I never can understand these families with just two people in them! How can a family get so small? And where’s your father anyway? My files are full of mother-and-child families. Two people!
I didn’t answer. I knew my schoolteacher father was somewhere carrying his other children on his shoulders and I didn’t even know his name.
Someday you’re going to have to remember how to talk, she said. And come on, open the door, hurry up. Get out of the car. Move it. Hurry. I’ve got four other kids I need to deal with today.
As the warm air from the garden encircled my body, I was so grateful to get out of the North Pole–cold car. My mother was dead and yet I could still feel gratitude for something.
The social worker reached into the trunk and took out the duffel bag and dropped it on the ground. She’d done this dozens of times.
What’s this box? she asked as she took it out and laid it on top of the bag. It looks fancy.
Mr. Brodsky came out of the house to greet us. He was tall and slim. He had thick, curly gray hair and wore a pair of black narrow-rimmed round glasses.
It’s good to see you, he said.
Listen, this shoot’s not talking, the social worker said. Good luck getting a word out.
Dropping off a child was as routine to her as dumping the laundry at a Laundromat. I knew I was just a sack of something.
I’ve got to run, she said, and headed back to the car.
I was surprised to find I didn’t want her to leave. During the drive, it was as if she’d become the only person I knew.
Mr. Brodsky got down on his knees so that he could look at me face-to-face.
I could hear the social worker start her car and drive off behind me. She was the link to my trailer park, the bridge between this foster home and my car. She was the last person who knew I belonged to something.
Mr. Brodsky said, I’ve known every kind of child. Your name is Pearl and that’s a nice name. I think I’ve had a child with every name of the alphabet in this house. I hope you’re a gentle person. I am. I know why you’re here. I’m so sorry. Really, I am so, so sorry.
Now I knew people would be saying they were sorry to me forever after. I knew right then I’d be running away from the word “sorry” for the rest of my life.
Mr. Brodsky tucked the long box under his arm and picked up the duffel bag. He was strong and lifted the bundle with ease.
Let’s go inside, he said. I’ll show you your room.
I walked behind him into the house.
You also need to know there are two other children who live here. Helen, who’s eight years old, and Leo, who’s seventeen. They’re both at school now. You won’t be going to school, Mr. Brodsky continued. You’re only going to be here for a few weeks while they find a more permanent home, so there’s no point.
The bedroom had a high ceiling and the walls were painted white. There was a large window framed by white lace curtains, which looked down on the front garden and playhouse. The room contained a chest of drawers, a bed covered in a white bedspread, and a desk and chair. There was a round dark-blue throw rug on the floor. There was also a closet. The door was open and it was empty inside except for a row of pink satin-lined hangers. On the wall there was a painting of a night sky with stars.
The room smelled like fresh paint. Everything was so fresh and clean, it seemed that no one could ever have lived in the room before.
I knew the first thing I’d do as soon as Mr. Brodsky left was to lie down on the bed. When you grow up in a car, you dream about lying on sheets. I was also going to hunt down the shower.
Mr. Brodsky placed the box and duffel bag on the bed covered with a white lace bedspread.
What’s the pretty box about? he asked.
I walked over from the doorway and placed my hand on the silk box. I looked into Mr. Brodsky’s kind face.
I knew these were going to be the first words I was going to speak here in my new life.
Long gone, I said. Long gone.
Mr. Brodsky didn’t answer. There was no way he could know my mother was in me singing “Long Gone Blues” as if it were her funeral march.
It’s a wedding dress, I said. My grandmother’s wedding dress.
Oh, I see, Mr. Brodsky said.
My mother always dreamed she’d wear it one day, I said. It was a dream. And she also had a dream that I would wear it.
Mr. Brodsky was quiet for a few seconds as he looked down at the box that lay between us.
I breathed in deeply. It seemed to be the first breath I’d taken since Noelle picked me up at school a few hours ago.
Well, sometimes a dream is better than life, Mr. Brodsky said.
Yes.
No, she won’t ever wear it, but she had the dream that she wore it.
Yes, I said.
When Mr. Brodsky said a dream was better than life, I knew he was one of us. My mother and I would have made a space for him in our car. She would have given him some plastic bags for his things. We would have opened the car door and asked, When are you moving in?
My mother had not given me much, had not bought me much of anything, but she’d filled me up with her words and songs. I was an encyclopedia of her chatter and young-mother hopes. From A to Z, I’d speak her. Her vowels and consonants would sing along with me forever and ever and ever after.
The moment I looked into Mr. Brodsky’s face, I wanted to run out and buy Band-Aids.
21
Eli’s small black gun lay between two blouses. It was the first thing I looked for as I rummaged through the duffel bag. I hid it under the pillow on my bed.
My possessions from the dump—the marbles, bag of mercury, bullet, and buttons—I put away in the top drawer of the dresser. I hung up my clothes and placed my underwear and T-shirts in another drawer. I didn’t have much. I didn’t know where to put my drawing of the solar system, so I just rolled it up into a ball and threw it in the trash. I no longer needed to learn that Mercury was the closest planet to the sun and was on fire. I knew it.
I was organizing my things but I was really praying I’d find a cigarette. In a kind of frenzy, I was looking through every plastic bag and every pocket of my clothes. April May would say I needed to pray to the cigarette god.
I found one. It was a Mexican Marlboro Red from Corazón and Ray’s trailer. Actually, the miracle was, I didn’t find one cigarette, I found a whole pack. This was perfect proof that the cigarette god cared deeply about orphaned girls.
I walked over to the window, pushed the pale lace curtains to one side, pulled the blue Bic lighter out of my back pocket, and lit up.
I took in a deep drag and felt everything in me settle. The river of my blood grew calm.
I looked out over the garden and its tall oak trees and freshly cut lawn. There was one magnolia tree covered with the large white flowers that were just beginning to turn brown at the edges. Behind the trees, closer to the street, I could clearly see the playhouse made of wood and painted white. It had a small porch and two windows.
I’d taken only a few puffs when two children walked into the garden, down the path, and toward the front door. They were a white boy and a black girl. Through the smolder of my Marlboro, I could see the boy was dressed in blue jean shorts and had long, curly light brown hair that was messy and grew down to his shoulders. He was tall and skinny and walked in long strides. The little girl beside him skipped and ran as she tried to keep up. She had a short Afro pinned in places with yellow and orange hair clips.
The boy stopped fast and looked up at the window. The little girl kept moving forward until she realized he was no longer walking toward the front door. She followed his gaze up to where I stood with my upper body leaning out the window as I sent a smoke plume skyward through my chimney-mouth.
I knew they were Leo and Helen. We looked at one another
for a moment and then they continued into the house. Nobody waved.
I finished my cigarette, stubbed it out on the windowsill, and threw the butt down into the garden below.
I was trying to decide if I should just light up another cigarette, as there was nothing else to do, when I heard a knock.
I walked across the room and opened the door.
For the first time, I knew the experience of opening a door, of standing, turning a knob and opening, opening, opening. Living in the car, because of the windows, we always knew who we opened a door to. This time, I didn’t know who knocked behind the heavy oak wood.
I opened the door and it was Leo. He stood there chewing on the sleeve of his shirt.
Leo stood under the doorframe and stared at my face. I looked back into his light-brown eyes.
At my mother’s university of love she’d learned about love at first sight. She said it was the only truth, and that love at first sight was like an accident. When I looked at Leo for the first time from my window I knew my arm was broken. I’d fallen down all the stairs. A train was coming down the tracks. And because I was so sad, I knew I loved him.
Are you an albino? Leo asked. A real albino?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes. I think so.
Where are you from? When did you get here?
Leo didn’t give me time to answer. As with so many people, he was interested in the way I looked above all.
Did you know that in Tanzania witch doctors attack albinos?
No. I didn’t know.
They think albino body parts bring good luck. Albinos have to hide in Tanzania, Leo said.
One of his eyes was a lazy eye, so it looked at me and then drifted away and seemed to look past me and out the window.
No. I didn’t know this. I’m not an albino. I’m just me.
Leo walked into my room and sat on my bed. When Leo spoke he took the cuff out of his mouth. When he listened to my answers to his questions, he chewed on it again. The sleeve went in and out.
I was to learn that the left sleeves on all his shirts were worn and some even had holes from the gnawing of his teeth. This was a side effect produced by the Rivotril he took for anxiety.
Is it strange to look how you look? he asked.
I don’t know.
Come here and sit with me, he ordered. Come here.
I obeyed and sat next to him on the bed.
What happened to you? he asked. Why are you here?
I don’t have anywhere to go. My mother was shot. She’s dead.
Leo shook his head. Yes, I imagined that’s what had happened, he said. I’m a shoot too. So is Helen.
I wondered what he would think if he knew there was a gun under my pillow, right there, between us.
I’m seventeen. Well, almost eighteen, Leo said. How old are you?
I’m fourteen. Almost fifteen.
What about your father? Where’s he?
I don’t have a father. I never met him anyway.
As we sat on the edge of the bed, side by side, our clothes touched. My sleeve touched his sleeve and we knew it was our skin beneath the fabric that was touching.
Did you know there are two bullets for every person in the world? Leo said.
No. Are you sure?
I know. I read about it. Everyone knows it. It’s a fact, Leo said.
Then, if that’s the case, I think my mother was shot with some bullets that belonged to other people.
Leo looked at me. His lazy eye looked down at my hands that were folded on my lap. I didn’t know if I should look into his one eye or follow the look of his other eye down to my hands.
My blouse continued to touch his shirt and I felt Leo’s warmth through the cotton.
You’ll get used to my eye, he said. Everyone does. I was supposed to have an operation years ago, but it hasn’t happened. The other people I was living with made an appointment but then it was canceled and then I moved here.
In a robotic, monotonous way, like saying times tables by heart, Leo told me his story. A foster child tells their story hundreds of times.
My mother used to say that some lives could be described in one book and that others needed a whole encyclopedia. She would have said Leo’s life needed only one sentence.
So, when Leo said he was an only child and that his mother had killed his father and then shot herself, he could have been saying two times two is four, four times four is sixteen.
When did this happen? I asked.
One of his eyes was looking at my mouth and the other eye looked into my left eye.
When I was four years old, he said. I don’t remember my parents. I know my father was a doctor and my mother was a nurse. He was a heart surgeon. I know this from my file. He invented something for the heart. It was a valve or stent. It means I’m going to be rich when I turn eighteen.
There was no family for you? No one to take you?
Leo shook his head.
I don’t even have a cousin, I said. Almost everyone at least has a cousin.
Do you want to see my room? he asked. Do you like to listen to music? Come, follow me. Do you know how to do origami?
Leo stood up and I followed him to his room, which was directly across from mine.
Leo had bins full of Lego and stacks of boxes with Mindstorms and robotics projects. He’d made complicated robots powered by batteries as well as helicopters and several rockets and what he called alien aircraft or UFOs.
Leo’s room was decorated exactly like mine except that it was filled with his things and he even had two posters stapled to the wall. One was a poster of a solar eclipse and the other was a large photograph of Albert Einstein.
Pearl, Leo said. If there is anything that I have and you want it, you can have it. I don’t want you to want something. It’s awful to be wanting and wanting. Is there anything here, any of my things, you want? What’s mine is yours.
He looked straight into my eyes.
When Leo said, What’s mine is yours, his mismatched eyes aligned.
He could see my severe and strict soldier control over tears.
He could see my love-at-first-sight pool of love for him.
He knew he’d better not dare me to do anything, because I’d do it.
I knew he was not a strong white flag of a person but was put together with scraps of Scotch tape and a few staples and glue.
My mother had taught me all the love songs and they were going to follow me everywhere. She would’ve said, All these songs are the chorus of your life.
I was singing, Surrender is just a word, my word.
22
Helen was even smaller standing beside me than she’d seemed when I looked down on her from my window. I knew she was eight, but she looked about five.
Helen smiled. She smelled like burned marshmallows. I knew that smell so well. In the car, as we didn’t have a stove or fireplace, we used to toast our marshmallows with a lighter.
Helen talked nonstop. It took me only a few minutes to realize that Helen had no idea who she was or where she came from. She said she had a white mommy and a black mommy. Then she said she had ten brothers and eleven sisters. She said she lived here and there near a beach and near a park. She was from Ethiopia and Finland. She was born in a house. She was born in a hospital. Helen had a twin brother and sister and she had two twin sisters. She had been in Catholic homes, Mormon homes, and Jehovah’s Witness homes.
Helen was the true-blue foster child—too many homes, too many people, too many changes. Nobody had taught her not to pick her scabs. Nobody had taught her how to pull her baby teeth out with string.
Helen had stayed in homes where she was given only cereal to eat. She’d been to homes where she had to reuse dental floss and tea bags and was given one square
of toilet paper a day. Helen had been to foster homes where she slept on the floor in a hallway.
Helen often spoke of herself in the third person. Nobody corrected her.
Helen said, Helen has no maple flavoring. Helen is always dreaming of a white Christmas in Florida and she doesn’t drink enough water. Helen loves forehead kisses. She sometimes wants to sleep forever and would not mind being pregnant. Helen feels better after a shower and she knows if you have bugs in your clothes just put them in a microwave oven. That kills all bugs even bed bugs.
Leo just accepted her chatter and I ended up doing the same. There was no way to follow her and attempt to make sense of her life.
Leo said, Show Pearl your collection of telephones.
Helen went to her room and came back in a minute with a plastic supermarket bag and dumped the contents out on the floor. She had at least seventeen phones and chargers in that bag.
Every foster home she goes to, they give her a phone and tell her to keep in touch, Leo said. There’re so many now, Helen has no idea if they work or what house they belong to. I promised her I’ll try and sort it out one day.
Yes, Helen said. These are the phones to all of Helen’s houses.
What will you do with them? I asked.
Call on a phone to people in her family that’s all and yes, of course, her friends Lulu, Gina, and Romey, Helen said. She wants to call her best friends to talk about things like, you know, do you like cats? Questions like that. A lot of people like cats. They’re cute. Soft. Helen likes them a lot.
I’ll figure it out for you, Leo said. First we’re going to have to charge them all. Pearl will help us.
Then he went back to chewing on his sleeve as he looked at the tangle of wires and multiple chargers.
Yes, of course I’ll help, I said.
Helen crawled over to where I was sitting on the floor and sat very close to me. She rubbed her forehead against my upper arm.
Hey, Helen said. You smell like bug-off.
I still smelled like the Mercury. The Raid was deep in my skin.
Maybe these conversations all happened over several days. I don’t remember. There are only two things I know for sure happened on that first day. I found Leo and I also found out I would not have to worry about cigarettes.
Gun Love Page 11