What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

The bus dropped me back at Francine’s road. Three cats stretched in the sun on the porch, one gray striped and two black, and in the open doorway a dog stood and watched me walk to him.

  “Hi,” I said. It did not move. “What’s your deal? You going to bite me?”

  Same size as the cats, it was brown and black and kind of mangy. It said nothing until I got to the porch steps and then offered one single bark. Like Hey. Then it turned and went into the house.

  I dropped my backpack on the bottom attic step and followed the dog to the kitchen, where Francine stood at the sink, rinsing strawberries. The table was set with tea. Not the drink, but, like, a whole tea: sandwiches and cookies and fruit on little plates like on PBS shows where people live in manor houses.

  “Hi,” I said. “Do you have company coming?”

  “You. And our neighbor’s three hundred cats…,” she said, an apron over her usual jeans and a sweater, hair up. She looked at her watch. “Right on time again. Hungry? Nice walk?”

  My heart sped up a little. Half lie—I had gone for a walk; there was just also the first day of an internship in the middle of it I hadn’t mentioned, so more of an omission than a lie—but close enough. Not even a week here and I was already breaking a cardinal rule. What am I doing?

  The teacups and plates looked fancy. Breakable. This was a lot of food.

  “It was a really nice walk, thank you,” I said. The sandwiches and cookies looked so good. “I am hungry.”

  Her face brightened. “You are?”

  “But I should shower.”

  “Shower later; you’re hungry now! Here, help me with these.”

  I washed my hands and started hulling berries with a knife, a skill I’d picked up a few houses ago. The dog clicked over to Francine’s feet and looked up at her, hoping for crumbs.

  “So,” I said, “is the dog visiting?”

  “Oh, no, this is my Terry Johnson. Terry Johnson, say hello to Muiriel. Got him back from the vet this morning. He was having his teeth cleaned the day you came, and then they found a weird lump they decided to remove, which turned out to be benign, but they kept him till they knew for sure—now here he is. Didn’t want to overwhelm you with it all, in case things went south. You never can tell with older dogs….I can’t make out if he misses having a bunch of kids around or if he’s enjoying the peace and quiet.”

  I looked down at him. “Hello, Terry Johnson.”

  Francine scratched his ears. “Joellen says you’re not allergic.”

  “Not at all. Is he…named for someone? A person?”

  “Nope. Let’s eat!”

  My heart slowed a little, and I smiled toward the berries in the sink. I liked that Francine said what she meant and no need to elaborate or apologize. Matter-of-fact. Maybe she would understand my wanting to work. About Salishwood, why the trees and kids made me feel better, and why I wanted the job so badly. I put the berries in a bowl and we sat down.

  The table was crowded. Fruit and actual clotted cream and scones, and the sandwiches. I took a little of each.

  “I’ve had these dishes in storage for years. Figured it was safe to bring them out: you don’t strike me as a plate thrower. Now, remember,” she said, spooning lemon curd beside my scone. “It’s only you and me. Eat as much as you want and still we’ll have leftovers. And then later we can eat those.”

  I missed a dinner table crammed with a bunch of other kids to disappear into…but eating as much as I wanted? And then leftovers?

  Intriguing. I took a second scone before I even started the first.

  “Well done with the strawberries,” she said. “Aren’t they gorgeous? They’re from the Sakamoto family’s farm, and they’ve got pumpkins at Halloween, unless you’re too old to carve a jack-o’-lantern?” She reached over to the sink and handed me a piece of cold bacon from a covered dish. “Dog’s not vegetarian. He’ll love you.”

  “I like Halloween,” I said, feeling lighter every minute.

  I put the bacon on my palm and Terry Johnson looked me in the eyes, swallowed the bacon without chewing, and trotted through Francine’s open bedroom door to climb a set of dog stairs up to the bed and tuck his nose beneath his tail.

  “Curls up like a cinnamon roll,” Francine said. “Okay. Pour some milk in your cup, then the tea. That’s how they do it in England. Also Oprah told me.”

  Paper tea bag tags hung on strings from the teapot lid. Red Rose.

  I stared, a little hypnotized.

  A million kinds of tea—loose-leaf, Lipton, organic-green-goji-berry bullshit. Why does every middle-aged white woman love Red Rose tea so much? I glanced at the windowsill—all clear. No ceramic circus animals. See, I thought. This is why you need to get rid of that pillowcase. Toss it all into the ocean and be here now.

  “Remind me to get you a bus pass,” Francine said, bringing me back. “It’ll take you to every trail head in every forest; there’s a ton all over the island.” She put another sandwich on my plate. “This one has goat cheese, can you believe it? Goats are adorable.”

  It was a perfect day—I looked at the table laden with food, at this nice lady who made it all for me and who let me walk wherever and whenever. Who seemed to trust me already.

  I wanted her to like me.

  I wanted this job.

  I wanted to see Sean on Monday.

  “Francine,” I said. “I hiked at Salishwood.”

  “Oh, good! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I swallowed. “It is. I’m—sort of working there.” I spoke fast, terrified to ruin the best thing I’d had in forever but more scared of getting caught in a lie of omission. Aside from stealing, lying is the number one crime foster kids are accused of and ruined by, no matter the kid, no matter the situation. We are liars. Says everyone. I’ve practically killed myself keeping that one at bay.

  “You’ve been here three days. How’d you manage that?”

  I couldn’t read her tone.

  “I saw a notice at Blackbird and took a chance and applied. I didn’t want to bother you unless I got it—”

  “Or risk my saying no.”

  Note to self: Francine is not dumb.

  “But,” I said fast, “it’s not paid; it’s just an internship, so really it’s not a job job. I’m sorry.” And truly, I was. Because I’d maybe screwed myself out of my dream work situation. And Francine did not deserve to be even half lied to.

  She squeezed a wedge of lemon into her teacup. “You tell Joellen?”

  “I will. I swear.”

  “You need to tell me when you make a decision like this.”

  “I will.”

  She put a cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwich on my plate. Was she worried I was malnourished?

  “Well,” she said. “Summer internships are good.”

  I clenched my toes tight in my shoes. “They said I could stay all year. If I wanted.” My heart raced.

  She took the tea bags out of the pot and looked at me. “Muiriel. My job is to help you do your job, which is to graduate from high school. School is your job; it is your only job.”

  “I’ve always worked, you have my report cards—I can do both, I swear.”

  We sipped our Red Rose tea. An impasse this early—she was probably working out how to call Joellen to pick me up.

  For the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to go. Not yet.

  “Wait,” I said. “They said I have to get school credit to work all year. Would that make it okay? You could come with me, meet Jane, the lady with the…school credits? Oh, and I heard they do a thing with U of W? So really it’s a class; it’s like independent study!” Thanks, Creepy Man-Bun Natan.

  Francine sighed and got up from the table but said nothing. It was maddening. She opened the refrigerator and brought a shallow dish of custard to the table. She tossed a handful of
sugar on top and fired up a little butane blowtorch. “Watch your hair,” she said, and aimed the blue flame at the sugar, which melted into an amber glass sheet on the custard.

  The hiss of the flame sent Terry Johnson skittering down his doggy steps and under Francine’s bed.

  “Oh, come on, you big baby,” Francine called to him. She handed me a spoon and with her own, cracked the sugar glass and scooped it up with custard. She eyeballed me until I did, too.

  Was this custard code for yes? Or no? I took a bite.

  Holy hell. I closed my eyes. Otherworldly. This was the fanciest meal I’d ever eaten in all my life. It seemed likely she made every single thing from scratch.

  “Crème brûlée,” she said.

  I took another spoonful. What. About. Salishwood?

  “Want me to teach you how to make it?”

  I nodded.

  She put more strawberries on my plate. “Colleges like internships,” she said.

  I held my breath.

  “I’m going with you next shift to make sure you’re getting school credit, and I’ll tell Joellen myself. Transferable college credit.”

  Whatever. I exhaled. “Okay.”

  “Your GPA has to stay where it is.”

  “Always does.” Hope crept in.

  “No more doing ambiguously not cool things and then apologizing after. It’s exhausting and part of the pile of reasons I retired from fostering. Just ask first. Too soon for this nonsense if you’re planning to stay with me all year. Agreed?”

  Straightforward. Calling me on my shit. But still—kind. Refreshing.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do I have your word?”

  I smiled so hard my face hurt. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Not for nothing, you’re my last,” she said.

  “Same.”

  She laughed. And weak with relief I nearly did, too.

  The brûlée was probably four servings’ worth. We ate the whole thing.

  “Francine.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  She sipped her tea and smiled at me over her cup.

  “I’ve never had a real tea before,” I said as I cleared the table, and we stood together at the sink, Francine rinsing, me loading the dishwasher. “Is it supposed to be so much?”

  “It is when it’s for a welcome dinner,” she said. “Do you feel properly welcomed?”

  The bright warmth swelled tentatively in my chest again.

  * * *

  —

  That night, showered and in my pajamas, I sat at the kitchen table and called Joellen on Francine’s rotary dial landline. Which, if you haven’t tried one, is kind of fun.

  “Francine?” Joellen’s voice was anxious. “Everything okay?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Muir! You okay?”

  “Hi,” I said. She was quiet. I liked the faraway buzz in the receiver. It felt like talking in an old movie, underwater and through a tunnel.

  “Muir.”

  “I’m here.”

  She sighed. “You want me to come get you?”

  The dishwasher, full of our high tea plates, shifted its cycle. Francine was in the living room watching TV with Terry Johnson cinnamon-rolled up in her lap.

  “Ohhhh,” Francine said to him in what I was learning was her special Terry Johnson voice, “you hate the new Bachelor, too, don’t you?” Terry turned his belly up to be scratched. “Yes, you do, that’s because he’s a mansplaining dummy. Every one of those cute dental hygienists and marketing majors is too good for him, but it’s all fake anyhow, so who cares? We do. That’s right, yes, we do! Brittney better get a rose or else!” And she smothered his face in kisses.

  “No,” I said to Joellen, working the knotted chain I’d taken from the pillowcase, more because I was feeling lucky than to soothe my nerves, which were oddly still. I watched Terry push his nose up against Francine’s face. “Don’t come get me. Not yet.”

  Upstairs, alone in the empty room in the huge non-bunk bed, I lay awake past midnight watching the bats dive and swoop around the moonlit window until I gave up and took a blanket from the bed, crept down the stairs to the living room, and lay down on the narrow sofa. Better. Two distinct sets of breathing echoed in the dark from Francine’s room. I closed my eyes and was nearly lulled to sleep until I was startled by trotting clicks on the floor. Terry Johnson jumped lightly up onto the sofa, wormed his way into the crook of my knees, turned around a bunch of times, curled up like the pastry he was, and fell asleep.

  Every orphan needs a dog to rehydrate our dead, frozen hearts, symbolize the unconditional love we’ve been denied, and make us realize that there really is beauty in the world, after all. Ask anyone. Ask Annie. Ask Sandy.

  Terry Johnson smelled gross and snored like a drunk guy.

  But I was asleep in about a minute, awake at dawn and back upstairs in the big bed before Francine was the wiser.

  * * *

  I carry with me a paperback copy of Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, pictures by his wife, Lillian Hoban, from the third house I lived in. I was six, and Joellen says I stayed for nearly half the year. I remember the kids were fun and the foster people were nice and they had a lot of books, including Bread and Jam, which I loved so much I read it over and over and hid it in my bed so the other kids didn’t take it. The pictures are pencil sketches in only black, white, and a little blue. It is a story about a family of badgers, nature’s most vicious killer, an animal that kills for fun—but in the Frances books, the badger family stands upright and lives in a house and they wear clothes and talk, and they have manners, they brush their badger hair and badger teeth, they have birthday parties and bedtimes, and the mom wears an apron and runs a tidy, efficient household.

  Frances is the older of two badger daughters, and she is having issues with trying unfamiliar food. Almost always, the new food does not work out; poached eggs are slimy, veal cutlet and French-cut string beans are complicated. Frances is sick of new tastes and textures being repeatedly forced on her, being told she’ll love them if she’ll just give them a chance, only to be disappointed again and again and again. So she takes matters into her own hands. She refuses any new food and eats only her favorite meal, bread and jam, all day. Bread and jam instead of slimy eggs for breakfast. She trades the chicken salad sandwich her mother packs in her school lunch for a friend’s bread-and-jam sandwich. Dinner is more bread, more jam. Bread and jam make Frances happy, she always knows what she is getting, and it always tastes good, so she is never disappointed.

  Every house I live in is different in every way. They all smell different, different median temperature, and the food is always unfamiliar; people buy a million kinds of peanut butter, milk, cereal, soup; some people cook only in Crock-Pots, or microwaves, or they fry everything that holds still long enough. Some people are really great bakers or barbecuers; some people buy a bunch of mixed nuts in bulk at Costco and call it dinner. Wonderful or horrible, none of it matters. I am a badger.

  White, wheat, sourdough, rye, multigrain, French baguette—every house has bread. Homemade or store-bought; strawberry, grape, raspberry—every house has jam. And almost all of them have a toaster.

  Everybody needs beauty as well as bread…strength to body and soul alike.

  Even John Muir knew the greatness of bread.

  Every new house I live in, bread and beauty are home. Toast and a walk. I always know what I am getting, and I am never disappointed.

  When the parents at that house told me I couldn’t live with them anymore, that I had to move again to a different house, I snuck Bread and Jam for Frances into the pillowcase. Joellen came to get me, and I did not say goodbye.

  IN THE MORNING IT WAS SATURDAY, day four at Francine’s house, three weeks until the first day of school, and she i
nsisted I attend the school district welcome-back picnic. “It’s an island tradition, makes the first day of school so much easier. Meet some people, stay an hour—half an hour—and then you can leave.”

  I took the bus to a park near the water that was filled with kids from every school on the island, kindergarten through high school. A cloudless, seventy-eight-degree day, cooled by the breeze off the Sound. I stood at the bus stop to watch the little kids chase each other, screaming, and set my watch alarm to beep in thirty minutes.

  “Toast and Jam,” a voice called.

  Kira. My age after all? She stood by herself just beyond the park fence, knee-length bright blue cargo shorts, black boots, black tank, and hair up, showing off her swirling tattoos, elbow-deep in a bag of popcorn.

  I am excellent at engaging with new people, even crowds; that’s basic foster care survival. But being good at it doesn’t mean I like it. I walked, wearing the clean version of the same gray T-shirt and jeans I’d worn to Salishwood, to Kira alone in the shade of a stand of pines. “Hey.”

  She leaned against the nearest tree. “You live here?”

  “I do,” I said with my meeting new people smile. “Now.”

  “Going to school?”

  “Yeah.”

  She crumpled the empty popcorn bag, downed almost an entire bottle of water, unwrapped two pieces of gum from her pocket, and chewed them into a giant wad.

  “When’d you move in?”

  “Few days.”

  “Where?”

  For all my city navigation, I was still unsure where I stood on this forested island. I turned toward the water, where the sun was positioned in the sky, then to the road. “Um. That way?”

  She nodded. “You’ll figure it out. Might be near me. Where from?”

  “Seattle.”

  “So. Muiriel.”

  “How’d you remember?”

  “You took cookies out of the trash.”

  “Right.” My face felt hot. “Sure. That was…You’re Kira?”

  She nodded again and snapped her gum, and to my relief, smiled. For real. “And the bitch with the cookies was Tiana. Just so you know. I’d say steer clear, but I think she saw you dumpster-dive, so it’s too late for you now. What grade?”