by Monroe, Anya
He looks a mess.
Not the kind of mess
that is me.
The kind of mess that makes people
wonder why he hasn’t bathed.
Wonder why Ms. F caved
and let him come here
on Thanksgiving Day.
Ms. Francine is right where she needs to be,
getting numbers and a list of prescriptions
from the social worker dropping
off my Benji.
I wish there was a little more
laughing and smiling
like Ms. F and Margot did when
she showed up on the very same
.
But Benji looks at me
pissed.
I’ve always been so good at reading him.
I went out on a limb
getting him
here today.
A hug would’ve been nice.
33.
Ms. Francine follows us up to the bedroom
that Benji will use during his stay
of the next four days.
My room right next to his room
where it should be.
To do my job of keeping him close.
After Ms. F goes through a list of rules:
- no smoking
- no fighting
- no knives
- no running away
I look at her
thinking, give me us a break.
He’s just a
little boy
as she searches the bag
he brought upstairs.
“Ms. F, he’s cool. Why are you doing that to him? You never do that to me.”
And she looks at me like I’m the fool in the room.
Not her.
“Honey, you’re not Benji. Okay? I am doing my job here, to keep everyone safe.”
She unzips the pouch on the front of the bag
pulling out
a pocket knife,
forty-two dollars cash,
a lighter,
and what looks to be
a stash
of cigarette butts.
I look from him to her
and see he has his arms crossed
feet apart.
He’s looking for a fight
with this tall
wide woman
who works at a
library.
But I know Ms. F doesn’t play
those kinda games.
Her games
are the only ones
we play at this house.
Games she calls:
I’m gonna meet you where you’re at
or
I’m not working harder at this than you are
or
Is that your plan?
I’ve been here nearly a year
so I know how to play by the rules.
Most days.
But the only games
Benji has ever played are the ones our dad taught us
and in those games
we always lost:
You looking at me, you piece of shit?
Or
If you say a single word I’m coming after your sister
Or
You think you’re special because you’re mommy’s special boy?
The rules games at “home”
were a lot different than the ones
here.
“Benji, I’m going to take these things for now, and when you leave you can have them back. I don’t know all the rules at the group home you’ve been at, but I do know the rules at my house. And this stuff isn’t going to fly. Okay?”
Benji doesn’t look at her.
He looks headlong out the window
a blank stare on his
freckled face.
34.
Sitting on the back steps
with my hoodie zipped up
and my fingers poking out of the holes
I cut in the cuff.
I ask, “Benji, you okay? Being here? You seem pissed.”
Pissed at me.
“I have something I wanna talk to you about, later,” I tell him. “After all these people leave. Okay?”
A plan that involves me, you, and mom.
Her getting it together
so we can go back
and have a chance at forever.
But I don’t say that yet, the time’s not right.
“Is it a plan to run away, Lou-Lou? That’s what the money was for. For us to go. Take a bus, or whatever, and leave.”
He’s mad that
Ms. Francine took his bus fare.
His only way to get outta here.
“She’ll give it back when the weekend’s over, Benji. You can trust her.”
And I know that word rolls
down his spine
just like it does mine.
Because
Trust
Means
Something
Different
To
Everyone.
35.
Everyone sits at the big long table.
Pumpkins and leaves
line the center
and they curve
around the glasses
and the goblets
like my feelings
curve around my heart.
I want Benji here
but not like this.
I want my little Benji baby back.
The one who
would laugh as
I blew bubbles
on his belly.
The one who
let me fly airplanes
of oatmeal as
I fed him bites
of breakfast.
The one who
called out
“Lou-Lou ba-ba”
holding up
his empty bottle.
I was just
a seven-year-old girl
trying to break a toddler’s habit
but knowing
his bottle
was one of the only things
that made him grin.
Let me win
him over.
Everyone goes around the table
saying grace
in the way of
giving thanks.
“I’m thankful for Margot being here today,” Ms. Francine says, squeezing her sister’s hand.
“I’m thankful for my wife’s patience this year as I completed my PhD,” says the man across from me.
“I’m thankful for the support of friends and family, as I battled cancer this year,” a lady, Ms. F’s friend from work, chokes out.
Most people are misty-eyed,
but my eyes are wide and white
my turn’s next.
I look over at Benji, whose eyes
say nothing at all.
I look down the table and see Margot
who has eyes that say
everything.
I wonder how to be
thankful
when everything
feels like nothing.
36.
“Go ahead, dear,” Cancer Lady says, expectantly.
Suddenly all eyes
misty
blank
or otherwise
are on me.
So I say the first thing I can think of
thinking it was wrong
the moment it got out
of those purple streaked lips of mine.
“I’m thankful the turkey didn’t burn.”
But no one here thinks it was the wrong thing.
Suddenly everyone’s laughing.
“On that note, dinner is served!” Ms. F announces.
Big heaping platters get passed around
and Cancer Lady never once frowns
at me for eating too fast
or dripping the gravy
on the tablecloth.
She just keeps asking if
I want more
cranberry sauce
or stuffing (the real kind)
and I say yes.
The real reason I’m
thankful for the turkey
not burning
is because this is the first
real Thanksgiving dinner
Benji’s ever had.
Even though he’s trying
so hard to be
ticked off
and annoyed.
Trying so hard to be a
twelve-year-old boy.
I know
that inside he’s happy.
And it has everything
to do with being
here
next
to
me.
37.
“So you just want to go to bed?” I ask.
Now, so early?
Dessert just finished
the other guests just left.
But I guess he has other things on his mind.
Other ways he wants to spend his time.
He goes off to bed.
Leaving me alone downstairs
with Ms. Francine and Margot
who are talking
in the whispered way
that means they have some catching up to do.
I’m not blind enough to miss those cues.
I say
goodnight to them.
They smile and nod
but don’t ask me to stay
to be a part of their time
to be a part of their space.
I head up to bed.
A little let down
at the lack of
catching up my brother wants
to have with me.
I wonder why he’d rather be
alone
on a night like this.
A night that is rare
for kids like us.
For kids who spent years going to bed
hungry
hurt
and broken
down.
This year
could have been
different.
38.
I let myself cry
those tears I usually keep
real nice and tight
in my chest.
I let myself cry
those tears I usually keep
real close inside
where I feel buried alive.
I’m sounding like a broken CD
a stuttering track
muffled sounds
trying to get out
and I can’t let all of it out.
If I do
it’ll never go back in right where it belongs.
It belongs in my heart
pop chart of sing-a-long songs
that nobody can ever hear but me.
If they hear it
they’ll freak out.
Freak out about Benji and me
and our problems
so big.
Don’t want to bother them now.
Let Ms. F have this night with her sis.
I would spend it with Benji if it
were my last dying wish.
So I won’t hold the laughter
I hear on that couch just one floor below
against the women
sitting there because they don’t
owe a thing
to this soul.
If Benji doesn’t want me
wait till I tell him
the truth of
what Terry said.
He will understand my happiness
and my faith in this
broken
fucking
system.
Just wait till I tell him the plan.
39.
Apparently the tradition
has existed since the beginning of mankind.
Friday after turkey day they go and find
a tree to cut down for
Christmas.
“Isn’t it a little early?” I ask. “I mean, isn’t Christmas like a whole month away?”
Margot laughs. “You don’t know my sister!”
I guess I don’t.
I mean, I came to Ms. Francine’s door
step
right after the New Year
‘bout eleven months ago.
I was looking totally
unkempt-
the last foster home
had been a joke.
By joke
I mean a million
toddlers running around
all these kids there
lost
never to be found.
They could
have stayed there longer
you know, me as the
perpetual babysitter.
I filled the role seamlessly
a little too easily
because the foster mom
Jodie Lynn Cratchett
let me do all the work
I spent the first thirteen
years of my life
perfecting.
Taking care of kids Benji.
Letting the adults around me keep
regressing
back to the role of do-nothing
douche bags
who are somehow okay
with a little girl taking on the load
of an entire household.
Cinderella?
Man, that bitch has nothing on me.
40.
But we had to leave
that little piece of “heaven”
Jodie Lynn Cratchett
had created.
The house was
too small
too loud
too many temptations
for a boy like Benji.
A boy who had spent his childhood
watching a man use his hand for abuse.
It came a little too naturally
for him,
I suppose.
In the end
it had really been all he had
known.
When someone makes you mad:
Fight Back.
When someone takes something you had:
Fight Back.
When someone treats you bad:
Fight Back.
And if the way he fought had been a little different
less contact
(the hands-on kind I hate)
or less one-on-one,
maybe we could have stayed.
But, at some point, over those
two long
years
in Jodie Lynn Cratchett’s
care
Benji broke all the the only rule.
He was caught in a closet
with a little boy.
Samuel was his name.
Great brown eyes
that will never be the same.
My life has been filled of
Great
Brown
Eyes
Now
Blank.
Benji was doing to him
what my father
had done to me.
Making him sit on his knees,
making him plead.
For
It
To
Stop.
41.
Jodie Lynn Cratchett
found them
both.
Both crying.
Both scared.
Two little boys not knowing how the world
could be so cruel
as to not prepare
them for this kind of pain.
Both broken.
Both bending
in two
as they sat so confused
about what had just happened.
42.
After that Jodie Lynn Cratchett
closed up shop.
We were her only form of employment,
but the kids had to go
someplace else.
She was “traum
atized.”
Not really understanding that
Benji was just a kid
confused
a boy beaten by his dad,
not knowing what to use
when his fists stopped giving him the
feeling he sought after so much abuse.
43.
I ended up at Ms. Francine’s.
A far cry from toddlers and chores.
Benji wasn’t so lucky.
No home would take a boy like him
had to protect the other kids.
So he went to a group home
lock down
alarm bells
no one to hurt
no one to hold
him
if he cried out at night
from the nightmares
that clouded his
life-long
fears.
And Samuel?
I can only pray
to a God
I have no faith in
got no reason
to believe in.
I hold out hope
to this day
that he got out
okay alive.
44.
The Christmas tree gets cut down
after many
talks on the best
sizeheightvariety.
I’m mostly trying
hard
to
be
noncommittal.
Because every time
I seem to act
involved
Benji chooses that moment to
withdraw
himself from the
situation
conversation
which makes me feel like
I’m doing everything wrong.
Like he needs me to stay strong.
And to him that means
Us against Them.
It means walls up
guard up
made up
our minds to be
One Won.
The thing is
the real thing is
that I like
cutting down a tree with Margot
and Ms. Francine.
And every time I let my walls
down
or guard
down,
Benji
thinks
I’ve let him down.
45.
