“So how are you feeling?” she asked.
“Good.”
“I was talking to your little sister and she said your mother is never home and she leaves them home by themselves.”
“That’s not true. My mom be working all the time. When she’s not home, I’m there. I’m seventeen and my other sister is eighteen.”
“She wasn’t home when the fire started, right?”
“No. She stepped out for a moment.”
“Do you know where she went?” she asked, frowning.
“No.” I knew better than to say the bar.
“Okay, thanks for speaking with me.” She went back to the nurses’ station and jotted something down. Then my mother came out of the room and asked her for a blanket. The nurse gave her an attitude and said she would bring one in there shortly. We all sat in chairs around Bilal’s bed.
It was two in the morning, and Alanna had called Bruce and he came to the hospital. Moments later she announced that she was leaving and for us to call her later. I was starting to get sleepy too. Bubbles was already balled up in the chair next to my mom. I went and got another soda. I couldn’t wait to go home. Then it occurred to me that we might not have a house to go home to.
“Excuse me, do you have a phone I can use?” I asked one of the nurses.
“Yes, it’s over there on the wall. Dial nine and then one to get an outside line.” I called my dad’s house. Charlotte answered the phone.
“Let me speak to my dad,” I demanded.
“Do you know what time it is?” she asked.
“Yeah, it is an emergency,” I said, sighing.
“John, the phone.”
My dad picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”
“Dad.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Our house caught on fire.”
“What? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Bilal is in the hospital and I don’t know how bad the house is yet.”
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I told him what hospital we were at and he said that he was on his way. After I called him I called Marcus’s house for John. Marcus said that John wasn’t there. I told him what happened and he said he was going to try to reach him. I didn’t have Nitra’s number on me.
I took a deep breath and went back into Bilal’s room and sat next to my mother. I closed the door and then the curtain. There was a light knock on the door. The nurse came in the room, asking if were we okay and if we needed anything else. My mother told her we were fine. A few moments later she came back in with a tall brown woman, with a short, black spiked haircut, and wearing a blue trench coat. She introduced her as Ms. Norton and said that she needed to speak with our mother.
“Why don’t you come with me and bring your sister?” the nurse said. I awoke Bubbles and figured out that the nurse had called the Department of Health Services on my mother. She sat us in a room a few doors down the hall from Bilal. I heard my mother down the hall cussing.
“Don’t be asking me no questions about my children. Bitch, get the fuck out of my face!” Then I heard a door slam. I jumped up to see what was going on and the nurse sternly told me to sit down. I looked at her like she was crazy. She stepped out of the room and I followed. Then I heard someone say, “Call security.” I ran down to Bilal’s room and saw they were pulling my mom out of the room.
I screamed, “Get off my mom,” and then I swung on one of the guards. Someone grabbed me, and I started biting and kicking. I saw them dragging my mother down the hall. They finally pulled me back in the same room with Bubbles. I tried to get out.
“Where are y’all taking my mom? Yo! Y’all better let me out of here. Yo, let me out,” I screamed. “Where is my mother?” I ran toward the door, and the guard grabbed me.
“Get off me! Get off me!” The guard finally let me go and then the woman with a blue trench coat came up to me and said, “Settle down. Your mother is fine. We just need to speak with her.”
“Well, I want to make sure she is fine,” I said, looking around for my mom.
“No, actually you can’t. Listen, you and your younger sister are going to stay the night with a foster family until we can get things settled.” I looked over at the woman as she stared me directly in my face.
“No, I can’t do that. My mother really needs me,” I said.
“She’ll be okay,” the woman said.
“Okay, I’ll say goodbye to her, then.”
“I’ll walk you,” she said. I guess she knew I was about to leave.
I went back and forth with the woman, then she told me she could send me to the Youth Study Center if I couldn’t cooperate with her. She said that they just took my mom downstairs to calm her down. She finally let me talk to my mom, who said, “Don’t give them any problems.”
Ms. Norton put us in her silver four-door Honda Accord and slammed the door. She eyed me from the rearview mirror the entire ride. We drove for a while, then pulled up in front of a big old house in North Philly. She introduced me and Bubbles to a foster mom named Ms. Waters. She was an older lady, about sixty with silver hair that showed through her burgundy dye job.
It was five in the morning. The sun was rising and we were just getting in. Ms. Norton introduced us and then Ms. Waters asked us if we was hungry. We told her no and she walked Bubbles and me upstairs to our room. Inside were two dark wood-frame beds and a tall, narrow dresser with an old-fashioned silver alarm clock on the top.
I said thank you as Ms. Norton pulled me to the side and whispered in my ear, “If you think about running I’m going to have you arrested and sent to the Youth Study Center.” I didn’t even respond to her. I was so tired, and I just wanted to go to sleep and figure everything out when I awoke.
Bubbles looked at me after they left us alone in the room and asked, “How long you think we going to have to stay here?”
“I don’t know, not going to be that long,” I said as I gave her a hug. We settled into our beds, and before I knew it we were both asleep.
The next thing I knew Ms. Waters was knocking on the door saying, “It’s time to eat.”
It was twelve-thirty in the afternoon. I got up and looked around, trying to place where I was. At first I thought I had dreamed what had happened the night before. It seemed unreal. As soon as I realized I hadn’t been dreaming, I thought about my mom.
“We’re not hungry,” I shouted out.
“I’m hungry,” Bubbles said as she got up, walked past me and opened the door.
“Okay, I’ll be right down,” I said.
A few minutes later I went down the steps and joined the other three kids. There was this slightly retarded boy named Dennis and a teenage girl named Tianna. She wore a large black T-shirt with no bra on, and her hair was braided to the back. Then there was Charles, a short boy with big, thick glasses looking like he was out of it. They all were eating sandwiches.
Later on Ms. Waters took Bubbles and me to Kmart. She bought us underwear and horrible clothes. The jeans she picked out for me were fake paper-thin jeans that looked like back-in-the-day stretch pants with a tapered leg at the ankle.
That evening she came into my room, gave me a token and said that I needed to come straight home from school or she was going to call Ms. Norton.
I called Chantel to ask her to bring me something else to wear. She picked up in three rings.
“Chantel, it’s Kendra.”
“Why didn’t you come to school today? You missed practice. You know the talent show is in a couple of days.”
“I had a fire at my house.”
“Oh my God! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Can you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Can you bring something to wear?”
“My clothes are going to be too big for you,” she said.
“Just bring something you think might fit me and meet me in the second-floor bathroom before advisory.”
Ch
antel met me in the bathroom with some blue jeans and a white shirt with a red star on the front. I went in the stall, took my clothes off and put on things she’d brought me. I stuffed my other clothes in my book bag. When I came out the bathroom stall, I checked myself out in the mirror. Chantel handed me another bag. “These some other clothes you might can fit into.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
“So what happened? Where are you staying?” she asked.
“It is a long story. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So are you going to still be in the talent show?”
“No, I can’t go.”
“What about Dajuan’s party?”
“No.”
“You should go to Dajuan’s party. It’s going to be good. And I can come and pick you up.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t you understand? I don’t know where my mother is and my little brother is in the hospital.” She was so damn dumb and she was making me mad. I walked out of the bathroom. She followed and said she was sorry. I ignored her.
“You’re not coming to class either?” she yelled down the hall as she followed me.
“I have to make some calls and check on my family.”
She finally stopped following me and began walking in the opposite direction toward class. I went into the school nurse’s office and asked her if I could I use the phone. She was busy taking a boy’s temperature but said yes and pointed to the phone in her inner office. I closed her door a little and called my dad’s house.
“Charlotte, my dad there?”
“No, your dad’s not here. He’s at work.”
“Do he know we in foster care? Why didn’t he come up to the hospital?”
“Yeah, he knows. He thought you were lying, so he didn’t come to the hospital. He been talking to some woman, I think her name is Ms. Norton. She said he got to go to court and go before a judge and bring in all this paperwork, and they got to come and inspect the house.”
“So why he didn’t go talk to the judge?”
“’Cause your dad can’t be doing all that, missing days from work. He don’t have no sick days left.”
“Well, can you tell my dad I called?”
“Sure, mm-hmm, I’ll tell him,” she said. I couldn’t believe my dad didn’t even check to make sure we were all right. He is so fucked up and Charlotte is just as dumb. Next I called Alanna. She said that Bilal was getting out of the hospital and that our mother was staying at Aunt Joanie’s house. She also gave me John’s number at Nitra’s house.
“Did Mommy tell you how long we were going to have to stay there?” I asked Alanna.
“No, she told me they said she was under investigation for child neglect and child endangerment.”
“Oh,” I said.
“How is the lady’s house y’all staying at?”
“It is okay. She’s an old lady. Alanna, give Mommy and John our number.”
I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to see my old house, but it was more important to go to class. Ms. Norton said she was going to be checking up on me, and I remembered she was going to lock me up if I thought about cutting classes.
If I had somewhere else to go I would. I would never go back with Ms. Waters. I hated it there already and I wanted to go home. But I had to make sure Bubbles was okay. After school I stopped past my job. Mr. Newman was working the register when I walked in the door.
“What are you doing here?” He looked me over and said, “What’s going on with you? Why didn’t you call me to tell me you quit?”
“I didn’t quit,” I said as I explained to him what happened.
“Well, can you work today?”
“I have to ask my foster mom, because they said if I don’t come straight home I was going to jail.”
“Where are your parents? What kind of parents do you have?” he asked.
There was no explaining to the old man. So I just stayed until three and then I told him I had to go. That was enough time for him to catch up on his prescriptions. He then told me he would hold my job for two days and then he would have to hire someone else.
Ms. Waters didn’t like anyone on her phone. She said she only had one line and nobody was going to be tying it up. I went in the kitchen and asked permission to use her phone. She said I had five minutes. I dialed Ms. Norton.
“Hi, Ms. Norton,” I said.
“Who is this and how can I help you?” she said, all mean.
“It is Kendra Thomas. I forgot to tell you that I have a job and I would like to keep it.”
“I have to call your job and confirm your hours with your manager.” I gave her all the information and she said she would call me back.
Ms. Waters was a church fanatic. She kept Bibles in every room except for the bathroom. She didn’t allow any television in her house until after dinner and then it was only for an hour or two. I just stayed in the room and listened to the radio. Bubbles was adjusting just fine. She liked playing with Dennis, that slow boy, because he made her laugh. The other boy, Charles, didn’t talk to anyone. He just stood in the corner and kicked the wall. When he wasn’t kicking the wall he was ripping pillows apart.
I had finished my homework and was tired of being in that room, so I walked downstairs to get some water. I sat down at the table. The girl Tianna said, “What’s up?”
I said, “Nothing.”
“Where y’all from?” she asked.
“Southwest Philly.”
“Why y’all here?” she asked.
“I had a fire in my house. And you?”
“My mom had an overdose.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
I told her I was seventeen and she said Dennis was her little brother. Then she took a blunt out of her pocket and offered me some weed.
“I’m good. Ain’t she going to smell that?”
“That lady can’t smell, and she go to bed like clockwork every night by nine. I sneak back out every night,” she said as she emptied the blunt out onto the table.
“How long you been here?” I asked.
“Six months.”
“Why so long?”
“My mom didn’t get herself together yet. I actually just came back here. I was at the Youth Study Center for two months ’cause I missed curfew two days in a row.”
After talking to her I knew there was no way I was staying here for six months. Plus I would be eighteen in a month. They would have made Alanna come too if they knew she was still in school, even though she was eighteen.
Bilal finally came home. He acted normal, but he was on all this medication. Ms. Waters said he couldn’t sleep in our room, but I didn’t care what she said. I layed my little brother next to me, and Bubbles was on the other side. With Bilal with us I felt a little better.
I spoke to John and he said that my mom was working with the social worker to get us home. I missed the talent show but I didn’t even care. I’d failed three tests in the two weeks since everything had happened. It was only December, and as soon as I got back home I could make those grades up. Nobody at school knew what was going on and I liked it like that. I was still normal there. I called my mom. She was still staying at my Aunt Joanie’s.
“Y’all okay?” Aunt Joanie asked.
“Yes.”
“Where they got y’all at?”
“Some lady house named Ms. Waters. She’s nice, though. I just called to tell my mom that we were okay and don’t forget to go to family court.” My Aunt Joanie said she would give my mom the message. After I called my mom I called John again.
“John, I don’t have any clothes. My friend let me wear her sister’s stuff and the lady have me wearing these messed up clothes. You think we can go see if we can get anything out of the house?”
“Kendra, there is nothing in that house,” John said.
“Let’s at least go try and see.”
“I’ll come and get you from school tomorrow. Wait on the Thirteenth Street
side.” The main reason I wanted to go back to the house was to see if I could get clothes and see if there was anything we could use now.
We went to my old house and saw that they’d put a big padlock on the front door and an orange sticker that read NO TRESPASSING. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought—it was worse.
The building structure looked sturdy from the outside, but you could see the imprint on the wall where the flames left their mark. Our neighbors were watching us as we looked at our house. I wished they’d go in their own houses. Nobody wants to be looked at, I thought.
“Let’s go around back,” John said. “Maybe we can get in that way. Matter of fact, let’s wait until it gets dark. Nobody won’t see us. I can get Marcus and he can help us. You want to get something to eat?”
“I don’t care.”
We went and ate at Taco Bell. I ordered a Nacho Bell Grande and he had four soft tacos. I carried the food to the table and sat down. John made sure we had napkins.
“Are you okay with that lady?”
“I’m fine, and Bilal and Bubbles seem like they’re having fun. There are a bunch of kids there and she has games. And she has been taking them somewhere every other day. You talked to Mommy?”
“Yeah, she supposed to go to a custody hearing tomorrow.”
After we ate we went to go pick up his friend Marcus. I had only met Marcus a few times before. He would come around, say hi and keep it moving.
“Who’s that?” Marcus asked when he got in the car.
“Man, that’s Kendra, my little sister. Don’t be looking at her.”
“Come on, man, I’m not. She just look different. She grew up. Man, I’m twenty-two.”
“Exactly! She’s only seventeen. What tools did you bring?” he asked.
“I brought this lock cutter my pop had and this sledgehammer.”
“That should work.”
We parked around the corner from my old house.
“Stay in the car,” John told me.
“No, I’m coming with you. We walked to the end of the block and came down the alley. A neighbor’s dog was barking at us but we just ignored it. John climbed the gate and Marcus pushed me over it, then climbed over himself. They took out the sledgehammer and John hit the door twice hard at the lock, and the door popped open. There was no electricity but we’d brought a flashlight to look around. Everything in the kitchen was how we’d left it. Cereal was still on top of the refrigerator and dishes were still in the sink. Just about everything was ruined—there was black soot everywhere. I grabbed trash bags out of the drawer and went to the basement to see if any clothes might be salvageable. Marcus followed me. Everything was still wet from the water the firemen sprayed all through the house. Some of the clothes had already started to mildew, and everything else had a heavy smoke smell, but I managed to find a few things I thought might be okay after they were laundered.
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