Nevaeh looked downright angry. “It was a lot better than living in their car,” she said. “They got to sleep on, like, actual beds.”
“Well, sure,” I said. “But—”
“You’ve never had to live in a car, have you?”
“Well, no,” I said, “but—”
Ms. Davonte clapped her hands for attention then, with a special glare at me when I tried to keep talking to Nevaeh. I knew I’d gone wrong with Nevaeh and I had no idea where. Sometimes it seemed like everybody understood the rules but me.
* * *
■ ■ ■
At recess, I followed Nevaeh out to the playground. She sat down on a swing and I sat next to her. “You were right,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it. It was a really good book.”
She looked at me. “You’re just saying that.”
“No, I mean it!”
“What changed your mind?”
I took a deep breath, and went with the truth. “I want us to be friends. If that means I have to like the book, then I really, really like the book.”
She stared at me for a moment, then laughed. She said, “You don’t have to like everything I like. It’s just—that book is really important to me.” After a pause she said, “We lost our apartment a few years ago, after my dad left. Mom and me. We’re doing a lot better now.”
I could hear what she was saying even without her saying it. I said it for her. “You had to live in a car.”
“Only for a couple of nights. But I hated it.” She drew a circle in the dirt with her toe. “I was glad, you know, to read the book. To know it didn’t only happen to me.”
I used my toe to draw a circle beside hers. “My sister was always afraid we’d be out on the streets. Only we didn’t have a car.”
There were, like, a hundred kids on the playground. Running all around us, yelling and laughing, kicking balls. But it felt like it was just Nevaeh and me.
“Were you afraid?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. I knew Suki would take care of me.” She always did.
“My mom takes care of me,” Nevaeh said. “My mom takes really good care of me. But we still lost that apartment.”
“Where do you live now?”
“A different apartment. I told you, we’re better now.”
“We’re better now too,” I said. “Suki and me.” I took another deep breath. “We’re in foster care. Francine, she’s what they call a foster mother.”
Nevaeh’s eyes widened. “Foster care is better than what you had before?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s hard.” She sounded like Francine.
“Yep,” I said. “It is.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
That night, Suki came home from work and went straight to bed. When I went to call her to dinner, she had the covers over her head and was sound asleep.
“Leave her,” Francine said. “She won’t starve overnight.”
Later I crawled in to sleep beside her. When I woke up to go pee, she was wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
A couple hours later she started screaming. We were used to it by now.
21
The next afternoon, when we were supposed to be working on math problems, Trevor got up and started walking toward the back of the class. Going to sharpen his pencil, I supposed. As he passed Nevaeh’s desk, he reached out and pinched the middle of her back. Again. Nevaeh jumped, but didn’t make a sound.
I stuck my foot sideways, fast. I caught Trevor right between the legs and he tripped, sprawling onto the floor. He got up, ready to take a swing at me. “She kicked me!” he shouted.
“Sorry, Trevor,” I said. “It was an accident. Don’t be such a baby.”
Trevor’s face turned red. I looked at Nevaeh. Her face had gone bright red too. She hunched her shoulders and stared at her desk.
Ms. Davonte came over. “Della,” she said.
“I didn’t kick him,” I said. “I maybe tripped him but it was only by accident. I promise.”
“Keep your feet to yourself, Della,” Ms. Davonte said.
“Snow!” I said. “What about Trevor’s hands? He pinched Nevaeh!”
Whoops. I hadn’t meant to say that. Nevaeh lifted her chin and glared at me.
“Sorry,” I mouthed.
It didn’t matter. Ms. Davonte only paid attention to one word I said, and you can guess which word it was. I had to stay in at recess, and Ms. Davonte gave me another note for Francine to sign. “Della,” Ms. Davonte said, “when are you going to learn to watch your mouth?”
She never realizes. I watch my mouth all the time.
* * *
■ ■ ■
When I got on the bus for after-school, Nevaeh had an empty seat beside her. I stood in the aisle, not sure she’d want me near her.
“Oh, sit down,” she said.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said.
“You did. You tripped him. I saw you.”
“Well, yeah, I meant that,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say he’d pinched you, though. I know you don’t want me to.”
She nodded. “I don’t. Also you cuss worse than everybody else in our class combined.”
Trevor got onto the bus and threw himself down in the front seat, where the bus driver made him sit. He was laughing. “They’re words,” I said to Nevaeh. “Everybody gets upset, but cuss words are just words. He’s hurting you. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
“I don’t want you fighting my fights for me, Della. It’s my business. Not yours.”
“But you don’t fight,” I said.
She sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
It was to me.
22
Suki fought for me, and I’m fighting for me, and that’s why Clifton is in jail. There’s going to be a trial, and it’s going to be easy because we have evidence, and hard because it’s scary and because having to testify against Clifton sucks. But the truth is, I got off easy. What he did was the worst few minutes of my life up until that time. But it only lasted a few minutes. Hard, easy, hard, easy.
Hard hard hard.
What Clifton did to me is still not the hardest part of this story.
Anyhow, I’m getting ahead of myself. The next Wednesday, I had to go to—I don’t know what you call it, the official name. It’s a place kids go to tell stories like mine, when there’s going to be a trial. Because I was young enough and this stuff is hard enough that I could tell the story somewhere other than court. They would film me talking and show the video in court, instead of me having to testify in person.
The place was an old house, set back in woods, with a swing set on the lawn. Suki and our other caseworker, whose name I never remember any better than the first one, but who’s setting up the trial stuff, took me there on Wednesday after school.
Right from the start, Suki was tense and watchful and fierce. She held my hand when we walked into the building, and she sat right beside me in the waiting room, so close, our legs touched. She said, “Are you going to be okay?”
My mouth was dry. I nodded.
They took me upstairs alone. I sat on an upholstered chair. My legs didn’t quite touch the floor. The woman there explained the video camera and how everything about the trial would work, and yeah, yeah, I already understood all that.
My heart was beating faster than usual. I don’t know why. Nothing could hurt me, not in that room with Suki right downstairs.
I told my story. I explained the photograph the woman handed me, the one printed out from Teena’s phone. I explained how the photograph got to Teena’s phone. I explained about Clifton, how we lived with him, how I knew we were supposed to keep it secret that we reall
y didn’t belong to him.
“Why did you keep it secret?” the woman asked. I could tell she was asking so my answer would be recorded. She didn’t really want to know.
“Suki said we had to,” I said. “Also, we didn’t have anywhere else to go. We had to live somewhere.”
By this time, my hands were shaking and I felt a little sick. Remembering what happened, thinking about it, that’s hard, but not nearly as hard as seeing the picture and talking about it.
“Good job,” the woman said, turning off the camera. “You did great, Della. You were very brave.”
Then we went back downstairs. Suki jumped up and hugged me tight. The woman said to Suki, “Your turn.”
Suki went white, like all the blood in her body suddenly drained below her knees. She went stiff too, and her voice sounded angry. “What for? I took the photo, didn’t I? You know that.”
“Yes,” the woman said, very softly. “I need you to talk about taking the photograph. On camera, for the court.”
“Just that, right?” Suki said. “’Cause I ain’t—I ain’t—”
I should have seen it right then, the whole truth, in the rigid set of Suki’s jaw. In the way her voice shook. If her nightmares and the stuff with Teena hadn’t been enough already.
I should have realized.
“Just that,” the woman said. “Unless—”
Suki shook her head hard, once, no. She clamped onto my hand. “I want Della with me.”
So upstairs again, and this time I sat on a plain chair in the corner while Suki sat in the pink upholstered chair. She sounded angry and snotty, and she said snow, snowing, snowflake, snowmen a whole lot. The woman running the camera kept trying to be nice, and Suki kept batting her kindness aside. Her voice was bitter and tight.
Afterward the woman thanked her. She said, “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you. You being so little, trying to take care of your sister, all alone so much of the time. You were too young for that kind of responsibility.”
I’d never thought about it as worse for Suki than me. Suki was so strong. I said, “It was a lot better when Clifton was gone than when he was at home.”
The woman gaped at me. Suki said, “You’re snow right,” and grabbed my hand and hauled me down the stairs.
That was the end of what we were going to have to do for the trial.
Or so I thought.
23
That night, at dinner, I asked Francine, “How much time is Clifton gonna get?”
Francine said, “All goes well—and it should—a couple of years.”
“Really?” I said. I knew what he did was bad. Just thinking about it made me feel sick. But I didn’t know if people actually went to prison for that kind of thing.
Suki dropped her fork. She said, “That’s ALL?”
“According to the guidelines,” Francine said. “That’s what your lawyer thinks, anyhow. What were you expecting?”
I didn’t expect much. Also, I never listened to the lawyers. I tried, but mostly when people were talking about Clifton, it was like my head filled up with bees all buzzing at once. I couldn’t make out a single word.
Suki said a lot of words about snow.
Francine said, “It was only the one time, right? And only what you caught in the photo?”
Suki glared at me. I said, “Yep.” Which was the truth.
Thank God.
Then Francine said, “I meant for both of you,” and Suki’s face crumpled. I remembered that, later.
We’ve come to the part of the story where I’ve got to tell you what happened. What happened to me.
* * *
■ ■ ■
It was a Thursday night. That mattered. Clifton drove away in his truck on Monday mornings, before I even left for school, and he never, but never, got back before Friday afternoon. Sometimes it was even later—sometimes, if the weather was bad or there were accidents on the highway or something, it might even be Saturday, but it was never Thursday. Thursday nights were good nights.
Teena and some of Suki’s other friends wanted Suki to go to a movie with them. You can’t walk to the movie theater from where we lived—you really couldn’t walk to anywhere—but Teena had borrowed her mom’s car and there was some movie they all wanted to see, some superhero thing.
Suki said, “We gotta take Della.”
Teena said, “We don’t have room in the car, Suki. Not with all of us going. What’s she going to do, ride in the trunk?”
I’d done that once, but I’d been smaller then. It hadn’t been as much fun as I thought it would be.
“Plus,” said Teena, “the movie’s rated R. No way they’re going to let Della in.”
“Plus I don’t want to go,” I said. I thought it sounded stupid.
“It’s Thursday,” Teena said.
“Right,” said Suki. Even then she was undecided. She dug around in her purse and in my backpack and in the couch cushions for the change that fell out of Clifton’s pockets sometimes, and then she went over to the washing machine and looked through the stuff she’d pulled from Clifton’s pockets before she did the laundry that week, and there was a twenty-dollar bill, so she had money enough for the show.
“Go,” I said. “I don’t mind.” I didn’t. It was late August, a clear night, and nice and warm. I could sit on the back step till the mosquitoes came out at dusk, and I had something to snack on and I just really didn’t mind. Suki usually left me by myself when she had something she had to do. Sometimes I liked being alone.
Teena said, “My mom’ll be around if she needs anything.”
Suki gave me a kiss. She promised, “I’ll be home by nine.”
Clifton came home at 8:30.
I was wearing my purple shortie pajamas.
It was a Thursday. I never did find out why he came home on a Thursday.
Clifton banged the front door. He looked at me in a way that made me jump to my feet, though I couldn’t have said why. “I’m just going to bed,” I said.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Sleeping.”
He’d never touched me once before. I’d still never trusted him. Right then, in that instant, I knew not to trust him at all. The hairs rose up on my neck and stayed that way, like spines.
He said, “She’s not here, is she?”
He smiled the way he did when he was just about to say something mean.
I looked at the clock. It was only 8:30. Thirty minutes until Suki came home. I listened for Teena’s mom’s car, but couldn’t hear anything. My stomach hurt.
“You owe me,” Clifton said. “That’s what I tell your sister. You owe me, living here.”
I didn’t know then about people like Francine, people who would never love you but at least would keep you safe. Safe-ish.
Clifton gave us food and shelter, but we were never once safe with him.
“I’m just going to bed,” I said again.
He walked forward. I backed up. He came forward. I backed up. My legs hit the living room wall.
I was trapped.
Clifton put his hand on my leg, on the inside of my thigh. Grabbed the bare skin beneath the bottom of my pajama shorts.
“Don’t!” I yanked myself sideways.
He laughed. Put one thick hand around my neck. Grabbed the elastic band of my pajama shorts with the other. Stuck his hand down the back of the shorts.
Inside my underwear.
I screamed. Not that anyone was going to hear me.
“Hold still,” he said.
I tried to get away.
He took hold of the waistband of my shorts, and pulled them down.
My underwear too.
Now I was crying. “Please don’t—” I didn’t know what he’d do next, not really, but I knew for sure I didn’t want it to happen. “Pleas
e!”
Click.
I looked up, and there was Suki, standing in the doorway, holding her phone in front of her.
Taking photographs.
Click click click click.
I still couldn’t move. Clifton looked sideways. He let out a roar and ran at Suki.
She jumped back outside. I dove at Clifton’s legs, tripped him up. Only for a second, but that was long enough.
He yanked the door open, grabbed Suki’s phone, smashed it onto the concrete step, stepped on it with his heavy boots. I heard it break into pieces.
Suki said, “Della, run. Teena’s house.”
I pulled my pants back up. Ran out the back door and sprinted across the yard. Suki caught up with me. She grabbed my hand. We ran, ran, ran to Teena’s house, up the steps to her front porch.
Teena threw open the screen door. She said, “Girlfriend, what the snow? What the snow did you just text me?”
“Resend it,” Suki said. “Don’t delete it. Resend it fast before he comes and breaks your phone too. He tried to hurt Della. I’m not going to let him.”
Teena’s mom came out to the porch. She looked at the photograph. “Get in the house,” she said. We did. Teena’s mom locked the door. She said, “Teena, go lock the back door.” She picked up her own phone. She dialed 911.
“Please,” Suki said, grabbing her arm, “don’t call the cops.”
Teena’s mom shook her off.
“Please,” Suki said. She started to cry. She looked frantic. “Please, don’t—”
Teena said, “Mom, they can just live here!”
Teena’s mom called them anyhow. Police showed up, saw the photograph, started asking questions. Suki cried and cried and then threw up and then called Teena’s mother a whole bunch of hateful names. Eventually it ended just like the night of the motel fire. Clifton went away in one police car, handcuffed. Suki and I went away in another, holding hands. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered, over and over, but I could see Suki didn’t believe me.
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