only ten feet away, but Betty, furious at being outwitted, wanted to make sure I paid a price.
“Get out of here!” she screamed. Mike jumped at the sound of her voice. She followed that comment with more salvos: “We never want to see you again . . . We never wanted you in the first place . . . You were never family . . . We could have adopted you a long time ago, but we didn’t want you . . . Nobody wants you, not even your own parents . . . You’re gonna be no good, you hear me? No good!”
She offered those last words with the conviction of a traveling preacher, pausing at each word, trying to brand my future the way she had my childhood. The last several hours had thrown Betty off stride, but now she returned to her usual venomous self. In the shrillness of her voice, I sensed a last, desperate plea to extract the unconditional surrender she now knew I would never give.
I stared at her long and hard. “You stopped being able to hurt me a long time ago.” I turned toward the kitchen. Remembering my conversation years earlier with George the construction worker, I turned back toward her and said, “God is going to take care of you.”
Mike put his hand on my chest, nudging me toward the front door. But I wouldn’t move. Finally, he whispered, “It’s time to go, Steve.” I nodded. I took one last look at Betty, whose head was bowed. She was crying and whispering over and over, “Just get out . . . just get out.” I looked at Willie as well, but he avoided my gaze, looking down and away. I walked through the kitchen and opened the front door, stopping in the hallway to pick up the garbage bag, the only material possession I had after eleven years.
The minute I opened the outer door and stepped onto the porch, I was struck by the vivid colors and the sudden crispness of everything around me. My breath hit the cold air. Small clouds formed around my head and then dissipated. The neighborhood, so quiet a few moments earlier, now pulsed with activity. The pigeons, still lined up on the roof, craned their necks toward me in curiosity before flying away. Rustina bounded toward me, her shortened tail wagging back and forth. Across the street at Sunnybrook Farms, a clerk was unloading a milk truck, the wheels bumping down the metal ramp.
Amid this reappearing world was one sound I did not hear, and I knew I would never hear again: the tink, tink, tink of the yellow and brown station wagon.
Several weeks later, the psychologist’s evaluation upon which my release was to be based finally arrived at the Department of Social Services: “Subject referred is clearly high functioning but anxiety and fear are masking what is very likely a superior IQ . . . it seems remarkable that Steve has been able to cope with his home situation for these many years. Immediate removal from present living situation is strongly recommended.”
PART 2
A MYSTERIOUS PAST
CHAPTER 17
We must wait for the future to show.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
It was late afternoon when we returned to the Department of Social Services. Because the office was one large space uninterrupted by cubicles, as Mike and I walked to his desk, all eyes were on us. A few of his colleagues came up to clap him on the shoulder, congratulating him on a job well done. He accepted these platitudes humbly, like a fighter pilot returning from a dangerous rescue mission. It dawned on me that the tough cases probably fell to Mike to resolve, and he had solidified his reputation with my departure from the Robinsons.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, as we sat down.
“Better,” I managed to say. The realization that I would never return to the house on Arnold Street after a decade in their clutches had not yet sunk in. I was still literally shaking my head in disbelief.
“I’m glad. Let me update my supervisor, and I’ll be right back.”
After Mike left, his colleagues eyed me as if I were a vaudeville curiosity. If I looked in their direction, they looked away, pretending to be immersed in paperwork. Don’t you dare, I thought, don’t you dare pity me.
For the last couple of hours, adrenaline had masked the aching in my ribs and the pulsing in my eye. Now the pain returned, and I felt exhausted. I wrapped my arms around myself and rested my head on the front of the desk. In the background I could hear phones ringing, file cabinets slamming shut, snippets of conversation. After a time, this all blended together and faded away.
Hearing footsteps approaching, I popped my head up, forgetting for a split second where I was. Mike slid into his office chair and pulled a list of names and numbers out of a black binder. Looking me square in the eyes, he folded his hands together on his desk, the way people do when they are about to deliver bad news. “Well, now we somehow have to find you a place to stay.”
Though I had left the Robinsons’ only two days earlier than scheduled, the Department of Social Services seemed to have no plan for me. I just need somewhere to go until I get to college, I thought, as Mike scanned through his list. For a brief moment I felt intensely lonely, rootless, and disconnected.
Mike looked up and gestured to his list. “I have a woman here who may have room for you. She usually helps out in situations like this. You wouldn’t be there long, but it’s a place to stay until the start of the New Year, when we’ll figure out a more permanent placement.”
“Am I going to be able to do what I need to do to get to college?”
Mike nodded. “She’s great about letting boys live their lives.” I took this to mean that the place wouldn’t be a home in a traditional sense but more of a group home for boys who had nowhere else to go.
He picked up the phone and dialed the woman’s number but got no answer. He went to the next name on the list and dialed another number, but the person on the other end said that she had no room. “Don’t worry,” he told me, offering a reassuring smile.
Mike called number after number, going farther and farther down the list. Each conversation began the same way: “Hi, my name is Mike Silvia with the Department of Social Services, and I have a client here . . .” Hearing myself described in such clinical terms bothered me, but I said nothin
g, for my options were dwindling. All around me, chairs were sliding under desks, coats were removed from racks, and “see you tomorrow” was resounding across the large room. It was the holiday season, and judging from their hurried departures, these social workers were anxious to return to their families and warm homes.
As the room emptied, I became more and more nervous. I had always wondered where I was going next, but I had never quite answered the question, always telling myself, Anywhere but the house on Arnold. A half hour later, after the last social worker had departed with a cheery “good luck, guys,” Mike hung up the phone and let out an exasperated sigh. He had reached the bottom of the list. “Sorry about this, Steve. It’s just that it’s two days after Christmas and families . . .”
His voice trailed off, and we sat there in silence, trying to determine what to do. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was among the most difficult type of foster child to place: teenager, male, African American. And during the holiday season, placing anyone was doubly difficult. Mike leaned back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling. I glanced around at the large, silent office awash in piles of papers, filing cabinets, and binders. Somewhere in the corner of the room, a phone rang for what seemed like forever. “Nobody wants you” had been among Betty’s final biting remarks, and now I was powerless to prove her wrong. The joy of escaping the Robinsons was gone; I felt lonely and defeated. Sighing long and hard, I buried my face in my hands.
“Do you know anyone you could stay with for a few days?” Mike asked. “Friends—anyone?”
I had been asking myself this very question. I thought about Mrs. Dottin for a moment, but given the Robinsons’ vengeful nature, I didn’t want to put her in harm’s way. Nearly all the other adults I had known over the years were somehow connected to the Robinsons or the Arnold Street neighborhood, and I needed as much distance from them as possible. But what about Upward Bound? Was there anyone . . . Wait a minute.