“Didn’t you ever see anyone with asthma before?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “Maybe you’re the one got something wrong with you.”
Well, that was it. See, I’m pretty sure no one in her whole life said anything like that to Debbie D’Olympio. Least of all the likes of James Kovacs Jr.
I stared at the cute mouth where she’d held my Camel a few minutes earlier and wondered how I could take it back. I tried to chuckle like I was just kidding or something.
“Debbie, you know I didn’t mean—”
But before I could get it out, I heard the rasp of the kid’s breath, and it was just like that day in the dang shack. Instead of thinking about Debbie like I shoulda been, my mind went back to the days when the kid first came, and how she had stood in the picture window for hours, waiting for some guy in a yellow station wagon to come and beat the crap outta her for nothing. All while Debbie sat in that nice split-level house. And you know what? I wasn’t sorry. Nah, I wasn’t a bit sorry.
Not that it woulda mattered. Debbie D’Olympio didn’t even say goodbye. She just walked away, picking up speed as she hit the pavement like she was running from a burning house. And heck, maybe she was.
Any kid in his right mind woulda told the wheezing Indian to scram and run after her. But me? I just sat there on that rock and let Debbie go. After a while, a shudder took hold a me as the cold came through my cheap jacket. I fired up another smoke, making sure not to breathe on the kid.
By then, my lungs were kinda burning, and every time I exhaled, the angry plume got bigger. “I hope you’re happy. You just ruined the best day of my life.”
“I made prettiest girl in the whole damn city go away,” she said, nodding.
“Jeez, you don’t have to smile about it. And Ma would wash your mouth out with soap she heard you curse like that.”
“Ma,” she repeated. As if the word tasted sweet in her mouth.
“Hah. You musta forgot what she’s like—because she’d be giving you a whoopin’ right about now.” I reached in my pocket and gave her the Sky Bar I’d brought for Debbie. Not that she deserved it, but I didn’t need no reminders. That’s when I noticed the shiny red ribbons tied to the end of Agnes’s pigtails, her fancy wool coat. She even had fur mittens like Debbie’s.
“Looks like them Dohertys are treating you pretty good, huh?”
She bit into the caramel square first just like she always did. “Mommy takes us swimming on Tuesday. Even in the winter. And I have my own bathing suit. A green one.” She scowled as she moved on to the fudge square. “Only she’s not really my mommy.”
“Yeah, well, real or not, she’s probably going ape by now. From what Ma says, this cold air ain’t good for the asthma, neither. You know the way home?”
She pointed toward Grainer Street. “That way. Mommy’s house is on the corner. A white one with green windows.”
“You mean shutters?”
“Shutters.” She touched her chest like she did when Zaidie taught her something, like she was taking the word inside herself. “See?”
It was just an ordinary word, but when she said it, I could tell what she was thinking about. Or who.
“You still miss her, huh?”
“My sister,” she whispered.
If Ma’s name was sweet to her, Zaidie was like one a Nonna’s holy saints. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it out loud. I was sorry I brung it up. Or that I’d ever played that silly “See?” game with her.
So there I was feeling sorry for ninety-nine things that weren’t my damn fault when outta the blue, the kid says, “Mommy was here looking for me.”
“Here? You mean today? While you were sitting here with me?” I jumped to my feet.
The kid pointed to the playground, not the least bit flustered. “Over there. Kathy, too. They don’t see us, though.” Then she corrected her grammar, all proud a herself. “Didn’t. Did not see us.”
“What the heck, Agnes? You saw your mommy and you didn’t say anything? How long ago?”
“Right before the prettiest girl leaved.” She popped the marshmallow square into her mouth. “This is the Jimmy piece, on account of it’s the sweetest one.”
“For cryin’ out loud, Agnes. Good old Mommy’s probably home calling the cops right now and you’re sitting here, naming the squares of your Sky Bar. Lady probably thinks you’re kidnapped or something. And when they see me, they’re gonna—”
I started for the street, pulling her by the hand. “Let’s get going. One block down Grainer, you say? Hurry up—but don’t run. No matter what, do not run.” Okay, I wasn’t making a lot of sense, but it had been a pretty messed-up day. And now I had to worry the cops and some crazed Mommy might be looking for us.
As we walked, I couldn’t help noticing that all traces of the asthma attack that wrecked my life were gone. She even had the nerve to smile at me. It woulda been pretty aggravating, but I figured when someone hurts you bad as that Mr. Dean did to her, you go one of two ways. You either walk around scared shitless for the rest of your dang life, or you turn out like Agnes.
Her new home was so close that we could see it from the sidewalk of the school. Four houses down. No streets to cross.
“That the house with the green shutters you were talking about?”
Agnes let go of my hand and nodded. Then she pointed in the opposite direction. “You go that way and I go to the green shutters. Then Mommy won’t call the cops on you.”
“Heck, did you think I was really afraid of that? Let’s go.” I tried to reclaim her hand.
Agnes shook her head and touched the center of her chest the way she did when she learned a new word or had something important to say. “I go by myself, I said.”
Like I told you, when that kid made up her mind, there was no changing it; and since there were no streets for her to cross, I didn’t argue. I looked back a couple of times until she reached the house, though. And every time I did, she spun around and gave me that smile of hers. Almost like she could feel my eyes on her.
On the way home, the whole dumb afternoon tumbled around in my head—the taste of Debbie’s Teaberry gum, the way she tilted her head when she asked me to go to the shack, and that thing that come over me when I walked around the Grainer School and saw her waiting for me in her pink parka. Best feeling I ever had in my life.
I walked a little faster. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could still go home and call her. But then the kid’s dang smile came back to me—and the way Debbie looked at her when she said the word wrong. Shoot.
Worst part was I couldn’t even blame Debbie for it. Just like you couldn’t blame people in town for acting the way they did when they caught Richard J. Cartier picking through the trash. None of those people had ever got as close to the bum as I did the day I give him that cigarette. Just like Debbie had never seen the kid standing in the window, watching for the yellow station wagon. Sometimes even in the middle of the dang night. And Debbie hadn’t been there the first time the kid laid down in the snow to make angels, neither. But I had. Suddenly, I was furious at Ma.
“Everything you do, no matter how small, has a consequence,” she liked to say.
One of what we called her personal Ten Commandments.
“And everything you don’t do,” Dad chimed in, looking around the house. “That adds up, too.”
But did either of them ever think of the consequences of bringing all those Emergencies into our house? How every one of them changed us? It made me mad till I remembered that once, someone had stood outside the house at 100 Sanderson holding a sorry-eyed kid name of James Kovacs Jr. And for some reason no one can ever explain, Ma had opened the door.
With my whole life and probably a little of Richard J. Cartier’s rolling around in my head like that, it was no wonder I never noticed the kid was following me. My first hint shoulda been the happy howl Princie let up when she spotted me from the picture window. I mean, the dog’s always glad to see me, but this was different.
Ma came and stood in the door, with Jon behind her. “Why is Princie barking like that?” But by the way his voice rose, you could tell he knew before he finished the sentence.
“Jimmy, what in the world—”
She was saying my name, but Ma’s eyes were on the spot behind me. And when I turned around, there was the kid I thought I left on Grainer Street, smile blazing like a fire that nothing in the world could put out.
“I come home, Ma!” she said, as Princie and Jon pushed through the storm door and leaped on her. “Home!”
Chapter Eight
The Fifth Time
ZAIDIE
THE FIRST TIME AGNES RAN AWAY TO OUR HOUSE, MRS. DOHERTY came to pick her up.
She was the tallest woman I’d ever seen and she sat on the edge of the couch straight as a parrot on her perch.
“We thought you were happy with us, Agnes.”
It sounded like an accusation, but I could tell her feelings were hurt, too. I studied her from across the room. Though I didn’t like her much, I couldn’t help thinking of Eleanor Roosevelt, who refused to make herself small for anyone. After I finished reading about her in my Biography for Young Readers, I’d torn her picture from the front of the book and tacked it on my wall. It wasn’t right, but sometimes you need something so bad, no one can stop you from taking it. Not even yourself. That’s what Jimmy says anyway and he would know.
Agnes was small and alone, but she had her way of not letting anyone make her feel little. She sat on the other end of the couch with her hands folded and said nothing until the girl who was supposed to be her new sister began to sniffle. Noisily.
“Sorry, Kathy, but I already—”
Ma stopped her there. “No, Agnes, you don’t. Now please apologize to Mrs. Doherty—I mean, Mommy—for all the trouble you caused.”
Agnes turned back to her hands, so Ma said the words for her—extra loudly like she did when she was speaking for two. “We’re sorry we worried you, Mrs. Doherty, and we promise it won’t happen again. Don’t we, Agnes?” Her eyes remained on the mute Agnes. “Well, don’t we?”
At that moment, I wished Eleanor Roosevelt could see my sister. The way she kept her peace.
“Don’t worry,” Jimmy said to fill the quiet. “I won’t be going to the Grainer playground anymore anyway, so even if she wants to run away, she won’t have no one to follow.”
That might have convinced the grown-ups, but us kids? We all knew how quickly Agnes learned. When I tried to prepare her for school, she’d memorized the alphabet in a single day, and Jon only had to show her the twisty shortcut to Tucker’s store once before she was cutting through yards and alleys like she’d been going there all her life.
WITHIN A WEEK, she’d run away to our house three more times. It didn’t matter how angry Dad got when he had to drive her home again, or that after a call from Nancy, Ma lectured her about ruining her chance.
“If they can convince your mother to sign the papers, the Dohertys want to adopt. Do you know what that means?” she asked every time.
But Agnes just gave her the Eleanor Roosevelt look. Only when we were alone did she answer. “But I want you adopt me, Zaidie.”
THEN, AS ABRUPTLY as they had begun, the visits stopped. When almost two weeks passed and she didn’t come back, Ma said, “See. All she needed was a little time to get used to it over there. With any luck, this will be a permanent home for her.”
Another week had slipped by when I picked up the extension in the foyer and heard Mrs. Doherty’s voice on the other end of the line. “Don’t even bother bringing her home this time,” she told Ma. “I’ve already called the department. They can pick her up at your place in the morning. God knows where the child will end up now.”
Ma hesitated. “Are you saying Agnes isn’t there? How long—”
There was a minute of quiet in which both mothers forgot to blame or be angry with each other long enough to absorb what had happened. A minute in which I imagined the two of them, each in their separate houses, peering out their windows into the descending dark.
“Oh, dear God,” Mrs. Doherty gasped. “Well over three hours ago. Where could she possibly be?”
Chapter Nine
The Trouble with Girls
DAHLIA
THE DAY I FILLED OUT THE APPLICATION TO BECOME A FOSTER mother I tried to tell them: boys only. I can still see the lady who came to do my home interview, looking up from her forms.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just, um, better with them,” I explained, feet crossed neatly at the ankle. If I had any idea how desperate they were for homes, I wouldn’t have been so nervous. Even put on a scratchy pair of nylons.
The truth was I knew too much about how things go wrong for girls. Oh, they start off bright and hopeful enough. Take my poor Zaidie—inhaling all those biographies, a picture of her latest hero tacked on the bedroom door every week, even thinks she might become the president of the United States, for heaven’s sake. No idea how the world would take back its promises one by one. You? A foster kid? A girl thin as a spindle, not even pretty? Did you really think we meant you when we said you could be anything you wanted to be? Sometimes she reminded me so much of myself I had to look away.
“There’s no place on the application form for that, Mrs. Moscatelli, but I’ll make a note,” the lady said, pretending to jot it down. “Better . . . with . . . boys.” She put her pen away and packed up to go. “All right, then.”
I followed her onto the front porch. “And no hoodlums, either,” I called after her. “In fact, no teenagers at all. Little ones are what I want. Well-behaved little boys.” I didn’t think it was necessary to add that these nice little boys should also be Caucasian.
She climbed into her car and opened the window. “No teens. No problem cases,” she repeated, nodding. “Got it.”
Little did I know that once they had me in the system, they’d do what they wanted. Just like they did with the kids. No problem cases? They must have had a good hoot over that one.
In the past eleven years, we’d had girls who blocked the toilet with their tampons because no one ever taught them better, and more delinquents than I can count, including the one who busted a hole in the garage window with his fist, leaving blood stains on the cement floor that will never go away. Colored kids, too. That always got the neighbors riled up, even though the twins who stayed with us for almost six months were probably the best behaved boys we ever had. Most didn’t leave blood stains, but they might as well have for all we could forget them. And finally this—a sickly Indian with a growth problem no one ever took the time to figure out. Another girl, to boot. In the middle of all my worry, I was damn furious.
On the phone, Mrs. Doherty had insisted she call the department. “It’s my responsibility—at least, for the next sixteen hours.”
I imagined her consulting her watch, estimating to the minute how long it would be before Nancy arrived to take Agnes away.
“The cops, too. You need to get a hold of the Claxton Police Department. Make sure you tell them it’s been three hours.”
“My husband has friends on the force. How will it look if I . . . In any case, I’m sure the department will phone—”
“Good heavens. She’s six years old and she’s out there somewhere in the dark. Call every number you can think of. And if they don’t find her, call again.”
“Well.” Within a minute, the shame and fear I heard in her voice had spun itself into resentment—a turn I knew all too well. “If your son had only stayed on his own side of town, none of this would have—”
“You can blame Jimmy or me or anyone else all you want later, but right now, you need to call the cops.” I slammed down the phone harder than I intended.
Zaidie was the first to get her coat on when Lou and Jimmy went out to search. “Not you. You stay here with your mother,” Lou told her, more gruff than necessary.
“But I know her best. I know where she’d—”
&
nbsp; “Just Jimmy and me, I told you.” Harsher still.
Finally, he turned to me like he always did. The universal translator. “We’re going to be looking through the fields and alleyways she mighta passed. Last thing I need is . . . her slowing us down.”
Both Zaidie and I heard the catch in his voice. In his mind, he was already surveying the vacant lots. We shuddered at the same time.
“But she’s my sister,” Zaidie whispered pitifully after they’d gone.
Defiantly, she opened the door and let Princie out—even though Louie had expressly forbidden it.
“Go ahead, girl. Find Agnes!” Zaidie told her. “Find. Agnes.”
Princie stopped and barked once, almost as if she understood. Then she took off in the direction Lou and Jimmy had gone, almost knocking Lou’s mother over as she climbed out of her car.
“Dio mio! Watcha my ricotta pie,” she yelled after her, shaking a fist with one hand as she balanced her pie with the other. “Stupid cane bastardo!”
I sighed. My mother-in-law had the uncanny ability of showing up at exactly the wrong moment with one of her pies. As soon as she heard Agnes was missing, she pulled out her beads and started with the praying and pacing.
“Dear God, Anna, can you do that in the kitchen? My nerves are shot to hell as it is.”
I’d never spoken to her like that before. She stopped, the way she had the first time Louie brought me home. Then as now, she gave me a good looking-over, deciding if all the rumors she’d heard about me were true. She took her beads into the kitchen.
I could still hear her, though. Spoken in emotional Italian, it sounded more like high opera than the rosary. Whenever she passed the stove her beads clicked against metal, marking the time since Agnes had gone missing. Made me jump every damn time.
Meanwhile, Jon had taken out two cars, his and Agnes’s favorites, and crawled under the table where they had played the last time she was here, narrating the race for both of them. His form of prayer, I thought.
All the Children Are Home Page 6