“I’m going to be adopted!” Luke bragged on the way home.
Luke and I were selected to be on the Christian Television Network. A bubbly blonde reporter interviewed us in the arts-and-crafts room on campus. “What sort of family do you want?” she asked me.
“Oh, I’m not too picky,” I replied. “I just want someone to take care of us, to treat us nice—just … a family.” I hoped I had hit the right note, but Luke made silly faces and purposely yawned, stealing my moment.
“What about you, Luke?”
“I want frogs and a baseball glove and a mom.”
“In that order?” The reporter laughed. “I’m praying that people will call in if the Lord has touched their hearts, because these children are praying for a family.”
When nobody responded, I felt hopeless. I also had few expectations for my eleventh birthday later that month. It would be the same old cottage party; I would get a few generic gifts and then meet the Merritts in the therapy conference room. Whoopee.
“Happy Birthday!” Mary Fernandez said when she came to take me to the therapy wing after my cottage cake.
I did not look up from some beads I was stringing for a Thanksgiving program. “What’s so happy about it?”
“Several kids threw cake,” Ms. Sandnes said to explain my rudeness.
My therapist had more bad news. “I’m sorry you had a difficult day, and I’m sorry the Merritts can’t make it either.”
“I don’t care.”
“Ashley,” Mary Fernandez said gently, “Matthew Merritt was hit by a car.”
I dropped my beads with a clatter. “Is he okay?”
“Yes, it isn’t life threatening. They want to have your party in his hospital room.”
Bruce Weslowski, our family therapist, drove Luke and me to Tampa General Hospital.
“Happy birthday!” Mrs. Merritt sang out.
“Hey,” Mathew said, “thanks for bringing your party to me.”
Mary Miller handed out my gifts. The Merritts gave me a silver vanity set complete with brush, comb, and rotating mirror, which was the sort of elegant gift I preferred over toys. But I remember thinking that the disinfectant smell of the hospital ruined the cake’s taste.
I should have known not to anticipate a great birthday because I had always been disappointed before. Even when Mrs. Chavez hosted my ninth birthday party, it was spoiled by Amelia wearing the outfit my mother had given me. At my tenth Luke hogged my candles and messed up my cake. Now even my eleventh was a letdown. This time, at least, Luke was more interested in Matthew’s leg cast than in harassing me, but it was hardly the birthday party of my dreams.
After a while the staff felt Luke was mature enough to move into Lykes Cottage—but they were wrong. Although he was almost nine, he followed at my heels like a pesky puppy. If I ignored a request, he pulled my arm, tugged my hair, or did something so annoying that I pushed him away. I loved him; but I did not want him hanging on me all the time, so I went out of my way to avoid him.
What I could not avoid was an irrational throbbing for my mother that came in waves. As long as I kept busy, I managed to skip over most of my feelings by reminding myself that this was another bad habit, like biting my nails. But during quiet moments I could be overwhelmed by thoughts about where she was and why she had never come for me. Worst of all were the times when I couldn’t fall asleep quickly because Sabrina cried out during the nightmares caused by her abuse. Mary Miller had told me that my mother’s parental rights were gone, yet I did not think that any official pronouncement would make the slightest difference to her because she had always returned in the past—even when the caseworkers had tried to limit her visits.
I believed that she yearned for me as much as I did for her. There were times when this longing dissolved all my defenses until all that was left were tears that couldn’t be contained. If someone found me crying, I’d refuse to answer their probing questions because I did not want to have to explain my feelings to Ms. Sandnes, Mary Fernandez, and Mr. Bruce over and over, as if words alone would bring my mother back.
In many ways The Children’s Home was more pleasant than any of my foster homes, and I was not worried about them sending me away without warning because they had promised I could stay as long as I liked. I decided it would be better to remain with Ms. Sandnes, Mr. Todd, Mr. Irvin, and my friends than risk some snooty parents kicking me out the minute they tired of me. Besides, the only parent I wanted was my mother, and if I could not have her, then having nobody was better than somebody else.
The cottage staff told all the TPRed kids—the obnoxious acronym had somehow become an adjective—that we were going to have our photos taken by a professional photographer for an adoption catalog.
Mr. Irvin was surprised I was not ready. “Hey, Ashfoot”—he had given me that nickname because my feet were growing so fast—“what’s wrong?”
I lay on my bed facing the wall. “I don’t want my picture in a stupid book.”
“How will a family find you if they don’t see those cute freckles?”
“I hate my freckles and don’t care if I am ever adopted.”
“Too bad, because I know how much you like contests.” My ears perked up. I had recently won third place in a poster contest for a race-car show.
“What contest?”
“At the photography studio. The best drawing will be on the cover of the book.”
“I guess I’ll go,” I said.
“That’s my Ashfoot.” He grinned. “Just don’t let them take a picture of your feet or you might break their equipment!”
While I waited for my turn to have my photo taken with Luke, I drew a picture of two couples. On the left was a man in a suit and a woman wearing a long dress and pearls standing next to a three-story house. Beside a ranch house on the right was a man in a T-shirt and shorts and a woman dressed in a blouse and short skirt. Underneath the picture I wrote:
I’d love a family rich or mid as long as they want a loving kid. If they love me and care for me, that’s all I want in a family
I was very pleased with it, but nobody told me whether I had won or not.
On Easter Sunday the Lykes staff took us to one of our sponsor’s homes—an elegant waterfront mansion—for an egg hunt. There was a five-dollar bill in every plastic egg! Within a few minutes, some of us had more money than we had been able to accumulate in a year of cottage allowances. As we drove away from the upscale neighborhood, I stuck my head out of the van’s window and shouted, “Hey! Anyone want a kid?” It seemed as useful a recruiting strategy as anything else.
There were several events on campus to which alumni and their families were invited. We suspected some shoppers were sprinkled in as well. One of these was the opening of the summer Murphey Awards, the campus’s mini-Olympics. As everyone gathered by the flagpole for the Pledge of Allegiance and some patriotic songs, I scanned the crowd to see if there was anyone who seemed to be paying attention to me. I heard some laughter from the audience and realized that Luke had wriggled to the front and was miming the words to the song.
“Isn’t he darling?” a slim woman in tight slacks gushed to her husband.
“We have an annual essay contest, and the winner gets to deliver it,” the announcer said. “This year the honor goes to the pride of the Lykes Lions, Ashley Rhodes.”
I stepped to the lectern and began delivering the speech I had written in verse.
Again, I heard inappropriate laughter. Luke was making faces. I wanted to strangle him, but I plowed on and the audience rewarded me with resounding applause. Afterward some Children’s Home staff members praised me, but most of the strangers fawned over my towheaded brother, which infuriated me further.
At my first adoption picnic, Luke climbed a tree and refused to come down. I pretended I did not know him and went home with the first vanload of kids. When they announced the July picnic, I told Ms. Sandnes I did not want to go.
“Why not, Ash?” she asked.
&nb
sp; “They’re like slave auctions!” She waited. “I thought the parents were going to bid on us after we left.”
The morning of the picnic Ms. Sandnes came into my room and pulled out my favorite outfit. “I love you in this color,” she said.
I turned my back on her. “I am not going!”
She handed me the turquoise shirt and white shorts without saying anything more. I put them on, then went through all my jewelry, slowly putting on every necklace and bracelet I owned. She herded me to the van.
The midday July sun beat down on Rowlett Park. I felt dizzy in the heat and headed to the shadier pavilion. A little girl’s pink balloon floated by my face, and I pushed it away rudely. Parents strolled the perimeter gawking at us as if we were freaks.
“Hey, look at me!” Luke called. He was dribbling his snow cone in the dirt to make a pattern, but most of it stained his shirt. I suspected that nobody wanted me because Luke was part of the package.
“Hi there.” A woman came up beside me. “May we get you a cold drink?” I looked up at a couple wearing matching khaki shorts and Polo shirts with the collars at preppy salute. Their name tags read JESS and LES. Somehow I found myself in line for sodas with Jess while Luke’s worker steered him into the line.
Jess pulled out some waterless hand cleaner while her husband went to get the four of us hot dogs. “Ashley, we use this before we eat.”
Another lady, whose name tag read GAY, turned around. “I like your necklaces,” she said.
I gave her a polite half smile. Jess quickly redirected my attention and guided me to where we would be sitting.
After lunch another worker said there was someone else she wanted us to meet, but Luke took the opportunity to bolt toward the baseball diamond. Somebody chased him as another woman asked me the usual dumb questions about what grade I was in and what my favorite color was.
“We’re taking Luke back,” Mr. Todd said. “Do you want to go with us?”
“Sure,” I said, because I was sick of potential parents who chatted for a few seconds, then went in search of cuter, younger specimens.
“Look at all the stuff I won!” I showed Mr. Todd my bulging goody bag. Luke tried to grab it and it ripped. Favors started to fall out.
“May I help you?” a kind-eyed man asked.
“I won so much stuff that I can’t hold it all!” I crowed.
“Wait a sec.” The man found a larger bag that had contained brochures and helped consolidate my trinkets.
“That should do it,” said the man with PHIL written on his name tag. He carried the bag to the van for me. I figured he was one of the workers from another agency and forgot about him the minute we left the adoption fair.
I was anxious about several upcoming changes in my life. I had to have an egg-size cyst removed from my back, which was a relief because Will had started calling me “Humpback.” I was also about to start middle school, where I would be a lowly sixth grader. None of that would have been so daunting if the worst thing in the world was not about to happen: Ms. Sandnes was leaving to get her master’s degree in social work! Well, I told myself, she wasn’t my family, so it didn’t really matter. I started thinking about ways to find out where my mother might be and how I might contact her. While the authorities had kept my whereabouts a secret from her, she might be living nearby, hoping I would find her.
Added to that, I was being awakened by frightening dreams that involved shouts in the dark, men with bloody hands, and women screaming. Before I could fall back to sleep, I would go sit with the night security guard and sip a glass of water. Nothing was private at the cottage. Logbooks of our behaviors were kept. So after I answered one sympathetic guard’s questions, Mary Fernandez brought the subject up at therapy. I hated rehashing everything—and I was a little bit afraid she would want to link my bad dreams to my feelings about my mother—so I vowed to keep any future nightmares to myself.
Just before school started, the whole campus—including cottage staff and therapists—moved to the camp that we had attended the year before. There was a cool lake for tubing, waterskiing, and fishing; a swimming pool; crafts; even archery and BB gun ranges.
One afternoon a man was filming the kids in the pool. “Mr. Cameraman, watch this!” I said before I attempted my first dive. When I popped up, I looked in his direction. “Did you get it?”
“Sure did,” the familiar-looking man responded.
“What are you filming?” one of the other kids called out.
“A movie about camp,” he called back.
Nothing special registered in my brain. I was looking forward to that evening’s capture-the-flag contest, because I often led the pack. Later, as we sat around the bonfire singing folk songs and roasting marshmallows, I thought: This is what regular kids do. Okay, maybe we had more than our share of emergency room visits, like the time one of the boys had to get BBs sucked out of his ears, but in the beautiful forest by the lake, the insanity seemed less intense. Best of all, I was too busy most of the time to worry about losing my mother—and now Ms. Sandnes.
After camp I had my cyst removed. The doctor did not give me sufficient anesthetic, so it wore off in the middle of the surgery. Then he removed the stitches too early and the wound ruptured. The resulting scar was uglier than the cyst. Will changed my nickname from “Humpback” to “Scar.” I did not care about it as much as the fact that Ms. Sandnes was leaving in only a few days. The idea of not having her any longer made me ache like there was something wrong with my bones.
The day of her departure we handed her farewell cards. Sabrina started clinging to her, and then Sam and Will latched on as well. I watched from a distance as Ms. Sandnes tried to disengage them. “I’ve got to go now.” She gave me a half smile. “I’ll be around for my internship, so it’s not like I’m going to China.”
An overwhelming sensation crushed my chest so that I could barely breathe. I felt as though I were having a heart attack.
“We won’t let her leave!” Sam shouted.
Leroy ran outside and jumped on the hood of her car. Ms. Sandnes looked over her shoulder and back at me. She did not know which way to turn. Sam and Will had joined Leroy. Ms. Sandnes peeled Sabrina off. Then Sabrina also rushed out to the car.
Ms. Sandnes’s eyes were teary as she came toward me. “Ash, I’ll miss you.” I fell into her arms and, for the very first time, hugged her as if I would never let go. “Ash …” I heard the catch in her throat. “Everything good is going to happen for you. I know it.”
“You’re the only g-good thing—” I jerked away and rushed out the door. Sam, Will, and Sabrina were lying under the wheels of the car. Leroy sat on the hood. I threw myself against the driver’s door. “Don’t leave me!” I sobbed.
Another staff member helped peel us off the car while Ms. Sandnes climbed into the driver’s seat. She checked to make sure she was not backing up on any of us and then drove off without waving.
I did not know what Ms. Sandnes knew: I had a family.
Mr. Todd interrupted my dinner and asked me to step out into the lobby. “What did I do?” I asked in response to his stern look.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Ms. Beth just wants to ask you something.” He led me to her office. Instead of returning to the cafeteria, he slouched against the door.
“Ashley,” Ms. Beth began in her gentlest tone. “How would you feel if you and Luke were both adopted—but by different families who live near each other?”
“Whatever you think’s best.” I gulped for air. “D-do I have a family?”
“We just wanted your opinion so we could check out some options.”
There was something odd about her expression that made me think this wasn’t theoretical, but I was too timid to ask anything else.
When I returned to the cafeteria, Mr. Irvin handed me my plate, but I waved it away. “You done?” he asked.
My stomach felt as if it would reject anything I ate, so I said, “I guess.”
“I understand,�
� he said with a wink that could have meant that he knew something or merely that it was okay to skip the meal.
The next day a staff member told me that I had a dental appointment. Ms. Sharon Williamson, my new primary, came into my room. “You ready?”
“I have to brush my teeth first.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t I going to the dentist?”
“Oh.” She looked uncomfortable. “You have to see Ms. Beth … first.”
“Hi, Ashley,” Ms. Beth said. She handed me a blue book with gilt-edged pages.
“You can open it!” Ms. Sharon’s voice sounded like she was more excited to see it than I was.
I looked down. Album was written in gold script. I turned the page to see the exterior of a two-story house. I flipped to the next page. It read: A recent photo of the Courter Family.
“Do you remember seeing these people at the last adoption picnic?” Ms. Sharon asked.
“No.”
“They’ve been around the campus and also filmed at camp.”
The cameraman wanted to adopt me? Did that happen after he saw me dive or before … or … ? I stared at the first family portrait. One son was in a cap and gown; the other son and the father were wearing shirts and ties, while the mother had on a striped suit and a floppy hat. They looked stiff and their smiles were goofy. Nobody looked familiar. The images blurred. “May I take it back to the cottage?”
“Of course, Ashley, it’s yours,” Ms. Beth said.
Ms. Sharon and I crossed the quad. The dentist was forgotten. I called to the kids watching television, “I’ve got a family,” and tossed my album on the table.
Three Little Words Page 14
