The Beautiful-Ugly (The Beautiful-Ugly Trilogy)

by James Snyder

  “Little biscuit,” Yolanda said, “when you come to Mercy, and you real bad off, they don’t put you in the cottages for a while.”

  “They put you in the big white house,” said Camerina, “where they can keep an eye on you.”

  Beatrice said, “They wanna make sure you’re not too suicidal, or that you’ll stab everyone else in the cottage in their sleep. So they keep you there, and keep you doped up, and let the doctors and nurses and therapists poke around you, until they think you’re ready.”

  They continued to sit there, quietly mulling over this or that, until Yolanda stopped them. “Remember now—when the res bring her over, we can’t be acting like nothing at all. We all got to be just cool and every-day, y’all hear?”

  “Just pretend like it’s nothing different,” said Julie, “no matter how much a nut case she is.”

  “Like my therapist says,” said Beatrice. “It’s not a matter of crazy, it’s degrees of insight, like mind geometry.”

  “That’s right,” Yolanda said. “And some folk got more geometry than other folk do.”

  Now everyone began doing other things. Connelly watched them curiously, and then began to comb what was left of Priscilla’s hair, which had sections missing now; and she could see the tiny holes where the hair had once been, hoping Priscilla wouldn’t notice.

  “You still look very pretty,” she whispered, combing, when the door opened, and she looked up.

  Anne came in, her right hand holding someone else’s hand that came in slowly behind her. “Everyone,” she said, smiling. “We have a new group member.”

  Connelly’s breath hung still inside her for a moment. It was the same girl she saw the first day, when she and Eric were sitting in the great room, waiting for Melissa. She had passed, carrying a clothes basket, going up the stairs, and had looked back at her. Her face. Her eyes. Still the same. Except now she looked like a little wild animal ready to run away.

  “Does everyone know Sara Gill?” Anne said, and then began going around the room, introducing each of them.

  When they came to her, Connelly saw Sara look at her, then quickly away.

  “We awright, Miss Anne,” Yolanda said. “Now we got two little biscuits to look after, that’s all.”

  Sara went and sat on her own bed, her head down, hands clasped together.

  “I’ll check in on everyone before I leave,” Anne told them, and went out, closing the door behind her.

  Everyone sat there in silence for a moment, until Beatrice said lowly, “She’s medded to her eyeballs.”

  Yolanda shushed her, putting her finger to her lips, then motioned with her hand, and everyone became busy with normal things: talking among themselves, doing homework, taking their bathroom turns.

  Meanwhile, Sara Gill didn’t move at all, Connelly noticed. She sat perfectly still on her bed, dressed in her yellow, worn-out top and blue, worn-out pedal pushers and white sneakers as raggedy as the black ones she had in the closet, as if that was all she would ever do. Connelly thought about it only a moment, and then she got up off her own bed, and went over and sat next to Sara.

  Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing, she saw, staring over at them; then they simply ignored them and looked away. She sat there, wondering what to do next. She said, “My name’s Connelly.”

  Head down, Sara said quietly and a little mockingly, “I already know that.”

  “Oh.”

  They sat there.

  Finally, Sara said, “But I don’t know her name.”

  “Who?”

  She indicated the doll.

  “Her name’s Priscilla.”

  Now Sara glanced sideways and then away. “What happened to her hair?”

  “I’m not sure. I think the Johnsons’ cat ate it.” She looked over at her. “Would you like to hold her?”

  Sara’s mouth made a funny little smile. “No thanks, I don’t play with dolls anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  Sara looked up at her now. Her eyes seemed two large black pools of something both hard and soft, melting about the edges, while deeper inside—at their center—they seemed to quiver, as if tiny bursts of fire were erupting, Connelly couldn’t quite see. Then Sara said, “The first time I saw you, when you were sitting with that boy, and you looked at me—I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That you were my guardian angel I’d been asking for and asking for and finally got.”

  Once again, the funny little smile, as she lowered her head.

  Connelly stared at her a moment, and then looked at Priscilla instead. First she looked into her startled eyes, staring back at her. Slowly, she tilted her back, until her eyes closed, and she held her to her chest, rocking her.

  *

  That night she was dreaming the same dream again, when Sara’s crying woke her. The four of them were having another picnic under the bridge. The day was pretty again, and Eric and her mother were wandering among the tall grasses alongside the water, while she and her father sat on the picnic blanket, talking about things she couldn’t quite hear. But they were funny things, because she was laughing, and her father rolled over, making silly noises and holding his tummy, and she was saying something else to him—when she woke up, hearing Sara cry out.

  Now she lay there, listening first to Beatrice, then Yolanda, then Julie, go sit with her to quiet her. She listened to them, talking quietly across the room, and tried to go back to sleep. She wanted her dream back; she wanted to be with her mommy and daddy again, even if it was just dreaming. It felt so wonderful having them so close she could almost reach out and touch them. That Sara. Why did she have to have such nightmares? And she tried to sleep, knowing she couldn’t, when it was suddenly early in the morning, and someone else woke her, saying: “Oh, Sara!”

  Everyone was awake now, jumping out of bed, running into the bathroom. She grabbed Priscilla and ran there, pushing her way between the other girls to see. Her mouth fell open when she did.

  Sara was crouched naked by the toilet, and she had made such a mess. She had gone potty on the floor and smeared it all over herself and the toilet and walls. And she was crouched there now, as if sleeping.

  Maribel said, “I came in and found her like this.”

  “We better get the res,” said Kathy.

  “No,” Yolanda said. “We get the res, they’ll ship her back to Patton.”

  “Well maybe they should,” Beatrice said. “Then maybe we could get some sleep.”

  Instead, Connelly watched while they put Sara in the shower. Kathy and Julie took off their tops and scrubbed her down, then shampooed her hair, with her saying: “Ow, that hurts!”, and everyone else saying: “Shut up, Sara!” Meanwhile, the other girls cleaned up the toilet and walls.

  When they were finished, everyone sat in a circle on the cottage’s brown carpet floor and talked about what they should do. Sara lay tucked into her bed, sucking her thumb and listening to them.

  “First place,” said Yolanda, “from now on we got to take turns sleeping with her. That way, if she wakes up, we’ll already be there to quiet her.”

  Camerina said, “Uh-huh, and someone has to be with her in the bathroom, no matter what. I know I ain’t cleaning her shit off the walls again, I don’t care how cute and helpless she is.”

  Now everyone looked over at Sara, and she smiled her funny little smile again, sucking her thumb, and turned away from them.

  “She gone back to sleep,” Yolanda said.

  They were all still sitting there, tired and complaining, a few minutes later when the morning res came by with her clipboard, counted them, and told them to get ready for school.

  Chapter 7

  The Interview

  On Saturday she and Eric met their new caseworker in one of the offices in the big house. Her name was Mrs. Morton, she told them, looking around the room as if she were in the wrong place, and telling them to sit down. Then she talked with them only a few minutes, writing down little notes,
Connelly watching her hand and pen moving carefully over the page of the small blue-leather notebook she’d taken from her purse.

  “I told them I didn’t want any cases out of the city,” she complained. “Certainly not the children’s home. But no one seems to listen anymore.” She shook her head.

  She was older than Melissa, she had short silver hair, and wore a lady’s blue suit, rather than blue jeans and old shirts like Melissa wore. And she had a string of pearls around her neck that she touched with her left hand whenever she became upset, which was often.

  “I told them I was cutting back. My husband wishes me to cut back. So instead they give me two Mercy children and apologize. I don’t need their apologies,” she said, putting her book and pen back into the purse, and snapping it shut with both her hands. While Connelly counted the four rings on Mrs. Morton’s fingers, the caseworker said, “I have only one foster interview arranged for you today. This is all becoming so difficult. I can’t remain here that long, of course. Your residents will introduce you. Just remember, it is you that has to prove you are worthy of someone else’s time in all this. They’re not responsible for your situation, that’s your responsibility. So my advice is to be on your best behavior, and use your manners. Your parents did teach you manners, didn’t they?”

  Afterward, when Mrs. Morton had driven away, they went out to the same bench they’d discovered their first day there. Connelly called it their bench now, because no one else ever seemed to sit there. And they met there almost every night and talked. She liked that—that Eric was talking to her again, almost like before, except (and she couldn’t quite understand why) he seemed different now. Just a little. Maybe it was the way his eyes would look away when she told him about something, as if he wasn’t quite hearing her; or the way, when he told her something, his voice was quieter now, even when it was something he used to love—like a book he was reading, or something he saw on television. She wasn’t sure.

  Now she was explaining to him how, for some reason, living at Pilgrims Mercy reminded her of when she took a bath and put her head under water. How, when she opened her eyes under water, everything looked different, everything sounded different. She knew the real world was only inches away, above her; but there, in that new world, nothing was the same anymore. The only difference was she couldn’t raise up her head now; she couldn’t go back to her normal world, like she did when bathing. She was underwater, where everything looked and sounded so strange, but now she would have to stay there, forever. That’s the only way she could think about it, and she asked Eric if that’s what he thought too.

  “I don’t know, Con,” he said, looking away. “I’m not sure how I feel.”

  “But it’s more than that, Eric,” she said. “I mean, more water—a lot more. Like before, the bathtub’s only half full, because mom didn’t want me making a mess, remember? Or even when we went with them down to San Luis Obispo and stayed at the motel, and went swimming there. It’s even more water than that, Eric—do you understand? It’s more like the ocean now, I think. I mean, it’s like the water’s everywhere, and it’s very deep, and we’re just stuck underneath it, and we can’t get out.”

  “You mean like fish?”

  “Maybe, except how do we know how fish feel? Do you think it’s like fish, Eric?”

  He sighed his frustrated sigh. “How should I know, Con. Fish aren’t mammals like we are. They’re cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates. Their brains work differently than ours?”

  “So how do their brains work then?”

  But he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  *

  As they were told, Saturday was visitors’ day. There was a special room in the main house for the interviews. For some reason, the other girls in her group called them cattle calls, but that didn’t make any sense to her. They weren’t calling any cattle; they were just talking with people who may want to take them home with them.

  That’s how Anne and Joe Hardy explained it to her and Eric before they went in. Joe was Eric’s resident, and he told them just to be themselves, to always tell the truth, and, most importantly, not to worry.

  That’s when Eric said, “But why can’t we just stay here, Joe? We both like it here.”

  She saw Joe and Anne look at each other, and Joe said, “Well, Eric, you see, Pilgrims Mercy is just an emergency home. It’s available for kids who, for whatever reason, get hung up in the system and don’t have any place else to go. But, unfortunately, there’re lots of kids like that, and we only have so many beds. So they have to go to the worst cases.”

  Anne said, “Fortunately for you two, there’s a good chance people will want to foster you. You’re both nice kids, and we’re pretty sure someone will take you. Then some other kids who aren’t so lucky can have your beds.”

  “We call it churn,” Joe said, frowning. “In one door, out the other. No one likes it, but we have to do the best we can with it.”

  Then, when it was time, Joe brought them into the interview room. Connelly saw the tables and chairs set up in each corner. Grownups were on one side of the table, talking with the home kids on the other. At one of the tables she saw Julie talking to a lady. The lady was smiling and holding one of Julie’s hands, but Julie wasn’t smiling. She was looking out the window.

  Joe introduced them to Mr. and Mrs. Gunderson. Then he left them there, and suddenly they were alone with these two strangers, sitting up straight as chair-backs, staring at them.

  “Well, Father,” Mrs. Gunderson said, “they certainly look healthy enough.”

  “I don’t know, Mother,” said Mr. Gunderson. “Boy looks runty.”

  “We can feed him up,” Mrs. Gunderson replied. “Young lady, can you make beds?”

  “She’s only six,” Eric told her. “Our mom always made her bed.”

  The Gundersons both looked at him, as if they were surprised he could speak at all.

  “We own a dairy farm,” Mr. Gunderson explained. “Everyone has to pull their weight. We’ve no time for slackers.”

  While Mrs. Gunderson read their background sheet aloud to Mr. Gunderson, Connelly sat there trying to understand how they could be each other’s mother and father. They both looked old and a little mean, and she couldn’t understand it.

  When Mrs. Gunderson was finished, Mr. Gunderson asked Eric to hold out his hands. Then he examined them with his big rough-looking hands and said, “Soft as rose petals, Mother.”

  “Hands toughen, Father.”

  “Well, boy seems a might tetchy, don’t he?”

  “A might,” Mrs. Gunderson agreed.

  “I don’t abide by no tetchy boys,” Mr. Gunderson added. “I work’em hard, and they can have off every other Sunday for privates. Milking stock don’t know nothing about shutting down. Got to stay lively. No place for a tetchy runt.”

  The Gundersons stared at them a while longer, before Mrs. Gunderson said, “Well, we’ll talk about it. You can go now. Bye.”

  Eric held her hand tightly all the way out of the house, as if afraid he might lose her there, or they might somehow become separated, if he let her go.

  Outside, he did let go of her hand, and she silently followed behind him all the way back to their bench, where he plopped down and said, “Sometimes I just hate them.”

  She sat next to him. “Who, Eric?”

  “Mom and dad, that’s who.”

  She looked at him, amazed. “But why?”

  “Because they left us here, Con.” He looked at her, his anxious eyes moving back and forth behind his glasses. “Don’t you ever get mad because they left us, and now we have to do everything we don’t want to do?”

  “I don’t hate them,” she said. “I’ll never do that.”

  They sat there, when Eric said, “All I know is, we’re here and they’re not.”

  “That’s because they’re both dead, Eric,” she said, wishing he wouldn’t talk like that. She knew he didn’t hate them. Not really. And she wished he wasn’t so upset. But
she didn’t know what else to do, so she held his arm, leaning against him. And they sat there, wondering what would happen next.

  They were still there an hour later when Joe came looking for them and told them the Gundersons had decided they would keep looking, and were gone as suddenly from their lives as they had arrived.

  Chapter 8

  Churn

  In spite of what Eric had said, she could feel the changing about them—with their brand new lives at Pilgrims Mercy, and their new school, and with everyone new surrounding them—that seemed a little less frightening, with each day passing.

  At the same time, she realized she wasn’t thinking constantly of them now; that is, her mother and father: constantly looking for them everywhere, expecting to see them, and then wondering was all her life now just a bad dream that wouldn’t end. Of course, she still thought about them, almost everything she did or saw reminding her of them; but it wasn’t like the very beginning when she knew every suffocating breath would be her last if they didn’t come back to her right then. It wasn’t like that now; although, she still missed them, and her heart still ached, and her stomach still hurt, thinking about them, at least a hundred times a day.

  *

  New lives, she thought at night, lying in bed, listening to one of the girls trying to quiet Sara. They both had new lives, whether they wanted them or not. That was what she was beginning to understand. There was the before, and there was the now. And the before was gone, and she couldn’t get it back. Ever. Except what she had in her mind and could remember. And the now, which seemed to be everywhere at once, unstopping, some things nice, some not.

  At school, her favorite time was finger painting. That was her favorite time in her old school as well, letting her fingers swirl the colors about the paper, trying to make it come out like her father’s paintings, although it never quite did. Still, when she brought her paintings home, her parents always held their hands over their mouths with surprise, and her father would hang them on the wall beside one of his paintings, even though she knew they weren’t nearly as good.