What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  Emotionally she is traumatized and cries often, according to the Changs. She is asking for her parents and begging to talk to the police about them. I told her the police were doing all they could.

  The police have talked to Grenadine several times. She told the police that they had to search harder to find her parents and she said they were bad at their jobs, then she apologized.

  She will be placed with Tom and Adelly Berlinsky.

  The Berlinskys have two boys, age ten and twelve, and live in a ranch home in the country. Father is a trucker, mother is a stay-at-home mother. This is their first year as foster care parents, and they seemed pleased to have Grenadine. I know they are hoping to adopt a little girl.

  Her new case worker is Connie Valencia.

  Children’s Services Division

  Child’s Name: Grenadine Scotch Wild

  Age: 6

  Parents’ Names: Freedom and Bear Wild (Location unknown)

  Date: August 8, 1982

  Goal: Adoption

  Employee: Connie Valencia

  I visited Grenadine today at the Berlinsky family home. She seems happy, although she looks kind of thinnish and has circles under her eyes, a purplish color, and bumpy bug bites on her arms.

  She wanted to know if we’d found her parents. I said no. I told her the police are still looking. I don’t like to lie to a child. Poor thing.

  Because of the trauma she has experienced, I am not concerned that she cried when I was there at the house with her and seemed scared and skinny as a skeleton. (Not really a skeleton! That’s an expression!)

  I tried to calm her down. She was in a pretty pink, long-sleeved dress with a ruffle, white tights, and shiny white shoes. She said she didn’t like her clothes because they itch.

  Mrs. Berlinsky did not leave her side at all during the visit while I asked Grenadine questions about how she was doing and what she was doing. She said she was making paintings for her parents because they’re lost (she thinks). The paintings were actually super duper. One was of three birdies flying. Each of the birdies had one of those T-shirts on with all the hippie colors on it.

  The others were of a family of smiley raccoons in a tree, the dad raccoon had a beard and the mom raccoon had a red shawl. And the other painting had a girl deer with lilies around her neck. Pretty!

  She showed me her bedroom. She has a pink bedspread and a white table and dresser. I asked her if she was excited to go to school in the fall, but she said she wasn’t going to school and that her parents taught her all the school she needed. She is a funny child.

  She looked at Mrs. Berlinsky a lot, so I think the happy bond is growing.

  I inquired with Mrs. Berlinsky if Grenadine had been to the doctor for a checkup recently, and she said it was on her schedule for ‘to do’ next week, and I asked if she had made the appointment with the counselor, and she said she would do that, too, that they were getting Grenadine all settled down, welcoming her to the home.

  The home looks messy, but Adelly assured me it was because she had been sickly with pneumonia. The father had left for another two-week trip for his trucking job, which Mrs. Berlinsky thought was good because he gives so much attention to Grenadine, the boys were getting jealous. Boys get jealous like that!

  Grenadine is flourishing like a sunny flower in this home, except for a few bruises, which Mrs. Berlinsky says is from all of her playing and skipping and hopping around outside that Grenadine is doing. The family has two dogs, a cow, goats, chickens, and three kitty cats.

  She is young and will get over her parents leaving her.

  Connie Valencia

  Children’s Services Division

  Child’s Name: Grenadine Scotch Wild

  Age: 6

  Parents’ Names: Freedom and Bear Wild (Location Unknown)

  Date: November 14, 1982

  Goal: Adoption

  Employee: Connie Valencia

  I visited with Grenadine today. She wanted to know where her parents were, if they had been found, and I said no, they weren’t found, not yet, but the police were looking. She cried and she still looks thin like a skeleton (That’s an expression!) and pale. I asked Mrs. Berlinsky if the child had been taken for her checkup and she said no, so we had a long and prickly disagreeable fightlike conversation about that.

  The other two children, the boys, were teasing Grenadine. One of them called her “their pet dog.” The other one called her “Ruff Ruff.” I told the boys, “Don’t be naughty!” Grenadine kept leaning towards me. I think she’s still shy of the boys. I had two brothers and I felt shy around them too, sometimes!!

  I talked with Mrs. Berlinsky about the teasing, and she told me she would talk to the boys. She says that Grenadine is a good girl but all she wants to do is art projects, so she asked that we buy art supplies for her, but I told her that the supplies can be bought with the money she is paid monthly for the child. Mrs. Berlinsky said she couldn’t afford to buy the child crayons, and we had another prickly fightlike conversation.

  There are marks around Grenadine’s neck, but Mrs. Berlinsky said it was because she’d helped Grenadine make a necklace of flowers and branches and a buzzing bee stung her. Grenadine has bruising on the arms, but Mrs. Berlinsky says the children play and skip around outside a lot, climbing in the loft of the barn, over the fence to the meadow, and playing in the stream.

  Grenadine’s hair seemed thinner, but I think it’s because it was back in a ponytail, like a little horse.

  Grenadine is doing well in this home, I think, and this placement is healthy and safe. I am not healthy, though! This darn cold. Sorry I’ve missed so much work lately! Poor me.

  Connie Valencia

  Children’s Services Division

  Child’s Name: Grenadine Scotch Wild

  Age: 7 (I think!)

  Parents’ Names: Freedom and Bear Wild (Location Unknown)

  Date: February 16, 1983

  Goal: Adoption

  Employee: Connie Valencia

  I visited Grenadine and she is thriving in the home.

  Children’s Services Division

  Child’s Name: Grenadine Scotch Wild

  Age: 7 (Seven years old!)

  Parents’ Names: Freedom and Bear Wild (Location Unknown)

  Date: May 26, 1983

  Goal: Adoption

  Employee: Connie Valencia

  I visited Grenadine and she is thriving, in this home.

  Connie Valencia

  Children’s Services Division

  Child’s Name: Grenadine Scotch Wild

  Age: 7 (Still seven!)

  Parents’ Names: Freedom and Bear Wild (Location Unknown)

  Date: October 22, 1983

  Goal: Adoption

  Employee: Connie Valencia

  I visited Grenadine and she is thriving in that home Berlinsky.

  Connie Valencia

  The Oregon Journal

  CSD Case Worker Inebriated, Arrested On Highway

  November 8, 1983

  By Rolando Krawchek

  A case worker with the Children’s Services Division was arrested at two o’clock Wednesday afternoon by police. Her car was weaving back and forth across the freeway and reached speeds of eighty miles per hour before crashing into a guardrail. She was arrested after she failed field sobriety tests and taken to the hospital in an ambulance when she passed out.

  Case worker Connie Valencia had alcohol, pot, and cocaine in her system. She had one of the children she supervises in the car. That child, a seven-year-old boy, sustained a concussion, broken ribs, and a broken ankle. He spent the night in the hospital but is listed in stable condition. His biological mother has said she will sue CSD from her cell in Teal Creek Correctional Institution.

  Valencia was charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving, and endangering a minor child.

  11

  I will never forget how I found out Covey was a lying, cheating scum eater.

  I was finishing a collage in
my upstairs studio for a woman named Divinity Star, who was coming by that day to pick it up. Divinity is the chief accountant of a computer firm during the day, where she goes by the name Ellen Horowitz, but in her after hours she believes she is living her fourth lifetime. She belongs to a group of ditzy women who also believe they have past lives.

  In her previous lifetimes Divinity was a peasant in Russia who inspired a minirebellion and was then burned at the stake (which is why Divinity says she doesn’t like fire), a French baker who hid people behind his loaves of bread during the French Revolution (which is why Divinity says her bread-making skills are magical), and a Canadian with royal lineage (which might explain her self-indulgent and entitled personality).

  She asked me to attend one of her meetings with other people with multiple lives the first time I met her to plan her collage.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “I don’t want to know what I did in past lives. I’ve had enough of this one.”

  She tilted her head, a pained, patronizing expression on her face like, “You are naïve. You are closed-minded,” then patted my arm, as if I were a dumb pet. “That’s a shame you don’t want to know your true self.”

  “Who are you to tell me what I want and don’t want?” My tone was sharp, and I knew it.

  “Women should know their true, eternal, ethereal selves.” Divinity flapped her hands like she was a magical fairy. “We have to know what’s happened before this journey, the dangers and passionate lovers, the adventures and murders and lessons and rendezvous. I want you to know the core of yourself, deep inside, Dina. I’m sorry you won’t take that step with me.”

  “Hey, Divinity,” I told her, pointing a purple pencil in her direction. “If you want to believe in this celestial, past-life, fantasy-fluff crap, go ahead, but don’t be condescending to me because I don’t believe I’ve been recycled through the last two thousand years.”

  Her mouth dropped, the ethereal image vanishing. “I’m sorry, Dina. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Good.” I am sensitive to people trying to undermine me or yank me down to the rung below them on the ladder. My place on the ladder is precarious enough as it is. “If you did, that would be irritating.”

  “I wanted you to be interested in who you were before—”

  “Come on, Divinity. I don’t have paint for brains, and neither do you. Cut it with the fairy dust.” I took out a handful of colored pencils and tapped them on the table. “I have twenty-six people who have already paid me for a collage and would like to take your place or the place of anyone else, including the Russian and the Frenchman, in your previous lives, today. Do you want to talk about your collage or not?” Like all my other clients she had to write me a check—that cleared—before I even started.

  “Oh, no no no! We all want to be here. I mean”—she coughed—

  “I want to be here.” Her shoulders slumped, and she stared at her red heels with the sparkly bows. Right then I knew she didn’t believe in her past lives either, but it was part of her identity. How she reached out to others . . . and how she felt superior to them.

  “Glad to hear it. So let’s talk about your collage like two people in this decade.”

  “Perfect. Let’s,” she gushed, her tone suddenly normal, not light and wispy. “I can’t wait. Thank you, Dina. I’ve been on your waitlist a long time.”

  Divinity wanted a carousel, complete with bears and lions and fancy horses. “It’s what I loved to do in my childhood,” she said. “Ride the carousel and dream, dream, dream!”

  As in, I thought, you dreamed about who you wished to be, past and future.

  On a six-by-four-foot canvas I had painted a grand carousel with gold, shiny paint. I cut up fabric to make the animals, gold satin for the lions, gray and black and white felt for the horses, and brown felt for the bears, so the animals all had texture. The bridles were made from brown yarn that I painted with a touch of gold. The saddles were pieces of cut leather with glitter on the saddle horns.

  I found tiny mirrors and attached them, too, along with gold braid, which I used to outline the entire carousel. I glued on shiny, glittery beads and shook on a liberal amount of glitter.

  I was almost done.

  I was completing the finishing touches, gluing blue beads along a mermaid’s tail, adding fake hair for the horses’ manes, and placing rows of sequins along the bottom of the carousel. As I glued on each sequin, I finalized my plans to leave Covey. As soon as Divinity picked this up, I would pack up and go. Last night was it. What he’d done was inexcusable. I was done.

  When I was in the middle of braiding the fake hair for the brown horse, I turned on the TV. Now and then I’ll watch a talk show to prove to myself that there are people crazier than me out there.

  The news came on and I hardly listened until I heard Covey’s name. I watched, through a fizzy, fuzzy fog of shock as my husband, in one of his six expensive gray suits, hands cuffed behind his back, was put into the back of a police car and driven off.

  I dropped the braided tail.

  When the police came for me, I was still sitting, the braided tail under my foot.

  That night a man named Moose Williams came in again to The Spirited Owl. I met him the first week I was here. When Tildy introduced us he shook my hand, smiled and blushed.

  He’s come in many times since then. He sits in the same chair, near my workstation, and talks to me. He is quite . . . pleasant.

  Moose Williams has red hair and is probably three or four years older than me. His grandfather’s father was born here. He has a million cousins. His family owns property in town, and a ranch, according to Tildy.

  “He’s an honest man, Grenady,” she told me. “Gentle. Smart. Wife left him ten years ago because she couldn’t tolerate small-town living. I always thought of her as The Princess. He doesn’t mess around like a horny tomcat, he’s respectful no matter who ya are, and he’s employed. Handles his family’s business. Most of the time he’s on the restaurant side with his family. He only started coming to the bar like a lovesick cow when you arrived.”

  Moose reminded me of a soft, safe Ferris wheel. The ride was pleasant, exciting at the top, but you didn’t need to do it again. I wasn’t interested.

  “I’ve seen him watching you.” Tildy pushed that white streak back. “He likes you. You gonna say yes if he asks you out?”

  “Nope, I won’t.”

  “Don’t like men?”

  There was no judgment in her voice. I appreciated that. “I like men. Sometimes. Now and then. If you’re asking if I like women, no. I don’t want a girlfriend. The thought of touching another woman’s boobs nauseates me, although I have no problem if another woman feels differently. The nauseated part, though, prevents me from being gay.”

  “Me too, darlin’,” Tildy said, hanging wineglasses upside down on a rack above our heads. “I like men in a physical sense, a roll in the hay settles out my stress and gives me a lift, but anything with a penis is suspect. Their brains lodge down there when they’re in their teens and don’t rise much higher their whole life.”

  “You take Moose, Tildy. Go ride that bronco.”

  “Too young for me.”

  “Give me a break. He’s forty if he’s a day.”

  She winked. “I’m a cougar now and then, I admit it. Growl!” She wriggled her claws. “But I’d send him home packin’ in the morning, like I do the rest of them. I need my space, and I don’t need a man invading it except to suit my purpose.”

  Moose struck me as the type of man who was shy with women but tried hard to overcome the shyness. I think I made him more shy. “Hello, Grenady,” he’d said the first night I met him. “I’m Moose Williams. Moose is not my birth name.”

  “I didn’t think it was. I cannot imagine a mother naming her son Moose.”

  “Nah. She didn’t. It was my older brothers. They called me Moose because they said I always butted them with my head. Hence, Moose. My name is Beau Williams. It’s actual
ly Beau Williams the fourth, but that makes me sound both pompous and ridiculous.”

  I laughed. “What can I get you?”

  He had me get him one of the local beers, then asked me a couple more questions about myself: Where was I from, which I answered vaguely; was I moving here permanently, which I answered even more vaguely; then I switched the topic back over to him. Men are so easily fooled. You’re fuzzy in your answers about your personal life, then ask them a question about themselves and they’re happily back on their favorite topic: Themselves.

  Dumb.

  Moose smiled, and I went back to work making a mint julep, Gin Fizz, and a Manhattan.

  I knew he was watching me, but I ignored it.

  Moose was there for three hours. He ordered another beer, he ordered dinner, dessert. He left me a twenty-five-dollar tip. I liked that because I needed the money, but I also didn’t like it because I didn’t want him thinking he was buying any of my “special” time in future.

  The next night he came in again. Then again. He knew a lot of people, and they came over to say hi to him and he introduced me. I was constantly shaking hands with his buddies, cousins, aunts, sisters, other relatives, and chatting.

  One night he waited until it was less busy, then said, “Grenady, it would be an honor if you would go to dinner with me. Please.” He waved a hand. “I’m sorry, I should have said please first. I know of a nice restaurant, it’s in Bennett City, only twenty-five minutes away, private, and they have the best pasta. How about Sunday night?”