by Meg Elison
“Doc, I’m really hungry. And tired. And it’s probably pretty obvious how bad I need a shower. I will totally stay put with people who will help me out with any of that.”
“I need your word, Layla.” She’s got me pinned down with her brown eyes.
“Do you want me to sign something?”
She laughs a little. “You can’t sign anything, honey. You’re a minor. I want you to tell me you promise and shake my hand.”
I hold out my hand. “I promise I will not run away from a nice foster home where there is a shower and some food, and you promise you will bring me my brother.”
She takes my dirty hand in her moisturized, manicured one. She has purple nails.
“You like purple.”
She’s still looking me over. “You’re careful. You made me promise, too.”
“Like you said, I’m smart. I’m a scientist.”
She looks at me for a minute, and I can see her hiding away pity underneath something else, something like the way Bette looked when she was buying me clothes.
She signs some paperwork for the police, and they let her take me. It’s light out again, and I’ve lost all sense of time. She pulls her little purple car into the drive-thru at McDonald’s, and I know it must be morning since they have the full breakfast menu up.
She orders me a big bag of everything. “It’s a little bit of a drive, Miss Layla.”
I must be eating fast, because she reminds me to drink my orange juice.
Between bites, I think about my remaining resources. “So did the cops give you back my phone?”
“No, I’m afraid not. It’s being looked at for evidence so they can find your mama.”
“Well, they’re not gonna find her on there.” I eat a sausage patty in three bites and fish for more in the bag. “When can I get it back?”
“I don’t know, but I will surely ask them for you. What do you mean, they won’t find her on there?”
“She’s never called my phone. Or texted. I don’t have a number for her, except her office.”
She sips a little coffee. “I see.”
We drive in silence for a while. I lick the last of the hash-brown grease off my fingers.
“That was really good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So where is Andy?”
She waits a second, checking the rearview before answering me. “He’s in another foster home.”
“Is it far? Are there other kids there?”
“It’s a little bit far from where you’ll be, yes. But he’s the only kid there for right now.”
“Have you seen him?” I ask her.
“Yes. I’m Andy’s social worker as well.”
“How was he?”
She’s quiet for a minute, her purple lips pursed as she makes a turn. “It was hard for him at first. He had to adjust to a lot of things. But he’s getting used to it now. He was excited to get new clothes. And he always asks for you.”
The hot octopus reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart. “Really? And he’s okay? He sleeps at night? And they know he’s allergic—”
“To strawberries. Actually, nobody knew that until I saw it on your Twitter. Thanks for telling us that.”
I don’t say anything.
We pull into a long driveway in front of a really old-looking house with square posts holding up the porch. A tall blonde woman who reminds me of Bette comes through the door.
I turn back to tell Doc I don’t want to go in, but she’s already out of the car.
How is it that when I’m scared I age backward?
I step out of the car and see Doc has my backpack, but it looks mostly empty.
“Layla, this is Mrs. Joel. Mrs. Joel, Layla Bailey.”
She walks down the steps and holds a hand out to me. “Hello, Layla. It’s nice to meet you. I only found out you were coming a short while ago, but I’m so glad you’re here.”
“We both are.” While Mrs. Joel is still holding my hand, a guy that has to be her husband is coming down the porch steps. “I’m Bertrand Joel.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Joel.” I shake his hand, too. I feel like a talking bird in a zoo.
Doc hands me my backpack. “You remember your promise, right?”
The Joels are walking toward their door together, letting me say goodbye to someone I’ve just met but who feels like my best friend in the world.
“They’re not real people, right? They came from the Foster Parent Catalog from last year, and we’re going to film a commercial.”
Doc laughs hard this time, throwing her head back. “I told you. Nicest people I know. So, your promise?”
I look back at the big house. How weird can it be?
“Yes. I’ll keep my promise.”
“Good, and I’ll keep mine. Now, they’re expecting you back at school tomorrow. Martha—Mrs. Joel—will have some clothes for you, and you can’t miss any more days. We have to keep you on track to graduate.”
“Okay, Doc. And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you will have dinner with your brother,” she tells me, promising again.
We both nod. She pats me on the shoulder as if to say goodbye and gets into her purple car. I turn back toward the front door, where the Foster Parent Commercial is about to begin.
Mrs. Joel gives me the tour. I have my own room. It was made up for a little girl, but everything is so clean and nice. When she gets a look at how dirty I am, she ends the tour in the bathroom. The tub is as big and as nice as Bette’s, and the bath mat is soft like a bed for a little dog.
“There are feminine-hygiene products in this drawer here, when you need them.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
She leaves the room for a minute and I strip off my gross socks, peeling them off my feet the way you peel a black banana to see if it’s still edible.
“Oh, I forgot!” She’s at the door with a stack of folded clothes and towels. “We had to guess at sizes, but this will do for today. I’ll go to Target tonight and get you a couple of outfits, but at least you’ll have something clean to change into. And there’s a clean towel for you, as well.” She sets the whole thing down very gently and turns to leave again.
“Oh. Um, sorry. What should I call you?”
She smiles. “Most of the little kids call me Mom.”
Did all the skin just peel off my face? She follows up quick with another option.
“You can call me Martha, though. If you like.”
“Thank you, Martha. I’m . . . pretty tired. Is it alright if I go lie down after I get cleaned up?”
“Sure, sure, of course!” She zips out the door and closes it behind her. It doesn’t lock from the inside, but foster kids can’t be picky.
I run the shower first, just to get the first layer of dirt and BO off me. After that, I lie down in the tub and fill it as full as I dare.
When I slip between the clean sheets on the bed, wearing my clean shirt and underwear, I’m completely out of it. Everything feels like heaven. It’s so much better than the canvas awnings and the sharp reek of chlorine that it seems ridiculous that that was the last time I was comfortable.
I laugh a little bit, because nothing makes sense. I laugh harder, and I think about Martha telling me I can call her Mom. My throat closes up and there’s really only a little tiny plastic playground slide between laughing and crying. I shush myself like I used to shush Andy, and I fall deeply, deeply asleep.
Martha wakes me up by knocking on the bedroom door, and I’m sitting up before I’m even awake. I don’t realize where I am at first, and it takes a minute. She pokes her head in.
“Hey, Layla, you slept through the whole day. It’s morning. Are you feeling up to school today?” She’s smiling.
“Yeah. Yeah, let me get myself up.”
She comes in gently, almost on tiptoes. She sets a bag down on the edge of the bed. “I went and got you a couple of things for school, like I said I would. And there’s new toothbrushes
in the bathroom, in the drawer above where the pads are. Can you get down to breakfast in the next fifteen or so?”
“I can, yeah.”
“Okay. Do you eat meat?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Opportunistic omnivore.”
She hesitates a second, and I wonder if she knows what I mean. “Okay. Make your bed before you come down.”
“Um. Okay.”
She’s gone as gently as she came. I take the bag to the bathroom with me and fumble open a toothbrush. I’ve had toothbrushes off and on the last few years. I try to remember to make Andy brush, but I forget. Like deodorant, it’s something I learned about late. My gums bleed, and I spit it into the sink.
I open the bag and pull out a pair of leggings and a dress to go over them. Underneath that, there’s jeans and underwear and a couple of T-shirts.
At the bottom of the bag, there’s a red zip-up hoodie with a really cool design of thin black lines across the front of it. It’s fleecy and soft inside, and I rub the hood with my thumbs for a minute.
I brush my hair more than usual. My curls open up into blooms of big frizz, and I wet the brush to calm them back down. I towel it just a little and hope it’ll dry looking decent.
I pull on the first new outfit and zip the hoodie over it.
So normal. My damp hair looks almost human, and my clothes look so nice. I could be anybody. I could be the kid who lives in this house. I could be normal. Remove a single organism from its biome and see if it can flourish elsewhere. Can H. sapiens thrive in captivity? Probably not. Ask people in prison. But we adapt. I am adapting.
I take the hoodie off and carry all my stuff back to the room.
I’ve never made a bed before in my life.
I’m looking at it, and it can’t be that hard. I’ve seen beds that were made. Kristi’s was always made when we got to her room after school. And I’ve seen them on TV, and in the movies. Sometimes there would be two people making a bed together while they talked something out. Is it usually a two-person job?
The sheet on the bottom seems fine. The sheet on top of that I slept under, so it’s all scrunched down because I kick in my sleep, according to Andy. I pull it up so that it covers the pillows. Did it start off that way? I don’t remember. Then there’s a thin blanket I pull up on top of that, and a fluffy peach comforter that I smooth out over the whole thing. That’s made, right? Maybe I’m supposed to fold the whole thing down.
I think about my old loft bed, the pattern of spaceships on the bare black mattress. We only had one pillow, so I gave it to Andy and slept on my arm.
It’s made.
I leave the bag with the clothes in it on top of the peach-and-gold dresser, and I add the clothes out of my backpack and my hairbrush to it. Now my backpack is just school stuff again. It feels light.
I carry it and my hoodie downstairs. Martha and her husband are in the kitchen. He’s reading his iPad at the table, and she’s setting down plates. I flash back to Mom making pancakes and pretending to be normal, promising this time would be different.
“Do you like juice?” Martha is holding open the stainless-steel door of her huge refrigerator.
“Can I have coffee, please?”
She frowns, putting her face against the edge of the door. “You really shouldn’t. You’re not done growing yet.”
“Here.” Mr. Joel is standing up, heading her way. “I’ll show you how we used to make coffee milk when I was back at Brown. It’s really good, but it isn’t really coffee.”
He pours a little coffee into a big glass of milk and adds a bunch of sugar. “Try this.”
It tastes like coffee for babies, or really good chocolate milk.
“Thank you, Mr. Joel. It’s good.”
He smiles. “Think you could call me Bert?”
“Bert.”
Everybody is smiling. I think about the chimps smiling at Dr. Goodall, how she smiled back. How it looks like the same thing to both species, but really can’t be.
“Layla, don’t let breakfast get cold, now.” Martha is sitting down, waving for us to join her.
We sit down, and I’m already aiming my fork at the bacon on my plate when Martha stops me.
“Layla, we usually say a short blessing before we eat. You don’t have to do it with us, but if you’d just hold off for a second?”
“Oh, sure. Sure.” I put my fork down and my hands in my lap.
Martha smiles at Bert with her eyes closed, and he says it fast. It’s short and sweet and it mentions me and my “trials” and it sounds like a wish for a good day at school. I can handle that. They say “Amen” together, and Bert digs straight in. I do, too.
Once he’s eaten a bit, Bert starts. “So, Brookhurst Junior High, huh?”
“Yes.” These eggs are so fluffy and good and hot.
“Eighth grade?” Martha is drinking regular coffee. I sip my baby coffee again.
“Yeah, uh, yes. Eighth grade.”
“And we hear that you get really good grades. That you want to study something in the sciences.” Bert looks like this is the best news ever.
“Yeah, um, yes. I really like lab work.” The bacon is good too, and there’s a muffin instead of toast. I try to pay attention to the conversation, but it’s hard.
“Did you know I’m a biologist?” Bert is leaning forward a little, trying to get my attention.
“No, I didn’t know that. That’s really cool. What do you study?”
He laughs a little bit. “Fruit flies. Most biologists study fruit flies, because they live and die so quick. And my fruit flies are going to cure male-pattern baldness. Maybe you’d like to see the lab sometime?”
I nod, eating the top off the muffin with butter melting on my tongue. Swallow. Speak.
“Yeah, I’d really like that. Thank you. What . . . what do you do, Martha?”
She’s a slower eater than me by a lot. “I was an emergency-room nurse for ten years, but then I decided to focus on being a foster mom. But I studied science, too. You have to, in nursing school.”
“That makes sense.” My plate is clean, my coffee milk is gone. I don’t know what happens next.
“So,” Martha starts. “So, your teachers have been updated about your situation. They will get you your missed work and help you catch up. And the kids you were having trouble with have been talked to about their behavior, so I want you to let us or Dr. Jones know if anyone is bothering you. Okay?”
“Okay.” I know there’s more coming, I just have to wait for it.
“Your videos have been getting a lot of traffic. And I know you’re going to hear a lot from people on Twitter and the rest of the internet about it, because everyone’s got an opinion . . .” She trails off and looks at Bert.
“Look, Layla. You’re a big girl, and nobody is going to stop you from using the internet. It’s been good for you so far, and you’re going to have to learn to deal with the kind of attention you’ve been getting. Just remember that nobody’s opinions about you are as important as your opinions about you. If anyone threatens you or scares you, tell an adult. But try to let the rest of it roll off you. It doesn’t really matter.”
They’re both looking at me, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. There is no way that this is actually how parents talk to their kids. This is like the worst episode of any family TV show, the one where they try to teach you something. Here we are having breakfast in the kitchen as a family. Is this real life? Who am I supposed to be here?
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.” I look down at my empty plate. When I look up again, they seem pleased. I guess that was good enough.
“If you’re finished, go ahead and put your dishes in the sink. We should get ready to go here soon.”
I do as I’m told. I run a little water over the dishes, like Bette always asked us to. I pull the hoodie on again and zip it up, pulling the cuffs over my hands.
“Do you like it?” Martha is carrying her own dishes to the sink.
“Yeah,
I do. Thank you. Do you have to buy new clothes for every kid who comes here?”
She sets them down and pulls her own jacket off the back of her chair. “We get a little money for every kid who comes here, so that we can get them what they need. Some kids come with a suitcase, and others are like you and don’t come with much of anything. But I saw that and thought it would look good on you. It really does.”
“I really do like it. It’s super warm. Thank you, again.”
She smiles funny, looking at Bert again. It’s like they can hear each other’s thoughts and I’m just slightly too simple to get it. I pull my backpack on.
“I’ll drop you at school, okay?”
She and Bert kiss on the cheek and say goodbye. Martha’s car is as nice as Bette’s. Bert pulls out of the driveway behind us in a smaller black car.
The drive to school lets me know where we are. It’s the nice side of town, a mile or two from where Kristi lives. I could find my way back if I had to walk. When we pull into the drop-off loop, Martha hands me a phone.
“I know this is old, but it’s really just for emergencies. It isn’t worth anything, if it’s stolen or sold. It will only call and text me or Bert or Dr. Jones. Or dial 911. It doesn’t have internet. I want you to hold on to it in case something happens. And I’ll be right here to pick you up as soon as school ends. Okay?”
I take it and hold it in my palm. It’s nicer than my phone was. And I would have never thought of stealing it or selling it if she hadn’t said that.
“Okay.”
She looks at me for a moment, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to say something else. Nothing comes to me, and I open the door and slide out.
Both hands deep in my hoodie pockets, I head to Raleigh’s classroom.
The first day at a new school is so tense. I’ve been to a lot of new schools, so I know this feeling. People look at you way more than they talk to you. They definitely talk about you, and they think you can’t tell. You sit wrong, you line up for lunch wrong, you eat with nobody.
I’ve been in the same district since fifth grade, which I think is a record. We’ve moved four times, but always in the same area. So I haven’t had this feeling in almost four years.
