Forever, or a Long, Long Time

by Caela Carter

  “OK, kiddos,” Person says. “Here it is.”

  “Huh?” Julian says.

  But I nod my head. I can’t ask too many questions.

  Person gestures at all of the papers spread out across the table. “This is everything I know about you guys from before I met you. Where you lived. Who you lived with. Why you moved.”

  Julian lunges at a paper and grabs it too quickly. “Really?” he says. “You know all of that? And it says we were born?”

  I pick up a paper too, but it’s rows and rows of black letters on white paper. It’s a code. I don’t even see my name on it. I see a lot of “seven-year-old girl.”

  What if we were born? What if these papers say we were born?

  I’m not sure I want to be born, really. That would lead to so many more questions. Like . . . where is that mother?

  “Oh, guys, I’m sorry. I’m doing this all wrong. I don’t . . . this stuff. It’s hard to talk about . . .”

  “Huh?” Julian says again.

  “I talked to Dr. Fredrick again yesterday,” Person says. “And he said to show it all to you. But he made it sound so easy.”

  We don’t say anything.

  “I didn’t know you’d ever want to know this stuff,” Person says. “So . . .”

  “It’s OK, Mom!” Julian says. His smile is real. He lunges for another paper. “Look at all of this. You know all of this. You must know everything.”

  Person glances back to the papers. “Oh . . . ,” she says. She does not sound happy. “I guess to you this might look like a lot, all this paperwork. But it’s actually not a lot. When I said this is all I know, I mean it’s limited. I know very little. The foster care system failed you guys in a lot of ways, and one of them is that it didn’t keep your records correctly.”

  “Explain?” I ask.

  “But what does it say?” Julian says.

  “You really want to know?”

  We nod. Of course we want to know. This is our lives. This is the answer to all of the questions. This is the light in all of the dark spots. This is the white house. This is the shoulders I sat on.

  “OK.” She sighs. “Well, I’ve been through the mess of these papers several times, and it all comes down to this: before me, you lived with a single mother with a lot of foster children.”

  “Gloria,” Julian says.

  “Yes,” Person says. “She was supposed to keep you very temporarily, but you ended up staying there for eleven months.”

  “That’s almost a whole year,” Julian whispers. I don’t know if he thinks that’s too long or too short for his memory. I’m not sure which one I feel either.

  “Before that,” Person says, “you guys lived with a woman who intended to adopt you.”

  At that, our eyes go wide.

  “I take it you never knew that?” Person says.

  We shake our heads. She intended to adopt us . . . and then didn’t? We were that awful?

  I start to shake.

  “OK,” Person says. “Well, that woman—I don’t know how to say this.”

  “You have to,” I say. I don’t mean to say it. My lung filters fail me again.

  Person doesn’t look angry at me, just sad. She says, “That woman would have gotten all of the files about what happened before you went to her. And now they’re nowhere to be found. I mean, the agency should have kept them too. But apparently neither that woman nor the agency can find them. I’ve been fighting to reclaim them for years but . . . I can’t get anywhere.”

  “Why?” I say.

  Person lowers her eyebrows at me. “Why what?” she asks.

  I mean, why would she fight to get records of our lives if she didn’t want us to have them, but before I can put those words together, Julian speaks.

  “So these don’t say we were born?” he asks.

  “J, baby.” Person sighs. “You were both born.”

  “Tell us about it then,” Julian says. “Where? When? With who?”

  Person shakes her head. “I . . . Look . . . I . . . We know your birthdays, that means you were born. OK? Do you guys believe me?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I just . . .”

  “We can’t,” I say.

  I wish I could believe her. It would make her so happy if I did.

  “Is there anything you guys remember?” Person asks.

  I nod. “White.”

  “Yeah,” Julian says. “We started at a white house. It was white inside. Flora remembers turning on a light switch while standing in a line.”

  “Inside the house?” Person says to me.

  I nod.

  Julian’s still talking. “And I remember a tiny table. I was sitting at the table. Flora was standing and reached up to turn on a light switch. So we weren’t babies.”

  Person nods. “Most people’s first memory is from when they were between two and three years old. So I bet that’s when you guys lived in that house. The white house, as you say. But you were babies before that,” she says. Her eyes are big and serious and begging.

  We don’t say anything. It feels good that Person believes us about the white house. I wish I could believe her back and make her feel this good.

  “Maybe the person in the white house knows,” I say.

  “What?” Person asks.

  “Yeah,” Julian says. “If we find the white house, maybe they’ll tell you that we weren’t born. That we just showed up there.”

  “Sweetie,” Person says. She takes Julian’s face in her hands. “You didn’t show up as a toddler inside a random white house.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t random,” I say. My filters are so open. I can’t stop the words.

  “Yeah,” Julian says. “Maybe Gloria or someone knows where it is.”

  “I want to find it,” I say. And I want to see Gloria again. And play with Megan B. and her dollhouse. But I don’t say those things out loud.

  “Do you guys want to write back to Gloria? And this little Megan B.?”

  But we’re shaking our heads. It isn’t enough.

  “I want to find the white house,” Julian says.

  “Me too.”

  Person looks so worried.

  She rubs her forehead. I try not to see how we’re making it sweat. I try not to worry about the baby inside her and how it’ll never make her look for white houses or ex-foster moms or beginnings. That baby will always have a beginning.

  “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for that place,” Person says. “But if you ever want to write back to Gloria or any of the kids at her house, tell me. I’ll make it happen.”

  Ten

  FAMILIES STAY ON THE SAME TEAM

  I’M AT THE WHITE BOARD IN my classroom first thing Tuesday morning, the second-to-last Tuesday of the school year, marker in hand, waiting for Ms. K to finish writing out a division problem so that I can loop to the answer. I can’t wait to loop to the answer. I’m very good at looping to the answer.

  Ms. K calls this Review Tuesday. She has one row go up to the board to work on a problem while everyone else works in their seats. Then we rotate so everyone gets a chance on the board. Since I’m in the first row, I get to go to the board first, and the board is the most fun, but I like Review Tuesdays, all of it, even the part when I’m in my seat.

  The morning was hard. Hard to pay attention to stupid things like unpacking my bag and greeting Ms. K when the sun is shining through the windows and Julian wants us to find the white house and so do I and when Person says we can write back to Gloria now but also I hurt Julian and he doesn’t know it.

  Ms. K writes

  My marker starts moving right away. My marker moves fastest. My marker is always moving fastest in math and never moving fastest not in math.

  I grab the answer from the string of numbers on my board and circle it.

  “Fifty-four, remainder two!” I shout.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Ms. K says quickly. “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you. No remainders. You know how to do the whole thing now
. Drop your zeros. Find the decimal. Round to the nearest hundredth.”

  “OK!” I say.

  Ms. K comes up and whispers something in my ear but I’m too busy dropping zeros like a genius to hear her.

  I’m still the first to the answer.

  “Fifty-four point one three!”

  “That’s correct, Flora,” Ms. K says. “But please don’t shout out the answer. Other students might still be working on it.”

  I look at the rest of the board. Everyone else is still working. Most of them have only gotten to the 1 and some haven’t even gotten past the 4 yet. I don’t understand how so many of these kids who are so good at hard stuff like reading out loud and timed writing responses are also so bad at math.

  The first row sits and I pick up my pencil as the second row goes to the board.

  Ms. K writes

  Multiplication! And with two fives! Even easier.

  My pencil moves across my paper fast as lightning. I circle the answer. Everyone at the board is still working. Some of them are only on their second round of addition. I need to say my answer. I can’t wait that long.

  “Seven hundred eighty-two thousand, eight hundred fifteen,” I say. I don’t shout it this time. I say it nicely.

  Ms. K comes over and squats in front of my desk. She can do this because she’s wearing her every-other-Tuesday khakis and blue blouse today. “Flora,” she whispers in her Warning Voice. “I’m proud of you for getting the answers correct, but I expect you to follow the rules and wait until I ask for the answer to shout it out. We need to respect the students who are moving more slowly. OK?”

  I nod. But she doesn’t get why it’s so hard for me.

  The thing about math is that numbers are better than words. I can give the answer and it will always make sense, even if it’s wrong (which it usually isn’t) because the answer is a number. No full sentences. No important words sneaking out before they’ll make sense.

  “This is your final warning,” Ms. K whispers so no one else can hear. “If you call out again, that will show me you are unable to participate in class today and you’ll have to go finish your math assignment with Mr. Jackson.”

  The third row is at the board and Ms. K writes

  My pencil is moving and I realize for the first time today that I’m not thinking about Julian or Elena or Person’s baby or where we’ll go at the end of the school year. My pencil is moving. I am my pencil moving.

  I have 4.574 circled.

  I tap my eraser against my paper.

  All around me pencils scratch. Markers move against the board. At least two of the kids have wrong answers already.

  Scratch-scratch-scratch.

  I have the answer. I want to say it. I don’t want to wait.

  Scratch-scratch-scratch.

  When I wait for anything, bad things wake up in my head. Like the time Julian was caught hiding food at one of the foster homes where the lights were hardly ever on. Or when we were really little and there was a girl who would pull my hair and I never said anything because back then I didn’t have any words at all.

  I don’t want to think about these things. I want to think about my circled 4.574. I want numbers. More numbers.

  The scratch-scratch-scratch goes on around me. I feel the numbers build in my throat. I feel them bouncing at the back of my teeth.

  If I call out the answer, Ms. K will send me to Mr. Jackson, the principal, and that wouldn’t be good because then I’d be away from Ms. K. But usually that also means I get a private moment with her at the end of the day. So maybe it would be OK. Maybe it would be better than waiting.

  Finally Ms. K goes back to the board. She says, “Raise your hand if—”

  “Four point five seven four!” I shout.

  “Flora,” Ms. K says. “Please go to Mr. Jackson’s office.”

  The look on her face does not say, Let’s have a private meeting later. It doesn’t say, I know you’re trying your best for me, Flora. I want to help you try your best forever. It doesn’t say, I love you, Flora.

  She doesn’t even look disappointed, which is a kind of love.

  She looks exhausted.

  By the time I get to Mr. Jackson’s I’m almost in tears, but Ms. K has emailed him with a Review Tuesday worksheet for me to do while I sit here so I’m OK. The math keeps the bad stuff out.

  A few minutes before recess, Mr. Jackson comes and sits next to me in the little room outside of his office. He’s a big man with huge shoulders and a bald, white head. He has gray glasses that barely look different from the skin on his face. He’s also wearing a gray suit. He’s a very gray person.

  “What happened today, Flora?” he asks.

  I don’t answer. My words are stuck again and his question is not a math problem.

  “Ms. K had said you’ve been improving. She said that if you finish the rest of the year doing as well as you’ve been doing the past few months, you’ll probably advance to fifth grade.”

  I still don’t say anything.

  “We didn’t think that would be possible during the middle of the year. I’m incredibly impressed with how much you’ve improved.”

  I shrug.

  It’s not like I can say what I’m thinking: I don’t like switching teachers. It feels too much like switching mothers.

  But I’m trying hard to pass fourth grade anyway.

  I love Person too much not to try.

  “You understand?” Mr. Jackson asks.

  I nod.

  “Good,” he says. “So then I take it that this little trip to my office was a fluke?”

  I tip my head. I don’t know what it means.

  “I take it you won’t end up here again.”

  That’s fine with me. I want every extra minute with Ms. K.

  I nod again.

  “OK, go enjoy your recess.”

  I dash out the door. I wonder if Mr. Jackson noticed that my words were stuck.

  When I get outside, I’m only a few minutes late. Recess has just started. My heart is already speeding up, happy, because it’s Tuesday, which is a Julian-at-recess day and an Elena-not-at-recess day. I run out to the blacktop and look for him at our typical spot under the basketball hoop, but he’s not there.

  I scan the crowd for his brown hair but I don’t see him with the other fourth graders or the little kids. When I finally find him, he’s standing in a circle of Elena’s friends.

  Elena’s friends?

  The sixth grade is at recess today? But it’s Tuesday. Their schedule must have changed.

  I start to shake immediately. I didn’t want to see Elena until I was supposed to have to see her on Friday. I didn’t want to see Julian and Elena in the same place until it was Saturday afternoon when Person and Dad would be there to keep us safe.

  But I see them now. And even though I don’t want to, my legs start running toward them.

  Julian is yelling.

  The sixth graders around him are all laughing.

  “FLORA!” Julian cries toward me. “FLORA!” He looks so tiny standing in the middle of all those laughing sixth-grade girls.

  I sprint across the parking lot like it’s on fire. I’m next to him with my arm around him. I’m trying to hold him on the earth. His brain is spinning, I can tell. I’m trying to be the point for his compass.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Julian is shaking under my arm.

  Elena laughs. “It was you, Flora. It was your idea.”

  “No,” I say without even hearing her. She’s standing a few feet away from us, but it’s still like she’s trying to wiggle her way in between us even though I don’t know how or why. I want to kick her.

  There’s bad in my blood: she hasn’t done anything but love me but I hate her anyway.

  “WHERE IS IT?” Julian screams.

  It’s not until Elena starts laughing that I rewind and hear what she just said. It was my idea.

  He’s so angry his face is sweaty, his fists are clenched, he’s
almost vibrating under my arm. But she’s still laughing. The rest of her friends seem to fall away so it’s just the three of us in this corner of the blacktop. Julian shaking and shouting. Elena laughing. Me frozen.

  Her laughing isn’t like at a cartoon when it’s actually funny. It’s the laughing of the girls in school. It’s the mean kind of laughing.

  “This is about the food?” I ask.

  She’s still laughing. It’s the laughing at. She’s laughing at my brother.

  Julian puts his hands on my shoulders and shoves me away from him. I trip into Elena and both of us fall on our butts.

  “Where is it, Flora? What did you do? Weeks, it’s taken weeks,” Julian shouts.

  Elena is laughing. I want to hit her.

  Julian is crying but not like he used to. Not soft and quiet and scared. It’s loud and violent. His tears are poison.

  “How could you, Florey? You? YOU?”

  Each time Elena laughs, my fists get tighter.

  “First Mom steals from me, and now YOU?”

  “Mom?” Elena says through giggles. “Emily stole something from you?”

  We try to ignore her.

  “You knew we needed it. We NEED it. Everything is . . .”

  Julian doesn’t struggle with words the way I do. But he can’t say what he wants to because Elena is here, laughing.

  “It’s . . .”

  I can fill in the blanks anyway. He doesn’t need to say it.

  Everything is . . . dangerous.

  “It’s . . . ,” Julian says again. He’s hiccuping sobs now. I hate myself. I hate him. I hate Person. I hate Elena.

  “It’s gross,” Elena says through those laughing-at chuckles. “Right, Flora? Disgusting. That chicken finger was moldy.”

  I swivel my back and head so I can see her face. Her eyes are sparkling. Her mouth is open. She’s happy. Julian is as angry as I’ve seen him—angry enough to kill another goldfish—and it makes Elena happy.

  “It was so gross!” she gasps between laughs.

  Her teeth are right there, jammed into the middle of her laughter.

  “Florey,” Julian sobs. “You’re the only person who . . . I can’t believe you would . . .”