“Speaking of boyfriends, who’s this guy Sheila was with?”
“Sheila don’t tell me nothin’. Hell, I thought she was with that dyke.”
“Yvonne is her friend, Nancy. This was some guy named Butch.”
“Never heard of no Butch,” she says. “Why?”
I’m hesitant to tell, but . . . “He knocked Sheila around pretty good, and I found some marks on Frankie.”
“You tell CPS?”
“I was gonna call my old caseworker, but Frankie would end up someplace completely unfamiliar, and nobody’s going to keep him for long. He’s back at our place now, but the Howards’ license is specialized just for me.”
“They could lose it,” she says. “Foster parents are mandatory reporters.” One place Nancy is an expert is the workings of children’s services. “He could come with me.”
“C’mon, Nancy. I can’t come with you, and I’m your kid.”
“Let’s talk about something else. I wanted this day to be about you and me. What about Thanksgiving this year? You going to make it, or you gonna follow Foster Pop’s rules?”
“I haven’t missed one yet, and I’ve been grounded every time I was caught.”
Nancy holds a gala “family” Thanksgiving dinner every year at Quik Mart. Yeah, the convenience store; and it’s way more bizarre than it sounds. I’ve had to sneak to it every year, because if you think Pop balks at my connecting up at my public sports events, well. . . . Marvin thinks it’s the coolest thing ever, which gives an indication of just how strange things get.
“It’s in November, Nancy. Why are you asking me now?”
“It was all I could think of to change the subject,” she says, and stands to get another sugar. “I think you should keep up this swimming thing, by the way. It looks like a lot of fun.”
“If it looks like so much fun, they have Masters’ swimming.”
She looks down, appraises. “You think I’m putting this body in a swimming suit?”
“If you did it every day, that body would look really different,” I tell her.
“I s’pose,” she says, and stares out the window.
It’s times like this that I just wish I could take care of my mother. I remember her screaming out the stories of her own childhood in times when she was tired of my whining—how she had to hide from her uncle and a couple of her cousins, how her father used to swing her around by the hair to show his friends how tough she was. I mean he lifted her off the ground and swung her around and around like a sack of potatoes. And if she cried or yelled, he dropped her. When I think of that, my throat closes over with hopelessness.
I feel guilty.
“You busy?” Pop stands in the doorway to my room where I’m stretched out on the bed reading the back cover of Bastard out of Carolina, a book Maddy said I’d hate, but would relate to.
I say, “Not really,”
“Time to talk?”
“Sure.”
He sits at the foot of the bed, takes a deep breath. Uh-oh. “Momma and I have been talking about . . . your family.”
“The Boots.”
“The ones and onlys.”
“What about them?”
“We’ve been pretty lax about contact. I know, you see them in public—at games and swim meets. I think it’s more frequent than that.”
I freeze inside, but hold his gaze.
“Well?”
“I run into them sometimes. Mostly Nancy. You know, she’s all over the place.”
“I think it’s more intentional than that.”
I shrug and look away.
“That’s what I thought. It needs to stop, Annie.”
I hesitate. “Or what?”
“I haven’t wanted to go there,” he says, “and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t force me to.”
“Pop, it doesn’t even affect me anymore. I know when I was little and they’d send me home, I’d come back a little shit, but I’ll bet you can’t even tell when I’ve seen them now.”
“Remember back at Hoopfest when you bludgeoned that girl on the court because Nancy didn’t show? Remember all the times you’ve come back from an event and gone straight to your room, wouldn’t say hello or sit with us? After all we’ve done?”
“I go to my room because I don’t want to have this very conversation.”
“Annie, I’ve told you, I won’t be lied to.”
Then don’t ask me questions. That one stays in my head.
“I know you went to Sheila’s.”
Dang! “How did you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. It matters that I know.”
“We ordered pizza.”
“Mmm-hmm. How did that end?”
I surrender. “The pizza ended on the floor. But I wasn’t the one to come uncorked.”
Pop stands, palms the back of his neck—a warning sign. “I don’t want this to turn into one of our epic struggles, but you’re going to be a senior in high school. You can’t go out into the world lying to people.”
“Actually, people do it all the time.”
I’m lucky this time. Pop really doesn’t want to get into this all the way, and he’s learned that threatening me is about the best way to assure I’ll do what I’m not supposed to.
Back in the day, when Nancy screwed up yet one more time and I got sent back, I was a handful. I hoarded food, disappeared things that were really important to Momma and Pop, threw temper tantrums that scared even me. They responded with “time out,” which was basically “go to your room,” then started taking things away when I didn’t straighten up—my iPod, books, games, whatever, until the only things in my room were my bed, my dresser, and me. When I was like that, they just couldn’t cost me enough. They won all the battles, but I won the war, because what they didn’t understand was, they could throw me out into a snowbank and nothing would have changed. My insides were so crazy mixed up that all I could count on was my own stubbornness.
“I don’t like those struggles, either, Pop,” I say now.
He takes a deep breath and stares out my window. He really should send Momma on these missions. Or better, Marvin.
“I’m going to leave it at that,” he says, “because I promised Jane I wouldn’t
