Three Little Words

  I wished that one of the Pottses would catch me so I would not have to watch it until the end, but they had gone to bed and left me on my own. The worst scene in the movie came when the commandant gave a dinner party. A woman was ordered to stand on a block of ice with a noose around her neck. By the end of the meal the ice had melted and she had hanged herself.

  For years scenes from that movie have haunted me, and the images still bubble to the surface whenever I remember my time at the Pottses’ house. I eventually learned the name of the movie, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and I learned something else, too: Mr. Potts had been accused of molesting children.

  I saw that movie only a few weeks before I entered first grade. Walden Lake Elementary was the most beautiful school I had ever seen; it even had a fountain in the courtyard. My only friend in the neighborhood was an older boy named Fernando. He promised he would not let anyone harass me on the school bus, which I appreciated until he showed me a knife he had hidden in his backpack. I was afraid we both would get in trouble. I liked some of the girls in my class, but—without any preparation—I was moved from the Pottses’ foster home to live with Irma and Clifford Hagen in October. I already knew Mrs. Hagen because she was Mr. and Mrs. Potts’s daughter, but I begged to stay where I was because I did not want to leave my new school friends.

  “You’ll be happier living with other girls,” Mrs. Potts insisted.

  “Can’t I go to Luke’s house?”

  “They don’t have enough beds for the ones they have.”

  I knew it was hopeless to ask about my mother or Adele. I flung my arms around Mrs. Potts’s waist and looked up pleadingly. “Please, can’t I just stay?”

  “They won’t let you,” she sputtered angrily. Something had happened, but I would not find out until much later why they took me away.

  According to my tally, Mrs. Hagen was my eighth so-called mother in three and a half years. To cope, I pretended I was destined for a different life, just like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Princess and, of course, Alice. I had only to fit in the shoe, be kissed by the prince, come into my rightful inheritance, or find some other through-the-looking-glass way out of foster care, and I’d enter the life I was meant to live. Each time I moved, I cheered myself with a little rhyme: Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! Down the rabbit hole to another place I go! I always believed that my happily ever after with my real mother was just over the next horizon.

  To my annoyance, the Hagens asked me to call them “Mom” and “Dad” right away, but I resisted. Adele had drilled into me the correctness of addressing my elders as “sir” and “ma’am,” so I could pretty easily say “ma’am,” which sounded close enough to “Mom” and sounded respectful enough to satisfy Mrs. Hagen. Plus, the Hagens were suckers for my stare into space. As long as I pretended to listen and said I was sorry for any infractions, I got off without much punishment. The important thing, I had learned by now, was not to get on a foster parent’s bad side, because certain incidents trailed you like dog poop on your shoes.

  The Hagens lived in the nicest home I had been in so far. There were four bedrooms, two baths, and a breezy family room. In the back there was an inground pool and a combination basketball and tennis court. Even though there were nine people in the house, it did not seem crowded. The Hagens’ daughter, who was around seventeen, had her own bedroom, while the six foster girls (the five others ranged in age from ten to fourteen), shared two bedrooms. I unfolded my Precious Moments sleeping bag, arranged Katie and Lilly on the shelf, put my jelly sandals in the closet, and tested my new bed, which smelled mustier than the sunshine-dried sheets that had flapped on Mrs. Potts’s line.

  I did like having others to play with and enjoyed girly activities, like having my nails polished or my hair done and dressing up like a princess. My imaginary prince’s name was Jonathan Rodriquez. He looked like a grown Fernando and he wore a blue uniform trimmed with gold braid. Someday he would whisk me to his kingdom, where I would be safe forever.

  My new school, Seffner Elementary, was overcrowded. My teacher’s name was Ms. Port, which I thought was a funny coincidence since her classroom was in a portable trailer.

  The day I started there, Mrs. Hagen dropped me off and said, “You’ll have to find your own way from now on, so remember where your classroom is.”

  “I will!” I said in my most chipper voice. When I looked back, she had disappeared. Other children were hugging their parents good-bye, but I was alone. My fingers flew to my mouth, and I bit off my thumbnail as I forced myself up the first metal step, then the next.

  “You must be Ashley Rhodes.” Ms. Port greeted me with a wide smile. As a way to welcome me to the classroom, she asked the students to make new name tags for our desks. “You can write your name any way you want,” she told me. I drew my name in bubble letters. When we finished, we each stood to show off our artwork and say our names. When the other students saw my creation, they clapped.

  I loved school, but I was envious of the children whose parents walked them to the classroom door in the morning and were waiting outside when the bell rang each afternoon. Like the older girls in the foster home, I rode my bike to school. Pedaling uphill on Kingsway Road during the morning rush hour could be scary because so many cars were passing me, but the downhill ride was exhilarating.

  On class picture day I chose my fanciest dress with a hoop skirt. When I got on my bike, I sat on the wire to keep the skirt from tangling in the greasy chain, but then the front popped up and I could not see over the top. Even worse, my panties were exposed. If I sat on the front of the dress, my butt hung out in the breeze. I was so frustrated that I had to walk the bike. I got grease stains on the hem and arrived after the bell.

  When I walked in the classroom, Ms. Port saw that I had been crying, so she did not fuss at my tardiness. “Are you okay?”

  “My bike—”

  She assumed I had fallen off. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but my dress is ruined!” My sobs rolled in heaves.

  “Honey, the bottom won’t show in the pictures and the spots will wash out,” she said, then sent me to wash up for the photographs.

  I had moved in with the Hagens only six weeks before my seventh birthday, but I do not recall any special celebration or recognition. Christmas, though, was a big deal in foster homes. The foster parents’ associations provided plenty of gifts. Adele had promised me an Easy-Bake oven, but I had not heard from her since April. The Hagens said it was their tradition to open a single present on Christmas Eve. One of the girls asked if we could have a second. Mrs. Hagen relented. Someone asked for “just one more,” and somehow we ended up unwrapping all the gifts. I lay in bed that night feeling that Christmas was ruined. I no longer believed in Santa, so I knew the holiday was all over. The next morning we awoke to find one more gift under the tree for each of us! Although it was only a puzzle, it had been important to receive something—even if it wasn’t from someone who loved me. Since I had left South Carolina, I had not felt special to anyone in the world.

  At the end of January, Clayton Hooper, my latest caseworker, visited me at the Hagens’ house. He watched me coloring valentines, then went to talk to Mrs. Hagen in a whispery voice on the other side of the room.

  When I overheard Luke’s name, my ears alerted. I held up a valentine. “Can you take this to Luke?”

  “Sure,” Mr. Hooper said.

  I wrote Mama on the prettiest one. “Do you know where my mother is?”

  He hesitated. “I believe she’s in South Carolina.”

  “With Adele!” I felt giddy and sighed deeply several times. It was perfect. If Adele and my mother were together, they would figure out how to get us back. My face flushed with excitement. “Can you send this to her?”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  I had not seen my mother since before our first trip to South Carolina—more than two years earlier—but now she would know where I was and could come back for me.

  “I knew she would come
! I knew it!” I danced around the Hagens’ home, hugging my doll when I heard that I would be seeing my mother. The closer we got to the downtown office, the shorter my already-stubby nails became. By the time my mother walked into the room, the cuticle on my thumb was bleeding.

  “How big you are!” my mother exclaimed. Tears streaked her makeup. She fussed about a mark on my chin. “Did you bump yourself?” Using her spit on her finger, she wiped my face and was relieved when the smudge came off.

  I pressed myself to her. “I missed you so much!”

  “Oh, me too, Sunshine.” She rumpled my curls and sniffled into my hair. “They kept me away from you for so long! I would have done anything to see you.”

  I did not doubt that it was “them” against “us.”

  “I’m getting all A’s and I can read, Mama!”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not calling anyone else ‘Mama,’ are you?”

  I shook my head. “No, Mama,” I promised.

  “That’s my Sunshine. You were always my good girl.” She stroked my hand. “Luke is Dusty’s boy, and you are my girl.” She drew me onto her lap. “Do you want to live with me in South Carolina?”

  I gulped. “Today?”

  “I wish.” She bit her lip. “They won’t let me have you until I—” Someone peered through the doorway. “First, I have to find us a nicer place to live, but I’m getting my act together. Anyway, we won’t have to worry about Dusty anymore.”

  I was confused. “But you said that Luke belonged to him.”

  Mr. Hooper took a chair and listened while my mother tried to explain that Luke was not going to be my brother any longer.

  “Is he my brother now?”

  “Yes, for a while longer.”

  A blurry vision of the baby in the box tried to surface, yet I could not express my confusion. Seeing that I still did not understand, my mother took a deep breath and tried again. “He’s just going with his daddy.”

  “Dusty’s his daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s my daddy?”

  “Oh, he went away.”

  Tommy had gone away, and Luke had arrived not too long after. Maybe if Luke wasn’t around, I could be with my mother. “I can get another brother.”

  When it was time for my mother to leave, we hugged so tightly, the worker had to pry me from her neck. “Be good,” she said with heaving sobs. “You’re my good girl. You’re my Sunshine. I’ll see you soon.”

  I started to chase after her, but someone tugged me in the opposite direction. As we rounded the corner, I turned for a last view of my mother. She looked over, and her strangled voice called, “Good-bye, my Sunshine!”

  I was still at the stage where I did not question anything she said. While I was already dubious about many of the foster parents and caseworkers, I do not remember being angry or resenting my mother. If she said she would return soon, then she would. I ignored her broken promises and pretended to be unaware of elapsed time when it came to her.

  As the weather warmed, I could not wait to go swimming. I began with inflatable swimmies on my arms, which Mrs. Hagen deflated a little at a time. When I could swim the width of the pool without them, I was allowed to jump off the diving board. I loved to float on my back and try to find my mother’s face in the cotton-ball clouds.

  The Hagens, who had been foster parents for more than twenty years, had decided to close their foster home. They prepared us by telling us that we would be moving at the end of the school year.

  I was elated. “I’m going to my mother!”

  “Not yet,” Mrs. Hagen explained. “But you are going to live with your brother.”

  I was confused. I thought I was supposed to live with my mother and Luke would live with Dusty. I worried that my brother was somehow keeping me away from my mother. I tried to imagine the perfect foster mother for us both. She would have Adele’s melted-butter voice. She would prepare tea parties with a blue-flowered pot of hot tea, cinnamon toast cut into triangles, and cream-filled cookies on miniature plates. That would be an agreeable way to while away the time until our mother took us home. She would arrive in a red convertible, and we would drive with the top down all the way to South Carolina. When we got there, I would start second grade. Every day my mother would drive me to school, and in the afternoon she would be waiting to pick me up and give me huge hugs. Then we would go out for strawberry milk shakes and sing along to Joan Jett on the radio. My mother was coming to get me. So it did not matter where I lived for the next few weeks. Besides, how bad could it be?

  5.

  the wicked witch

  My caseworkers changed more frequently than my placements. Miles Ferris was fairly new when he arrived at the Hagen house to take me to my next foster home. He had a gentle smile and puppy-dog eyes. Mrs. Hagen helped stuff my clothes, dolls, and sleeping bag into large plastic garbage bags. The hoopskirt of my favorite dress kept popping back up like a child who refuses to lie down.

  Mrs. Hagen lifted it out. “Why don’t you leave this here?” she asked. “It’s too snug anyway.”

  “But it’s mine!”

  She relented. “Maybe they have younger girls who can fit in it.”

  “Oh, they have plenty of friends for Ashley,” Mr. Ferris said in a slick tone that didn’t match his friendly face. “And her brother is so anxious to see her.” I would soon learn that behind his gentle appearance was a careless and uncaring man.

  Mrs. Hagen handed the caseworker my bags. “Check and see if you left anything in your room or around the pool.”

  I found one of my doll’s shoes under the bed. I would have been frantic if I had left it behind. Some of the older kids were getting ready to swim, and I wished I could join them. It was not even ten in the morning and the temperature was over ninety degrees. I hoped the new family also had a pool.

  Mr. Ferris carried the bags to his trunk. “You got a lot of stuff for a little girl.”

  “I have a bike, too!”

  “I don’t have room for a bike,” he said.

  “How will I get to school?” I asked.

  “You’ll be riding the bus,” Mr. Ferris replied. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

  We drove out of the suburban neighborhood to a rural area outside Plant City where there were no traffic lights, just infrequent stop signs. As the road narrowed, the branches of immense oaks arched across it. Tendrils of Spanish moss draped on the trees like gossamer green ghosts. The pavement was dappled with shimmering light. I imagined I was entering a fairy-tale kingdom inhabited by tree spirits.

  The car slowed in front of a rusty metal fence. A rickety gate drooped inward. Mr. Ferris turned down a rutted dirt road, made even bumpier by the roots that crisscrossed it like the veins on an old man’s hands. We pulled up to a trailer that was even more decrepit than my portable classroom at Seffner Elementary. There were no children in sight. Maybe we were stopping here for another reason. I leaned back and closed my eyes as I waited to arrive at a more suitable final destination—preferably, a castle with turrets. The car’s engine sputtered off.

  “You sleeping?” I stirred at this. “Rise and shine and meet your new foster mom,” Mr. Ferris said.

  A screen door squeaked. “Well, hello, Miles,” called a syrupy voice. “And who is this young lady?”

  He opened the car door. “She’s had a nice nap, haven’t you, Ashley?”

  I slid out of the car. “I guess,” I said, then quickly added, “sir.”

  He nodded at the woman. “This is Ashley Rhodes. She is one of the best-behaved children we have, and one of the smartest. She gets straight A’s.”

  The woman seemed doubtful. “Isn’t that nice?” she said between clenched teeth. “Most of my kids have to attend summer school, but I guess you’ll have the whole summer to play, Miss Smarty.” She looked me up and down. I sensed she was trying to calculate whether good grades made me low maintenance or more trouble. By now I knew that foster parents were paid for taking care of
me and that they could trade troublesome kids with a single call to their worker.

  Mr. Ferris started unloading my garbage bags. “Ashley, this is Marjorie Moss. She’ll introduce you around because I have to get downtown for a meeting.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about us, Miles, we’ll be just fine. Won’t we, Ashley?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I smiled hard enough to make my dimples show.

  “Isn’t she a breath of sunshine?” Mrs. Moss beamed at Miles. The minute she said “sunshine,” my stomach flipped and that morning’s breakfast rose in my throat. “And who can resist those red curls?” She reached over to muss them. I squirmed away, so she only got a quick feel.

  The trailer’s front door burst open. “Sissy! Sissy!” I managed to get to the steps before Luke flew into my arms, almost knocking me to the ground.

  “Luke!” called Mrs. Moss. “You were told to stay in your room.”

  “It’s Sissy!” He leaped up and locked his legs around my waist.

  “Young man, get back to your room right this minute!”

  “I’ll take him, ma’am,” I offered.

  Her spine relaxed. “Luke can have a time-out while we get you settled.”

  I steered my brother up the stairs. “Show me your room, Luke.”

  “Girls aren’t allowed in the boys’ room,” he replied.

  “I won’t go inside,” I said because Mrs. Moss was following ten steps behind.

  “I want to be with you!” he wailed.

  “I’m going to be living here now, so we can play later. I need to unpack.”

  “You staying for real?”

  “Yes, for real. Promise.”