by Caela Carter
He slumps. “I’m trying here, Meredith,” he says.
I want to say, Fine.
I want to say, Elena wasn’t family anyway.
I want to say, Why does she even have to come back here at all?
When Dad doesn’t say anything else, Person shoots him a disappointed look and says, “I’d like to try to fix this in a way that preserves all of our relationships. I think everyone deserves to have her voice heard.”
Meredith almost snorts.
Person ignores her. “I know Flora and Elena fought, but I do think deep down they understand that they’re sisters and they love each other.”
Person is hardly ever wrong, but she is now. I maybe love Elena. Or maybe I could if I don’t. But sisters? No.
She can’t be my sister.
Julian and I are Onlys.
Meredith sighs.
Person says, “Flora, will you explain what happened?”
I remember what Person said before bed the other night about how I needed to express myself or else it would hurt me. I have to try to talk when Person asks me to. “The food. The laughing. Julian. Elena was laughing and I—”
Elena’s voice is so much louder. “She punched me for no reason. It came out of nowhere. I was at recess talking to my friends, I didn’t even see them walking up to us. Then boom. She punched me.”
“That’s not—” I say.
“She’s lying!” Elena says.
“She punched you while your back was turned?” Meredith says, somehow getting louder and louder.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Elena says.
“She was laughing,” I say, all the words coming out without me even trying. I can feel Person smiling at me. “Elena was trying to get me to—”
“She’s lying!” Elena says.
But Elena is lying. I don’t know why she’s lying. Punching is worse than laughing. I’m in the biggest trouble.
Person leans over and whispers to me. “Try again. Explain.”
I take a deep breath. “Julian was mad about the food,” I say.
“What?” Elena spits. She’s leaning out of her chair now. “I don’t even know what she’s talking about.”
And that’s also a lie because I know that part made perfect sense if you were there, and Elena was.
“She never makes any sense,” Elena says.
“I’m not sure what the point of this is, Emily, but it’s not working. Why should my daughter come all the way over here? So she can listen to a girl who assaulted her and who refuses to apologize? I’m not sure the abuser should get a voice.”
Person’s jaw snaps shut so hard I can hear her teeth clank together. She stares at Meredith. Her eyes are hard, but it’s like she doesn’t know what to say.
It’s tense and frozen and I want to melt and drip through the floorboards. I can’t believe I haven’t floated away to the ceiling yet. I rub the scab on the back of my hand but it’s mostly healed so it doesn’t even distract me.
Meredith motions for Elena to get up but then finally a little voice says, “How about me? Can I talk?”
Julian.
Meredith sighs.
Meredith doesn’t know that Julian uses my own words better than I do. That Julian talking is me talking. Julian didn’t do any punching so she has to listen to him.
“So . . . um . . . ,” Julian says. His voice is small but everyone is quiet and listening. I don’t know how he does that. I’m glad he’s not smiling. I’m glad this will be the truth. “I don’t like to talk about this but for Florey . . .” He pauses and looks at me for a second. His eyes are sad. “OK. I . . . I hide food, sometimes . . . in my closet. Sometimes. I just . . . I . . . put food in my closet. Flora and Elena went to my closet and stole all the food—”
“I didn’t do that!” Elena yells.
Dad finally speaks. “Let him finish. Then you can talk, baby.”
“Maybe they were trying to help me,” Julian says, looking right at Elena like he’s the strongest person in the world. “But I got really mad when I found out it was all gone . . . I never thought Flora would do it . . . I went into my closet on that Sunday night when Elena was still here and all of my food was gone. It was totally gone. So I thought Elena had—”
“You immediately assumed that—”
“Meredith,” Dad says. “Let him finish.”
“I’m sorry, Elena. I thought it was you,” Julian says, looking right at her. But he’s smiling that crazy smile. The “sorry” is a lie.
“So then when I saw Elena on Tuesday at recess I was so angry. And I ran up to her and started yelling at her and telling her she shouldn’t steal and then Flora was there and she was so upset she was crying.”
I was crying? I don’t even remember that part.
“Elena didn’t care that I was shouting or that Flora was crying. Because she was . . . making fun of me. She was laughing.”
“I wasn’t laughing,” she says.
“Yes, you were,” Julian says. “And then Flora got mad at her for laughing at me like that so she punched her.”
“I wasn’t laughing,” Elena says, even louder. “God! You’re both liars. I didn’t even see you guys before Flora punched me in the face.”
Julian snorts, which is something else I’ve never heard.
“Flora, was Elena laughing? Did she have her back turned or did she see you guys?” Person asks me.
“Laughing,” I say. I’m so calm I put it into a full sentence. “She was laughing at Julian. It was the mean kind of laughing. She was trying to get me to laugh with her. At Julian.”
“Now,” Person says, still looking at me. “Is that a reason to—”
But before she can finish, Elena cries out, “I can’t believe you’re going to take her side. You know she’s lying. She can’t even—”
“Elena,” Person says. “Flora is going to get an appropriate punishment for punching you. It is my top priority to make sure that every member of this family feels safe in this house. There’s no punching or hurting in this house. But there’s no making fun of your brother, either.”
“I cannot believe this!” Elena says.
Person turns to keep talking to me. I feel like she’s a wall. I feel like chaos is swirling around her, thick and familiar, and she’s a wall built just to keep it from touching me.
Meredith looks so upset I almost feel sorry for her. It’s not her fault Elena is lying. And Person is right. I shouldn’t have punched her no matter what she did.
But then Meredith says, “Honestly, Emily? This is how you will handle this situation? You barely listened to my kid. And what about you?” she says, turning to Dad. “Is this what goes on here now? Do you never even think about your real kid anymore?”
“Hey, now,” Dad says. Then stops.
“Excuse me,” Person says. “We don’t use that language. They’re all real kids.”
“But Elena is his kid. He’s Elena’s father,” Meredith says.
“He’s Julian’s father. He’s Flora’s father. He’s Elena’s father,” Person says.
Meredith stands. Not to leave. Just to make herself bigger or something. “Our kids are not the same.”
“What does that mean?” Person says, almost in a growl. She stands as well.
“I’ve done some reading,” Meredith says. “I couldn’t stop Jon from marrying you but I did some reading when I found out about it. I had to protect my girl as best I could. You know some things about foster kids? They do more than hide food in their closets. They do worse than that. They lie. They fail out of school. They’re violent. They end up homeless or—”
“Meredith!” Dad says. “Stop!”
“At first I was so worried. The girl seemed so weird and the boy killed that goldfish. I was terrified to have my daughter around them all the time.” Meredith won’t stop talking. “But then they seemed to be getting better. You all almost seemed like a family. And Elena said she enjoys coming here. As soon as I let my guard down,
this happens.”
“Stop. Now,” Dad says again.
But she doesn’t. “Emily, it was your choice to accept dysfunction into your family. Jon, it was your choice to marry into a dysfunctional family. But Elena and I didn’t get that choice.”
Dysfunction. She called us dysfunction. We are dysfunction, the whole word at once.
“Enough!” Person says.
She reaches for us and almost scoots us behind her back like she really wants to be a wall. But it feels like the wall is falling down.
“We didn’t even listen to Elena, you realize that, right?” Meredith is saying. “We skipped right over everything she said.”
Behind her mother’s back, and with our father staring into the kitchen, Elena sticks her tongue out at us.
“Tongue!” I yell, just as Person is saying, “Elena was lying. She was not sucker punched. She saw them, talked to them, then Flora got angry.”
“Tongue!” I yell again.
“What?” Person says, turning to look at me.
“Tongue,” I say, still too excited and angry and frustrated and confused to make it make sense.
“Elena stuck her tongue out at us,” Julian says flatly.
“Lying! They’re lying!” Elena bursts out again. “Mom, they’re always doing this. They’re always ganging up on me and lying about me and I’m always getting into all sorts of trouble because of the messed up things they do.”
None of that is true. We mostly ignore Elena when she’s here. We can’t gang up on her if we barely even talk to her.
“Elena,” Person says. Her voice is almost calm but it’s more thin than I’ve ever heard. “I am trying my heart out here. I’m trying to make everyone feel loved and special and important to this family. I love you. But you need to tell the truth.”
“Why do you assume my kid’s lying? Why do you think your foster kids are perfect?” Meredith says. “How dare you say you love my daughter in the middle of accusing her of being worse than them?”
Julian and I are specks on the couch. We’re dirt. We’re nothing. I hope he’s floated away by now. I’m still waiting for it to happen for me.
“Enough,” Person says again, even though it hasn’t worked a single time yet. “And they are my kids, period.”
“Elena, are you telling the truth?” Meredith asks.
“Yes,” Elena says. “Flora is lying.”
“Flora is not lying!” Person says.
“How do you know that?” Meredith says.
Suddenly, it’s funny. Adults yelling about tongues sticking out and food hidden in a closet. It’s gross and funny. It’s too familiar but I don’t remember why.
But then Person says, “Flora can’t communicate well enough to lie.”
I’ve been slapped in the face before. I’m sure of that at this moment. Because those words coming from my person, they feel exactly the same way.
Person turns and stares at me, her face broken. And then she collapses back between Julian and me again, her hands covering her face.
It’s quiet for a minute. I’m biting my lip. I don’t think I’m crying but maybe Julian will tell me later that I was. Maybe I can’t even tell what crying is anymore.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Dad says. “We should get some sleep and try to figure all this out another time.”
“I’m not dropping Elena off tomorrow, Jon. Sue me for all I care, I won’t do it. And I know you’re supposed to have the first two weeks of summer, but no. No way. This is unacceptable. My daughter does not have to pay the price for your choices.”
Dad sighs. “That’s not how we see it, Meredith. It’s good for Elena to have siblings . . . We’re all still . . . working.”
Elena’s looking at her shoes now, almost like she’s shy.
“Jon . . . it’s . . .” Meredith is not as loud anymore. “Elena is a child. This is too heavy. She shouldn’t have to be involved in all of this. I . . . I’m trying. I’m trying to be a good mother and I . . . I can’t drop her off tomorrow. I can’t leave her for two whole weeks when she feels this way.”
Dad sighs. “Elena, honey,” he says. “Do you mind staying with your mother this weekend? And then when school ends, Emily is going to take Flora and Julian on a little trip down to the beach in Maryland.”
Julian leans across Person to raise his eyebrows at me.
His eyes say we’re going back to Maryland?
Mine say back, the trip we accidentally asked for?
Dad is still talking. “We’ve had this planned already. We were all going to go and hang out on the beach but . . . what if you and I stay back? We can have some dad-daughter time like the old days and hopefully Flora and Julian can feel a little better. Then we’ll work on getting everyone together again.”
I don’t know what Elena says because sirens blare in my brain.
She’s taking us that soon? We’re going to see Gloria and Megan B. in just a week? Right after my last week of Ms. K, Person is going to take us searching for the white house?
Miraculously, Meredith doesn’t yell. She says something else I can’t hear over the noise in my head. She stands and puts on her sweater. She holds Elena’s hand. Person and Julian and I stay frozen. Dad follows Meredith to the apartment door. He gives Elena a long hug, then Meredith shoos her away. Before she leaves herself, she turns and says, “You broke our family. I hope you know that, Jon. Forget the divorce, we all survived that. But when you adopted those children, you broke our lives.”
“Meredith, leave,” Dad says. “They can hear you.”
But we didn’t need to hear that to know it’s true.
Sitting in the middle of us is the woman who is supposed to be our final human mother.
It looks like we broke her too.
Fifteen
FAMILIES ADJUST (FOREVER)
MONDAY MORNING I WAKE UP WITH a headache that goes boom boom between my ears and a stomachache that comes from when your stomach won’t stay still even when you’re just lying in your bed.
I stare at my hard-boiled egg. I think about telling Person there’s no way I can eat it. I think about telling her I don’t feel well and asking if I can stay home.
In the end I let Julian steal my egg and hide it in his closet.
It’s another quiet morning. Saturday and Sunday we managed to go grocery shopping and play board games and all the usual stuff, but we did it quietly. Person confirmed that we start our hunt for the white house and all of the other foster houses this weekend, and Julian smiled at me and my heart raced in my chest, both excited and scared.
I wander into the classroom to start the last week with Ms. K and I don’t even feel like looking at her. In my backpack, there’s a pile of blank worksheets, an assignment notebook listing assignments without a single initial next to them. I didn’t even think about homework last night. Person didn’t even mention homework last night.
I drop into my desk and float to the ceiling. My head hurts too much or my stomach is turning over too often so it’s sort of good to float away now. I wish I was able to float away on Friday when Meredith was yelling and everything awful was happening. I wish I was paying attention now when it’s the last week of fourth grade and the last chance to show Ms. K and Person that I’m normal and lovable and smart.
When I come back it’s because I’m doing a long division test and that’s something I can actually think about without feeling like I want to disappear. It’s fun. My pencil goes all over the paper. My hand is quick-quick-quick. My brain works. Answer. Answer. Answer.
I realize I missed Ms. K collecting all of our homework this morning. I missed it when she said I had to stay in from recess to work on it. I missed her disappointed look.
And as soon as I realize that, the bell rings for recess. My test is complete and flipped over on my desk so the back side is up, the way Ms. K likes, but around me pencils are still moving and kids groan.
“I didn’t get to finish!” Sue says.
“Me
either, Ms. K,” David whines.
“OK,” she says. “If you’d like to work during your recess, I’m not going to stop you. If you’d like to hand in your papers as they are now, go ahead outside. The rest of you work until you’re satisfied, then come and hand in your paper and go outside.”
About half the class leaves right away. I stay. I watch Ms. K work at her desk. I wonder what she said to me this morning. I know I’m not allowed to go to recess if I don’t have my homework done, but I don’t know what else she said.
I didn’t do it on purpose but I don’t want to go to recess anyway. I don’t want to go anywhere except back in time to before we found out about the baby.
I watch Ms. K. She writes something on the top of a piece of paper, flips it onto a new pile, and looks at a different piece of paper on her desk. She seems to have forgotten about me.
One by one, kids get up and hand in their papers.
Sue.
Greg.
Annie.
She says, “Thank you, enjoy your recess,” to each of them, like they are each the most special kid in the world. It’s hard to watch since I’m apparently invisible and she forgot all about me.
Finally, it’s me and David left and then even he goes to hand in his paper.
“Thank you, David. I’m proud of you for working hard on this,” Ms. K says. “You have about eight minutes of recess left. Go run around! It’s a beautiful day.”
That makes me look out the window. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. Why don’t I ever notice when it’s a beautiful day until someone points it out to me?
David is still heading out the door when Ms. K finally sees me. “Flora?” she says.
I nod.
“You’re still working on your test?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“Come hand it in and get out to recess then,” Ms. K says. “It’s a beautiful day.”
I shake my head.
“No recess for you today?” Ms. K asks. “Why not?”