The Sound of Us

by Sarah Willis

  I’ll buy toys. A plastic stove and sink. We can make pretend cookies. Real cookies. Put up pictures of silvery blue fish. I close my eyes. My house is so quiet. It’s a morgue. Larissa will hate it.

  Upstairs, I take off my clothes, put on the old, soft T-shirt I sleep in, lie down on the bed. Well, I did it, I think.

  Proud of you, sis, Vince says.

  Thanks.

  Anytime.

  God, Vince, I’m tired.

  This ain’t nothing yet, he says. I know he’s smiling, wherever the hell he is. I fall asleep with a smile on my face, not sure why.

  At six o’clock sharp, Polly wakes me, standing next to my bed and softly saying my name.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Where’s your car?” she asks.

  “Oh, Jesus, my car!” I sit up. “I was so tired I did just what you said. I took a taxi home. You said go home. I did. My car’s parked in front of her apartment. Or towed.”

  “We’ll get it back,” she offers with a nod. I understand her easy nod. Getting my car back will be a whole lot easier than helping me adopt a kid.

  “The pizza’s on your kitchen counter. Come on.”

  It’s white pizza with artichokes, my favorite, and I’m so glad I have a friend who knows what my favorite pizza is. I eat quickly, finishing two pieces before Polly’s done with her first. I wonder if Larissa likes this kind of pizza. A pizza called white pizza?

  “You know,” Polly says, “you should have called me before you left the house.”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “Yes, at three in the morning, or four, whatever. You shouldn’t have done that alone.”

  “You would have gone with me?”

  She laughs. “Hell, no, but I would have talked you out of it.”

  I’m quiet for a minute, thinking. She might have.

  “You done?” she says, pointing to my plate. We’re sitting at my kitchen table, the overhead fan slowly sweeping warm air around us, the smell of someone’s smoky grill easing in the window. The beginning of a summer evening when mosquitoes bloom like magic in the air, carrying West Nile virus. I’ll have to get plenty of insecticide. Children and older people are most prone to getting the virus. I can pretend I’m not in the latter category, but I will have to think about a six-year-old child.

  “That was good. Thanks. What do I owe you?” I ask this only to be polite. She shakes her head.

  “Okay, listen,” she says, pushing her plate aside. “I called Children and Family Services. Larissa Benton was transferred to a foster home this afternoon.”

  I try to take this in. “Already?”

  “Yeah. They don’t want kids sitting around downtown in the child care room for too long. She’s in a home. I can’t tell you where. I don’t know.”

  I nod. Polly would have spent some time finding all the facts, using her professional voice and position, but not abusing either. Just like my car. She’ll make it easier for me to grease the wheels, so to speak, but I’ll still pay the fine.

  “What I can tell you is that her mother has been found.”

  I gasp. “Is she alive? Dead? What?”

  “She’s alive. She came down to the county building a little after they took Larissa to the foster home. She was angry, loud, and upset. Most people are. They handle that very well down there.”

  I remember the raised voice, the way someone was led away.

  “She says she was gone only nineteen hours.” Polly rolls her eyes. “As if that makes it all better.”

  “I thought she had been gone for two days. Why was she gone?”

  “Oh, who knows. Probably she has some stupid, half-assed excuse. But she wants Larissa back.”

  The pizza feels heavy in my stomach. I ate too fast. “Will they give her back?”

  Polly shakes her head. “No. There’s a history. On file. She won’t get Larissa back right away.”

  “What history?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay. So can I get her?”

  “Not without jumping through the hoops.”

  I think about the number Mrs. Walker gave me. Why hadn’t I called the minute I got home? Where is it? I check my pocket. It’s there. “Okay. How long will the hoops take me?”

  “At very best, three months, maybe six. Her mother could get her back in six months, or not, depending.”

  “I can’t wait that long, Polly. She’s so little. She shouldn’t be in some strange foster home.”

  She hesitates, and I know what she’s thinking, that my home would be a strange foster home, too. But she doesn’t say this. She clasps her hands together, leaning forward. “I’ll help any way I can.”

  I say, “Thanks.”

  Polly drives me down to the impound lot and I get my car. By the time I get home, it’s dark. There are two messages on my answering machine. The first is from the Hearing and Speech Center. I missed an appointment, an evening AA meeting I do once a month on Friday nights. I forgot all about it. Jesus, I’ve never done that before.

  The second message is from Yolanda Walker, letting me know that Larissa is safely in a foster home and that her mother has been found.

  I pick up the phone, my fingers itching to press the buttons that would call a number no longer in service. I call my parents instead. Vince would be the wrong person to call anyway. He’d have gone on and on about how fucked up the government is, how I shouldn’t trust Yolanda Walker or anyone in Children and Family Services, how Larissa would be scarred for life by the process. He would have gotten so worked up, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep all night.

  “Hey, Dad,” I say when he answers the phone. “How are you?”

  “We’re doing okay, honey. Is everything all right?” It’s ten o’clock on a Friday night. I imagine my mother looking up from a magazine, anxious. She a worrier with her own set of fears: heights, storms, snakes, spiders, botulism, strep infections that eat away at your flesh, and a whole set of fears for her children. During one visit home, in the mid-eighties—I was over thirty years old—she had me swear on her grandfather’s Bible that I would always use a seatbelt.

  “I’m fine, Dad. Just fine.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Your mother wants to talk to you. I’ll let her tell you.”

  “What? Tell me what?” But he’s already handed the phone over.

  “Alice, is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mother,” I say. “What do you have to tell me?”

  “The boys are coming for Labor Day. Friday through Tuesday. I was going to call you tomorrow. You can come, can’t you?”

  “Really? She’s letting them come?” I haven’t seen Vince’s kids since his funeral. We thought they were coming for the Fourth of July, but Cindy changed her mind at the last minute, and it really upset my parents. My father actually called her a fool. Fool is the worst thing he ever calls anyone, but when he says fool, it sounds as bad as any swear word I ever use.

  “We got the tickets the minute she said yes. We had to pay fifty dollars each, just to change those old ones! Your father told her if she changed her mind this time, he was making her pay us the hundred dollars, plus the price of the tickets. Oh, Alice, you’ll come, won’t you? We haven’t all been together since . . .”

  “I know, Mom. I’ll be there. Absolutely. I’d love to see them.”

  “It will be wonderful to all be together again,” she says sadly. Wonderful is relative now. All sorts of words have different meanings since Vince got killed. “Now why are you calling so late at night? Tell me, are you all right? Has something happened?”

  I can’t tell her. She’ll be so upset, I’ll never get off the phone, and she’ll call me every day for weeks. “I’m fine, Mom. Really. Just thought I’d call. How’s Daddy? Is he okay?” Ever since Vince died, my father’s been drinking more, berating himself for selling the hardware store instead of letting Vince take it over. But True Hardware paid good money for it, and Vince would have only driven it furt
her into the ground. It was the right decision, but you can’t tell him that now. If Vince had been at the hardware store, he wouldn’t have been in Akron, walking across that street.

  “Yes,” she says. “He’s doing fine.” Her tone says she knows exactly what I’m asking, and I shouldn’t be. My father’s drinking is not my business. “Now, what’s happening with you? Tell me.”

  We talk about my job, the weather, her arthritis, my dad’s podiatry appointment, what we’ll cook for Labor Day. We talk for a half an hour. The world is not such a bad place. I’ll show Larissa what a wonderful place it really is.

  The next morning I call the number Yolanda gave me, and tell them I want to become a foster parent. They say they’ll send me some paperwork.

  “If I wanted to get started right away,” I say, “what should I do?” The woman tells me where to go to for foster parenting classes. “Start there,” she says. “I’ll let them know you’re coming. You’ll need to take all eight classes.” I thank her. Eight classes, each offered twice a week. The first class I can get to is Tuesday morning. That means it will take me four and a half weeks.

  I stay as busy as I can. I go to Pilates class Saturday morning, keep digging in my backyard all afternoon, and go to a play with two of my deaf friends Saturday night. Sunday morning I mix in peat and fertilizer, completely frustrated that I’m supposed to wait a few more days to plant anything, then plant half the perennials anyway. Sunday night I go to my book group and nod as everyone says what they think. I’m having a hard time even remembering the author. Monday I interpret at a seminar on “improving your self-worth through imaging,” which takes up half the day and pays really well, then teach a class at the Hearing and Speech Center from seven to nine.

  Tuesday morning, I drive to my first foster parenting class.

  Chapter Eight

  The classes are held in a tiny one-story church in Euclid, right off State Route 2. The building sits like a hatbox surrounded by a large, almost empty parking lot.

  Inside, the chapel is modern and light. I sign in at a card table, and the woman sitting behind it hands me a stack of papers and tells me to take a seat down front.

  There are nine other people in the chapel, clumped in groups of twos and threes. I sit by myself in the fourth row as more people arrive, no one hurrying much. At the head of the aisle is an easel with a large pad of paper. Printed in capital letters are the words CULTURAL ISSUES IN PLACEMENT.

  An extremely thin woman wearing a lavender skirt, a lavender blouse, and matching lavender shoes, walks up to the easel and in a loud, friendly voice introduces herself as Julia. “Hello, and welcome.” Some people say hello back. By now there are at least two dozen people in the room, with more still straggling in. Besides me and Julia in her lavender outfit, there are only two other white people.

  “What is culture?” Julia asks as people take their seats. “What does that word mean to you?” She isn’t asking this rhetorically. She looks at us expecting an answer. Not getting one, she points to a man in the front row. “Come on,” she says. “Name me one component of culture.”

  “Music,” he says.

  “Good!” She points to the person next to him. “You?”

  “Religion?”

  “Yes, certainly religion. Thank you. Next?”

  Her pointing finger is getting closer. I think about what to say. When she gets to me, no one has taken my answer. “Language and dialect.”

  “Good!” she says. She writes all these words down on the pad. “Now,” she says, “we need to talk about these things. They will all have an impact on your foster child.”

  She forms us into groups of six and gives each group a particular aspect of culture to discuss. Our group gets family rules and codes of conduct. For fifteen minutes we are to share our own family stories about how we were disciplined, the standards our parents expected from us, what our own standards of discipline are, and whether these would be appropriate for our foster child.

  A woman holding the hand of the man who came in with her says that in her family, children never talked back. “We gave our elders respect. Our parents raised us that way. Not like children today. But I’d expect respect from my foster child. I’d like a little one. Raise him right.” One man shares a story about his father using a belt, and a few people nod. Afraid to seem stand-offish, I tell them that my father never used a belt, but he’d been firm. “I never talked back to him,” I say, knowing that I had.

  “You can’t touch a foster child,” says the man who told the story about his father beating him with a belt. “No matter what they do.”

  I didn’t know that. Does that also mean I can’t hug her? I know teachers can’t hug students anymore. I don’t ask, afraid to look stupid.

  After this, Julia opens up the discussion to the whole group. We talk about how foster children might have different religions, expect different foods, different family rules. I don’t know what religion Larissa is. I was brought up Protestant, but no longer go to church. What if Larissa is a Muslim? Or a Jehovah’s Witness? All this talk is making me feel less capable, not more.

  After a quick break, Julia hands out clear plastic cups to everyone, then gives one person in each group a container of small colored beads. White beads, black beads, red, yellow, blue, green, and purple beads. She writes on the sheet of white paper which race each color bead represents.

  “Okay, listen up, now,” she says. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. For each answer, pick the one bead that represents your answer. Ready?” There are some murmurs of yes, and then she begins.

  “You are?”

  It takes a moment for some of us to understand. One by one each person in our group picks a bead. Five black beads, then I pick out a white bead and drop it in my cup.

  “Your immediate family?” Once again, five black beads, and one white: me.

  “Your spouse or partner? If you’re single, your last relationship.” White bead.

  “Your co-workers? Pick the bead that represents the majority.” Some interpreters are black, but most are white. White bead. “Your boss?” White bead.

  “Your teachers.” White bead.

  “Your principal.” White bead.

  “Your friends.”

  I want to ask if there is a bead to represent the Deaf culture. Then I can pick a bead that isn’t white. I put a white bead in my cup.

  “Your doctor?” White bead.

  “Your dentist? White bead.

  “Your hairdresser?” White bead.

  “The authors of the books you read?” White bead.

  The questions go on. I fill up my cup with white beads.

  All the other people in my group have a mixture of colors in their cups. They look at me and I lower my cup into my lap. I want to run out of the room.

  Julia talks about our cups, how we may need to broaden our cultural lenses. She speaks about avoiding ethnocentrism, helping children develop a positive racial identity, but as hard as I try to listen, as much as I need to listen, I’m looking at my cup of white beads. I can’t do this. I can’t come back to this class again.

  That afternoon, I call Yolanda Walker at work. “How is she? Can you just tell me if she’s okay?”

  “You’re still applying to be her foster parent, right?”

  “I went to a class this morning,” I tell her, feeling a tightness in my chest. I can’t do this. I won’t be any good at this at all. “I’ve finished the paperwork. It’s in the mail.”

  “Okay, I’m talking to you as an interested individual.” She isn’t whispering, but her voice is low. I listen carefully. She tells me that the judge agreed Larissa needed to be in care of the county. The aunt wanted to get Larissa moved to her care, but couldn’t. She’d been in the hospital for diabetes during the time of the “incident of abandonment,” and would be off her feet for at least a month, and she only has one bedroom anyway. Larissa’s mother had shown up at the hearing, quite angry. “She called me a bitch,” Yolanda sa
ys. “What, she thinks we should just let her daughter sit there, alone, till she decides to come home? You don’t call me a bitch and get my sympathy. There’ll be another hearing in a few weeks, concerning temporary custody and Larissa’s mother’s case plan. Then we’ll see what she’s made of, if she shows up.”

  “I’m sorry she said that to you,” I offer.

  “Yeah, well she will be too.” She pauses. “I never said that.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “Stick with the classes. I’ll see what I can do here to speed up your home visit.”

  “Thank you, Yolanda. Thank you. And please, how is she?”

  “She’s sad,” Yolanda says. “At least she’s still got emotions.”

  I do go back to the foster parenting class a week later, hoping no one will remember me, but they do, smiling and nodding, asking how I am. “Fine,” I say. “How are you?” The woman who was holding the man’s hand last week tells me she’s taking in twin girls next week. This is her last class.

  “I’m a twin,” I tell her, the words catching in my chest. “That’s really great, your taking them in.”

  “Oh my,” she says. “Sit next to me. Tell me all about it. I need to know more about twins. God sent you to me today. Jeffery couldn’t come. Sit with me.”

  By the end of class, she’s holding my hand. “That poor Vince,” she says. “That poor boy. I know you loved him. I know that. He’s with God now. You can be sure of that.”

  Obviously she didn’t listen to a word you said, Vince says.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

  “Well, I won’t see you next week, but you be good now. You take care of yourself. I’ll be praying for you. You’ll make a good foster mother, I can see that. I certainly can.”