by Unknown
Despite how poor her school grades were, Kiera was far from unintelligent. She was clever and conniving. Eventually she succeeded in having me believe she had not only accepted me in her life but wanted to be the big sister that she wasn’t able to be for Alena. Her regret seemed so sincere that I bought into it. I was flattered that she included me with her friends, all seniors. It helped me to feel important at a time when I was feeling very sorry for myself.
Later she succeeded in getting one of her boyfriends to seduce me and then got me into serious trouble with her parents by making it seem as though it had been my entire fault. She convinced them that I had never really left the tough, gritty street life behind. As incredible as it was, she had them believing that I was corrupting her and her friends and not vice versa.
But in the end, I thought that her conscience about the way she had treated and thought of her sister Alena and what she had done to me had driven her to be reckless again, and she nearly died in a drug overdose. All of the mean things she and her friends had done to me were revealed when her friends, overwhelmed by her near fatality, confessed to being part of Kiera’s schemes.
Now imprisoned in a silence of her own making, she did seem to begin to change. However, I had suffered too much because of her to simply accept the nice things she said and the kind way she behaved toward me after all this. I didn’t come right out and say so. I just took longer to believe in anything.
My mother used to say that a little skepticism is a blessing. “It’s like a safety valve,” she had told me. “It will keep you from falling too far too fast.” She was bitter by then. My father had not only left us without a word but had taken all our money and everything else we had of any value. Forced to accept whatever employment she could get, my mother had often been exploited. She had grown more and more depressed, let herself go physically and mentally and began to drink heavily. Eventually, we were evicted from our home.
“Remember this, Sasha,” she had told me during one of her more sober moments, while we sat on the beach and stared at the ocean. “The world is divided into two kinds of people, the gullible and the deceptive. It’s only good and sensible self-defense to be distrusting and be a little deceptive yourself. This isn’t paradise yet. We’re always in one danger or another, no matter where we are.”
I didn’t understand all she was telling me back then, but I could feel her pain and agony. It washed away her beautiful smile and smothered to death the softness in her soul. I know she drank anything alcoholic because she hated herself, hated what she had become even more than she hated my father. She was choking on her own venom. I cried for her often then, cried more for her than I cried for myself.
Ironically, her death had brought me to the lap of luxury. Not only did I now have far, far more than I had then or even could have imagined having, I had more than probably ninety-nine percent of girls my age. After having once been a pitiful creature on the streets, I found myself now being envied by girls and boys whom I had thought were princes and princesses themselves.
I challenge you to try to do what I have trouble doing even today. Try to imagine a nearly fourteen-year-old girl having to sleep with her mother on the beach in a large carton, a girl with nearly no clothes, old shoes, who couldn’t go to school, a girl who had to wash herself in public restrooms, a girl for whom finding a quarter or even a dime on the sidewalk or beach was like finding gold.
Then try to imagine this girl being taken out of a hospital room full of welfare patients and brought to a private room where she was given a private-duty nurse, treated by the best specialists, and then brought flowers and gifts she could only dream about receiving while walking past store windows.
Imagine this girl being taken to live in a mansion that could only be approached by a private road, a uniquely styled house with a tower that made it look like a castle. Not only did the property have tennis courts, an indoor pool, and an outdoor Olympic-size pool but also a man-made lake big enough to accommodate rowboats. Imagine her being given a room that was larger than the house in which she had once lived, a suite with a walk-in closet that looked as if it was half the length of a basketball court, filled with clothes and shoes many of which had never been worn more than once and some of which still had their price tags attached.
Imagine her having her own private physical therapist to help get her strong and well again. And being provided with her own private tutor to get her ready to go to school again, but not just any school, a beautiful private school with only the children of the very rich attending, and with classes small enough for each and every student to get personal attention.
If you can imagine all that, you can see me now years later, a high school senior bedecked in only the most fashionable styles and trends, a high school senior who is constantly told she is exotically beautiful, something her mother was and she always dreamed she would be. You can see me as an honor student, popular, who on her seventeenth birthday was presented with her own red BMW hardtop convertible.
How often I have sat by the window in my suite and looked out at the well-manicured grounds, the pool and tennis courts, and closed my eyes, feeling sure that when I opened them again, I’d be back on the beach, sitting beside my ragtag mother, staring out at the sea, both of us left dumbfounded by how quickly hardship and misery had grasped and tightly held the two of us.
But when I opened my eyes, I was still here, still the ward of a very wealthy foster family, gliding through life without a worry in the world.
Kiera was off in her charm school college now. Her parents had yet to learn it, but she had told me she thought she was close to becoming engaged to an English boy, Aubrey Woodhouse, whose famous architect father had been knighted. She e-mailed me almost daily, describing her social life and sharing her most intimate love secrets. I knew how hard she had been working at making me again feel like her sister. I imagined she was doing it because she needed my forgiveness and because, despite what a brave and often arrogant facade she had, she was basically a very lonely person, lonely and especially afraid that I would replace her in her father’s heart. I thought that was something she would never have to fear.
Even though my foster mother desperately tried to make me feel as loved as her lost daughter had felt, I knew I was still a guest, an orphan in her husband’s eyes. Eventually he was kind and full of praise for me, and certainly generous, but there was always that look of restraint, that realization that I was not his real daughter. He could only care for me just so much, the way a father would, before that look came into his eyes and he would pull back and become more distant and formal.
Mrs. March was aware of it as well. She tried so hard to regain a daughter, to hold onto her idea of a family. Her new goal now, her method of overcoming this last hurdle, was to have her and Mr. March legally adopt me. From time to time, I couldn’t help but hear them discussing it. Up to now, he was reluctant. To justify his hesitancy, he pointed out the complicated legal and financial considerations. He also emphasized that they had established a quarter of a million dollar trust fund for my college education.
“It’s not that we’re not looking after her future,” he said.
Another one of his excuses was the emotional and psychological impact it would have on Kiera. “Let’s wait until she is more settled, more adult. Even though she is doing well—better, in fact, than I had ever expected—she is still quite fragile, Jordan. You know what her therapist, Dr. Ralston, told us about sibling rivalry and how that diminished her self-esteem. Go slowly, or you’ll destroy all the progress she has made,” he warned and my foster mother stepped back again and again.
It would be a little while longer before I would understand the real reasons why he was hesitant. Some of it did have to do with what he was saying, but the biggest reason lay in waiting, as patient as a confident tiger who knew his prey was coming closer. He would pounce when the time was right.
And the poor lamb, innocent and trusting, I, Sasha Porter, could fall victim
.
My mother’s words never were forgotten. They linger now in the shadows of this exquisite mansion. Often, even on one of my happier days here, I would hear them as if her ghost, dressed in shadows, stood in some corner waiting for me to walk by.
It’s only good self-defense to be distrusting.
Remember the safety valve.
Always be skeptical.
I heard her, but would I listen?
And even if I did, could I stop any of it from happening?
My mother had come to believe that everything for us was decided even before we were born. It was futile to fight destiny. Why try? Why bother? She was that discouraged and defeated.
I couldn’t blame her for feeling that way. I hoped she was wrong.
But deep in my heart, I was afraid she was right.
I was afraid that someday I would be as stunned and lost as she was the day she died.
And there would be a new silence.
