The receptionist, who was thoroughly engrossed in her typing, gave a nervous start, swung around in her chair, and emitted a choked scream at the sight of a shining, dripping fish directly in front of her nose.
Julie took a cautious step backward but persevered. “It’s dead,” she said boldly, fighting to keep her voice empty of the sentimental pity she felt. “The other fish are going to eat it, and I don’t want to watch. It’s gross. If you’ll give me a piece of paper, I’ll wrap it up and you can put it in your trash can.”
Recovering from her shock, the receptionist carefully suppressed a smile, opened her desk drawer, and removed several tissues, which she handed to the child. “Would you like to take it with you and bury it at home?”
Julie would have liked to do exactly that, but she thought she heard amusement in the woman’s voice, and so she hastily wrapped the fish in its tissue-paper shroud and thrust it at her instead. “I’m not that stupid, you know. This is just a fish, not a rabbit or something special like that.”
On the other side of the window, Frazier chuckled softly and shook his head. “She’s dying to give that fish a formal burial, but her pride won’t let her admit it.” Sobering, he added, “What about her learning disabilities? As I recall, she’s only at a second-grade level.”
Dr. Wilmer gave an indelicate snort at that and reached for a manila folder on her desk containing the results of the battery of tests Julie had recently been given. Holding the open file toward him she said with a smile, “Take a look at her scores when the intelligence tests are administered orally and she’s not required to read.”
John Frazier complied and gave a low laugh. “The kid’s got a higher IQ than I do.”
“Julie is a special child in a lot of ways, John. I saw glimpses of it when I reviewed her file, but when I met her face-to-face, I knew it was true. She’s feisty, brave, sensitive, and very smart. Under all that bravado of hers, there’s a rare kind of gentleness, an unquenchable hope, and quixotic optimism that she clings to even though it’s being demolished by ugly reality. She can’t improve her own lot in life, and so she’s unconsciously dedicated herself to protecting the kids in whatever foster care facility she’s put into. She steals for them and lies for them and organizes them into hunger strikes, and they follow wherever she leads as if she were the Pied Piper. At eleven years old, she’s a born leader, but if she isn’t diverted very quickly, some of her methods are going to land her in a juvenile detention center and eventually prison. And that’s not even the worst of her problems right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that despite all her wonderful attributes, that little girl’s self-esteem is so low, it’s almost nonexistent. Because she’s been passed over for adoption, she’s convinced she’s worthless and unlovable. Because she can’t read as well as her peers, she’s convinced she’s completely stupid and can’t learn. And the most terrifying part of it is that she’s on the verge of giving up. She’s a dreamer, but she’s clinging to her dreams by a thread.” With unintentional force, Terry finished, “I will not let all Julie’s potential, her hope, her optimism, go to waste.”
Dr. Frazier’s brows shot up at her tone. “Forgive me for bringing this up, Terry, but aren’t you the one who used to preach about not getting too personally involved with a patient?”
With a rueful smile, Dr. Wilmer leaned against her desk, but she didn’t deny it. “It was easier to follow that rule when all my patients were kids from wealthy families who think they’re ‘underprivileged’ if they don’t get a $50,000 sports car on their sixteenth birthday. Wait until you’ve done more work with kids like Julie—kids who are dependent on the ‘system’ that we set up to provide for them and have somehow fallen through the cracks in that same system. You’ll lose sleep over them, even if you’ve never done it before.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said with a sigh, as he handed back the manila folder. “Out of curiosity, why hasn’t she been adopted by someone?”
Teresa shrugged. “Mostly, it’s been a combination of bad luck and bad timing. According to her file at the Department of Children and Family Services, she was abandoned in an alley when she was only a few hours old. Hospital records indicate she was born ten weeks prematurely and because of that and because of the poor condition she was in when she was brought to the hospital, there was a long series of health complications until she was seven years old, during which time she was repeatedly hospitalized and very frail.
“The Family Services people found adoptive parents for her when she was two years old, but in the middle of the adoption proceedings, the couple decided to get a divorce, and they dumped her back into the arms of Family Services. A few weeks later, she was placed again with another couple who’d been screened as carefully as humanly possible, but Julie came down with pneumonia, and the new couple— who’d lost their own child at Julie’s age—went completely to pieces emotionally and pulled out of the adoption. Afterward, she was placed with a foster family for what was only to be a temporary time, but a few weeks later, Julie’s case worker was seriously injured in an accident and never returned to work. From then on it was the proverbial ‘comedy of errors.’ Julie’s file got misplaced—”
“Her what!?” he uttered in disbelief.
“Don’t judge the Family Services people too harshly, which I can see you’re doing. For the most part, they’re extremely dedicated and conscientious, but they’re only human. Given how overworked and underfinanced they are, it’s amazing they do as well as they do. In any event, to make a long story short, the foster parents had a houseful of kids to look after, and they assumed Family Services couldn’t find adoptive parents for Julie because she wasn’t very healthy. By the time Family Services realized she’d gotten lost in their shuffle, Julie was five, and she’d passed the age of greatest appeal to adoptive parents. She also had a history of poor health, and when she was removed from the foster home and placed in another, she promptly came down with a series of asthma attacks. She missed large chunks of first and second grade, but she was “such a good little girl” the teachers promoted her from one grade to the next anyway. Her new foster parents already had three physically handicapped children in their care, and they were so busy looking after those children that they didn’t notice Julie wasn’t keeping up in school, particularly because she was getting passing grades. By fourth grade, though, Julie herself realized she couldn’t do the work, and she started pretending to be ill so that she could stay home. When her foster parents caught on, they insisted she go to school, so Julie took the next obvious route to avoid it—she started cutting school and hanging around with kids on the street as often as she could. As I said earlier, she’s feisty, daring, and quick—they taught her how to snitch merchandise from stores and avoid being picked up as a truant.
“You know most of the rest: Eventually she did get picked up for truancy and shoplifting and was sent to the LaSalle facility, which is where kids who aren’t doing well in the foster care system are sent A few months ago, she got busted—unfairly, I think—along with a group of older boys who were demonstrating to her their particular prowess with hot-wiring cars.” With a muffled laugh, Terry finished, “Julie was merely a fascinated observer, but she knows how to do it. She offered to demonstrate for me. Can you imagine—that tiny girl with those enormous, innocent eyes can actually start your car without a key! She wouldn’t try to steal it though. As I said, she only takes things the kids at LaSalle can use.”
With a meaningful grin, Frazier tipped his head toward the glass. “I assume they can ‘use’ one red pencil, a ballpoint, and a fistful of candy.”
“What?”
“In the time you’ve been talking to me, your prize patient has filched all that from the reception room.”
“Good God!” said Dr. Wilmer but without any real concern as she stared through the glass.
“She’s quick enough to do sleight-of-hand tricks,” Frazier added with reluctant admiration.
“I’d get her in here before she figures out a way to get that aquarium out the door. I’ll bet the kids at LaSalle would love some exotic tropical fish.”
Glancing at her watch, Dr. Wilmer said, “The Mathisons are supposed to call me right about now from Texas to tell me exactly when they’ll be ready to take her. I want to be able to tell Julie everything when she comes in here.” As she spoke, the intercom on her desk buzzed and the receptionist’s voice said, “Mrs. Mathison is on the phone, Dr. Wilmer.”
“That’s the call,” Terry told him happily.
John Frazier glanced at his own watch. “I’m having my first session with Cara Peterson in a few minutes.” He started toward the connecting door that opened into his office, paused with his hand on the knob, and said with a grin, “It’s just occurred to me that the distribution of workload in your program is grossly unjust. I mean,” he joked, “you get to work with a girl who filches candy and pencils to give to the poor, while you give me Cara Anderson who tried to kill her foster father. You get Robin Hood and I get Lizzie Borden.”
“You love a challenge,” Theresa Wilmer replied, laughing, but as she reached for the phone, she added, “I’m going to ask the Family Services people to transfer Mrs. Borowski out of LaSalle and into an area where she’ll only be involved with infants and small children. I’ve worked with her before, and she’s excellent with them because they’re cuddly and they don’t break rules. She shouldn’t be dealing with adolescents. She can’t distinguish between minor adolescent rebellion and juvenile delinquency.”
“You aren’t by any chance getting revenge on her because she told your receptionist that Julie will steal anything she can get her hands on?”
“No,” Dr. Wilmer said as she picked up the phone. “But that was a good example of what I meant.”
When she finished her call, Dr. Wilmer got up and walked to her office door, looking forward to the surprise she was about to deliver to Miss Julie Smith.
2
“JULIE,” SHE SAID FROM THE doorway, “Would you come in please.” As Julie closed the door behind her and walked forward, Terry added cheerfully, “Your time in our testing program is over. All the results are in.”
Rather than sitting in a chair, her young patient took up a position in front of Terry’s desk, her small feet planted slightly apart, hands jammed into the back pockets of her jeans. She gave a jaunty, dismissive shrug, but she did not ask about the results of the tests, because, Terry knew, she was afraid to hear the answers. “The tests were dumb,” she said instead. “This whole program is dumb. You can’t tell anything about me from a bunch of tests and talks in your office.”
“I’ve learned a whole lot about you, Julie, in the few months we’ve known each other. Would you like me to prove it by telling you what I’ve discovered?”
“No.”
“Please, let me tell you what I think.”
She sighed, then gave an impish grin and said, “You’re going to do that whether I want to hear it or not.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Wilmer agreed, suppressing a smile of her own at the astute remark. The blunt methods she was about to use on Julie were completely different than those she would normally use, but Julie was innately intuitive and too streetwise to be fooled with sugared phrases and half-truths. “Please sit down,” she said, and when Julie had slumped into the chair in front of her desk, Dr. Wilmer began with quiet firmness. “I’ve discovered that despite all your daring deeds and your show of bravado to your companions, the truth is that you are scared to death every moment of every day, Julie. You don’t know who you are or what you are or what you’re going to be. You can’t read or write, so you’re convinced you’re stupid. You cut school because you can’t keep up with the other kids your age, and it hurts you terribly when they laugh at you in class. You feel hopeless and trapped, and you hate those feelings.
“You know you were passed over for adoption when you were younger, and you know your mother abandoned you. A long time ago, you decided that the reason your birth parents didn’t keep you and adoptive parents didn’t want to adopt you was because they all realized you were going to turn out to be ‘no good’ and because you weren’t smart enough or pretty enough. And so you cut your hair like a boy’s, refuse to wear girls’ clothes, and steal things, but you still don’t feel any happier. Nothing you do seems to matter, and that’s the real problem: No matter what you do—unless you get into trouble—it doesn’t matter to anyone, and you hate yourself because you want to matter.”
Dr. Wilmer paused to let the last part of that sink in and then she thrust harder. “You want to matter to someone, Julie. If you had only one wish, that would be your wish.” Julie felt her eyes sting with humiliating tears as Dr. Wilmer’s relentless verbal thrusts found their mark, and she blinked to hold them back.
Her rapid blinking and damp eyes weren’t lost on Terry Wilmer, who saw Julie’s tears as what they were— confirmation that she’d hit raw nerves. Softening her voice, Dr. Wilmer continued, “You hate hoping and dreaming, but you can’t seem to stop, so you make up wonderful stories and tell them to the little kids at LaSalle—stories about lonely, ugly children who find families and love and happiness someday.”
“You’ve got everything all wrong!” Julie protested hotly, flushing to the roots of her hair. “You’re making me sound like some—some wimpy sissy. I don’t need anybody to love me and neither do the kids at LaSalle. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it! I’m happy—”
“That’s not true. We’re going to tell each other the complete truth today, and I haven’t quite finished.” Holding the child’s gaze, she stated with quiet force: “The truth is this, Julie: During the time you’ve spent in this testing program, we’ve discovered that you’re a brave, wonderful, and very smart little girl.” She smiled at Julie’s stunned, dubious expression and continued, “The only reason you haven’t learned to read and write yet is because you missed so much school when you were ill that you couldn’t catch up later on. That has nothing to do with your ability to learn, which is what you call being ‘smart’ and we call ‘intelligence.’ All you need in order to catch up with your school work is for someone to give you a helping hand for awhile. Now, besides being smart,” she continued, changing the subject slightly, “you also have a perfectly normal, natural need to be loved for what you are. You’re very sensitive, and that’s why your feelings get hurt easily. It’s also why you don’t like to see other children’s feelings get hurt and why you try so hard to make them happy by telling them stories and stealing things for them. I know you hate being sensitive, but believe me, it’s one of your most precious traits. Now, all we have to do is put you in an environment that will help you become the sort of young woman you can be someday . . .”
Julie paled, thinking the unfamiliar word environment sounded like an institution, like, maybe, jail.
“I know just the foster parents for you—James and Mary Mathison. Mrs. Mathison used to be a teacher, and she’s eager to help you catch up with your schoolwork. Reverend Mathison is a minister—”
Julie shot out of her chair as if her backside had been scorched. “A preacher!” she burst out, shaking her head, recalling loud lectures about hellfire and damnation she’d heard often enough in church. “No, thanks, I’d rather go to the slammer.”
“You’ve never been in the slammer, so you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Wilmer stated, then she continued talking about the next foster home as if Julie had no choice in the matter, which of course Julie realized she didn’t. “James and Mary Mathison moved to a small Texas town several years ago. They have two sons who are five and three years older than you, and unlike the other foster homes you’ve been in, there won’t be any other foster children there. You’ll be part of a real family, Julie. You’ll even have a room of your very own, and those are both firsts for you, I know. I’ve talked with James and Mary about you, and they’re very anxious to have you with them.”
“For how
long?” Julie asked, trying not to get excited at what was probably only a temporary thing that wouldn’t work out anyway.
“Forever, assuming you like it there and that you’re willing to follow one strict rule they have for themselves and their children: honesty. That means no more stealing, no more lying, and no more cutting school. All you have to do is be honest with them. They believe you’ll do that, and they’re very, very anxious to have you be part of their family. Mrs. Mathison called me a few minutes ago, and she was already on her way to go shopping for some games and things to help you learn to read as quickly as possible. She’s waiting for you to go with her and pick out things for your bedroom, so it will be just the way you like it.”
Squelching her flare of delight, Julie said, “They don’t know that I’ve been busted, do they? I mean, for truancy?”
“Truancy,” Dr. Wilmer said pointedly, stating the horrible truth, “and attempted grand theft, auto. Yes, they know everything.”
“And they still want me to live with them?” Julie countered with cutting derision. “They must really need the money Family Services pays to foster parents.”
“Money has nothing to do with their decision!” Dr. Wilmer shot back, the sternness of her voice offset by a faint smile. “They are a very special family. They aren’t rich in money, but they feel that they are rich in other ways—with other kinds of blessings, and they want to share some of those blessings with a deserving child.”
“And they think I’m deserving?” Julie scoffed. “Nobody wanted me before I had a police record. Why would anybody want me now?”
Ignoring her rhetorical question, Dr. Wilmer stood up and walked around her desk. “Julie,” she said gently, waiting until Julie reluctantly raised her eyes, “I think you are the most deserving child I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.” The unprecedented, glowing compliment was followed by one of the few physical gestures of affection Julie had ever known: Dr. Wilmer laid her hand alongside Julie’s cheek as she said, “I don’t know how you’ve stayed as sweet and special as you are, but believe me, you deserve all the help I can give you and all the love that I think you’re going to find with the Mathisons.”