Leo's Chance(30)

I smile and extend my glass to hers. "To beginnings," I say. To new beginnings.

As I start taking ingredients out of the fridge, I say, "Can I ask you a question? You told me the other night that you didn’t date in high school. Why not?" I’m hoping she’ll give me a better idea of what her life was like after I left. I know that I might be torturing myself with this information, but I need to know what she’s been through.

She’s quiet for a minute, seeming to consider whether she’s going to answer me or not, when she puts her wine down and starts, "When I was fifteen, my foster mom, Jodi, was diagnosed with cancer and she and her husband decided they couldn't foster anymore. I wasn't close to either of them, they were mostly disinterested in us girls who lived with them. They weren't unkind, just sort of indifferent and checked out. They watched a lot of t.v. and didn't take a big interest in getting to know who any of us were. We co-existed and they mostly gave us what we needed physically, but emotionally, they were not parents to us, at least not in the way I define parenthood. But I was comfortable where I was, I liked the house, I liked the girls I lived with, and I thought life was as okay for me as it was gonna be in that situation.

"Anyway, when I was moved, I moved in with another couple and they made no bones about the fact that me and the other girls living there were drains on them, even though, as far as I could tell, the main reason we were there was for the checks we brought in. Me and Genevieve and Abby, the other girls who lived there, were mostly their slaves. We cooked, we cleaned, and we took care of their six year old twin boys who, it must be said, were good birth control for us girls if that was what they were trying to teach us. Our foster parents sat on their butts and if they wanted something, they hollered at us to run and fetch it for them. My foster mom, Carol, constantly made remarks about me, my body, my hair, my lack of personality, just being nasty. She was specifically mean to me, but she had an equal opportunity policy when it came to our care. She didn't spend one more cent than she had to on our needs, which meant that our clothes were constantly old and too small. At school, girls made fun of me because they thought I wore my clothes overly tight to get the boys to notice me. They called me a slut and worse and the boys treated me like one and so I steered clear of everyone as much as possible.

"I wasn't exactly brimming with self confidence as it was, but Carol made it her job to make me feel even worse about myself. This didn't exactly make me eager to put myself out there as far as making friends or dating. I ate my lunch in the library every day, and I went home after school and cleaned Carol and Billy's house. The day I turned eighteen, I got a job at the Hilton, and moved out with the intention of sleeping on Genevieve's couch for three months. She had moved out of our foster home and in with her boyfriend six months earlier and told me I could stay there until I had enough money saved up for a security deposit on an apartment. Two months into my stay, her boyfriend made a pass at me, Gen threw me out and I had nowhere to go, and so I worked during the day, went to the library after work and slept at a table in the corner for three hours until they closed and then wandered to several different coffee shops nursing coffees until it was time to go back to work, where thankfully, they have a shower in the employee restroom that they don't mind us using.

"I slept at a shelter downtown one night but an old man tried to crawl into my cot with me in the middle of the night, and someone stole the pair of shoes I had left at the end of my bed before I went to sleep. I couldn't risk someone stealing the money I had saved for an apartment, which I was carrying all in cash. I would have been right back where I started, and that was unthinkable."

I’m taking each and every one of her words into my soul, letting them dissolve into the very fiber of who I am, forcing myself to picture her alone and scared, sleeping at a table in the library, wandering around the city alone, nowhere to go. I want to start throwing things; I want to beat my fists into someone’s face. I’m not sure who I want my victim to be. Probably myself. I need to be here for her though. I need to keep my own feelings of self-punishment for what I didn’t do for her, at bay.

My mind flashes to a time when we were about twelve and thirteen and I saw a small form she had filled out from some "Giving Tree" crap that her foster parents had given her that some charity was collecting for foster kids. I had gotten one too, but I had crumpled mine up and threw it away. I didn’t want some well-off family picking out some shit for me and driving home in their minivan to eat roast beef around the family dining table, feeling like they were such super people, giving back to the community. Just the thought of it pissed me off.

But I got a glimpse of the one Evie had filled out when it fell from her backpack. She had flushed and quickly stuffed it back in, and I pretended I hadn’t read it but I had. She had written in that she wanted her own pillow and pillowcase. I don’t know why that was important to her and I never asked. Maybe because she moved around enough to feel like if she had one thing to take with her that was hers and permanent, something to provide comfort, it wouldn’t be so hard. I don’t know. But something about that broke me in a way that I couldn’t explain at the time and I had gone home and picked a fight with this big thug of a kid that I lived with, mostly letting him kick my ass. I was usually able to get a few good licks in, even against kids a lot bigger than me. But that time I didn’t even try.