Don't Fail Me Now(6)

“No.” I splay my fingers out on the tabletop, feeling my weight pressing into the scratched black vinyl, trying to root myself like a tree without soil.

“Is the other biological parent deceased?”

I wish. “No.”

“And does your mother have a boyfriend or significant other?”

“No.”

“Any living grandparents?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But you do have an aunt.”

“Yeah, my mom’s sister.”

Janet licks her thumb again and flips back a few pages, looking for something. “That would be . . . Samara Means?”

“Right.”

“And she lives locally?”

“Yes.”

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

“Any other aunts or uncles?”

“No.”

“And you’re all in school full-time?”

“Yes.”

“Do you depend on your mother to take you to school?”

“No, she takes the bus and I drive us.”

Janet frowns, sending a web of lines running down the sides of her mouth and off of her cheeks like tributaries from a river. “You know,” she says, “it’s in violation of your provisional license to have other minors in the car without supervision.”

Shit. “I . . . um . . .” The truth is, I am familiar with that particular passage in Maryland’s DMV manual, but what else am I supposed to do? Mom works—well, worked, anyway—from seven thirty to six, and we all have to be at three different schools spanning six miles between seven forty-five and eight fifteen, and Denny gets out at two forty-five and then Cass at three ten, and I have to bring both of them to Taco Bell by four for my shift so they can do homework and eat the edible-but-messed-up-looking kitchen errors for free, so we’re all screwed unless I take a little creative license with the driving laws.

“Well, I’m sure you can find a suitable alternative for the next month,” Janet says with a thin smile.

“I’m sure,” I parrot hollowly.

“Would you say your family is . . . isolated?” she asks. I wonder how long this checklist is and whether she has some key at the end that’ll tell her where we fall on the spectrum between the Cosbys and the Mansons.

“No, we’re right here in the city, over in Berea.” Our house is one slightly busted-looking brick row house on a block of dozens. Like most of low-income Baltimore, our street has a few abandoned, boarded-up lots, places you have to stomp by after dark so the rats won’t dart out from under the rotting stairs and scare the bejesus out of you. But it’s not the boonies by any means.

“Of course,” Janet says, a little impatiently. “I mean, do you see friends, have people over?”

“Yes,” I say. But the truth is I haven’t brought a friend home in years, not since I was a kid. There was this one girl in particular I remember, named Excelyn, who was Mexican and had black braids down to her hips. She would come over after school, and we’d watch cartoons or play with Cass while she bounced in this little chair that hung in the kitchen doorway, and Mom would cut grilled cheese into long strips that she called monkey fingers. There was also a girl named Rosemarie who didn’t go to my school but was the daughter of one of my grandpa’s parishioners who tried to help Mom for a while after her parents passed. For some reason I don’t remember any identifying details about Rosemarie except that in the bathroom at her house, there was a clear, round liquid soap dispenser that matched the seasons. In December it would have a little Santa hat floating in it; in April, a nest of colored eggs; in July, an American flag. At the time, it seemed like an unfathomable luxury item, and later, when things got bad, I sometimes thought of that soap dispenser, convinced that if we were the kind of family who had one, it would have protected us somehow. Made everything perfect.

“So you have a social life outside the home?” Janet presses.

“Yeah,” I lie, trying to sound casual, like I don’t eat the same fast-food bean burrito for dinner every night in the cramped booth right by the men’s room exit, which is the least popular booth due to the pervasive urinal-cake stench, and therefore the only one my manager will let my latchkey siblings park themselves for hours on end.

Janet scribbles in her notebook and then looks up at me, fixing me once again with Meaningful Eye Contact. We’re so close I can see the contact lenses glistening on her slate-colored irises.

“Have any of you suffered physical abuse at the hands of your mother or another adult in the home?” She asks this in the same tone of voice that she used when she asked how old we were.

“No,” I say, forcing myself to keep calm for Denny’s benefit. I glance across the table at Cass and see in her face that she’s thinking the exact same thing I am: We could take her.

Janet furrows her brow sympathetically. “I know it’s a sensitive topic, but this is a standard question in cases where substance abuse is also present.” She thinks I’m lying, when for once I’m not. I bite down hard on my tongue.

Denny holds up the drawing he’s been working on, oblivious to the tension in the room. “Look!” he cries. “It’s a T. rex eating a Brachiosaurus!” Denny has worn out the red ink cartridge on Janet’s bribe pen making spurts of blood shooting out of every possible place on the dinosaur’s body, and she smiles at him before jotting something down in her notes. Great.