She crooks her finger at me. “Get in here.”
An unsteady breath leaves my mouth as I trudge to the front door, a nauseating feeling of puke rising in my stomach. It happens every time she needs me. I get sick to my stomach at the thoughts of what she’s going to make me do creep inside my head.
When I reach the stairs, she moves back, not looking happy, but not looking sad either. She holds the door open for me, watching me with her brown eyes that remind me of the bag of marbles she made me throw away because they didn’t look right. Once I’m inside, she closes the door and shoves the deadbolt over that’s at the top. She fastens the small chain and then clicks the lock on the doorknob before turning around.
The curtains are shut and there’s a lit cigarette on a teal glass ashtray that’s on the coffee table, filling the room with smoke. There’s a sofa just behind the table and it’s covered in plastic to keep “the dirty air from ruining the fabric,” my mother told me once. She always thinks the dirt in the air is going to do something to either the house or her, which is why she rarely goes outside anymore.
“Why’d you run off?” she asks me as she walks over the sofas and flops down in it. She picks up her cigarette and ashes it, before putting it into her mouth. She takes a deep inhale and seconds later a cloud of smoke circles around her face that’s covered in sores. “Were you playing a game or something?”
I nod, because telling her I was playing a game is much better than telling her I was hiding from her. “Yes.”
She takes another breath off her cigarette and then stares at the row of cat figurines on one of the shelves lining the living room walls. Each row on the shelf is organized with figurines, according to breed. She did it once when she was having one of her episodes from too much medication, the one that makes her stay awake for a long, long time, not the stuff that makes her pass out. The glass clinking together and her incoherent murmuring had woken me up when she was rearranging the figurines and when I’d walked out she was moving like crazy, frantically trying to get the animals into order or “something bad was going to happen.” She knew it was—she could feel it in her bones. I think something bad already did happen, though. A lot of bad things actually.
“Luke, pay attention,” my mom says. I tear my gaze away from the figurines, wishing I was one of them, so I could be up on the shelf, watching what’s about to happen instead of taking part in it. She switches her cigarette to her other hand and then leans to the side, grabbing her small wooden “medication box.” She sets in on her lap, puts the cigarette into her mouth one last time, and then sets it down so she can turn on the lamp. “Now quit messing around and come here, would ya?”
My body gets really tight and I glance over my shoulder at the front door, crossing my fingers that Amy will come home and interrupt us long enough that I can find another place to hide. But she doesn’t and I’m stuck out here. With her.
“Do I have to?” I utter quietly.
She nods with chaotic frenzy in her eyes. “You need to.”
Shaking, I turn back around and trudge over to the sofa. I take a seat beside her and she pats me on the head several times like I’m her pet. She does that a lot and it makes me wonder how she sees me; if I’m kind of like a pet to her instead of her kid.
“You were a bad boy today,” she says as her fingers continue to touch my hair. I hate it when she does that and it makes me want to shave my head bald so she won’t be able to touch me. “You should have come when I called you.”
“I’m sorry,” I lie, because I’m only sorry I was found. I need to find better hiding spots and stay in them long enough that she’ll stop looking for me, then maybe I can become invisible like Amy.
“It’s okay.” She strokes my cheek and then my neck before pulling her hand away. She places a kiss on my cheek and I shut my eyes, holding my breath, trapping in a scream in because I want to shout: Don’t touch me! “I know deep down you’re a good boy.”
No, I’m not. I’m terrible because I hate you. I really do. I hate you so much I wish you were gone.
She starts humming a song she made up as she removes the lid from the box and carefully sets it aside. I don’t even have to look inside it to know what’s in it. A spoon, a lighter, a small plastic baggie that holds this stuff that looks almost like brown sugar, a thin piece of cotton, a half a bottle of water, a big rubber band thing, and a needle and syringe that she probably stole from the stash I use to give myself insulin shots.
“Now you remember what to do?” she asks, and then starts humming again.
I nod, tears burning in the corners of my eyes because I don’t want to do it—I don’t want to do anything that she tells me. “Yes.”
“Good.” She pats my head again, this time a little rougher.
I don’t watch her as she opens the baggie and puts some of the brown sugary stuff onto the metal spoon along with some water, but I can pretty much visualize her movements since I’ve seen her do this a lot, sometimes twice a day. It really depends on how much she’s talking to herself. If it’s a lot then she brings out the needle a lot. But sometimes, when she gets quieter, it’s not so bad. I like the quieter days, one’s where she’s either focused on cleaning or stuck in her head. Or I’ll even take her being passed out.
She heats the spoon with the lighter as she mutters lyrics under her breath. She actually has a beautiful voice, but the words she sings are frightening. After the spoon is heated enough, she ties the rubber band around her arm, I sit on the couch beside her, tapping my fingers on my leg, pretending I’m in there instead of here. Anywhere but here.
I hate her.
“All right, Luke, help me out, okay,” she finally says after she’s melted her medication into a pool of liquid and sucked some into the syringe.
I turn toward her, shaking nervously. Always shaking. Always nervous, all the time. Always so worried I’ll do something wrong. Mess up. She instantly hands me the syringe and then extends her arm onto my lap. She has these purple marks and red dots all over her upper forearm from all the other times the needles have gone into her. Her veins are really dark on her skin and I don’t like the sight of the needle going in just as much as she does like it. Like a routine, I point the needle toward her arm near where all the other dots on her skin are.
My hand quivers unsteadily. “Please don’t make me do this,” I whisper. “Please Mom.” I don’t know why I even try, though. She’ll do anything to get her medication. And I mean anything. Dark things that normal people wouldn’t do.
“Deep breaths, remember?” She ignores me as she wraps her free arm around the back of my neck. “Remember, don’t miss the vein. You can mess up my arm or even kill me if you’re not careful, okay?” She says it so sweetly like it’s a nice thing to say and will make me less nervous.
But it makes things worse, especially because part of me wishes I’d miss the vein. I have to take a lot of breaths before I can settle down inside and get my thoughts from going to that dark place they always want to go, reminding myself that I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t.
When I get my nerves under control the best that I can, I sink the needle into her vein, like I’ve done hundreds of times. Each time it gets to me, like I’m sticking the needle in my own skin and feeling the sting. I wince as her muscles tense a little underneath the poke of the needle. As I push in the plunger, the medicine enters her veins and seconds later she lets out this weird noise, before sinking back on the couch, pulling me down with her. I hurry and pull the needle out before we fall down completely onto the couch cushions.
“Thank you, Luke,” she says sleepily, patting my head with her hand as she holds me against her. Her throat makes this vibrating noise, like she’s trying to hum again, but the noise is trapped like I am.
I press my lips together, staring at the wall across the room, barely breathing. After a while, her arm falls lifelessly to the side, her hand hitting the floor as her eyelids flutter shut and I’m temporarily freed from her hold
.
I sit up, sucking the tears back, hating her for making me do this and hating myself for doing it and being secretly glad she’s passed out. I toss the syringe down on the table, then I push to my feet. Using all my strength, I rotate her to her side because sometimes she throws up. I have a house full of quiet now, just how I like it. Yet, at the same time I don’t like it because the emptiness gets to me. What I really want is what all the other kids have. The ones I see at the park playing on swings while their parents push them higher. They’re always laughing and smiling. Everyone always seems to be, except for me. Every time I get close I always remember this feeling I have inside me right now, this vile, icky feeling, mixed with hatred and sadness that makes me sick all the time. It always wipes the smile right off my face and I don’t even bother trying anymore. Happiness isn’t real. It’s make-believe.
I throw the syringe and spoon into the box, wondering if my life will always be this way. If I’ll always carry so much sadness and hate inside me. I’m shaking by the time I get everything into the box and I feel like I need to flee somewhere—run again. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take living here. With her.
“I can’t take it!” I shout at the top of my lungs and ram my fist into the coffee table. My hand makes this popping sound and it hurts so bad tears sting at my eyes. I cry out in pain, sinking to the floor, but of course no one hears me.
No one ever does.
Violet
(Thirteen years old)
I hate moving. Not just from house to house, but from family to family. I hate moving my legs and arms, moving forward in my life, because it usually means I’m going to someplace new. If I had my way, I’d remain motionless, never moving forward, never going anywhere. The thing is I always have to, it’s not a choice, and I never know exactly where I’m going or who I’ll be stuck with. Sometimes the families are fine, but sometimes not. Drunks. Religious freaks. Haters. Wandering hands.
The family I’m staying with now always tells me everything I do is wrong and that I should be more like their daughter, Jennifer. I’m not sure why they took me in to begin with. They seem pretty content with the child they have and I’m just a decoration, a flashy object they can show off to their friends so they can get told how great they are for taking in such a messed-up child. I’m the unwanted orphan they took in, hoping to fix me and make their family appear wonderful.
“It was so nice of you to give her a home,” a woman with fiery red hair tells Amelia, who’s my mother at the moment. She’s having one of her neighborhood shindigs, which she does a lot, then complains about them later to her husband. “These poor children really do need a roof over their head.”
Amelia glances at me, sitting in a chair at the table where I was directed to stay the entire party. “Yes, but it’s hard, you know.” She’s wearing this yellow sweater that reminds me of a canary that was a pet at one of my foster parent’s homes that never stopped chattering. She arranges some crackers and sliced cheese onto a large flowery platter and then heads for the refrigerator. “She’s kind of a problem child.” She opens the fridge door and takes out a large pitcher of lemonade. She looks over at me again, then leans toward the redhead, lowering her voice. “She’s so angry all the time and she broke this vase the other day because she couldn’t find her shoes… but we’re working on fixing her.”
Angry all the time. That’s what everyone seems to say; I’m so angry at the world and it’s understandable considering what I’ve been through, yet no one wants to deal with it. That I probably have too much rage inside me. That I’m broken. Unstable. Maybe even dangerous. All the things that no adult wants in a child. They want smiles and laughter, children who will make them smile and laugh, too. I’m the dark, morbid side of childhood. I swear they’re waiting around for me to do something that will give them an excuse to get rid of me and they can tell everyone they tried but I was just too messed up to be fixed.
“And her nightmares,” Amelia continues. “She wakes up screaming every night and she wet the bed the other night. She even came running into our room, saying she was scared to sleep alone.” Her eyes glide to the tattered purple teddy bear I’m hugging. “She’s very immature and carries that stuffed animal around with her everywhere… it’s strange.”
I hate her. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to see things that most people can’t even admit exist. The ugly truth, painted in red, stuck in my head, images I can’t shake. Death. Cruelty. Terror. People taking other peoples’ lives as if lives mean nothing. Then they leave me behind to carry the foul, rotting truth with me. Alone. Why did they leave me behind? This teddy bear is all I have left of a time when ugly didn’t consume my life.
I turn my head away from the sound of her voice and stare out the window at the sunlight reflecting against a lawn ornament shaped like a tulip, and hug the teddy bear against my chest, the one my dad gave me as an early birthday present the day before he died. There are little red, heart-shaped beads on the tulip and when they catch in the light they flicker and make dots dance against the concrete on the back porch. It’s pretty to watch and I focus on them, shoving my anger down and bottling it up—trying to stay in control of my emotions. Otherwise all the feelings I’ve buried will escape and I’ll have no choice but to find a way to shut it down—find my adrenaline rush.
Besides, Amelia doesn’t need to repeat what I already know. I know what I do every night, just like I know what I am to them, just like I know in a few months or so they’ll get tired of me and send me to another place with a different home where everything I do will annoy those people, too, and eventually they’ll pass me along. It’s like clockwork and I don’t expect anything more. Expecting only leads to disappointment. I expected things once when I was little—that I’d continue to grow up with my mom and dad, smile, and be happy—but that dream was crushed the day they died.
“Violet,” Amelia snaps and I quickly turn my head to her. She and her redheaded friend are staring at me with worry and a hint of fear in their eyes and I wonder just how much her friend knows about me. Does she know about that night? What I saw? What I escaped? What I didn’t escape? Does it make her afraid of me? “Are you listening to me?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
She crooks her eyebrow at me as she opens the cupboard above her head. “No, what?”
I set the teddy bear on my lap and tell myself to shut off the anger because the last time I released it, I ended up breaking lots of things, then got sent here. “No, ma’am.”
Her eyebrow lowers as she selects a few cans of beans out from a top cupboard. “Good, now if you would just listen the first time then we’d be on track.”
“I’m listening now,” I say to her, which results in her face pinching. “Sorry. I’m listening now, ma’am.”
She glares at me coldly as she stacks the cans on the countertop and takes a can opener out from a drawer. “I said would you go into the garage and get me some hamburger meat from the storage freezer.”
I nod and hop off the chair, taking the teddy bear with me, relieved to get out of the stuffy kitchen and away from her friend who keeps looking at me like I’m about to stab her. As I head out the door into the garage I hear Amelia saying, “I think we might contact social services to take her back… she just wasn’t what we were expecting.”
Never expect anything, I want to turn around and tell her, but I continue out into the garage. The lights are on and I trot down the steps and wind around the midsize car toward the freezer in the corner. But I pause when I notice Jennifer in the corner, along with a boy and two girls who are messing around with bikes in the garage.
“Well, well look what the dog drug in,” she sneers as she moves her bike away from the wall. Her bike is pink, just like the dress she’s wearing. I used to have a bike once, too, only it was purple, because I hate pink. But I never learned how to ride it and now it’s part of my old life, boxed away and sold along with the rest of my childhood. “It’s Violet a
nd that stupid bear.” She glances at her friends. “She always carries it around with her like a little baby or something.”
I keep the bear close and disregard her the best that I can, because it’s all I can do. This isn’t my house or my family and no one’s going to take my side. I’m alone in the world. It’s something I learned early on and becoming used to the idea of always being alone has made life a little easier to live over the last several years.
I hurry past her and her friends who laugh when she utters under her breath that I smell like a homeless person. I open the freezer and take out a frozen pound of hamburger meat, then shut the lid and turn back for the door. Jennifer has abandoned her bike to strategically place herself in front of my path back to the door.
“Would you please move?” I ask politely, tucking the hamburger meat under one of my arms and my teddy bear under the other. I dodge to the side, but Jennifer sidesteps with me, her hands out to the side.
“Troll,” the boy laughs and it’s echoed by the cackling of laughter.
“This is my house,” Jennifer says with a smirk. “Not yours, so you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
I hold up the hamburger meat, fighting to keep my temper under control. “Yeah, but your mom asked me to get this for her.”
She puts her hands on her hips and says to me with an attitude, “That’s because she thinks of you as our maid. In fact, I overheard her talking to my dad the other day, telling him that’s why they’re fostering you—because they needed someone to clean up the house.”