Three Little Words Read online

  Mr. Benson passed over some papers and our plastic bags. Grandpa did not say much, but Adele cooed over Luke, who clung to her neck.

  As we drove off, I started with my questions. “Where are we going?”

  “To our house,” Adele responded.

  “Is Luke going to stay with us?”

  “Of course, darlin’.” Adele laughed.

  “When do I go to school?”

  “Not till you’re five.”

  “I’ll be five soon.”

  “I know that, hon, and next year you’ll ride the big yellow bus.”

  “Wheels on the bus go round and round!” Luke clapped.

  I cupped my hand over my brother’s mouth. “Will I have a birthday cake?”

  “Sure, hon. Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla?”

  “Vanilla!” Luke chimed in.

  “No, chocolate.” I shoved him to be quiet. “Where’s Mrs. Ortiz?”

  “Who?” Grandpa asked as we turned down their dirt lane.

  “That foreign lady who had her,” Adele said in a disapproving voice.

  While Adele fixed lunch, Grandpa took us to see the cow named Moe, the chickens, the goat, and the pigs.

  There was almost no conversation while the four of us ate grilled cheese sandwiches, pickles, and potato chips. I was wistful for the commotion in the Ortizes’ home. “It’s too quiet here,” I announced.

  “Peace and quiet are priceless,” Grandpa said.

  I would soon learn that when he wanted peace and quiet, he had to have it; but when he wanted to raise a ruckus, it was best to stay out of his way. I sometimes held as still as a statue and pretended I couldn’t hear or see when my grandpa squabbled with Adele and called her mean names.

  Luke and I shared a bedroom. Sometimes he would climb into my bed when he was scared. If he wet my bed, he would sneak back into his dry one.

  “I never wet the bed!” I protested.

  Adele grumbled. “Liars get soap in their mouths,” she said, and even made me lick a bar a few times. Still, I refused to take the blame for Luke’s mess.

  Adele was a registered nurse and also had an associate degree in commercial art. She had decorated the mobile home with her paintings. She taught me how to color inside the lines and the proper ways to shade an object. While we were working on a project, Luke would follow Grandpa around like a baby duckling behind its mother.

  Our life fell into a routine that—for once—usually centered on us. There were warm chocolate chip cookies and my favorite video, Fantasia. Grandpa built a two-story playhouse in the backyard, where I played house and Luke took the roles I bossily assigned to him. In the evenings we would watch whatever television show Grandpa wanted to see while Adele crocheted or sewed. Even though we arrived the last week in October, Adele made Halloween costumes for us. I was an angel with stiffened wings strapped on my back with a gold harness. She filled my closet with handmade dresses with puffed sleeves and made dolls’ outfits from the scraps. I had a basin where I would scrub my dolls’ clothes and hang them with tiny clothespins on the wash line Adele strung at my height next to the playhouse.

  Adele tucked us in with prayers and kisses. Soon Luke was calling Adele “Mama” and my grandpa “Papa,” but I kept my promise to my mother and called them “Grandpa” and “Adele.” After a few weeks I let my guard down. I stopped worrying about someone coming to take me somewhere else.

  The state authorities had only approved the transfer “with reservations” because Grandpa had never provided a stable home for his own children. He had had a tumultuous childhood and quit school in the seventh grade. By the time I was returned to South Carolina, their oldest son, Perry, age twenty-four, was in prison for murder. The twins, Leanne and Lorraine, were twenty-two; and their youngest, Sammie, had just turned eighteen and was still in foster care. My grandpa had been in and out of jail for crimes he committed while intoxi-cated, and my grandmother had divorced him because he abused her. Perhaps the authorities believed that Adele, who was twelve years older than my grandfather and had been his live-in companion for two years by that time, would make sure that nothing happened to us. She had three grown children, four grandchildren, and a clean record.

  Two weeks after we arrived, Ava Willis, a local caseworker, came to check on us. Adele showed her my drawings and some of my make-believe schoolwork. “This child is itching to go to school.”

  “You know I had concerns about this placement,” Ms. Willis replied, “but I always say that it’s best for children to be with their family, so I am delighted at how well everything is going.”

  “Who wants to go for a ride?” Grandpa asked while Adele was napping. We rarely rode in his beat-up car because it did not have doors or seat belts. He joked that it had “all-natural air-conditioning.” The junker was so rusty that I could see through the floor.

  We stopped at the country store, and Grandpa told us to wait in the car while he shopped. When he came out of the store, he was yelling at a man. He got in the car muttering obscenities, floored the gas, and the car lurched forward. I clutched the seat as we whizzed past our dirt road. The tires screeched as Grandpa did a 180-degree turn. Coming directly toward us in another car was the man from the store. “Let’s see who’s boss!” Grandpa shouted. He hit the accelerator even harder. The gap was closing between the oncoming car and us. Terrified, I looked away. The pavement rushed by like a river. When I glanced to the side, ribbons of flickering green flashed by the nonexistent door.

  “Fassa!” Luke laughed with manic delight.

  “Stop, stop!” I yelled.

  The other guy swerved around us at the last second, but not before he clipped our rear fender. I smashed my face into the back of the front seat. By the time we got home, my lip was swelling. Dust blanketed our clothes. “What in the world?” Adele asked.

  Grandpa gave Adele a don’t-you-start-with-me look, marched into the kitchen, grabbed a can of beer from the refrigerator, planted himself in his favorite chair in front of the television, and lit a cigarette. Blue smoke curled into the air like an exclamation point. Adele herded us into the bathroom and shut the door with an incensed slam.

  Two weeks later, Ava Willis was back and she was furious. Grandpa had taken Luke to town and had been arrested for drunk driving.

  When Ms. Willis confronted him, he was belligerent. “I only drank apple cider. Those deputies were out to get me.”

  “You know I was worried about your stability,” she chided him, “but I hoped that Adele’s strengths would compensate for your shortcomings.”

  “I haven’t had a single drink in three years!”

  “The police tested you, sir.”

  “Sometimes I have a taste, just to be social.”

  “It’s my fault,” Adele said as she wept. “I should have been more protective. I won’t let them go with him ever again.”

  “I have to report this to Florida,” she told Adele and Grandpa.

  “Are you going to send them back?” Adele moaned.

  “The authorities in Florida are still in charge of the case,” the caseworker said. “Personally, I don’t think the children are at risk based on this single incident, but my supervisor is probably not going to want to accept further responsibility.”

  All the commotion caused Adele to cancel my fifth birthday party. She still gave me two dolls: Lilly, a Cabbage Patch doll; and a life-size baby doll I named Katie. I wrote my initials—A. M. R.—on her bottom with permanent black marker.

  “Christmas is my favorite time of year!” Adele said. She decorated the whole trailer before Thanksgiving. We went to the mall and sat on Santa’s lap, and I wore my angel costume again in a holiday pageant at church.

  There were many phone calls about our placement, and Adele pleaded with the authorities not to move us before the holidays. “We’ll do anything you say,” she promised Ms. Willis, who had stalled our return after Adele and Grandpa had agreed to undergo psychological examinations.

  On Christmas mo
rning I received a pink bicycle with training wheels and Luke got a red tricycle. Grandpa gave me a battery-powered Barbie car that I could drive down our long road, and Adele made me a red dress with a white pinafore that had strawberry appliquÉs and matching outfits for my dolls. After we opened our presents at home, we visited Adele’s relatives and played with her three grandchildren, who were close to my age.

  A few weeks later Adele woke me up early. “We’re going to drive up in the mountains so you can see snow.”

  I slept in the car until Adele nudged me awake. Huge flakes whirled around and the ground looked as if it were coated with shiny pearls. When the car stopped, I ran outside, opened my mouth, and curled my tongue to catch snowflakes. I thought that they would taste like vanilla. Instead, they had a rusty-nail flavor. I wanted to make a snowman, but the thin layer was melting into mud.

  After our trip to the mountains, I asked when it was going to snow at our house so I could build a snowman. “It’s very rare around here,” Adele said, and made me a cup of cocoa with a marshmallow bobbing in the middle.

  “But could it happen?”

  “Only the weatherman knows.”

  From then on, I listened to weather reports for any mention of snow. When I finally heard the word, I kept checking for the predicted snow, but it never came. “That weatherman is a liar!” I said.

  “It’s snowing in Colorado,” Adele said with a laugh.

  “Take me there!” I demanded.

  “Maybe someday,” she replied offhandedly.

  A few weeks after Christmas my grandpa was arrested again—this time for nonpayment of child support for his youngest son. Adele bailed him out, and in his attempt to deflect the heat from himself, he told the police that Adele’s heart condition made her unfit to care for us.

  “Yes, I had a problem with my heart muscle, but it’s in remission,” Adele explained to Ms. Willis when she came to investigate. “Anyway, caring for the kids isn’t too hard.”

  “You’re judging me because of my past,” Grandpa argued. “People have always been against me. Why should the system take my own flesh and blood?”

  “I went to bat for you,” the caseworker reminded him. “We wouldn’t have a problem if it hadn’t been for these recent arrests.”

  “The last arrest was unfair,” Grandpa scoffed. “Why should I have to pay child support when I gave all my children up for adoption?”

  “If you gave them up, then you are no longer Lorraine’s legal father,” the worker responded. “That means you have no legal basis to have your grandchildren.”

  “What about me?” Adele said in a timid voice.

  “The children were placed with a relative, and you’re no kin to them.”

  Grandpa left the room several times. Each time, Adele lowered her guard and cried. “He doesn’t care about the children the way I do. I’m the one who will suffer if they leave.”

  Ms. Willis shook her head. “Because Mr. Rhodes assumes no responsibility for his actions, we have no other choice but to send them back to Florida.”

  “Like hell she will!” Adele screamed as the caseworker drove away from the house, a trail of dusty fumes in her wake.

  I had never seen Adele so furious. She made a series of phone calls ending with one to Ms. Willis. “I’ve spoken to our attorney,” she said. “We will not relinquish the children without a court order.”

  Adele had gotten good advice, because the South Carolina Department of Social Services would have to get a Florida court order to force the issue. What she did not know—and I discovered many years later—was that someone in Florida had neglected to get the court’s permission for us to live with our relatives in the first place. Now they had to figure out how to ask for an order recalling us when no judge had approved sending us to South Carolina.

  Adele kept the appointment with the psychologist and took me along. I sat in the waiting room coloring, but then the therapist called me inside. After admiring my drawing, she asked, “What do you think of what’s been going on at your house?”

  I leaned back in my chair, propped my feet up on the coffee table, and sighed. “These social services people want to send me back to Florida, but I’m not much in the mood to go.”

  “What do you think about your mother and Dusty?”

  I refused to look directly at her when I replied, “I like them okay, but my mama did bad things, so social services had to take me away for my own good.”

  The psychologist gave me some tests and said, “You are doing far better than most children.” Then she showed me some pictures and asked me to make up a story about each one. My replies involved ghosts, witches eating people, and monsters swallowing parents alive. “She’s very bright,” she told Adele, who preened at the news. “Her level of verbal expression and her ability to grasp her total situation are way above her age level.” She then whispered something I could not quite hear about showing signs of being disturbed by all the upheavals in my life.

  There was no further talk of moving us, but the legal staff in Florida scurried around trying to figure out how to redo the paperwork so it would look like we had been sent to South Carolina legally. They filed a motion to send us to Grandpa as though we’d never left Florida. The judge signed this document five months after we were already in South Carolina.

  We had visits with Dusty in January and March. He brought toys, candy, and clothes to each visit. I loved the pile of pretty dresses, each wrapped in a plastic bag like the kind you get from the dry cleaner. I sat on his lap and sang songs with him, but Luke—who really had no memory of him—would not join in. We went to a scheduled third visit in April; but after waiting more than an hour, Adele, who had little patience with the Grover clan, took us home. I know Dusty showed up eventually because Ms. Willis brought our gifts to us a few days later.

  My South Carolina interlude has a dreamlike quality to it. I know it existed because I have more photos from that time than from any other placement in foster care. They depict Luke and me snug in new pajamas, splashing in a bubble bath, and hugging a hound dog whose head is twice as big as my brother’s. There are snapshots of us having a picnic in the park, posing in new outfits, and floating in a plastic kiddie pool. Despite the fact that this interval was doomed not to last, we are always smiling in the pictures and they evoke only warm feelings in me.

  That summer Luke stayed home while I went to the beach with Leanne, her boyfriend, and his daughter, Savannah, who was about my age. We built sand castles, ran in the surf, rode a merry-go-round, a miniature train, and bumper cars. Savannah and I slept together in a double bed, wearing T-shirt nighties and hugging matching dolls.

  Adele made a big fuss over Luke’s third birthday in July with a homemade cake, balloons, and fancy hats for us and her grandchildren.

  “Why didn’t I have a party?” I complained.

  “You had just arrived.” Adele did not mention Grandpa’s arrest a few days before I turned five. “But when you are six, you can invite children from your class.”

  Sometime later that summer, Ava Willis dropped by. “The report from the mental health center shows that Ashley has bonded with you and is relatively well adjusted.” She paused. “How are things going between you and Sam?”

  Adele admitted that Grandpa sometimes spoke to her cruelly. “But don’t you worry, he would never hurt me or those children.”

  “It must be hard for you,” the caseworker said sympathetically.

  “Yes, sometimes I think about leaving him, but since I’m not kin, I’d lose the children, right?”

  “If you got a foster parent license, they could stay with you.”

  Luke ran up to Adele. “Mama!” He slipped into her lap. She kissed his forehead. After wiggling around a bit, he slipped down, crawled under the table, and started grunting like a pig.

  “How long has he been calling you ‘Mama’?” the caseworker asked.

  “Almost right away,” Adele said. “He doesn’t remember anyone else.”

/>   “What about Ashley?”

  Adele chuckled. “One time I said something like ‘You mind your mama,’ and she stuck out her tongue and said, ‘You’re not my mama!’” She sighed. “I do love them as much as if they were mine.”

  “Is she still seeing the therapist?”

  Adele nodded.

  “Then give her some time.”

  “It would be better for all of us if this was permanent. How can we get custody?”

  “It might help if you two were married.”

  “I’m working on that!” Adele laughed. Then she lowered her voice and said something about wanting to make sure the Grovers were ruled out as placements.

  A week later it did not matter who loved us or who wanted us. It did not matter whether Adele and Grandpa were married. It did not matter whom we called “Mama” or “Papa.” It only took a few seconds for everything to blow apart.

  Someone had come to see my grandfather about buying a car. He let Luke and me tag along while Adele did the dishes. Almost at once the men started shouting. Grandpa placed his beer bottle on the hood and told us to go back to the house. I heard cussing, and then there was a strange popping, like a car backfiring. Then another. And another. Luke turned and shouted, “Papa fall down!”

  Grandpa was facedown in the dirt. He howled more like an animal than a man. Terrified, I took off toward the house. Adele was running in our direction, and I pressed myself into her outstretched arms. She collapsed on the porch steps, crying with her hands clasped over her mouth. The other man had shot Grandpa four times—twice to his head.

  “Of course he’s home,” Adele said when Ava Willis called four days after the shooting. “I’m a registered nurse and I can take care of him better right here.” Ava Willis’s voice was so loud, I overheard her shrill questions. “No need for you to come over. Everything is back to normal. Sam always said he came from the strongest stock in this county, and I guess he proved himself right,” Adele said with a forced laugh. After a pause her tone became more challenging. “He’s already agreed to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, what more do you want?” She began to pace, squeezing the coiled phone cord in her hand. “I’ve told you before that I am willing to leave him if that’s what it takes to keep my kids. Sure, I’ll become a foster parent, but I can’t do that until Sam’s better. Besides, he can’t get in any trouble in the shape he’s in!” She slammed down the phone.