by Amy Hatvany
“Natalie Clark,” she said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“You caught me at a rare slow moment,” Melissa said, with a smile. “How can I help you?” Natalie took a moment to explain why she was there, and when she finished, Melissa spoke again. “Hmm. Well, we can check our files, but it’s unlikely we’d know where your sister went after she aged out, unless she kept in contact with someone here. What year did you say she left us?”
“I’m pretty sure it was 1994,” Natalie said. “That’s the year she would have turned eighteen.”
“Okay,” Melissa said. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
Natalie followed the younger woman to her office, a cramped, cube-shaped room without a window but with three walls lined with tall black filing cabinets. Melissa gestured for Natalie to sit in the chair on the other side of her desk while Melissa sat in front of her computer. “Most of our records are digitized, so we should have something on her,” she said as she typed. “Here we go. Brooke Walker.” Her eyes moved over the screen, reading aloud what she saw on it. “Brought in with her six-month-old sister, Natalie, in October of 1980.” She paused, reading more, silently. “You were right. Looks like she did age out in 1994, but we don’t have anything on her after that. Nothing official, anyway.”
“Would there be something unofficial?” Despite having known that the odds were against there being anything substantive here about her sister’s whereabouts, Natalie couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
“We actually have one employee who worked here back then. Miss Dottie, our kitchen manager. She was only twenty when she was hired, and has been here almost forty years. The kids love her, and she’s got a great memory. A real knack for names. Maybe she knew Brooke.”
“Is she here?” Natalie asked, feeling a surge of hope.
“She should be. Let me check.” Melissa reached for the phone on her desk, and after a quick conversation, she hung up and looked at Natalie. “She’s in the middle of overseeing lunch prep, but we can head down to the cafeteria and wait for her, if you like.”
“That would be great,” Natalie said, fingering the edge of her leather purse strap. “I was wondering, though . . . if it’s not an inconvenience, is there any way I can see a bit of the building? Where Brooke might have stayed?”
“Sure,” Melissa said. “I’d offer to show you where you were for the brief time you were here, too, but we don’t house babies anymore. They’re kept in a different facility altogether. The infant room has been remodeled into a study hall.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Natalie said. She’d been so focused on finding out more about Brooke, it hadn’t even crossed her mind that she might want to see where she had spent a month of her own life—she wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.
Melissa moved her eyes back to the computer. After a moment of scrolling, she smiled at Natalie. “Found it.” She stood up and headed out the door, Natalie following right behind her.
They walked down a long, narrow hallway that was lit by buzzing, yellow-tinged fluorescent lights and then went up a flight of stairs. The walls there were plaster instead of cement, painted the same dingy white as the linoleum, and were covered in brightly colored posters with inspirational sayings on them, including one that said, “The struggle is part of the story.” As she walked by it, Natalie noticed that beneath that statement someone had written “Fuck you and your story” in thick black ink. She winced, practically able to feel the anger coming off the resident who had penned those words.
When they got to the second floor, Melissa led Natalie down another hallway, this one lined with several gray doors. Melissa stopped at the third one on the right and gestured for Natalie to enter. “This is it,” Melissa said as they each stepped inside. “She stayed in a lot of different rooms before she hit ninth grade, a new one every time she came back from another foster home, but this is where she spent her last four years.”
Natalie moved her eyes around the room, which was about the same size as Hailey’s bedroom at home, but rather than her daughter’s frilly canopy bed covered in a lime-green comforter and lavender pillows, the space had four black metal, twin-size bunk beds squeezed along its perimeter. There were no windows, no other furniture besides the beds, and nothing hung on the walls. The space was blank, industrial. There were dented cardboard boxes with handles under the bunks, which Natalie assumed served as makeshift dressers. There was nothing about the room that said home.
Natalie took a step over to one of the bunks and sat down on the thin mattress, resting the heels of her palms on the scratchy gray blanket. She thought of her children, how they might react to being relegated to a room like this—how they might survive knowing their mother had given them up—and she had to fight back an ache in her chest. She thought about the room that she had grown up in, with its big windows and comfy, full-size bed. She remembered wanting to redecorate it when she turned thirteen, abandoning the pink and white frills for blue paint and posters of Luke Perry and Jason Priestley. She thought about how lucky she was to have been adopted, that her parents had saved her from living in a place as sterile as this.
Natalie moved her eyes upward and noticed that the plywood beneath the top bunk mattress was etched with so many names, it was difficult to decipher one from the other. “Julie Peterson was here, 1987,” Natalie read aloud.
“The kids like to leave their mark,” Melissa said.
Natalie slowly scanned the wooden board above her again, and without a word Melissa, seeming to sense what Natalie was trying to do, stepped over to another bunk, checking the plywood on that bed for Brooke’s name. When neither of them found it, each moved to a different bunk. Natalie was just about to give up when Melissa spoke. “Here she is.” She pointed to a spot above where she sat, and Natalie quickly joined her. Melissa stood up, leaving Natalie to look at the spot where the younger woman had pointed. It took her a minute to find her sister’s name, but when she did, she reached up and slowly traced her index finger over the gouged wood, the muscles in her throat thickening. “Brooke Walker,” her sister had carved in jagged letters. “Here too fucking long.”
“Wow,” Natalie said, and her eyes blurred with tears. The fact that her sister had sat in that exact spot—that she’d taken the time to make sure there was evidence of her existence in that space—hit Natalie hard. She couldn’t imagine the life of a young girl in these surroundings: sharing a room with seven likely revolving-door strangers, sleeping on a thin mattress with a flat pillow and a stiff, scratchy blanket. Having no one to tuck her in at night. Nothing to make her feel treasured and safe.
“Miss Dottie should be free by now,” Melissa said. “And I have a meeting I need to attend pretty soon . . .”
“Oh,” Natalie said, standing up and wiping her cheeks with the back of her bent wrist. “Of course. Sorry.”
“No need,” Melissa said. “I’m happy to help.” She led Natalie to the end of the hallway and down another set of stairs, then turned a corner and pushed open a pair of black swinging doors. The room was set up with multiple rectangular tables and metal benches. To their right was a large, square open space in the wall, and through it, Natalie could see four women working in the kitchen. One of them stood off to the side with a clipboard in her hand. She was a tall woman with a sturdy-looking build and olive skin. Her silvery black hair was pushed down beneath a net, and she wore a bright red chef’s coat, white sneakers, and jeans.
“Miss Dottie!” Melissa called out, and the woman left the kitchen and came to stand in front of Natalie. “This is Natalie Clark,” she said, and quickly explained why Natalie was there.
The older woman listened with her head cocked to one side, still holding her clipboard, and then looked at Natalie. “What did you say your sister’s name was?”
“Brooke Walker,” Natalie said. “Melissa said you might remember her?”
“I’ll let you two have a chat,” Melissa said. “Thanks, Dottie. And good luck, Natalie. I hope you find what yo
u’re looking for.” Natalie thanked her, and Melissa turned and left the room.
“Let’s sit,” Miss Dottie said, gesturing toward one of the tables. “I’m just about ready to retire, so I have to practice not being on my feet all damn day.” She cackled, and Natalie smiled politely. The two of them sat and Miss Dottie set her clipboard down. “Now. Brooke Walker . . . Brooke Walker.” She squinted her eyes and repeated Natalie’s sister’s name a few more times, as though she were fingering her way through a cabinet in her head, looking for the right file. “When you say she aged out, again?”
“Nineteen ninety-four,” Natalie repeated, wondering if there was any point in having this conversation. She imagined thousands of children coming and going from this facility over the past thirty-some years. How could Miss Dottie remember a single face? “She stopped being sent to foster homes when she turned fourteen and stayed here all four years of high school.”
“Ah!” Miss Dottie said, loudly enough that it startled Natalie. “I remember. Dark curls, pretty eyes. So blue they almost look purple.”
Just like Hailey’s, Natalie thought. Her pulse quickened.
“If I recall,” Miss Dottie continued, “her and that wild girl, Zora Herzog, talked about getting a place together when they left. They were the same age, but Zora’d only been here two years before she turned eighteen.”
“She and Brooke were friends?” Natalie asked, feeling excited but a little wary at Miss Dottie’s use of the adjective “wild” to describe Zora.
“I wouldn’t say friends, exactly,” Miss Dottie said. “More like they happened to be leaving at the same time and needed someone to split rent with.”
Natalie considered this before speaking again. “You said Zora was wild. How so?”
“Oh, you know,” Miss Dottie said, waving a dismissive hand around in front of her face. “The kind of girl that they’d probably put on some kind of drug now. She was a hyper little thing. Loud, too.”
“Was Brooke the same way?”
“Hmm,” Miss Dottie said, pressing her lips together and making them pooch out a little, like she was about to give someone a kiss. “Not that I recall. Pretty sure she was a quiet one. Kept her head down.” She shrugged. “That’s all I remember. Does it help?”
“I think it will,” Natalie said, thinking that Miss Dottie’s description of Brooke matched what Gina had said about her. “Thank you.” She stood, and Miss Dottie joined her.
“My pleasure, honey,” she said. “Your life turn out all right, after being here?”
Natalie smiled, thinking of her parents, of Kyle and the kids and the home they shared. “I was only here a month when I was a baby,” she said, “but yes. It did.”
“Glad to hear it,” Miss Dottie said, bobbing her head and then repeating the phrase. She gave Natalie a wave and then headed back into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, Natalie sat in her car, doing an online search for “Zora Herzog, Seattle,” on her phone, relieved that the girl Brooke might have moved in with after leaving Hillcrest had such a unique name. It would make finding her all that much easier. She could have waited until she got home and done the search on her laptop, but she was too excited about what she’d learned. Maybe Zora and Brooke were still friends. Maybe their shared background at Hillcrest had created a bond that linked them. Maybe once Natalie found Zora, she’d find Brooke, too.
It didn’t take long for Zora’s name and contact information to come up on the search engine, and Natalie was grateful the other woman hadn’t chosen to keep her address and phone number unlisted. She glanced at the clock and saw she still had plenty of time before the kids got out of school, and a quick check on the map told Natalie that Zora lived in White Center, which was on the south side of West Seattle and only a fifteen-minute drive from Hillcrest. Again, she thought about calling first, but she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm and decided to head right over to Zora’s house. Even if she wasn’t home, Natalie could leave her a note. She put her phone on the passenger seat, started her car, and went exactly where her GPS told her to go.
Brooke
When Brooke’s cell phone rang about a week after her argument with Ryan, she almost didn’t answer. But when she saw his face on her screen, she decided it was only fair to hear whatever else he might have to say. A small voice in her head even went so far as to suggest that he might have changed his mind and would support her in her decision to keep the baby, and though she was hard-pressed to admit it, this possibility was what made her pick up the phone.
“Brooke, please,” Ryan said. From the horns beeping in the background, she could tell that he was in his car, on his headset, likely on the freeway on his way to a job site. “I know you’re upset, but we need to talk about this.”
“I don’t really see what else there is to say,” she said. She tried to sound strong, unshakable, but she worried that he could still hear the tremor beneath her words.
“You can’t just make a unilateral decision,” he said. “It’s my child, too. I have a say in how we handle it.”
“It’s not an ‘it,’ ” Brooke snapped. “It’s a baby.” She had lain in bed just that morning, running her hand over her stomach again and again, marveling at the fact that there was a human being growing inside her. She’d gone online and discovered that at nine weeks, her baby was about the size of a peanut and already had earlobes, which seemed to Brooke like such a random thing for her to know. But it also made what was happening seem more real. “It’s my body,” she told Ryan now. “So it’s my decision. I don’t need anything from you except to be left alone. You’re off the hook.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“Actually,” Brooke said, “it is.” She hung up the phone, steeling herself against the rush of conflicting emotions she felt. One part of her, the part she had honed over the years to keep the men in her life at an emotionally safe distance, was determined that cutting Ryan out of her life completely was the right call. She didn’t need him, that part told her. She could do this. She’d be fine. But another part of her, the more exposed, needy part that had risen to the surface as soon as she found out she was pregnant, screamed at her to call him back, to ask him to support her, even if he didn’t agree with her decision to keep the baby. But the idea of this, the idea of admitting her weakness, made Brooke squirm. She’d learned a long time ago that it was safer never to show anyone that kind of vulnerability.
By the time Brooke was twelve, she had been in and out of ten foster homes and had been sent back to Hillcrest every time. But at the start of seventh grade, Gina took her to live in a two-bedroom apartment in North Seattle, near Green Lake. Claire, the woman who was to be her new foster parent, was different from the other people with whom Brooke had stayed. She was in her late thirties and had never been married or had any children, something she told Brooke over a dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup a few hours after Gina left the apartment. “I never thought I’d do something like this,” Claire said.
“Why did you, then?” Brooke asked in a guarded voice, looking over the main living area, where they sat at a two-person table. The room was highly feminine, decorated in pale pastels with plush furniture, silky sheer curtains, and lots of pillows. There was a big bowl of Hershey’s Kisses on the coffee table, along with a stack of fashion magazines like Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Claire was a short, curvy woman with wide hips and a big smile. Her hair was brown and straight, and that day, she wore a stretchy polka-dot headband to pull it back from her round face.
“Because I don’t have a mother,” Claire said in a quiet voice. “And I thought it would be a good thing to help take care of someone who doesn’t, either.”
Brooke wasn’t accustomed to grown-ups telling her private information about themselves—usually they just lectured her about everything they thought was wrong with her—so she blinked a few times before responding. “What happened to her?”
“She died when I was two,” Claire explained. “I was raised by m
y grandparents, because my father couldn’t handle taking care of me on his own.” She gave Brooke a long look. “I understand that you lost your mother, as well.”
Brooke bit her bottom lip, feeling a swell of emotion in her chest that she normally was able to keep pressed deep down inside. “I didn’t lose her,” she finally said, hoping that in taking this risk, telling Claire the truth, she wasn’t making a huge mistake. “She gave me away.” Her voice cracked on the last few words, and she dropped her eyes to the floor, unable to make eye contact. “I was only four.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “That must have hurt you so much.”
Brooke nodded, feeling a few errant tears slip down her cheeks. She never talked about her mother with anyone, and suddenly, here she was, discussing her with Claire. Maybe it was the fact that Claire hadn’t pushed her to talk; she’d simply shared a bit of her own story and made Brooke feel safe in sharing the basics of hers. And as the weeks passed by, Brooke found herself opening up more and more to Claire, and bit by bit, the weight she normally carried under her skin began to melt away. “I didn’t know how to stop myself from being bad,” she said after telling Claire about living with Jessica and Lily and how Scott had spanked her.
“Oh, honey, you’re not bad,” Claire said, pushing Brooke’s dark curls back from her face. Brooke was in bed, and Claire sat on the edge of her mattress. The only light in the room was that of the small lamp with the pink floral shade on the nightstand. “You were hurting, and sometimes, when we hurt, we lash out at other people so they will hurt, too. It doesn’t feel like that should make sense, but everyone does it at some point. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.”
“Really?” Brooke sniffed, allowing herself to feel a little bit better. “Have you?”