What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  “But you can’t be with me forever.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Sean! When you turn eighteen, is your mom kicking you out alone with nothing and telling you to never come back or ever speak to her again?”

  He looked right at me. “No.”

  “Well, my parent is the state of Washington. And when I’m eighteen, Washington is kicking me out.”

  “What about Francine?”

  “What about her? She is paid to let me live with her. When they stop paying her, I have to leave. That’s how foster care works.”

  “What if she adopted you?”

  I walked. He followed.

  “Muir. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…is adoption bad?” he said, trying to keep up with my anxiety-fueled pace.

  “No, adoption isn’t bad. It isn’t anything. It isn’t true.”

  “What?”

  His confusion made my heart hurt. Also made me furious. How could he not understand that I did not choose this life? I was forced to be alone; I couldn’t have best friends or a boyfriend or any normal shit other kids get to do in high school because I did not want to die, and love was a land mine of attachment.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish you would let me help.”

  “I wish you could.”

  “I can.”

  We walked and walked until Francine’s road, and I could not help it, I hugged him and he held on tight. I wanted so badly to kiss him, but why salt the wound?

  “I’ll see you at school on Monday,” he said. “Because I go there, too, and I…am your friend.” He turned and walked across the road and into the trees, on the path to his house. His mom’s house. Where he would always be welcome. Always home.

  He can’t help me. I can’t help Zola. Land mines everywhere.

  Terry Johnson came tip-tapping to me, and I scooped him up. All through dinner Francine watched me being gloomy but didn’t say anything until I turned down the oatmeal cookies she offered for dessert.

  “Dessert is the most important food group,” she reminded me.

  “I know.” I tried to smile.

  “I talked to Sean’s mom,” she said.

  “I heard.”

  “You can both read a clock. No more penis emojis.”

  “Francine.”

  “Muiriel. He’s a nice boy.”

  “I know.” I cleared the table, Francine rinsed the dishes, and I loaded the dishwasher. I wrapped the cookies in foil and excused myself for bed.

  “You want to take Terry Johnson up with you now?” she asked. “He’s going to end up there later anyway.”

  Terry Johnson’s ears lifted at the sound of his name.

  “You sure?” I asked. “Doesn’t he want to watch The Bachelor?”

  “He probably does. But you look like you could use some extra warmth tonight.”

  I picked him up, started to the stairs, and stopped to bury my face in his soft neck. “Or we could watch with you,” I said. “So he doesn’t fall behind and get confused.”

  He curled between us on the sofa, and we all shared Francine’s blanket. It was a terrible, terrible show.

  But the nicest night in a house I’d had in so long I couldn’t remember.

  In the bed in my room upstairs, I scratched Terry Johnson’s ears with one hand, held my phone in the other.

  “Joellen,” I said when she answered. “Are you allowed to check in on a kid who isn’t yours?”

  * * *

  I carry with me a library card for a county I no longer live in.

  Not only are libraries the greatest invention ever for a person to get her hands on every single book she ever feels like she might want to read without having to buy and carry the heavy things along with her every six to ten months when she moves to a new house—they are also a peaceful and clean and cheerful place to get some quiet alone time. Living with a bunch of kids is chaotic and exhausting, and so there were many Saturdays in my life when my morning and a good part of the afternoon were spent curled up in the toddler picture-book area of whichever library was near the house I lived in at the time. The adults there, the librarians, were so kind. They spoke in modulated low tones that made the top of my head tingly, and they brought new books to my attention that they thought I might like, and they forgave my late fees. My favorite days were rainy ones, especially in the Seattle Central. That whole building is practically made of glass; the wind blows the rain at the windows, and there are warm drinks for sale in the lobby. Heaven.

  My favorite books when I was little were a series of seven that I now understand are actually a romanticized celebration of white people barging into the homelands of indigenous people, participating in their genocide, and stealing the land for themselves, but which, as a little white kid with no parents, I knew only as cozy stories about an adventurous pioneer home life—Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie.

  Here was a loving family that moved every year or so, again and again, just like me. Except they were searching for better luck, not with people but with new places. They were searching for a home. I liked the intricate descriptions of domestic life, the floor sweeping and water fetching and window cleaning and bed making written so deliciously I wished I had a twig-bough broom to use on a dirt floor, and a straw-tick mattress to fill with sweet, sun-warmed hay, and goose-feather pillows to plump. I read all the books in order, then reread them, and then I read only the disaster chapters (locusts, long winter storm, chimney fire) or only the new-house chapters (dugout, brand-new wood house, log cabin) or—my favorite—the food chapters (hog slaughter—ugh; oyster crackers at the surveyor’s house; pancakes from wheat in Almanzo’s walls; Pa survives a blizzard by eating a pound of candy).

  But my very favorite food chapter of all was the one about a social supper. I like this one, first, because it’s a potluck—the whole town meets in the church and every lady brings her best dish—and, second, because it’s the only time Laura’s mother, Ma, is ever pissed about the patriarchal bullshit that keeps her and Laura in the kitchen all night while the men lounge and eat and drink, waited on like princes while the women wash and dry the hundreds of dishes and only then are allowed to pick the scraps off the leftover pig and chicken carcasses.

  But this chapter also gave me the willies because at the potluck, Laura is a teenager and she’s got a teenager friend from school, Ida Brown. Ida is the minister’s daughter, and so of course she’s in the church kitchen, working her ass off all night, and when at last Laura thinks they are free to eat, another huge load of dirty dishes comes into the kitchen and Ida rolls up her sleeves.

  “Aren’t you going to eat now?” Laura asks her, and Ida is super cheerful and says she can’t, because even after eight hours of cooking and cleaning, she doesn’t deserve food yet.

  “I’m only an adopted child, you see,” Ida tells Laura. “I must be obedient and grateful to my parents. I’ll eat tomorrow,” or some such horseshit. I remember thinking maybe she was adopted, like, a month ago and still buying into that crap, but no. The minister and his wife had adopted poor Ida at birth, and then spent the next sixteen years making sure she knew she wasn’t really an actual person, “only an adopted child” and not worthy of respect or dinner at a reasonable hour, not until the manual labor was all done. Ida was, it seemed, less of a daughter and more of a beaten-down indentured servant.

  Laura’s equally creepy response to Ida’s chirpy declaration that she was “lucky to be taken in by the dear Reverend and Mrs. Brown” was not the horror and a hearty Bitch, let’s saddle up some Morgan horses and get you the hell out of Dodge that I yearned for. Instead, the titular character was charmed by Ida’s “dear and cheerful heart.”

  Oh, girl, I thought. You’re not lucky. You’re trapped.

  SALISHWOOD IN OCTOBER was more gorgeous every day, a romantic Abercrombie & Fi
tch backdrop against which Sean’s nonstop sweetness made resisting the “we’re alone, so let’s make out real quick” opportunities even more agonizing. With my phone I sent him links to PBS and Netflix documentaries about kids aging out of foster care, and he watched them and asked questions, which I appreciated and hated because it made me like him more.

  * * *

  —

  “You’re so gloomy without him,” Kira said on a Monday afternoon over the noise of Blackbird’s espresso machine. “Just—you don’t have to marry the guy. Can’t you go out with him and not let it ruin your life?”

  I ignored my homework to watch her pipe perfect frosting wings on sugar cookie bats and didn’t say that being friends with her was also dicey AF. The more I depended on her kindness and company, the more anxious I felt. But I held on, maybe because I’d left friends behind never to see them again, and maybe I could do it again with Kira and still be okay.

  Except none of them had been as smart and funny and understanding as Kira was. No one had ever been so nice to me. And I hadn’t ever liked any friend nearly so much.

  I dipped my toast in the raspberry jam. “I’ll survive without the company of a boy. Or, hey, how about if you take art next semester or have an actual conversation with Elliot, I’ll go out with Sean again.”

  She flipped me off and stole a piece of toast crust from my plate.

  “Oh, speaking of…”

  The bells rang and Elliot materialized as if summoned. I liked that he deviated from the other kids’ standard-issue boy uniform of knee socks and basketball shorts (no matter if they played or not, no matter the weather). Elliot, like Sean, wore actual pants that went all the way down to his shoes. Kira put down her piping bag and ducked behind the counter, smiling and straightening her apron, and then the bells rang again.

  “Oh, hey, Kira?” Tiana’s saccharine upspeak gave me the creeps. Everything was a question. “I didn’t know you worked here?” She put her hand on Elliot’s arm.

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “Everyone does.”

  Kira exhaled audibly. Tiana glared.

  “Hi, Kira,” Elliot said, smiling shyly. “How’s it going?”

  Kira’s voice was quiet but determined. “Great, good, thanks. Thank you. I’m— Can I get you something?”

  “Yeah,” Tiana said. “We’re just getting some cookies and muffins to go? The art showcase is next week, so we’re working on setting up the studio? For the displays?”

  “Why didn’t you enter something?” Elliot said to Kira as a line of customers formed behind him. “You don’t have to be enrolled in class. Are you painting lately? Tiana, have you seen Kira’s acrylics? They’re amazing.”

  Oh, boys. They can be so clueless. Tiana laughed and shoved through the line to examine croissants in the case.

  “I’m really busy this semester,” Kira said, running the register and pouring coffee. “Lots of psychology homework.”

  “Kira,” Tiana said, “we’re going to need a dozen cookies, ten scones, and we’ll take the rest of these cupcakes? Sound good, Elliot? Artists get hungry, amirite?” She laughed and googly-eyed him.

  This was an after-school special with a shitty actor trying to be a mean-girl bully. She was so mediocre. She wasn’t even good at being a bitch. She was just—nothing. And Kira, who was happy to see me every day, who was herself the reason I never felt nervous or had to eat alone at school, who was nice to everyone—she put her head down and filled boxes with the pastries Tiana pointed to, impatient and entitled and wallowing in Kira’s humility.

  I wanted to push Tiana off a cliff.

  “Kira, see you at school?” Elliot called as Tiana dragged him out the door, balancing boxes of pastries.

  Kira got through the line of other customers, untied her apron, and sat miserably beside me.

  “Don’t listen to me about anything,” she said. “Ever.”

  I gave her my last piece of jam-drenched toast. “I will listen to you about everything. Always.”

  She bit the toast and chewed sadly. “Till you leave.”

  “Well,” I said. “Yeah. But always till then.”

  * * *

  —

  “The Irish story of Halloween says there was once a dickhead named Jack who played a trick on the devil, so when Jack died and was turned away from heaven, the devil was still mad about being tricked and wouldn’t have Jack in hell, either. Instead, the devil banished Jack to wander earth in darkness forever, with only a burning bit of coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way. And that’s why we make jack-o’-lanterns!”

  Twenty little kids sat on a carpet of red and gold leaves in the Salishwood field and looked up at Sean, eyes wide, hands full of seeds and stringy innards from the pumpkins they were carving.

  Zola wasn’t there. She would have loved this. Joellen couldn’t legally tell me anything about Zola’s life beyond the fact that she was safe where she was. Try as I might, Joellen would not talk to me about Zola, the state of her happiness or lack of it. I hoped she had a pumpkin to carve. I hoped she was with her grandma. Or, better yet, home with her mom.

  A small girl raised her hand. “Isn’t dickhead a bad word?”

  “It sure is,” I said. “Grown-ups shouldn’t even say it, right, Sean?”

  “That,” Sean said, “was a test, and you passed! Everyone keep going, we’ve got half an hour till the bus comes, and I want to see some scary faces carved into those gourds.”

  The leafy trees among the pines and cedars blazed crimson like fire; I’d never seen such an autumn. Seattle’s parks and streets are full of and lined with trees, of course, but this was another world, lit and glowing orange. I sat with (not next to) Sean at the picnic table.

  The kids flung gourd guts at each other. We let them.

  “So. What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.

  “Sleeping through the whole thing.”

  “Hold up. You don’t like Halloween?”

  “I love it.”

  “Explain.”

  “No kids in Francine’s house. It’s kind of making me sad.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Just different. You know?”

  “This island is in love with Halloween.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I can tell.” Main Street had been lined with carved jack-o’-lanterns for weeks. Kira was giving herself carpal tunnel trying to keep up with the demand for her exquisite cookies, more bats and pumpkins with fondant vines and especially the vampires, each one featuring a different expression on its white frosting face, glittery red sugar blood dripping from every fang.

  “Main Street is a block party. There’ll be a million kids there running loose.”

  “Not mine. Not ones I can take trick-or-treating.”

  “Okay, but there’s a parade, and, listen, Salishwood has a booth. I ran it last year, and I told Jane I’d ask you to come with this time.”

  “Sean.”

  “Please,” he said. “Come with me. It would be so fun. Not a date.”

  Nearly impossible to say no to that smile, but I summoned all the resistance I had left.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be eating KitKats in bed with Terry Johnson.”

  He sighed. “That dog needs a new name.”

  * * *

  —

  The next evening, said dog and I were settled in with our KitKats for Halloween, not in bed but on the sofa, waiting to answer the door to trick-or-treaters, and I was working hard to convince Francine I honestly did want to stay home by myself.

  “Oh, come on,” she called from the bathroom, where face painting was happening. “It’s such a fun night, and won’t Kira be there?”

  “She’s working.”

  “Blackbird closes early; she’ll be done by seven!”

  “I’m good. T
hanks, though.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Muir?”

  “Got it.” Terry Johnson huffed when I moved him off my lap to open the door to Sean leaning on a carved wooden walking stick, wearing a floppy hat and a long white beard.

  Terry Johnson barked his head off. He hates hats.

  “The mountains are calling,” he said. With his free hand, he offered me sheep ears on a headband. “I’m John Muir,” he said, smiling behind the beard. “Herding sheep. In Yosemite. Get it?”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said, trying to play it cool and hide my swooning.

  When will he figure out I am not worth all this effort?

  “Please be my lamb,” he said. “If you don’t, no one will know who I am.”

  Unfair the way he always, always made me laugh.

  “Ohhh…,” Francine sighed dreamily, leaning out from the hall bathroom door. “Muiriel. How can you possibly say no to that?”

  “Hi, Francine!” Sean called.

  She came to the door and smiled the way she did when the hens give an egg with two yolks (Look at that! It’s magic!), and then we all stood there together, Francine looking from Sean to me, hands on her hips in her gardening overalls.

  Just a party. Not a date.

  “I should be Muir,” I said at last. “It’s my name.”

  Sean yanked off the beard. “Here, put this on!”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Francine clucked at me.

  “Oh jeez, fine, just hold on,” I said, and took the stairs two at a time.

  “Where are you going?” Francine called.

  “I have to put on a bra if I’m being forced to leave the house.”

  * * *

  —

  “Take some vampires!” Kira shouted over the madness of people in Blackbird. She tossed me a paper bag full of them, and even in my balance-throwing lamb ears, I caught it.

  “Come find me after!” I yelled back.