“Does he get strikes here too?” I asked.
“NO,” said Trevor.
The counselor ignored him. “Sorry about that pass, I should have warned you. It’s called a bounce pass. You ever played?”
I shook my head. We messed around with basketballs sometimes in gym at school, but that was all.
“Want to?” she asked.
I shrugged.
She showed me how to dribble, and told me to practice walking and dribbling at the same time. “Try not to look at the ball,” she said.
She went away to help someone else. I dribbled. It wasn’t very fun.
I made it halfway across the floor when I saw sneakers in front of me. I looked up, and there was Trevor again.
He said, “Hey, stupid. You hit me with the ball.”
I said, “Did not. Jerkface.”
He said, “You’re in my way.” He grabbed the basketball out of my hands and hurled it across the gym. It rolled into the middle of the high schoolers’ game.
One of them scooped it up. “Whose ball?”
I raised my hand. She threw it toward me. I tried to catch it. I missed.
Trevor laughed.
I went after the ball and chucked it at his head.
He ducked. The ball smacked into a white-haired man who had just walked into the gym. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but he looked familiar. “Hey, sunshine!” he said.
Trevor was beaming at him. “Coach!” he said.
The coach shook Trevor’s hand. Then he smiled at me. “We haven’t met here before, have we? I bet you know me from Food City.”
“Tony,” I said. The Friday night manager. Suki’s boss.
His grin widened. “Grocery store manager by night, middle school basketball coach by day. You working on your skills? Gonna be on my team next year? I coach both the girls and the boys.”
Trevor’d grabbed my ball and was dribbling it. Coach held out his hands, and Trevor snapped the ball into them. “Come on—” Coach Tony looked like he was trying to remember my name.
“Della,” I said.
“Della. We’ll get a group together, run through a couple of drills. I come here after school until the middle school practices start. Keep my players sharp.”
I looked at Trevor, grinning up at Tony like a puppy dog. I looked around the room. Looked at the basketball. I shook my head. “Not today.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
Clifton never hit me, or kicked me. Sometimes he gave me what he called a snakebite. He’d grab my arm with both of his hands, and twist one hand up and the other down, so that my skin burned. It hurt, but it didn’t leave a bruise.
Mostly what Clifton did was laugh at me. “You’re sure big and ugly,” he’d say. “Clumsy too.” Or “Not good at anything, are you?” Or “Look at you run. Like a buffalo. Not much like Suki, are you?”
I was as much like Suki as I could manage to be. Which wasn’t much. Wasn’t enough.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Francine picked me up from the Y on her way home from work. When we got to her house, there was a strange car in the driveway. I ignored it. I was counting down the number of seconds until I saw Suki, until I could ask her just why exactly I had to go to the Y. I ran up the steps into the house. Our social worker was sitting next to Suki on the couch. I stopped dead. Francine bumped into my back. “Did you forget?” she asked. “You’ve got a meeting about your Permanency Plan.”
12
Every kid in foster care has to have a Permanency Plan. It’s a written-down goal we’re supposed to be moving toward. Like getting back with your parents or getting adopted.
Problem is, nobody knew quite what to plan for Suki and me. We don’t have family outside of Mama. Nobody’s likely to adopt us, a ten-year-old and a sixteen-year-old, not that I’d want them to. Shoo.
Our caseworker wanted us to look on the bright side. Wanted us to think big thoughts about our futures. Wanted us to be people other than who we are. She said something about going to college, and I thought, Have you seen my math quiz? And Suki—her grades are worse than mine. She’s in remedial everything. Plus, who goes to college? Not kids like us.
“I turn eighteen in a year and a half,” Suki said. “As soon as I do, I’m leaving foster care. I’ll take custody of Della. We won’t be your problem anymore.” She tapped her fingers on the table. “That’s our plan.”
The caseworker put on her patient face. She was always doing that. I don’t know if she couldn’t tell that her patient face made Suki angry, or if she got patient on purpose to tick Suki off. It was one of the reasons I didn’t trust her.
“What about my plan?” I asked.
The caseworker ignored me. “Where will you live?” she asked Suki. “Where will you work? You can’t get custody of Della until you’re in a stable situation.”
“I’ve already got a job,” Suki said. “I’m going to get a car and then an apartment. I’ll save up.”
“Good for you, finding a job already,” the caseworker said. “That’s super. How many hours a week are they giving you?”
“I just started last Friday,” Suki said. “They said around twelve hours a week. But I’m going to try to get more.”
The caseworker nodded. “At your age, when school’s in session, they can’t give you more than eighteen. You can work full-time in the summer. It’s minimum wage?” Suki nodded. The caseworker scribbled on a piece of paper. “Okay. What are you responsible for paying for right now?”
Suki glanced at Francine. “I owe Francine some money. For my work uniform. And half the car insurance, when the bill comes.”
Francine said, “I just put her on my plan so she could drive my car. I told her I’d pay half.”
“That’s very generous,” the social worker said. She looked at Suki. “She doesn’t have to do that.”
“Cuts into her profits,” Suki said.
The caseworker pursed her lips. “People don’t take foster kids for the money,” she said.
“Sure they do,” I said. “She said so.”
The caseworker and Francine exchanged a glance and I saw them decide to ignore me again.
Suki said, “I’m going to buy a phone, and then I’m going to get Della a phone. Then I’ll save for a car. Then I’ll save up for the apartment and stuff. That’s our plan. You can write it all down.”
“What about my plan?” I said again.
The social worker scribbled some numbers. “How much will the phones cost, each month? How much for the car insurance?”
Suki told her. “One fifty for the car insurance. But that’s for the whole year.”
“Uh, no,” said Francine. “It isn’t. That’s per month.”
“What?” said Suki.
“I’m sorry,” Francine said. “I thought you understood.”
One dollar and fifty cents didn’t sound like that much to me, but then Suki said, “A hundred and fifty dollars a month?”
“Three hundred, when you count the part I’m paying,” Francine said. “That’s what car insurance costs for an inexperienced sixteen-year-old girl not related to me.”
“Shoo,” Suki said, her shoulders slumping. “I gotta pay that every month?”
Francine said, “If you want to drive my car.”
Wow. I mean, of course Suki wanted to be able to drive. It would be useful, especially on weekends. And she’d have to have insurance if she got a car of her own. But that was a big chunk of change.
“So,” the social worker said. “Let’s look at the feasibility of what you’re saying.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“Your budget,” the caseworker said. She took out another piece of paper and started a list. “Right now, let’s say you’re getting minimum wage for fifty hours a month. Minus tw
o cell phones and half your car insurance. You might be able to save a hundred dollars a month, if you’re careful.”
“I am,” Suki said. “And that’s sixteen months, so—”
“Sixteen hundred dollars,” the social worker said. “You might get more hours in the summer. Let’s say you save two thousand dollars. If you work hard. If you really try to save.”
I took a deep breath. That was okay. It was a lot of money.
“To get your own place, and custody of Della,” she said, “you’ll need first and last months’ rent. Probably a security deposit. Rent’s cheap around here—you might be able to find a two-bedroom for six hundred a month—”
“We don’t need two bedrooms—“
“To get custody of her you do. Say $550 at the cheapest. So there’s at least $1650 to get into a place. An electric deposit—that’s likely a couple hundred dollars. Money for the first electric bill. Water, sewer. That’s not counting anything like buying a car.” The caseworker shook her head. “You’re going to need more than two thousand dollars. And once you get a place, you’re going to need to make enough to stay there. Minimum wage, even full-time, isn’t enough.”
“What about public housing?” Suki asked. “Teena’s mom gets Section 8.”
“You might qualify,” the caseworker said, “but right now, the waiting list for those is two years long.”
“Can I get on the list right now?”
The woman shook her head. “Not until you’re eighteen.” She said, “Look, Suki, I’m not here to rain on your parade.”
“Sounds like it,” said Suki.
“We have some special programs. If you were saving for a car, or a rent deposit, in some cases the state can provide matching funds. So if you saved a thousand dollars, we’d give you another thousand.”
Suki blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s part of our Independent Living program.”
I took a deep breath. “WHAT ABOUT MY PLAN?”
They all stopped and stared at me like this was the first time I’d said it.
“Jeez, Della, calm down,” Suki said. “This plan is all about you.”
“Well, you’re not talking to me,” I said. “You’re talking to her. And you stuck me at the Y without asking me. Without even telling me—”
“I did not,” Suki said. “I told you about it yesterday. Only we didn’t know if they’d be able to take you right away.”
“You didn’t tell me! Francine didn’t! And nobody asked if I wanted to go in the first place!”
“What do you want, Della?” Suki snarled. “I can’t watch you all the time and work and try to save all this money. I can’t keep doing everything for you right this minute and still take care of you once I’m eighteen. I can’t! What do you expect? I’ve been stuck taking care of you since you were born!” I sat back. Never. I mean, never. Suki worried and she laughed and she sang. She held my hand and she washed my clothes and she kissed me good-night. She never acted like she didn’t want me around. Plus I knew how to do all sorts of things. I always helped.
“It’s too much,” Suki said. “Too. Much. Okay?”
Francine blew out her breath. “Sorry we dropped the Y on you like that, Della. We should have given you more warning. But I did think you understood.”
“I don’t want to go there.”
“Tough,” Suki said. “You are.”
“Suki—”
“I can’t keep doing everything,” Suki said.
The social worker was just sort of staring at us, like we’d gone totally off topic and could we all go back to discussing her programs now? Francine said, “We need some mental health evaluations on these two.”
It took me a second to realize she meant Suki and me. It took Suki less time. She jumped up from the table. “So now I’m CRAZY?” She bolted into our bedroom and slammed the door.
13
The social worker took a deep breath. “Looks like normal sibling conflict to me.”
“They been through a lot,” Francine said.
“We’ll keep an eye on them,” the social worker said. She looked at me. “Just the one time, right?”
I was sick of people asking that question. I nodded.
“So,” the social worker said, “I think they should be fine.”
Francine said, “There are a lot of ways to be traumatized. Their mother—”
I didn’t want to talk about Mama. “She was a hamster,” I said. Hamsters weren’t traumatic.
The social worker made some notes. “I’ll put in a request,” she said to Francine. She looked at me. “You don’t want to be part of your sister’s plan? You’d rather she not get custody of you?”
That wasn’t what I meant at all. “Of course not,” I said. “I mean, of course. I mean, I have to stay with Suki.”
The social worker closed her folder. “It’s a lot to process,” she said. “I’ll come back in a few weeks. Meanwhile, encourage your sister to stay in school. She ought to at least graduate high school. Plus”—her eyes softened, just for a moment—“if she stays in custody, she’d get a chance to be a teenager. She’d have some time to have fun.”
Fun. Fun was Suki and me and Teena, watching game shows all summer morning, sprawled across our living room floor. Fun was the three of us at the carnival that set up every April in the high school parking lot. I ate a whole cotton candy once and then barfed hot pink on the Tilt-A-Whirl. The guy running the ride was furious and Suki and Teena laughed until they cried. We ran off, leaving him with the mess, and they bought me a second cotton candy since I’d wasted the first one.
Fun was the Monday afternoon feeling, when Clifton was gonna be gone for five whole days.
But here it was a Monday afternoon, and it felt more like a Friday to me.
* * *
■ ■ ■
When the social worker left, Francine went to our bedroom and wrenched the door open. “Slam it shut like that again, and I’ll take this door off its hinges,” she said. “Don’t try me. I’ve done it before.” I heard Suki growl. Francine came back into the kitchen.
“Why’d you say we were crazy?” I asked her. I was doing everything I could to act normal, all the time.
“I didn’t say you were crazy,” Francine said. “I said you were having a hard time. You need help, you and Suki. Nothing wrong with that.”
I didn’t need help. But apparently Suki did. Help taking care of me.
* * *
■ ■ ■
At dinner Suki tried to make nice. “You know I didn’t mean what I said,” she told me. “Right?”
I didn’t say anything. Suki always meant what she said.
She smiled big. “What’d you do at the Y?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing fun. Can I come home and be with you tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “I’m working,” she said. “Right after school. That’s why we signed you up for the Y in the first place.”
I could go with. I could hang out in the deli. “I was useful at Food City,” I said. When she didn’t respond, I added, “I’m useful all the time.” I did do all sorts of work around Clifton’s house. I knew how to vacuum and dust and put the dishes away. I helped cook sometimes. I could make sandwiches and cereal.
Suki still didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at me.
“Your boss works at the Y,” I told her. “Tony, the night manager? He coaches basketball. I’ma tell him how mean you are.”
She shot back, “As long as I do my job, I’m pretty sure he won’t care.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
That night, when we got to bed, Suki started singing just like always. Skinnamarinky, dinky, dink, skinnamarinky do. I didn’t join in. “C’mon, Della,” she said, hugging me a little. “Sing the night song with me.”
I
didn’t. Didn’t want to.
She went through the whole song a second time. Then she studied my face up close. “I hope you don’t think we should have stayed at Clifton’s.”
“No,” I said. “I never once thought that.”
“Good,” she said. She rolled over and set her shoulder against mine. In a few minutes she was sound asleep.
* * *
■ ■ ■
A couple of hours later, she sat up and screamed.
14
Suki’s eyes were open, but blank, like she wasn’t seeing me or anything else. She kept screaming. She screamed and screamed. It scared the snow out of me. Francine ran into our bedroom wearing only a tatty T-shirt. “Oh,” she said, “nightmare.” She shook Suki awake and said to me, “Way Suki was hollering, I thought you two’d been attacked by wolves.”
Teena’s mom used to say me and Suki were being raised by wolves. She said it whenever Suki messed something up, like when Suki didn’t know that when a toilet plugs, you’re supposed to mash it with a plunger, and she just kept flushing until toilet water and paper and snow was pouring across the floor. The words raised by wolves made Suki angry—especially when it was Teena’s mom saying them, since Teena’s mom was in and out of jobs and boyfriends and was generally not someone you could count on.
I liked the idea. Raised by wolves. Imagine how safe and warm you’d be, sleeping every night in a den full of wolves. Big teeth and all that fur. Plus, Suki pretty much was a wolf. She’d outfight anything. She was my own private wolf.
When Francine left, I put my arms around Suki. I said, “We’re okay. We’re here now.” She didn’t reply. “We’ll get our own place,” I said. “One with a great big lock on the door. Won’t let nobody else have a key.”
She whimpered, which frightened me more than the screams.
I said, “Suki, we’re okay. It’s okay here.”
Fighting Words Page 6