by Molly Hoffer
Central Park in the Winter
A naked row of trees,
Once wild and free,
Now paved through with roads,
And cluttered with loads
Of jugging housewives
And Wall Street thieves,
All hoping for a dream
With a grand love theme…
How trite! I thought, shaking my head.
I turned the pages of the book, searching for some clue of something more substantial than bad poetry. There were a few diary entries. One of them stopped me because Nick drew a little thin figure of a girl with giant boobs on the side of the page.
Vanessa is unbelievable. Again, she didn’t say anything on the limo ride. It’s like she doesn’t realize I exist… Would it be so hard to just say, “Hey Nick, what’s up?” It’s not like we have to be best friends, but in three months, she hasn’t gotten used to me enough for basic politeness? It’s like she was brought up among hicks and not in a penthouse with menservants with impeccable manners…
I stopped reading, fuming over his words. I guess it was evidence of something… well of his total misinterpretation of the reasons I wasn’t saying anything on the limo rides. How dare he say that I’m not saying anything! It’s not like he’s breaking the silence! I thought.
Turning over the other pages, it was clear there wasn’t much of anything else in the notebook. I turned over some of the papers in other drawers of the desk, and only found homework assignments.
I left Nick’s room, huffing and puffing over the whole situation. I reclined on the bed in my room for a few moments to calm down, before I returned to the dinner party.
On Christmas morning, Nick got more gift boxes than I did because even Fedor packed a gift for him, and didn’t invest into gifts for other members of the family. Apparently, being a foster child meant that everybody felt sorry for him. My parents got him some kind of a pre-release gaming system that costs even more today because it ended up being too expensive to produce for the general public, so that system is one in a handful released, and thus is now priced as a collector’s item. Fedor had got him a set of ultra-warm earmuffs and a scarf because he didn’t like how red his ears were when he got back from his outings. I didn’t get him anything, and he didn’t come up with a gift to give me in return, but this wasn’t really noticed amidst all of the other gift exchanges. I was even more muffed after this gift ritual, but could imagine few other things to try.
As Fedor started cleaning up the gift wrappings, Nick got a call on his cell phone, “Hello?” he said, and listened. “I see…” he responded and walked out of the ballroom, where the tree was, and down the hallway back to his room.
That’s weird, I thought. Why is he sneaking out to his room for a phone call? Maybe this is finally something…
I got up, trying to be casual, and briskly walked over to my own room, hoping to overhear the conversation through the wall. To my disappointment, Nick was finishing the call as I was closing the door to my room, “I can’t believe you! How can you just… Ok, got it, thanks, bye,” he said, and hung up. His voice was a bit shaken, and it was clear the call upset him.
He left his room and went back to rejoin the party. I just had to find out what that was all about. I snuck into his room and got the phone from his writing desk. There was no lock on it, so I pulled up the call log. I got a piece of paper out of his printer, and a pen from the table and wrote down the last few numbers Nick had dialed. Then, I went back to my own room and typed these into Google. Names came up, and options to buy a record check on them. I paid for the checks and had them a couple of minutes later.
The last number that had just called him was from Linda Bethal, who was thirty-three. She had a “General Delivery” address in Brooklyn, which meant that she was either homeless, or lived in a place that couldn’t receive mail. She had a few criminal records, one for solicitation, one for drug possession, and one for disruption of the piece and public intoxication.
Another number came up as Sam Krest, a forty-three year old man, living at 209G 11th Avenue in Brooklyn. He also had a criminal history, including three counts of assault against a spouse and a minor across a few years. He also had a charge against possession of illegal substances with intent to distribute, which had kept him in jail for 5 years, until a couple of years before that time.
I finally had proof that Nick was in contact with shady criminals, and I thought about bringing these facts directly to the attention of my parents, but then realized that I would’ve had to explain that I had gone through Nick’s phone, and then ran background checks on the people in it… that seemed a bit crazy from that perspective.
I kept thinking of ways to explain why and how I found out about the people he was talking to, but couldn’t figure it out. On December 27th, Nick went shopping with my parents for specialty night and distance vision goggles they were going to use to watch the crowd below as the ball dropped over Times Square. I went into his room once again, and this time, looked though the notebooks in his desk more slowly.
At the lowest drawer, and at the bottom of a stack of notebooks and sketchbooks, I found an old, slightly chewed around the edges notebook. When I opened it, I found that the handwriting and text immediately stood out as more intense, detailed and more jittery and nervous than the lighter poems and diary entries I found in his recent writings, which he sketched since he moved in with us. I estimated that I had a few hours, so I took this notebook into my own room, and started reading it closely, keeping an ear out for when Nick came back, hoping I would have enough time to rush over and put it back in place, or that I could return it later that evening during dinner, without him noticing that it was missing.
As I started reading this diary, I felt a heavy gloom set over me, as all of the information in it pointed to extreme trauma and neglect that put Nick in the victim’s position. This did nothing in my quest to pit him as a crook that had to be cast out of our penthouse, and instead gradually led some sympathy inadvertently to sneak into my heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
January 20, 1994:
I’m writing in a giant dormitory for foster children. Mom dropped me off at school this morning and then never showed up to pick me up. I waited for her for two hours, long after all the buses left. I was sure she was just running late. Then, the principal came up and asked me why I was there. I told him I was waiting for my mom. He said he didn’t believe she was coming, and took me to his office. He called a few numbers, and then a couple of people and a police officer showed up and took me here. I was sure that mom would come to pick me up from here at first, but now I don’t think she will… Maybe she died… She was giving herself a lot of medicine in the arm this morning… I hope I’ll find out what happened… I hope she’s ok and will take me out of here… soon…
March 30, 1996:
Mom came to visit me at my new foster home again. My caseworker from St. Stephen’s keeps saying that they’re trying to reunite me with her… But she keeps slipping up and going on drunken and drug-ridden binges, or gets herself locked up right before she’s supposed to take me back in. I’ve been in foster care for over two years now. I think I’m on home seven… I can’t remember most of the names of the guys that took me in.
April 10, 1999:
Mr. Racket, my new caseworker, missed the court date scheduled to finally move me into an adoptive home. I guess I’m going to stay with my current foster family… I can’t stand them. I’ve asked around and most kids stay in foster care for four years, and I’ve been going through this for five years now. It’s unbelievable. It’s like I have the worst luck on the planet.
June 8, 2001:
I’m between foster homes, so I’m sleeping in St. Stephen’s downtown Brooklyn offices for a couple of nights now. I got a wooden bench, and a mice-eaten rag to cover myself with. It’s hot as hell, even at night, and I couldn’t go to sleep for hours, so I decided to write these notes to put the time to better use.
S
eptember 5, 2002:
I’m supposed to be starting a new school year, but I don’t have anything but this notebook and pen to use at school. The new foster home I’m staying in is basically made up of one older guy who used to be a panhandler, but failed at that, and because of his record, all he could do to make a living was take in a couple of foster kids. He’s on so much drugs that he’s either passed out, or screaming, raving and running around like a maniac. To have more money for drugs, he has cut out food from his budget, and now there’s basically just spoiled milk in the fridge. I’m starving, but I can’t imagine telling him about it. He’d beat me blue, if I did. Mr. Racket is still my caseworker. I’ve complained and asked to get somebody else dozens of times, but they just say that they have two case workers for a thousand foster homes, so there’s nothing they can do.
October 15, 2002:
I’m back to sleeping on the bench at the Brooklyn office. The crazy fuck got a shotgun and fired it a couple of times in the backyard to scare us, so the neighbor finally called the cops on him. They took him in and brought us over here. I was sitting in the hallway, looking around at the freaks that come through the office, when I overheard the scariest foster care story I’ve heard in a few years. Some year-old girl died of a cocaine overdose in her foster father’s apartment. They said that the cocaine was left on the couch next to her and she just crawled over and sniffed and chewed a whole pile of it because she saw her foster father doing it. Blood just gushed out of her mouth, and she was dead before the father sobered up. I’m just glad that I wasn’t a baby when they put me into foster care, or that could’ve been me.
August 28, 2003:
Mom came by to visit me in the apartment I’m living at this year. I’m actually staying in the same Brooklyn school district, and I got a ton of stuff to get done before the school year starts, and here she is butting in again. She said that she’d definitely remember to come to my next adoption hearing, as usual just to stop me from getting adopted and to show that she’s more incompetent and incapable of taking care of me as ever. After she left, I couldn’t think about anything else, and couldn’t even see the handbook I was supposed to be reviewing. I kept thinking about how this is seriously my life, and decided to write this entry instead.
January 5, 2004:
I can’t believe it; I’m back at St. Stephen’s. It’s the middle of the year, school is about to start back up, and I have no idea if I’ll be going back to the same teachers and classes, or if I’ll be in a whole new school district, and maybe taking a whole different set of classes. Every time I switch schools, I don’t know if I’ll be taking American or European history, or if I’ll be studying Shakespeare or Bookkeeping. It’s the middle of the day, and they left me in the lobby because all of the benches are occupied inside the offices. So, I’ll spend this time writing notes on what I see out here, which is pretty entertaining, especially since all other forms of entertainment is lacking.
There are around twenty parents currently in the lobby. The guy that was arrested for shooting in his backyard when I was staying with him is back, and I think he’s waiting for a new foster kid to take in. Unbelievable. A couple of African American teenage moms have been intimidating each other, shoving, and screaming, “Oh no you didn’” and “Oh yea, bring it bitch!” for a couple of hours now, and they show no signs of seeing the repetition in it. I think the front desk clerk has been on a lunch break for the last two hours, so there’s pretty much nobody to help the newcomers, who start screaming at each other in frustration. At least three phones are ringing in the offices, and nobody’s picking them up. I moved from one side of the lobby to another because the teenage mothers tossed their diapers there, as if missing the garbage can by the entrance. Then, a couple of other parents with toddlers also tossed diapers there, as if to show that they were retaliating in kind. The stench of crap is super strong in that whole area, and it’s only a bit better on this side. I tried to go to the bathroom, but the toilet is clogged up and looks like somebody had diarrhea in it, so I didn’t go, and I’m holding it in for a while now. A couple of foster mothers next to me started gossiping about some kid that got snatched right from that same lobby the day before during lunch hour, without anybody noticing until that evening, long after everybody in the lobby left, and nobody could figure out who took the kid. They thought that the kids mother, who forced her to eat vomit had grand her herself. “Uuuh,” one of these gossipers just whispered, “did you see Janel goin’ in the bathroom with that girl?” “Yea, why?” the other woman replied. “The court took that kid out of her care because she contracted herpes, and nobody noticed that she just came in here grabbed the kid and is just camping out in the bathroom with it… She can be pimping that kid out in there…” “No! You think the kid seriously got herpes because her mother pimped her out!?” “Hmm, I don’ know, but it’s likely!” I don’t think I’m going in that bathroom for at least a day. I’ll try to use the “Employees Only” bathroom at the back of the offices, unless they’ll catch me before I can sneak in. Well, this is a dramatic story, but I’m exhausted from writing this stuff down. I’ll try to sleep sitting up, maybe the time will go by faster.
July 3, 2004:
When the school year ended, I started clashing with my foster parents because I was home all the time and they didn’t want me watching TV or doing anything else that took up their electricity, so they returned me back to St. Stephen’s. The lobby is busier than I’ve ever seen it. It’s a day before 4th of July, when they’ll be closed for the holiday, so it looks like everybody’s here to get something done. But something is a bit different about this crowd from the last time I was here. Before it seemed that all of the adults were either foster parents or the natural parents, but now most of the people in the lobby seem to be just hanging out, or doing some other sort of business. A guy across from me is wearing a t-shirt with a pot-plant on it, and he’s been grinning and staring up at me, and scanning the plant that I’ve been noticing, as if asking if I’d like to buy some pot from him. There is also a guy in a stereotypically pimp-like pinkish-blue outfit who’s sitting with a couple of women in miniskirts, who occasionally stand up and go to the restroom, typically followed by one of the older guys from the lobby. It’s the shadiest I’ve seen this place, and I wish I was anywhere else.
August 20, 2004:
I’ve been transferred into a group foster home in Manhattan. It’s full to the brink. I got the last empty bed in the dormitory. After I kept whining for a while, the clerk finally found and printed an article for me from the net about the recent events at St. Stephen’s. I always suspected something like this was going on, but reading about it is pretty intense. The article said that St. Stephen’s was closed down by the city, and that several officials were convicted of stealing money from the organization. On top of this, other staffers were giving contracts and jobs to relatives. I had to laugh when I read that the agency was found to be “inept” in their handling of children’s cases, “No shit!” In the ten years I spent in the system, nine kids had died while in St. Stephen’s care from “unnatural” causes that pointed the finger of responsibility at St. Stephen’s staffers. I finally figured out how the psychotic, drug-addicted nuts that I kept getting as foster parents were getting those paid gigs. The caseworkers were forging signatures, and inserting bogus notations without inspecting homes or parents for safety. I don’t know what’s gonna happen here in Manhattan, but with a story like this in the papers, I hope it will be at least a bit better…
CHAPTER FIVE
A couple of hours flew by, as I read over these memorable lines. Then, I jumped up when I heard my mom’s voice down the hall. I shut the diary, and looked out of the door. They were taking their time, getting out of their winter clothing by the door, so I quickly ran into Nick’s room, dropped the diary in the bottom drawer at the bottom of the pile, and ran back out, and into my room, without being noticed.
Back in my room, I listened to the sound of Nick walking dow
n the hall and entering his room. His step was pretty cheerful, and I heard him walking up to his window and standing there for a bit. I assumed he was testing the binoculars they got on the street below. I walked over to my own window and looked down to see what he must’ve been seeing. I saw a few tiny black dots down on the sidewalk below, against the contrasting white snow. Then, I scanned the length of Central Park, and remembered the poems that Nick was writing there. How can he think about trees and love when that’s what he was dealing with just a few months ago? I thought.
As I looked down on the City’s streets, I felt as if our lives were suddenly in parallel, as we both had the same perspective from that top floor, similar rooms, similar dinners, and even similar clothing designers. I needed a moment to ground myself and to remember the objective of my mission. So what if he had a rough past, it doesn’t mean he can keep in touch from shady people from it, putting us all in danger. It was my senior year, when I was supposed to be the queen of Trinity, with the faculty and student body at my feet. While I maintained the leading role symbolically, by keeping the position of class president and being the leader of our dance team, I saw a decrease in the number of social invitations I was getting, and I was not always put in charge of resolving social conflicts between other students.
