by Dani Wyatt
Jesus, my heart breaks looking at her.
Sorry kiddo, life ain’t fair. Get a good armor going.
I try to smile at her, but she won’t meet my eye. I want to scoop her up and tell her I get it. I understand. You can’t trust anyone. Especially the adults.
A blast of cool air hits me as I open the doors to Judge Horace Carmichael's courtroom. I give my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, and I knit my brow straining to see as I step inside.
From behind, Louis’s voice greets me.
“Early as usual.” He has a voice that needs to be on the radio.
I like Louis. He’s the only—and I do mean only—person I’ve met in this bureaucracy that even hints at still retaining some humanity.
And a sense of humor.
That is not easy.
Louis’s barrel chest and dark stare would be intimidating attached to anyone else. He’s a monolith, towering over me by a good three inches. He must get his hair buzzed every day, because, in all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen it noticeably longer or shorter. A few more silver hairs replace black each year, but that’s the only change I’ve been able to detect.
“Yep. So, everything good? You think we’re good?” I despise the insecurity in my voice.
“Well, you know I’m always honest.” He gives me a reassuring smile. “Yes, I think we’re good. Could it still go sideways? Sure, there’s always that chance.”
“Fuck.” My hands go up and over my head, rubbing back and forth, gaining momentum. I can’t believe we could come this far and have it all fall apart.
I’m not going back. They can hang me by my balls; I’m not going. I will not live another day in another foster home.
“Hey.” Louis senses my rising ire, and he knows that will not work in my favor in front of the judge. “Breathe. I have a good feeling, okay? We’ve got all your bills, school records, recommendations—all the proof you’ve been knocking it out of the park on your own. You are the most organized almost-eighteen-year-old I’ve ever met.” He laughs, but I can still hear that halt of doubt in his voice.
I’m making a sound like a pressure relief valve on a steam engine when Louis lands a solid hand on my shoulder. My neck is twitching like a motherfucker.
After almost a year of taking care of myself under the watchful eye of my current social worker, I get a notice that Child Protective Services wants to place me in yet another foster home. Fuck that. I worked my ass off getting them to agree to let me live on my own even though I had just turned seventeen at the time. They said it was a probationary arrangement, but I hit all my high notes for a year. I worked, paid my bills, kept my grades in the four-dot-oh range and then this?
So, after I got the letter, I wrangled Louis and my social worker and petitioned the court to release me permanently from the nurturing care of CPS. I’m just a bump shy of my eighteenth, so fucking come on already.
Louis gives my shoulder a squeeze, he can feel my tension. He’s one of the only people I let touch me. I’m not a fan of people in my personal space.
“I’ve got another case coming before Judge Carmichael today. She should be here by now.” He scans the nearly empty courtroom and looks at his watch. “Just wait here, and I’ll be back.”
Louis turns away as I settle into the rearmost row of benches tossing my backpack next to me.
He stops a few steps away. “You bring your notebook?” He sets his eyes on me, raising his eyebrows.
It’s a rhetorical question; he knows I have it. I always have it.
“I want you to start right now. You’ll want to have something about today. I’ve got a feeling things will go your way.”
Over the years, I’ve discovered that sketching and drawing relieves my stress. Whenever I have a court date, I’m sketching faces, writing down thoughts, snippets of things I hear. It’s become a part of me.
Louis is out the door. There are two other people inside with me, huddled together in the kind of hushed whispers you find in the cool darkness of a court of law.
The room feels like a bulkhead, and no one leaves quite the same way they came in.
I unzip the top of my back pack and pull out my files and sketchbook. I flip it open to a blank page and shift forward on the bench to dig for the pencil in my back pocket. I set pencil to paper. I love the sound of the surfaces meeting, and then making something new from the friction. I start writing.
Let this be the last fucking time.
I can’t go back.
I won’t go back.
The soft squeak of the hinges on the massive door draws my eye.
The very instant I lay eyes on her, my pencil comes to life.
Louis is guiding a young man a little younger than me inside the courtroom and gets him settled in a bench toward the front.
Right behind him, I see another little girl accompanied by what must be her social worker hustling into the room. Her eyes dart around like a cornered mouse, their color near translucent. Like the crystal clear shallow water of a tropical shore, I want to look away, but I’m mesmerized. Her hair falls to her waist in a tangle of silk the color of antique porcelain. She is as close to a living, breathing china doll as there could ever be.
My eyelids burn when she turns toward me. Her ivory cheek is decorated with an angry purple and red circle. I notice how she crinkles her nose when she looks up at the woman by her side, hoping she will be the one to save her. Because I can see she needs saving. Then for just a moment, our eyes meet.
This broken, little soul with white hair and skin to match digs her sheer blue eyes into mine so deep, I feel her fear. My heart shatters inside my chest as I see the pain in her eyes and the way she moves so softly, gliding instead of walking. Her arms around her waist, holding onto herself, hoping for protection that she seems to know will never come.
Someone else was born inside of me that day. Someone that knew she was part of me.
Promise
{Present day}
Mrs. Selburn is telling me for the five-hundred and sixty-second time since I’ve worked here that she’s just arrived and will only be staying a short time.
Her son is out of town, you know, she always says, but he’ll be here to pick her up in a day or so.
I enjoy the five or so minutes of silence that follow as I pick up each little bunny and kitten figurine on her dresser and dust around and under them.
“I’ve just arrived, you know.” Mrs. Selburn’s voice says from behind me, and I grin. “I will only be staying a short time. My son is an attorney, very important, and he will come for me in a day or so.”
I turn to see her milky eyes staring at today’s newspaper. It’s upside down.
I don’t mind the repetition. It’s comforting not having to hear something new every day.
Most people would feel sorry for her, but not me. She doesn’t have to remember. Doesn’t have to think about the future. She lives only in this one moment, over and over. I can think of worse moments to be stuck inside.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answer softly. I don’t usually connect with people, but I find her pleasant enough. “I know. I’ll just finish cleaning, so it looks nice for when your son gets here.”
“You are sweet. What’s your name, dear?”
“Promise, Mrs. Selburn.”
“Promise? That’s an unusual name. You must be new here.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m new.”
Mrs. Selburn has lived here for six years, and I’ve worked here for two.
“You look just like a china doll I had when I was a little girl. Ivory hair and your eyes—my dear . . . they are like opals. I’ve never seen eyes that color in all my years. My doll’s name was Caroline.” She rocks back in her chair.
I smile, and she smiles back. She raises the upside down paper again, holding it closer to her face than before, and I think about flipping it over for her. But, she looks content, and I envy her blissful ignorance.
Her son is an attorney. She rememb
ers that correctly.
An asshole attorney who doesn’t give a shit about her.
I’ve seen him here twice this year. He struts in like he’s king of the douchebags. He spends maybe five minutes with her, annoyed and correcting her the entire time. He’s back on his cell phone before he hits the door on his way out, driving off in his Bentley while she’s here in a Medicaid placement bed.
It’s better for her this way. Some things are better forgotten.
“Are you new here?” Mrs. Selburn smiles at me.
Groundhog day every five minutes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where are you from, dear? From around here?”
I want to tell her I’m from some exotic, wonderful place where flowers bloom year-round, and you wake to ocean breezes and pick fruit from the trees in your backyard.
Then how the heck did you end up in Cleveland, dear?
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve lived here my whole life. Around here.” I shrug as I put down the little porcelain rabbit with the chipped ear.
“Hum.” She nods, then she’s gone again in her upside down paper.
I’m from nowhere; that’s what I should have said. I’ve moved as many times as the years I’ve been alive. Twenty-one. I keep track.
Twenty-one moves all within the city limits of Cleveland, Ohio. One of these days, I will crack the state line and see the backside of this city.
The radio on my belt chirps, and I hear Selma, one of the floor supervisors, through the static.
“Promise, you on two?” Selma’s voice crackles.
Mrs. Selburn nods at me then chuckles at her paper as I step into the hall.
“Yes. The radio makes a click-click sound when I press my thumb on the button to speak.
“Get on over to unit twenty-six. His son’s coming today, and he needs a change.”
“Yup. Okay.”
Twenty-six came here a couple months ago, barely able to walk from self-neglect, liver disease and a near fatal infection in his amputated left leg. He was a wreck.
He doesn’t say much and neither do I. It will be interesting to see what his son is all about because he’s had zero visitors since he got here. One of the things I find fascinating about working here is watching the families. How they interact, how some of them genuinely care while others barely mask their disdain.
Everyone has a story, and I like to try to piece them together. It makes me feel better about my own past.
“Hello? Mr. Fitzgerald.” I knock softly on the door of unit twenty-six before stepping inside, shoving my hands down into the front pockets of my scrub shirt.
The v-neck pulls down far enough that the crease of my cleavage shows, and I immediately take my hands out. I like wearing my scrubs. They are loose and nondescript, and no worries about a little muffin top hanging over a tight waistband. It’s hard enough looking like I do but add on more curves than straight lines and I never feel quite right in my own skin.
Mr. Fitzgerald grunts toward me from his usual place by the window. We both know why I’m here, and it’s no spring picnic for either of us.
We work together in silence after I roll his chair into the bathroom. We’ve done this chore before, and within five minutes I’ve got him in and out with as little shame as possible.
I roll him back toward the window as a knock comes from the door behind us.
“Hey, Dad.” A man’s voice breaks into our comfortable silence.
Both of our heads snap around.
I’m hit with a flurry of tingling electric current up and down my spinal cord. The man I see working his way inside the room is impeccably dressed even in his jeans and t-shirt. Even with the textured flaws of his face, he stands proud and gorgeous. He is perhaps the most attractive man I’ve ever seen in person, and he’s staring back at me like he sees a ghost.
His close-cropped, near-black hair anchors eyes that defy definition of color.
Cobalt? No. Aqua? No.
Monet. They look like the water in one of Monet’s “Water Lilies” paintings.
He’s staring at me.
My eyes dart away. I’d only given him a split second glance, but his eyes are on me, and I’m all too familiar with that look.
I feel the heat rising up from my toes. I’m ashamed for something that I have no control over.
See, that’s the other reason I like this job. Almost everyone here is miserable, so how I look is a nonissue. I’m not a freak here; I’m just the girl with the white hair and the eyes that look like ice cubes.
I am a ghost in many ways. Not just because of how I look, but because I don’t feel like I belong in this world. I don’t fit. Never have.
And this world has shown me over and over, the feeling is mutual.
My stomach flutters. All I see are dark lashes outlining wild, blue eyes that are on me, and the tips of my ears feel like there are flames coming off of them. There’s no other way out of the small room except that door. He’s blocking the entire thing, and I realize just how massive he is.
He’s his father’s son, alright.
Mr. Fitzgerald must have stood a good 6’ 5” before they took his foot and part of his lower leg. He’s a diabetic and alcoholic, and that is not a winning combination.
Mr. Fitzgerald is African American, light skinned but still. His son looks Caucasian with angular lines to his face, warm olive skin, and I can only assume that his mother must have been white, and the DNA dice just fell toward her side.
But he and his father have the same look. They have the same stare. They are as similar as they are different, and they have an intensity that radiates from them that makes you want to look away.
I’m desperate to get out of here, but he’s not moving. I feel my pulse doing double time, and a low vibration of panic is rising and charging my skin.
Is he beautiful or horrible? Whatever he is, I’ve never seen anyone like him.
It seems like an eternity before he takes his next step forward, and I’m sure my face is hot to the touch. I toss my head to the side, wishing my hair would fall over my face. Instead, the loose bun I tied it in this morning merely flops over my ear.
“You coming in or what?” Mr. Fitzgerald breaks the silence with a terse greeting.
I take a breath, but it comes out as more of a loud gasp and both men turn to look at me. I can feel his eyes on me as he takes another step forward. It feels like the air in the room itself is nervous, like it’s tightening around me.
I instinctively move in the opposite direction from the son. I try not to look too long at the half of his face that is cloaked in scars.
Scars that make me want to run.
Scars that make me want to know.
I shuffle away, keeping my eyes low, trying to find my way around and out without looking at him again. Without touching him. He’s on my blind side now, so I can’t see him, but I can hear him.
I can feel him.
And it hurts.
“Hey, Dad,” he says quietly.
He sounds sad. His greeting is heavy as though it is filled with many more words he wishes he could say.
Then, he’s looking at me. “Hi.” His voice is like thunder.
Shit.
“Hi,” I reply.
Wow, that’s original.
This is why I don’t talk much. Everything I say sounds moronic. In my head, there’s too much going on. Then when it comes out, there’s nothing. Silence is better.
“She doesn’t talk,” Mr. Fitzgerald grunts.
I’m oddly relieved by Mr. Fitzgerald’s statement. I hate when people work so hard trying to get me to talk, and I have nothing to say. It’s exhausting.
“You don’t?” More thunder only he adds a smile.
And I like it. A lot. He should smile all the time.
At me.
I’m staring stupidly between the two men, plotting my escape.
“That’s not true,” he goes on, still smiling. “She just said ‘Hi’ to me.” He’s genuine, an
d I can’t help but appreciate the way he fills out his t-shirt. My eyes wander up his chest, his throat, the smile, and then the scars and I quickly look back down at the New Balance tennis shoes I nabbed when they cleaned out Dolores Spencer’s room last week.
We’re not supposed to trash-pick here, but when the residents pass away, the families sometimes throw away perfectly good stuff. And, I’m a budget-minded gal.
Mr. Fitzgerald grunts. “I mean, she doesn’t want to talk. She barely says two words to me when she’s in here.”
“Maybe you aren’t all that fun to talk to.” His son’s words are sharp, and I know there is history here. I’ve heard rumors.
“I’m sorry.” I blurt out. I’m not even sure why I just apologized. I’m embarrassed, and I have no idea why.
I grit my teeth, but I can’t stop my eyes from betraying me and leaving the floor again to skim him up and down. I catch an entire Mediterranean Sea of blue and green behind that rim of dark lashes. I’ve never seen eyes so haunting and glowing. I feel like I’m falling.
He takes a long stride, and he’s next to me. I can smell the outside on him as though he just walked through the woods. He’s fresh, clean and still creating a wall in-between me and the door.
It is hard to look at his face, but it’s not just the scars. It’s more. I try to force myself to meet his gaze because I know how it feels when someone looks, then suddenly you’re invisible. People don’t want to stare, but instead of being polite, they turn you into something less than human. You can feel their discomfort, and I hate that I’ve just done the same to him.
The wall of man in front of me isn’t overly friendly, but he also is not off-putting. The air still feels like it is charged around us, but something about his manner eases me a bit.
“Are you coming in? Or, did you just come to stand there and stare at her?” His father wheels forward a few feet, then he nods towards me. “My son, back from some secret mission. You keep going back. I guess that says something. You’d rather be anywhere but here. How many tours have you done now?”