What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  Have friends, but don’t “life or death” depend on them. Go out but not date; fostered, never adopted.

  Emotional energy normally reserved solely for work, school, and gearing up to live on my own would be spent mourning the loss of a friendship I was already liking so much that I was starting flame wars with dumb-ass, run-of-the-mill mean girls? Giving a shit what this Sean guy thinks of me and agreeing to go to a movie with him? Why was I sabotaging my own exit plan?

  “Muiriel,” Kira said. “You know what this means?”

  I folded the paper bag into the last, tightest square. “Nope.”

  She took the paper from my tense hands. “We’re like…cousins!”

  What.

  “Francine,” Sean said, still looking from me to Kira and back to me—looking out for me—“want to see a picture of a marmot trying to steal my granola?”

  “For sure.” Francine leaped at the chance to defuse the situation and took Sean’s phone to get a better look.

  What was happening? Who were these people?

  “Oh,” Francine cooed in her Terry Johnson voice. “Look at that sweet baby….God, I love a nice round marmot.”

  I slunk down in my plastic cafeteria chair, limp with relief, then tense with anxiety about the relief.

  Giving a shit about friendships was exhausting. And it was only September.

  * * *

  —

  “I really am sorry I blew your cover,” Francine said for the third time that night at the dinner table. Six o’clock, every night.

  “I don’t know why I lied to Kira.” I passed a few peas to Terry Johnson under the table.

  “I do,” she sighed. “Kids can be assholes.”

  I choked on water, and she whacked me on my back until I could breathe enough to laugh. “Are you allowed to say that?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No. But I know Kira wouldn’t have been mean.”

  “You didn’t know that. Maybe you lied because you could tell she’s worth keeping.”

  I lined up green beans on my plate.

  “Sean’s a good kid, too. You meet at school?”

  “Salishwood.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said. “You know his mother’s a forest ranger.”

  “I heard. Dad, too?”

  “He was. Awful when he died.”

  I nodded, resisted asking more.

  “I would have introduced you to Kira—maybe Sean, too—but I stopped trying to set my kids up with nice island kids years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Backfired every time. They resented my interfering, which I get. But then they purposely wouldn’t be friends with the ones I knew, and missed out on the only kids who would have been good to them. I knew you and Kira would find each other.”

  I side-eyed her. “Oh, really?”

  “Sure. She’s smart, like you. And needing a friend.”

  “I don’t need a friend.”

  She got up and went to the freezer, put an ice cream sandwich in my hand, and unwrapped one for herself. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked at me. “How was it today?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you call Joellen?”

  “Yep.”

  “Think you’ll make it?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “You will,” she said. We ate the bars and did the dishes together, and I sat at the table to do some already-assigned history reading. The landline wall phone rang.

  “Could you get that?” Francine called from the living room. “I got a DOL situation in here.”

  “A what?”

  “Dog on lap! Terry Johnson can’t be disturbed!”

  I picked up the receiver. “Francine’s house.”

  “Muiriel?”

  Sean.

  “Who is it?” Francine called out.

  “It’s Sean.”

  “Oh, good!” she trilled, blatantly delighted.

  Oh brother.

  “Muiriel,” Sean said.

  “Yeah. Yes. Hi.”

  “ ‘The mountains are calling and I must go, and I will work while I can, studying incessantly.’ ”

  I closed my eyes and smiled.

  “Muiriel. You still there?”

  “You called to say the mountains are calling?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you find that in an actual book or just Google it?”

  “What if I Googled to find the source, then checked the book out of the library and read the actual letter because I knew you would ask me that?”

  With all this smiling, my face was going to accumulate more lines in a matter of weeks than I’ve had all my life. Happiness was aging me. “Then I’d say you were right and…well done. Muir approves.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both.”

  For someone not well versed in witty flirting banter, it sure was rolling off my self-deprecating tongue. I could not believe that he bothered to find Muir’s words, the true circumstance of the quote, and that he wanted me to know.

  “First day go okay?” he asked. “How was it after lunch?”

  “It was fine. Good.”

  “Excellent. So…I meant it. About the movie. You know there’s two movie theaters on this island?”

  Seventeen years old and I’d never had a phone call like this. Never had a conversation like this, not once. Ever. My hands were all jingly. I sat on the kitchen stool.

  “Can I—let me talk to Francine. I need to. First.”

  “Oh, right, okay. See you at school. Oh, and Salishwood after?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. We’ll make a movie plan.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Good night.”

  “ ’Night.” I sat in the chair and breathed.

  “Didn’t mean to be nosy,” Francine called. “Just doing my job.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “He ask you on a date?”

  “Not a date. Just out. Movie.”

  “We need to get you a phone. Remind me.”

  I groaned.

  “Suck it up—I need to keep track of you. And you don’t need to ask my permission to go on a date if I know the person.”

  “Not a date…”

  “Whatever. Sean’s a nice boy. You’ve got a curfew, just tell me when and where. You know that.”

  I stood up and went to the living room, where she sat Netflixing it up with lap-bound Terry Johnson. “But can I say I have to ask you?”

  She looked up at me. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”

  This woman had a habit of saying the right thing, always when I wished she would. It was interesting. And strange.

  The mountains are calling, and I must go, and I will work while I can, studying incessantly.

  John Muir wrote these words in a letter to his sister in 1873, while feverishly writing his first book and letters to the legislature begging for help to protect Yosemite Valley from irreparable harm.

  The mountains were not calling to him to take a nice hike; the mountains were calling to him for help, and Muir was in a constant battle every moment he was awake, compelled to save the wild. Because no one else would.

  I gathered my homework and climbed the stairs.

  A lifetime in foster care can make a person really hate bunk beds. But there’s a lot to be said for always having someone below or above you to ask in the dark, “Are you crying? Are you okay?” Which was always me. Asking.

  I had a pillow under my arm, ready to sneak down to the couch, when a hollow scratching came from the stairwell. I shined my key chain flashlight, new batteries blazing, to the bottom of the steps, where two round eyes refl
ected in the blackness.

  I carried Terry Johnson up the stairs, lifted him onto the bed, and he burrowed under the covers.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, sir,” I whispered to him. “I’m only here for a little while.”

  I turned to lie on my side. Still just a lump under the blanket, he nosed his way into the crook of my bent knees, curled tight into a dog cinnamon roll, and slept there pressed against me all night.

  “I TOLD HIM I’D GO to a movie with him. Just us,” I whined to Kira after school the next day, my Blackbird seat near the window now firmly established as homework central before Salishwood.

  “Well done!” She handed me half a scone, untied her apron, and sat across from me for her ten-minute break to eat her half. “I don’t know that he’s had a girlfriend since I’ve been here….He was waiting for you.”

  “Not his girlfriend,” I whispered desperately.

  “Not yet. It’ll drive Katiana insane. A date!”

  I wrung my hands in my lap. “Just going out; it’s not a date. I’ve never had a date; I can’t date anyone.”

  “Never? Really? Like, legally you can’t?”

  “Not illegal.” I laughed without meaning to. “Just not a great idea.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Francine’s never had someone your age—only, like, fifth grade, younger. Summers here with my grandparents, we’d always play with her kids.”

  I sat up straight. “You played with Francine’s foster kids? Where?”

  “Uh…here? Francine’s house. Our house.”

  Every neighborhood I’ve ever lived in, we were never allowed in any neighbor’s house. Neighborhood kids were not allowed to come to our house to play with us. We were persona non grata to the moms whose kids had come out of their vaginas. They knew our houses, they knew us, and they kept their precious angels away.

  “Francine told us she wasn’t going to take any more kids,” Kira said.

  “My social worker was desperate. She talks a good line—she’s like my agent.”

  “Good thing for me,” she said, through a huge bite of scone. “For Sean, too.”

  “Okay”—I leaned across the table to her—“listen, I can’t date a boy because it’s a guaranteed way to screw up everything. I’ll be out in ten months and on my own; I’m not trying to get knocked up so I have to buy a windowless van to run away in and travel the county busking for change because I’m just so in love with some guy who only wants me to help him cook meth and then I’m part of it and I end up in jail with him. Fuck that.”

  Kira’s eyes were wide. “Okay, it’s either don’t date or…cook meth while pregnant in jail?”

  “I mean. Basically. Yeah.”

  She stood and retied her apron. “Listen, man. I don’t think Sean’s into that kind of thing. Like, any of it.”

  “You can never tell,” I sighed, and rested my head on my forearms on the table. “Until it’s too late.”

  “Oh, my friend,” she said. “You are living in an episode of Jerry Springer in your mind.” She put her hand on my back. “None of that is going to happen.”

  I smiled into the table and sat up. My friend. Almost as dangerous as dating, but I couldn’t help liking how it sounded.

  “I have seen some shit,” I said.

  She nodded. “I bet you fucking have. I can’t imagine.”

  My friend.

  “Speak of the devil,” she whispered.

  Bells rang on Blackbird’s glass door. And because life is insane, Sean stepped in. “Hey, Kira.” He smiled. “Can I get coffee to go? Muiriel, you taking the bus to work?”

  I looked at my watch. “Yes.” I wrapped the rest of the scone in a napkin.

  “Good! I’ll go with,” he said. “You guys hear about the bonfire? Tomorrow night?”

  Kira rolled her eyes. As if she or I would have heard about some DL popular-kid bonfire action.

  “Tons of people are coming. Some soccer guys. Dale from chem club. Few second chairs from orchestra. I can give you the details—you want to meet me there?”

  A bonfire? So, kids on a beach in the dark. No adults. Strangers, probably drinking, potential interactions with cops.

  My worst nightmare.

  Kira lit up. “Tell us everything.”

  * * *

  I carry with me an AA sobriety coin.

  I have never not been sober. That I can remember. I entered the foster care system as a newborn, no birth parents or blood relatives to claim or fight over me, all statistically prized and rare characteristics in an adoptable foster child. And yet, for the first year, I was passed from home to home.

  Joellen waited until my thirteenth birthday to take me for ice cream and tell me the truth: I had scared away potential parents with a prenatal meth addiction. Which, for me, cleared up a huge mystery and was frankly understandable, but Joellen found it ridiculous.

  “Meth is what you want,” she fumed. “I mean, if you’re going to be born exposed to something, alcohol is the absolute worst—opiates are bad, too, of course, but meth you can recover from. Look at you! You’re perfect!”

  I had some problems with math, but none with words. I needed absolute quiet when I took tests, but otherwise, yes, I had escaped nearly unscathed.

  I stirred hot fudge into my two scoops of mint chip and felt bad for my mom, because—God—meth? If it really did what they say it does to your face and brain, she probably hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Or had any teeth left. I stirred and stirred until my sundae was soup, all the whipped cream and everything a melted mess, and the pity dissolved and I was angry. The fuck was wrong with her? My mother had ruined my chances of anyone wanting me, ever.

  And I was furious at Joellen. I wished I didn’t know, because now I felt unclean. Ripped off. I pretended to be sick for my next weekly lunch date with Joellen, and she was miserable. She wished she’d told me sooner. Or later. Or not at all. She didn’t know what to do, and neither did I. Finally, the third time I tried to ditch our date, she showed up anyway and drove us to the Seattle ferry dock and got me a pretzel, and we sat and watched the ferries come and go and the gulls and the seals playing, and she said she was sorry. She said to open my hand, and she put a shiny thing in it. Brass AA coin.

  “Thirteen years sober,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  I understood later that Joellen wasn’t just being ironic and funny; she was bitter. Furious on my mother’s behalf and mine. Because my mom needed help and never got it. Because people who claimed they “wanted to be parents” were afraid of a baby with an illness I didn’t ask for, acting on the understanding I did not deserve parents because I wasn’t perfect. Punished for something I did not do, had no control over, and was not my fault.

  “It’s a lucky thing none of them got their hands on you,” Joellen said. “You’re too good for them. This is your medal for bravery and patience. You will always have me, and I know your true family is out there, still,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  She didn’t know that by then I had long since found mine; I was my own true family. I could never leave. I would always take care of myself. I was all I ever needed. I knew I could never be alone, because I was enough.

  * * *

  —

  Friday after school I did my homework, collected eggs, fed Terry Johnson, had dinner with Francine at exactly six o’clock, and loaded the dishwasher, and then Francine practically shoved me out the door to walk to Kira’s house.

  “See you in the morning,” she said. “Ten o’clock.”

  “I have Salishwood. I’ll drop my stuff off here at eight, walk there, and then be back here by four. Okay?”

  “Right,” she said, scribbling it all on her wall calendar. “Got it. Eight and four.”

  “Eight and four.”

  “Salishwood still okay? Homewo
rk’s getting done?”

  “You’ve got the password—you can check whenever you want.”

  Poor Francine. She was not a fan of logging in to the school website to see my grades. I had to help her every time, and then there wasn’t anything exciting; everything in on time, as usual. Marks fine, as usual. Reliably unextraordinary.

  “I’ll take your word for it. Don’t you girls stay out too late.”

  “We won’t.”

  I could not believe I was doing this. That Francine was not only letting me but sort of pushing me to walk to a classmate’s house. To spend the night. Then off to a party destined to ruin my life…all on purpose. To be with Kira and Sean. For fun? I had my toiletry kit, my pajamas, the tangled chain in my pocket, and a burning pit of worry in my stomach.

  But beneath the burning pit, I wanted to go. Maybe I could do this; I was nearly an adult, I had to stop being ridiculous—an adult could have fun with friends sometimes without losing her ability to exist independently in the world. Right?

  The sun was setting as I walked to Kira’s house, where she pulled me into the front door and booked it up the stairs until her mom called out, “Kira!”

  She was Kira’s height, hair up, jeans, sleeveless white blouse. They looked so much alike. Minus the tattoos.

  So strange to be in a house that I didn’t live in. That I was invited into. It was all warm wood and windows, full of pink sunset light and not much else. Some furniture, a couple of rugs, a few paintings on the walls. Like they hadn’t finished moving in. But also—like everything that needed to be there was.

  I have lived in some cluttered-ass places: messy bedrooms, stacks of boxes of who knows what, way too much furniture—people like to have a lot of things. And I mean, no judgment—all God’s children and whatev. Francine’s house was cozy. Still unnaturally quiet for me, but cozy and not as empty as Kira’s, though not cluttered.