She doesn’t know, Mum, that that’s the worst thing to do, to make a big deal out of it, so I cut across her and laugh like what he said was a joke. “Fine by me. I’m going to enjoy kicking your skinny Italian ass!”
The kids laugh then and Shirley high fives me and they go on choosing until everyone is chosen and I pretend I don’t see the pity in Amanda’s face. And we do kick his ass, Mum. Even though it’s only a kids’ game, I run all over the beach like it’s the Olympics or something and we beat them 21–7. I scored twelve of our points.
I’m wrecked now, Mum—it never stops here—volleyball, art, helping David make the rice for dinner and cleaning up after, although that was worth it because I got to sample his banana walnut muffins, straight from the oven. Tonight was movie night—E.T.—and I thought I was going to be able to watch it all, but even then they don’t sit still. It was getting to the best part—the part where the plant comes back to life and then E.T. does—and then Natalie threw up all over her shoes and because I was sitting nearest I had to clean it up.
I’m not complaining, Mum, I’m not. It’s just that
Dear Mum,
I fell asleep last night, right in the middle of writing that sentence. It’s fifty kinds of crazy that I’m more tired now than when I was on the streets. When I say it to Winnie she says it’s the sea air, but I think it’s because Jean is working us like slaves and I have more work than anyone else.
Like this morning, I’m on breakfast, with Matt and Zac, even though I was on dinner last night. Breakfast is easier though because half of them are having “Be Myself Time” and eighteen kids between three of us isn’t too bad—even though Zac doesn’t do much and pretends he doesn’t see the milk Luis spilled all over the table. I like him, Luis, but he’s so scared all the time, you’d think I was going to hit him for knocking over a glass of milk. When I tell him it’s okay and bring him another one, he starts crying and I pretend not to see the box of Cheerios he has shoved in his pocket in case it makes him cry more.
I don’t know how to be with kids—what to do when they fight or cry or anything. It was Erin who stepped in when Maleika and Shirley were pulling each other’s hair on the beach over whose turn it was to go on the Swingball and I don’t know how she does it, because five minutes later, they were both jumping over the waves at the edge, each of them holding one of her hands.
They’ve all formed groups now, Mum, in only a couple of days—the girls in pairs mostly and the boys in mini gangs. The only one who always spends time on her own is Robin, a little black girl—one of the youngest. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t speak to anyone, she didn’t even say anything today when Isaac and Jeffrey kicked sand in her face on purpose, she didn’t cry or anything.
Jean came to check up on me this afternoon. I’m down in the rec room, washing the trays and brushes after art, and when I turn around she’s right behind me in a lime-green polo shirt. I’m holding four trays between my stump and my hand and I drop two of them on the tiles.
“Hi,” she goes, bending down to help me pick them up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you a shock.”
“You didn’t,” I go. “You’re grand.”
She hands me two of the trays and it’s harder to carry them than if she’d just let me pick them up on my own.
“How are things going?”
“Fine.”
I put the trays on the table and water drips on the floor.
“I just came down to see how you were finding things. If you’re settling in okay. Some people find it a little intense at first.”
She’s holding her sunglasses between her fingers, swinging them back and forth.
“I like it,” I go.
“Good.” She swings her sunglasses, smiles. “You’re not too busy? The schedule works okay?”
I have that feeling again, like on the train platform, as if she can see right into my head, that she knows I’ve been bitching about it, but I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of saying it’s too much.
“I like to be busy.”
She smiles too. “Then you’re in the right place.”
I think it’s over and take the dirty brushes, lay them out one by one in the sink.
“Amanda mentioned that Marco said something nasty—on the beach?”
I don’t look up or turn around, just line up the bristles so they all make one line of bristle. So that’s why she’s here, stupid Amanda and her interfering. I don’t need her running to Jean any more than I need her pitying looks.
“It was nothing,” I go. “No big deal.”
“I can talk with him, explain that it’s not okay to say what he said. He might not have met someone with a disability before.”
She says it like it’s any old word, like it applies to me. I want to tell her that I don’t have a disability, that I can do anything she can do, but instead I turn on the tap full force so the water almost drowns out what she says next.
“He might have questions about it, be curious.”
She’s a bigger dumbass than I thought, if she thinks that. Marco is the Susan Mulligan of the group—he’s not curious, he’s a bully. I don’t tell her that, Mum, she’s the psychologist after all, so instead I just watch the water making clouds in the sink, pink, green, blue, until everything is a muddy brown.
I don’t know how long she stands there watching me, because I can’t hear over the water, but when the sink is about to overflow, I turn off the tap and she’s gone by then. All that’s left is the sound of her flip-flops slapping against her feet as she climbs the stairs.
R
Dear Mum,
David goes to the farmers’ market every Wednesday and today, when I’m helping him unload the corn and tomatoes and onions from the van, my heart nearly stops because I see all this post on the dashboard, next to a box of Marlboro Lights.
I’m looking at the envelopes, trying to see names on the top, when he comes around the side of the van and catches me.
“What are you looking at, nosy?”
“Nothing!” I turn around too fast, so I nearly drop the corn.
Walking into the house, my heart is beating really fast, Mum, as if one of those letters is definitely from Aunt Ruth, which is weird because, up until then, I’d kind of forgotten I even wrote to Aunt Ruth, as if my letter was something I sent into space, with no chance of her ever writing back at all. It takes ages to put everything away. When we do, David gives me a banana walnut muffin and I sit on the counter, watching him sort through the envelopes, laying them out on the table.
“Anything for me?”
I say it all casual, with my mouth full of muffin in case my voice sounds weird.
He stops and looks up. “Not so far. You expecting anything?”
“Uh huh.” I shake my head, take another bite.
“A ConEd bill, circulars, the usual shit.” He’s eating a muffin too and there’s a big crumb of it stuck in his beard. “But don’t worry, I’ll be back at the post office tomorrow. Jean’s a stickler for checking the mail—has me down there every day.”
“Why?”
David rolls his eyes but he smiles too. “You know what she’s like, never gives up on these kids. In five years, I think I’ve picked up two letters, maybe three, for them, but she’s always hoping that this year will be the year, that people will write.”
I wish I didn’t know that, Mum, about him going there every day. Because now I know that every single day there’s a chance the soup kitchen could forward a letter from Aunt Ruth, or maybe even from Laurie, and now that I know, my mind won’t let me unknow it. And it’s not like I want a letter from either of them—I didn’t even write to Laurie. But if nothing shows up at all, I can’t even tell myself that maybe it got lost with all the letters for the kids because there are no letters for the kids. And let’s face it, not much can get lost in the
middle of a few circulars and a ConEd bill.
Rhea
Dear Mum,
One of the things Jean is obsessed with, that she went on and on about that first day, is counting the kids. Count the kids on the way to the beach, count the kids when you get back. Count kids at the start of art class, at the start of dinner, when they go to bed. She says it fifty thousand times, over and over, as if we’re going to forget.
Today someone forgot. It’s Saturday—“Cowboy and Cowgirl” night—so we were having franks and beans around the campfire with stories after. Winnie and Amanda had been doing the nature walk so it was one of them who forgot, one of them who should have counted before they came back from the beach.
I’m helping David lay out the food and I’m not really paying too much attention at first until I hear Winnie’s voice all out of breath, like she’s been running.
“You must have missed one,” she goes. “Count again.”
Amanda walks down the line, tipping each of the kids on the shoulder, her voice and Winnie’s voice counting out loud together. Marco pushes Luis out of the line and laughs but Amanda just walks past, counting. By the time she’s at number twenty, I’ve counted ahead and I know they were right first time—that one kid is missing. By the time Amanda’s at twenty-eight, I know the one missing is Robin.
I don’t know who tells Jean what’s happening, but she’s there by the time they are counting a third time, her hand on Winnie’s shoulder, scanning the line of kids. Matt and Zac come out with the soda coolers and she splits us all up into areas to search. Someone has to stay behind with the other kids to help David serve up the food and to make sure no one else gets lost. If anyone else was missing—even Genesis or Gabriel—I wouldn’t mind staying behind, but it isn’t any of them. It’s Robin. And I want to find her.
I get to check the house—the rec room and the storage rooms behind it. Zac is checking the first floor and Matt’s on the second. Winnie and Amanda are searching outside and the beach. We have twenty minutes to find her, after that we call 911.
Did you ever just know something was going to happen, before it happens? Going down the stairs, I know I’m going to be the one who finds Robin. I don’t know how I know, I just do.
The tables are all pushed up against the walls because last night was Friday and that’s the night Erin does the dance party. If I was a kid who wanted to hide, I’d probably hide under a table. That’s what I’m thinking when I get down on my knees, look under each one. And I think I’m wrong, that she’s not there, and then I see her, under the very last table, scrunched up in the corner.
I don’t stand up, instead I kind of slide over on my bum, my legs pulling me forward. She’s not looking up and I can’t make out what she’s doing at first until I see a page, her hand moving, and I see that she’s drawing.
“Hey, Robin.”
She doesn’t look up but the crayon stops for a split second before she starts colouring again, so I know she hears me.
“Are you okay? Everyone’s looking for you—we were worried.”
I’m about to tell her not to go anywhere, to wait right there while I go upstairs for Jean or Gemma, like we’re supposed to, but something makes me crawl under the table next to her. She stops drawing, puts her hands over her eyes. After a second, she opens her fingers to peer out, sees that I’m still there, and snaps them shut again.
“It’s nice under here,” I go. “Do you like hiding out?”
I sit cross-legged, the same way she is. My head touches the underside of the table and I scrunch my neck down a little. Over our heads, I can hear footsteps, a voice—Zac or Matt’s—calling Robin’s name.
“What are you drawing?”
I reach out to touch her paper and she pulls it away. Her dark eyes take me in, everything about me—my face, my Hendrix T-shirt, my stump. Next to her on the floor, there’s extra paper and crayons.
“Can I draw a picture too?”
She looks at me for a second, then she nods, pushes a piece of paper at me. I pick up a purple crayon and start to draw. And it’s really weird, Mum, because, right then, it’s like I forget about everything—about waiting for the letter from Aunt Ruth and about everyone searching the house and the beach and even about Robin sitting next to me. And halfway through I realise that it’s the first time I’ve been able to draw since that night I left Florida, but I don’t let myself think about it too much, just keep drawing, because if I think about it too much I might have to stop.
When I’m finished, Robin’s still drawing, but she stops once she sees I have. She looks over at my page.
I hold it out, so she can see it. “That’s my mom.”
She leans closer but she doesn’t touch it.
“I have a photo of her like that and I like to draw it. I don’t need to look at the photo, though, I can see it in my head.”
“My mom’s in Heaven,” she goes.
It’s the first thing she says to me—the first thing I think I’ve heard her say to anyone.
“So is mine,” I go. “My mom’s in Heaven too.”
She picks up a red crayon and goes back to her drawing. Her page is full of squares and circles and squiggles. She’s colouring in a red part of one of the circles.
“Is that a bird?” I go. “Is it a robin? Like your name?”
“Robin is a thin girl’s name.”
At first, I think she doesn’t understand that a robin is a bird, but when she starts to colour again I see the way her pudgy hand grabs the crayon, the dimples in her knuckles, and I know that what she’s just said aren’t her words.
“Who said that, Robin?”
She puts the red down, picks up my purple and starts to colour over her drawing, making circles of purple over and over on her page.
“Did someone tell you that, Robin?”
She moves her head a millimetre. A tiny fraction, a nod.
“Uncle Nat.”
“My daddy always said not to mind people who called me names. He had a rhyme that said, ‘Sticks and stones might break my bones but words can never harm me.’ ”
She starts to scribble harder, her crayon is going to rip through the paper.
“Uncle Nat says my mommy was stupid and fat too. But he doesn’t say it in front of Nanny.”
She says this like she’s talking about something else, something she’s seen on TV—maybe it is something she’s seen on TV.
“What does your nanny say?”
Robin shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Do you live with your nanny?”
The crayon picks up speed, making lines and zigzags so you can barely make out the shapes from the original picture.
“Nanny went to Heaven too.”
I know I should be getting up, running upstairs to tell the others I’ve found her, that this is something Jean can talk to Robin about during “Be Myself Time.” I know everything it says in the handbook but, right then, I don’t care what it says in the handbook—Robin’s not telling Jean this, she’s telling me.
I’m thinking of what to ask Robin next when she turns to me. Her little face is serious.
“Is your arm in Heaven?”
I start to laugh, I can’t help it, but I stop when I see that Robin’s not laughing, that she looks scared.
“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, it just sounded funny.” I let myself hold my stump in my hand. “I don’t know if arms go to Heaven.”
“Where did it go?”
I take a breath, make myself smile. “When I was a little girl I had an accident. There was a machine in my daddy’s shop and, because I wasn’t careful, my arm got stuck in there.”
I didn’t think her eyes could get any bigger, but they’re saucers now in her face. Now I have her full attention, whether I want it or not.
“In the machine?”
I nearly laugh again, but I hold it in. “I hurt it, really bad, and they had to take away the part that was hurt, so the rest of me would be okay.”
Her eyes are on my stump now. She’s turned a little bit towards me, the half-destroyed drawing forgotten on the floor.
“Does it hurt?”
I think about it. “Not usually. Sometimes.”
“I fell and I cut my chin before and I got stitches.”
She sticks her chin out, so I see the scar, a thin line, barely visible.
“Ouch,” I go. “That sounds sore.”
“Here,” she goes. “Feel it.”
I trace my finger gently along her chin. When I’m finished, I know she wants to touch my stump even before she reaches out her hand. I’ve never let anyone touch it before. I might have let Laurie if she’d asked, but she never did. I hold it out to her and she looks at it for a few seconds before she prods it with her index finger. She looks up at me. “Does that hurt?”
“No. It doesn’t hurt when you touch it.”
Slowly, she cups her hand around it, the way I was holding it. Her hand is much smaller than mine, so her palm just covers the end. It feels warm and kind of ticklish. I start to giggle and she does too and that’s what we’re doing when I hear footsteps.
“Rhea? Rhea? Are you down here?”
It’s Winnie.
“Over here,” I go, “in the corner.”
I can tell already, by the way she doesn’t answer me, that she’s annoyed. I can see it in the way her feet move in her sandals as she walks across the room towards us, in the way she crouches down on her hunkers.
“They’re sending a search party out for you, Robin,” she says. “We were all worried.”
Robin stops laughing. She lets go of my stump as if she’s been caught—as if we both have—doing something bad.
“It’s okay,” I go. “You’re not going to get in trouble. Sure she’s not, Winnie?”
“No,” Winnie says, “I just wanted to make sure you were up in time to get some franks and beans before they’re all gone.”
Robin shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 25