White Oleander

by Janet Fitch

  Nauseated and headachy, I nevertheless spent the rest of the day wadding up foil gift wrap and stick-on bows, vacuuming popcorn and Styrofoam peanuts, hauling trash and washing sink after sink of dishes. Marvel wouldn’t let me lie down. She kept saying, “You made your bed, now sleep in it.”

  Later in the day, the cops arrived. Schutzstaffel. The kids wanted to see them, but Marvel stepped out and closed the door. We watched from the living room as Marvel’s mouth flew and she gestured to Olivia’s with a meaty arm.

  “What do they want?” Justin asked. It was three in the afternoon and he was in his pajamas, glassy-eyed from TV and sugar and new toys.

  “Someone lost a dog,” I said.

  Marvel opened the door and called me.

  I went out, burnishing the sapphire of my hatred. “Jawohl,” I said under my breath.

  Marvel’s eyes sprayed me with Mace, my skin blistered under her gaze. The older of the two white men drew me aside. “She says you spent the night with the woman next door. It’s technically a runaway.”

  I shifted from leg to leg, the throb of my headache accompanying each heartbeat. If I breathed carefully, I could smell English flowers. The football announcer shouted excitedly from the house, and the cop’s eyes flickered briefly in its direction. Then he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and they returned to me.

  “This woman gave you alcohol?”

  “No. Marvel and Ed had a big Christmas Eve party last night.

  The eggnog was spiked.” The sparkle of my sapphire, Officer Moody. See how it shimmers. Nothing up my sleeve. “They make you work on Christmas?”

  “Triple overtime,” he said. “I’ve got child support you wouldn’t believe. So what did you do next door?”

  “Listened to records, talked.”

  “And you spent the night?”

  “Well, it was too noisy to sleep over here.”

  He pulled his fleshy earlobe. “You go over there a lot?”

  I shrugged. “She’s nice, but she’s busy. She travels a lot.”

  “She ever introduce you to her friends?”

  I shook my head, let my mouth go slack, a little moronic, as if I had no idea what he was getting at. You mean, did she ever set me up on a date with one of her johns? Did she ever sell me to the BMW man on a cake platter like Pretty Baby? I wanted to laugh in his face.

  “She ever talk to you about what she does for a living?” He said it quietly, stroking his brushy mustache.

  “She’s a caterer, I think.” It came out of nowhere.

  “What a bunch of crap!” Marvel called out from where she was talking to the other cop, her eyes narrowed in disgust.

  I turned my back to the turquoise house so Marvel couldn’t read my lips. “Marvel hates her because she’s pretty and doesn’t have any kids to worry about. She’s always calling her names — nigger, whore. It’s embarrassing, but what am I supposed to do, I’m just a foster kid. She does it to all the neighbors, ask anybody. Beaner this, Jew bitch that, everybody hates her.” He probably said nigger and beaner too, this Officer Moody, pulling his red earlobes, but not where anybody would write it up.

  They sent me inside, but I watched through the kitchen window as the Schutzstaffel went through Olivia’s garden, knocked at her door. Five minutes later, they were back. I could hear Marvel screaming. “Aren’t you going to arrest her?”

  The patrol car slowly pulled away from the curb without Olivia Johnstone.

  THINGS WENT back to normal for the rest of the Christmas break, except Marvel watched me like a shoplifter. No more “runs” to the market or library, no more “workouts.” But she mostly stopped yelling at me, and was back to just telling me what to do and otherwise treating me like a slave. She left me alone to babysit on New Year’s Eve, though she called four times to make sure I was there. I left messages on Olivia’s machine, but she never picked up.

  15

  ON THE FIRST DAY back at school after winter break, I was given a yellow summons slip during third period. It led to a sour, overweight caseworker waiting in the office with the girls’ vice principal. The vice principal told me to clear my locker out and leave my books at the front desk. She never once looked at my face. The new caseworker said she had my things in the car.

  I twirled my combination and emptied the books from my locker. I was stunned, and somehow not. How like Marvel to do this while I was at school, without a word of warning. I was there and then I wasn’t. I would never see any of them again, would never have the chance to tell Olivia good-bye.

  The caseworker, Ms. Cardoza, scolded me all the way back into town, down the Ventura Freeway. “Mrs. Turlock told me everything. That you was doing drugs, running around. With little kids in the house. I’m taking you somewhere you’ll learn to act right.” She was an ugly young woman with a broad, rough-skinned face and a set look about the jowls. I didn’t bother to argue with her. I would never speak to anyone ever again.

  I thought of the lies Marvel would tell the kids, why I didn’t come home. That I died, or ran off. But no, that wasn’t Marvel, the Hallmark card woman, dyeing her hair behind closed doors. She would think up something completely the opposite, something you could paint on a Franklin Mint plate. That I went to live with my grandma on a farm, where we had ponies and ate ice cream all day.

  Though it hurt me to admit it, I realized Olivia would probably be relieved. She’d miss me a little, but it wasn’t her style to miss anyone much. Too many gold badges knocking on her door. She would rather worship sweaters. I wrapped my arms around my waist and slumped against the door. If I had had more energy I would have opened the car door and fallen out under the sixteen-wheeler driving next to us.

  THE NEW HOME was in Hollywood, a big wooden Craftsman with a deep eaved porch, too nice for foster care. I wondered what the story was. Ms. Cardoza was excited, she kept opening and closing her handbag. A Latina girl with a long braid let us in, eyed me guardedly. Inside it was dark, the windows covered with heavy curtains. The woodwork gleamed halfway up the walls, smelling of lemon oil.

  In a moment, the foster mother appeared, chic and straightbacked, with a dramatic streak in her dark hair. She shook hands with us, and Ms. Cardoza’s eyes shone as she took in Amelia’s fitted suit and high heels. “¿Qué pasa con su cara?” the foster mother asked. What happened to my face. The social worker shrugged.

  Amelia invited us to sit in the living room. It was beautiful, carved wood and claw-footed chairs, white damask and needlepoint. She served tea from a silver set, and butter cookies on flowered bone china. I put to work all I had learned at Olivia’s, showing her how I could hold my cup and saucer and keep the spoon from falling. They spoke Spanish while I looked into the deodar cedar framing the bay window. It was quiet, no TV. I could hear the little clock on the mantel.

  “It’s beautiful, no? Not a dormitory,” Amelia Ramos said with a smile. She sat on the edge of her chair, her legs crossed at the ankle. “This is my home, and I hope you will enjoy becoming part of our life.”

  Every once in a while a girl would pass by, cast an inscrutable glance through the doorway, as Amelia signed the papers and explained the rules in her lightly accented English. Each girl cooked and cleaned up one night a week. I would make my bed, shower every other day. The girls took turns doing the laundry and other chores. She was an interior decorator, she explained. She needed the girls to look after themselves. I nodded each time she paused, wondering why she took in girls at all. Maybe the house was too big for her, made her lonely.

  OVER THE POLISHED dining table, the other girls spoke in Spanish to each other, laughing in lowered voices, and only stared at me. I was the White Girl. I had been here before, there was nothing you could do about it. Amelia introduced them. Kiki, Lina, Silvana. The girl with the long braid was Micaela, and the wiry, tough-looking girl with a crescent-moon scar on her forehead serving the meal was Nidia Diaz. We ate chiles rellenos, with a salad and corn bread.

  “It’s good,” I said, hopi
ng Nidia would stop glaring at me.

  “I provide the recipes,” Amelia said. “Some of these girls come to me, they cannot even open a can.” She eyed Nidia and smiled.

  Afterward, we took our plates into the kitchen, where Nidia was starting on the dishes. She took my plate and narrowed her eyes at me, but said nothing.

  “Come in here, Astrid,” Amelia called. She brought me into the sitting room, more feminine than the living room, with laceedged tabletops and an old-fashioned couch. She had me sit in the armchair next to hers. She opened a large leather-bound album on the marble-topped coffee table. “This is my home. In Argentina. I had a splendid house there.” There were photos of a pink house with a flagstone courtyard, a dinner party with candlelit tables set up around a rectangular pool. “I could seat two hundred for dinner,” she said.

  In the dark interior of the house were a heavy staircase, dark paintings of saints. In one photograph, Amelia in pearls sat in a thronelike chair before a painting of herself, she wore a ribbon diagonally across her ball gown, and flanking her chair were a man, also with ribbons, and a beautiful little boy. “This is my son, Cesar, and my husband.”

  I wondered what had happened in Argentina, if it was so great there, what was she doing here in Hollywood? What had happened to her husband, and her little boy? I was about to ask when she turned the page and pointed a lacquered nail at a picture of two girls in tan uniforms kneeling on a lawn. “My maids,” she said, smiling nostalgically. “They were sitting around on their fat culos, so I made them pull weeds out of the lawn.”

  She gazed admiringly at the picture of the girls pulling weeds. It gave me the creeps. It was one thing to have somebody pull weeds, but why would anybody take a picture of it? I decided I was better off not knowing.

  AT AMELIA’S, my room was large, two beds covered in white flower-sprinkled quilts, and a view into the deodar cedar. My roommate, Silvana, was an older girl, eyebrows plucked to a thin line, lips outlined in lip liner but not filled in. She lay on the bed farther from the door, filing her nails and watching me as I put my things away in the dresser, my boxes in the walk-in closet.

  “Last place I slept was a laundry porch,” I said. “This is nice.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Silvana said. “And don’t think sucking up to that bitch is going to do you any good. You better side with us.”

  “She seems okay,” I said.

  Silvana laughed. “Stick around, muchacha.”

  In the morning I waited my turn to use the huge, white-tiled bathroom, then dressed and went downstairs. The girls were already leaving for school. “Did I miss breakfast?” I asked.

  Silvana didn’t answer, just shouldered her backpack, her eyebrows two indifferent arches. A horn honked, and she ran outside, got into a low-slung purple pickup truck and drove away.

  “You like breakfast?” Nidia said, putting on her baseball jacket in the front hall. “It’s in the fridge. We saved it for you.”

  Lina and Kiki Torrez laughed.

  I walked back to the kitchen. The refrigerator was padlocked.

  When I went out into the hall again, they were still standing there. “Was it good?” Nidia asked. Her eyes glittered under her moon-scar like a hawk’s, amber-centered.

  “Where’s the key?” I asked.

  Kiki Torrez, a petite girl with long glossy hair, laughed out loud. “With our lady of the keys. Your friend, the noblewoman.”

  “She’s at work now,” said Lina, a tiny Central American with a broad Mayan face. “She’ll be home by six.”

  “Adios, Blondie,” Nidia said, holding the door open for them all to go out.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE ME long to figure out why the girls called Amelia Cruella De Vil. In the beautiful wooden house, we went hungry all the time. On the weekends, when Amelia was home, we got fed, but during the week, we only had dinner. She kept a lock on the refrigerator, and had the phone and the TV in her room. You had to ask permission to use the phone. Her son, Cesar, lived in a room over the garage. He had AIDS and smoked pot all day. He felt sorry for us, knew how hungry we were, but on the other hand, he didn’t pay rent, so he felt there was nothing he could do.

  I sat in my tenth-grade health class at Hollywood High with a searing headache. I couldn’t tell you whether we were studying VD or TB. Words buzzed like flies that would not land, words drifted across the pages of my book like columns of ants. All I could think of was the macaroni and cheese I would make that night for dinner, how I would devour as much of the cheese as I could without getting caught.

  While I made the white sauce for the macaroni and cheese, I hid a stick of margarine behind a stack of plates. The girls told me right off that whoever had kitchen duty stole food for everybody, and if I didn’t, they could make life hell for me. After the dishes, I carried it up to my room inside my shirt. Once we could hear Amelia in her room talking on the phone to a friend, they all came into our room and we ate the whole stick. I divided it into cubes with my knife. We ate it slowly, licking it, like candy. I could feel the calories enter my bloodstream, undiluted, making me high.

  “Eighteen and out,” Nidia said as she licked her fingers. “If I don’t kill that bitch first.”

  But Amelia liked me. She had me sit next to her and finish the food on her plate when she was done eating. If I was really lucky, she invited me into the sitting room after dinner to talk about decorating, look at her fabric swatches and wallpaper patterns. I nodded to her endless anecdotes about aristocratic Argentina while scarfing down tea and butter cookies. The girls resented my collaborating with the enemy, and I didn’t blame them. They didn’t speak to me at school or on the street in the long hungry lockout afternoons before she got home. Nobody had a key — we might steal something, break into her room, use the phone.

  WHAT CAN I tell you about that time in my life? Hunger dominated every moment, hunger and its silent twin, the constant urge to sleep. School passed in a dream. I couldn’t think. Logic fled, and memory drained away like motor oil. My stomach ached, my period stopped. I rose above the sidewalks, I was smoke. The rains came and I was sick and after school I had nowhere to go.

  I drifted the streets of Hollywood. Everywhere were homeless kids, huddled in doorways, asking for dope, change, a cigarette, a kiss. I looked into their faces and saw my own. On Las Palmas, a girl with half her hair shaved started following me, calling me Wendy. “Don’t you walk away from me, Wendy,” she yelled after me. I opened my knife in my pocket, and when she grabbed the back of my jacket, I turned and stuck it under her chin.

  “I’m not Wendy,” I said.

  Her face was streaked with tears. “Wendy,” she whispered.

  Another day I found myself walking west instead of east, then north, zigzagging through wet side streets, drinking the resinous smells of eucalyptus and pittosporum and leftover oranges on the trees. Water squished in my shoes, my face burned with fever. I knew vaguely I should get out of the rain, dry my feet, prevent pneumonia, but I felt a strange pull to go north and west. I picked an orange from somebody’s tree, it was sour as vinegar, but I needed the vitamin C.

  It was not until I emerged onto Hollywood Boulevard that I realized where I was going. I stood in front of our old apartment house, dingy white streaked with rain, water dripping from the bananas and the palms and the glossy oleanders. This was where our plane had crashed. I saw our windows, the ones that Barry had broken. Michael’s windows. There was a light on in his apartment.

  My heart came to life for a moment, beating with hope as I studied the names by the buzzers, imagining him opening the door, his surprise, he would smell of Johnnie Walker, and the warmth of his apartment, the ceiling crumbling, the piles of Variety, a great movie on the TV, how welcome I’d be. Masaoka, Benoit/Rosnik, P. Henderson. But no McMillan, no Magnussen.

  I knew by my disappointment what I had really expected. That we would still be here. That I could go in and find my mother writing a poem, and I could wrap myself in her quilt and this would jus
t be a dream I could tell her about. I was not really a girl one step from homeless, eating scraps off Amelia’s plates. In that apartment, my mother had never met Barry Kolker, and prison was something she ’d read about in the papers. I would brush her hair, smelling of violets, and swim again in the hot nights. We would rename the stars.

  But we were gone. Michael was gone. The door was locked, and the pool was green with algae, its surface pimpled with rain.

  I LEANED AGAINST the wall of the lunch court at Hollywood High, fevered and trying not to watch the other kids eat. A girl looked into her lunch bag, made a face, and threw away the offending meal. I was shocked. Of course, she would have a snack waiting when she got home. I wanted to smack her. Then I remembered The Art of Survival. When your plane crashed, you drank radiator water, you clubbed your sled dogs. This was no time to be fastidious.

  I walked up to the garbage can and looked inside. I could see her brown paper bag on top of the trash. It stank, they never washed out the cans, but I could do this. I pretended I had dropped something in the garbage, and grabbed the lunch sack. It held a tuna sandwich with pickle relish on buttered white bread. The crusts were cut off. There were carrot sticks and even a can of apple juice fortified with vitamin C.

  Compared with clubbing your sled dogs, this was easy. I learned to watch when the bell rang, when everybody threw their lunches away and rushed back to class. I was always tardy fifth period. But my hands didn’t shake anymore.

  Then one day I got busted. A girl pointed me out to her friend. “Look at that nasty girl. Eating garbage.” And they all turned to look at me. I could see myself in their eyes, my scarred face, gobbling up a thrown-away yogurt with my finger. I would have stopped going to school, but I wouldn’t have known where else to eat.

  I found a library where I could safely pass the afternoons, looking at pictures in art books and sketching. I couldn’t read anymore, the words wouldn’t stay still. They drifted down the page, like roses on wallpaper. I drew samba figures on lined notebook paper, copied Michelangelo’s muscular saints and Leonardo’s wise Madonnas. I drew a picture of myself eating out of the garbage, furtive, with both hands, like a squirrel, and sent it to my mother. I got a letter back from her cellmate.