Three Little Words Read online

  Blood dribbled down my chin. “Please stop!” I pleaded.

  She glanced to where Mr. Moss was watching television.

  “Go to your room. I don’t want to see you until tomorrow,” she hissed.

  I lay on my bunk and moaned. My mouth was bleeding. My ankle throbbed. My legs were scraped from falling on the roots, and my bottom burned. That night, when I was getting ready to take my bath, I noticed the spoon had made a curious imprint: My skin was red where the spoon had smacked flesh, white where there had been holes.

  Only a few more days, I reminded myself. My mother was coming soon to take me home with her and everything would be all right.

  This particular visit with my mother is encased in my mind like a scene in a snow dome. The door opened, and I saw her silhouetted in the window light. I ran into her arms, claimed her lap, and forgot about Mrs. Moss, who hovered in the corner. A raw sunburn blotched my shoulders. She examined the red dots that mottled my limbs. Since we spent so much of the day outside, we were covered in bug bites. My sensitive skin reacted to every nibble. My mother fretted over each blemish, sending accusatory glances in my foster mother’s direction.

  Luke sidled up to her and showed off his bruised arm. “Ashley did this to me at the beach.”

  Our mother did not seem concerned. “She didn’t mean it, did you, Ashley?”

  “No,” I mumbled.

  My mother’s latest boyfriend distracted Luke while she gave me a bracelet, a package of crayons, and a coloring book. I started coloring while Mr. Ferris discussed some papers that his predecessor, Clayton Hooper, had sent my mother in May.

  “I’m working on everything he asked me to do,” my mother said with a self-righteous attitude.

  “Are you in rehab?” Mrs. Moss probed.

  “I’ve been clean for a long time,” she insisted. “And anyway, I can’t afford it.”

  “What about the parenting class?” Mr. Ferris asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” she agreed absentmindedly.

  “I have referrals for housing and employment.” She nodded, but Mr. Ferris became impatient. “If you’re serious, you’ve got to get cracking on these tasks.”

  My mother turned her attention back to me. “What would you like me to bring you on my next visit?” she asked.

  “I am dying for an Easy-Bake oven,” I said passionately, “and a tea set!”

  “What would you like, Luke?” Mr. Ferris asked to make certain he was included.

  “A helicopter that really flies!” He zoomed back and forth.

  “Well, we’ll see,” my mother answered. I could not tell what annoyed her more: Luke’s buzzing around the room, Mr. Ferris’s prompting, or Mrs. Moss’s interference.

  My mother kissed my neck, and I lavished her with the hugs I reserved only for her. Once more, she promised to be back soon. I held on to her hand and did not want to let go. She uncurled my fingers and stepped back slightly. “Love you, Sunshine,” she said as I was tugged away by Mrs. Moss.

  The night after my visit, Chelsea—Ricky and Melissa’s daughter—cussed, and Mrs. Moss forced her granddaughter to drink hot sauce. “I’m telling!” she screamed, and ran from the house back to her own trailer.

  I did not think much of it until two days later, when summer school had resumed after the long holiday weekend. Two men arrived shortly after the school bus had brought the older kids home. One wore ordinary clothes; the other was in uniform. I waited outside while they called Chelsea in the trailer first. She came out looking defiant and said, “I told them that Grandma hit you with a spoon and that she made me taste hot sauce when I didn’t want to.” She grinned. “I also said how we’re only supposed to tell the good things that happen when people visit.”

  She looked so pleased with herself that I was not too worried when it was my turn to be questioned inside. The man named Mr. Kull asked me to sit at the table in the kitchen area. “Whatever you say will be confidential,” he told me softly. “We’re here to protect you and the other children.”

  I dared not glance over to where Mrs. Moss and Melissa were sitting in the living room, but I knew they were close enough to overhear every word.

  “Do you know the difference between a truth and a lie?” the officer asked. I nodded. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  After I answered his questions, he asked, “Does anything hurt?” I pointed to the sore inside my right cheek.

  “You can go now,” the officer said.

  Mrs. Moss waved for me to sit by her. She brought me some iced Kool-Aid and pretended to be worried about my wound. “You should have shown me that.”

  Next, Mr. Kull talked to Heather. She admitted being disciplined by standing in the corner, squatting, and running laps. She said Mrs. Moss had not paddled her, although she had put hot sauce in her mouth. Her brother, Gordon, revealed that he had lived with the Mosses for eighteen months now and liked this home better than the others.

  “Are you punished much?” Mr. Kull asked. Gordon shook his head. “Not ever?”

  He admitted he sometimes had to run laps and squat. When pressed further, he confessed that he had been forced to swallow hot sauce and pepper.

  “Why do you get those punishments?”

  “Because I say a lot of bad words.”

  I was so close to Mrs. Moss, I could hear her teeth grinding.

  When it was Toby’s turn, his lips formed a rubber-band grin. “I like it here!” he said loud enough for anyone within ten feet of the trailer to hear.

  “Do you get punished when you are naughty?” Mr. Kull asked.

  The smile remained pasted in place. “Sometimes I stand in the corner.”

  “Anything else?” Mr. Kull prompted.

  “I run laps with the other kids … or squat.”

  “For how long?”

  “Five or ten minutes?” came out more as a question than an answer.

  “Have you ever been paddled?” Toby shook his head. “Given hot sauce?”

  “Maybe one little mouthful if I cuss.”

  “Who gives it to you?”

  “Mrs. Moss,” he mumbled.

  “When was the last time you got hot sauce?”

  “The day before yesterday.”

  “What kind is it?” Toby pointed to the Crystal bottle on the table.

  Mitchell claimed the Mosses’ home was better than some of his previous foster placements, yet he confirmed that he had to squat and run laps. He denied that the Mosses ever spanked him and claimed they never gave him hot sauce, only black pepper.

  Mandy whispered that she had only run laps twice and that they had never forced her to squat.

  “What about hot sauce?” She shook her head. “Did anyone else get hot sauce?”

  “I—I’m not sure,” she stammered.

  Luke kept bobbing his head and shouted “Nope!” to every question he was asked.

  “Were you forced to drink hot sauce or swallow pepper?”

  “Nope. I ate it on my own!” He glanced over for my approval.

  Mr. Kull asked Mrs. Moss if Clare could speak. “Sure, she’s smart for her age.” The investigator asked the toddler if she liked it there, and she said, “Yeth.”

  Her endearing lisp tore into me like a dull saw. Unexpectedly, I burst into tears.

  Mr. Kull asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Mrs. Moss elbowed me. I looked up. Her glacial eyes made me shiver. “Ashley has something to say to you.” At first I did not understand her scheme, so she prompted me. “You wanted to tell him that you exaggerated, right?”

  “I guess,” I said slowly as I tried to puzzle out what would happen if I stuck with the truth. If the men did not take me away that afternoon, I would get an even worse punishment than I had before.

  “It’s okay,” the deputy urged. “Just tell us what happened.”

  “It didn’t h-happen the way I said it d-did.”

  “You weren’t hit?” the deputy asked. I shook my head. Tears flew in every direction—not becaus
e I was sad, but because I was outraged that nobody was ever going to see through the woman’s manipulations. “Then what did happen?” the deputy asked sternly.

  “I j-just fell,” I said between sobs. “It w-was an accident.”

  “This one tells stories,” Mrs. Moss said between pursed lips. “Been through a lot of trauma … saw her grandfather shot…” I was furious that she was twisting my story to save her skin, but now she had caught me in her trap.

  Mr. Kull checked the inside of my cheek again. “This needs medical attention,” he said to Mrs. Moss. “Shall I transport her to the doctor now or will you?”

  “I’d be happy to,” she replied.

  We left for the doctor as soon as the investigator was finished. Even though Mrs. Moss had outsmarted me at her house, I was confident that a doctor would detect the truth. When I went in the examining room, Mrs. Moss trailed behind. She fussed like a concerned mother. “She fell down the stairs and bit the inside of her mouth. I think it got infected!”

  I thought: This doctor is smart. There is no way that he will fall for that old line. He peered in my ears, waved a light in front of my eyes, and then examined my mouth. “You’re not brushing very well, young lady, and that can lead to sores and infections.”

  I was stunned that he was not more suspicious. The doctor wrote on his pad: Fell down and bit the right side inside mouth. Next, he gave Mrs. Moss instructions about gargling with warm salt water. And that was it!

  That evening Mrs. Moss prepared her infamous sour broccoli soup, which she made from half-rotten vegetables that she got from a man who delivered crates of supermarket discards. I asked to skip dinner because my mouth hurt.

  “You still have to gargle,” Mrs. Moss reminded me. She fixed a glass of hot salt water. “Chelsea, take her into the bathroom and make sure she does it properly.”

  The minute I took a swig of the mixture, my mouth burned even worse than it had with the hot sauce. “Ow!” I spit it out, spraying the mirror.

  “Grandma, Ashley’s making a mess in here,” Chelsea called. I emptied half the glass in the sink. “And she’s pouring it down the sink.”

  Mrs. Moss rushed into the room, pushing Chelsea aside. She clutched the glass in one hand and held my head back with the other. “Doctor’s orders,” she said, and dumped some water down my throat. I coughed and sputtered, and then she made me swish what was left in the glass. Again, I choked, and this time I sprayed her leg. Her face puffed and her talonlike fingernails gripped my shoulders. The sharp edges of several rings grazed my flesh. Mrs. Moss steered me into the kitchen, grabbed the hot-sauce bottle, and dribbled some into my mouth. She held my cheeks together, pressing the tender spot with her thumb.

  “Bet salt water is looking better and better,” she said. When she released me, I ran into the bathroom and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, but the pain only became worse and worse and worse.

  6.

  nobody listens

  At that point I had been in that hateful house for only six weeks. I am sure I would have been safer with my mother—or almost anyone else. In the meantime, I was determined not to be the center of Marjorie Moss’s sadistic attention, although I could never tell what might spark her rage. A door slam or a sentence that did not end in “ma’am” could make her furious. There were times when so many children were in so many corners that I would have to hunt for a space for my own punishment. The worst offenders had to wear smelly trash cans over their heads.

  Several of the kids had bed-wetting problems, but I had been dry for years until I woke one morning to Heather making gagging sounds. “What stinks?” She sniffed our bunks for the new smell. “Ashley, you pissed your bed!”

  “There’s no way—,” I started to protest, but shut up as I rolled over on a cold, damp spot.

  Mrs. Moss caught me stripping my linens. “What’s going on here?”

  “Ashley peed her bed,” Mandy volunteered.

  “You know we don’t change the sheets but once a month. You’ll have to sleep in that bed as your punishment.”

  A few days later I realized that I had done it again. “I’ve never wet before,” I insisted when Mrs. Moss found out.

  Mrs. Moss made me put on one of Clare’s diapers. “Now go outside and tell everyone: ‘I am a disgusting pig and I pissed myself.’”

  “I’m not supposed to say that word.”

  “You say exactly what I told you. Then maybe you’ll stop acting like a pissing baby.” Frozen, I stood on the trailer’s stoop. Mrs. Moss yelled at me through the door. “Go to the boys first, then back to the girls’ side and do what I said.” I was barefoot and the patio was hot, so I hurried to where the boys were swatting a beach ball with some branches. “I’m a disgusting pig and p-p-pissed myself.”

  Toby stopped in mid-swing and gaped. Mitchell started to laugh, but one look from Toby shut him up.

  I proceeded to the girls’ side. Heather giggled. “Ah, you look so cute!”

  Mandy said, “Go back inside.” Her voice wobbled as if she was about to cry. One minute the kids would turn on one another; other times we would rally because each knew what it felt like to be the victim of the day.

  Unfortunately, Luke never learned to lie low. A favorite trick of his was putting the time-out trash can on his head, then blindly knocking into walls. If he had to stand in the corner, he would jump up and down making farting noises or keep turning around until the time increased. He was trapped in a cycle of acting out and punishment.

  We got so dirty playing outside all day that we bathed nightly. After filling the tub with no more than six inches of water, Mandy and I bathed the babies; then it progressed until the oldest was finished, with everyone sharing the same water. I didn’t mind washing a little boy named Brandon because he never fussed. One night I removed his diaper while he held the tub’s rim. As I lifted him into the water, something warm slipped down my leg. When I realized what had happened, I giggled.

  “What’s going on?” Mrs. Moss called from the living room.

  “Brandon peed all over me!”

  Mrs. Moss began to laugh. It was our first humorous interaction. For that brief second I thought she was starting to like me.

  Warm water often caused Clare to have a bowel movement, yet no matter how gross the water, Mandy and I would still have to get in it later. If the stools were firm, I could usually fish them out with a cup and flush them down the toilet, but I never knew if the babies peed. If the meager layer of bathwater was filthy, I would try to get away with a quick rinse; but if Mrs. Moss did not think I had washed myself thoroughly, she dragged me back into the bath and scrubbed me so hard with a bristle brush that it sometimes scraped off my skin.

  Luke hated baths. When he refused to get in the tub, Mrs. Moss would wash him roughly with a cloth, pour shampoo on his head, and then dunk him to rinse it off. The more he sputtered, the longer she held him under. I could not see what was happening, but I heard him screaming in terror.

  At the end of July, Miles Ferris visited Luke and me at the Moss home. We wore our best clothes, and Mrs. Moss shooed the others outside. Mr. Ferris gave us gifts from our mother, including candy, school clothing and supplies, plus backpacks.

  “I’ve enrolled Luke in Head Start,” Mrs. Moss said, sounding like the most responsible parent ever. “He could use the extra attention.” Mr. Ferris gestured toward me. “She’s my big helper.”

  He raised his eyebrows so high, he looked startled. “Any issues?”

  “All children have their moments …”

  I was relieved that she did not mention that I now wet my bed nightly.

  They talked over our heads as though we could not comprehend their shorthand, but I heard enough to figure out that my mother had not fulfilled the requirements to get us back yet. Adele had called to tell Mr. Ferris that my mother was “on the street.” Mrs. Moss sighed in a way that made me worry that my mother did not have a place to live.

  “She still wants the girl,” he said.
r />   Mrs. Moss pretended to be concerned about our future. “What about the boy?”

  “Those relatives of his expect me to start the paperwork all over!”

  “They’re full of demands, aren’t they?” Mrs. Moss shook her head as though she sympathized with all the trouble he went through that nobody appreciated.

  But I was hung up on the idea that our relatives still wanted us. I thought of Adele wistfully. She had loved me almost as much as my mother had. I would jump at the chance to live with her so I could leave this hellhole.

  Mr. Ferris groaned. “I have to follow up on the request, although I’ve always believed this one is going to termination.”

  At the time the word was meaningless to me, but termination of parental rights—usually abbreviated as TPR in the system—is a huge transition in a child’s life. Of course, I did not know what that entailed, only that the hushed voices and sideways glances meant that this was a big deal—and I had a stomach-churning sensation that “termination” was not something I would like.

  Finally, the broiling, terrifying summer was coming to an end. School was my safe haven, and I was eager to start second grade. Any teacher, even a strict one, would be a welcome change from Mrs. Moss. I volunteered to pick the clothes for the first day of school so I could wear one of the outfits my mother had sent.

  “Real breakfast!” Toby reminded everyone. Foster kids, along with others who qualified, received two meals a day at school. I loved the breakfasts with pancakes, scrambled eggs, little bottles of juice, and sausage links. When they served grilled cheese or chicken sandwiches for lunch, I would cadge extras from the children who hardly ever cleaned their plates. Knowing that we ate at school, Mrs. Moss scrimped even more at home, often serving only thin sandwiches for supper.

  The second-grade classrooms were set up pod-style, with a central space where our class built a teepee. If you finished your work, you could go inside to read or draw. I spent a good portion of my day there reading. When we studied the seasons, Mrs. Brush assigned us an essay describing a winter holiday with our family and said the best one would be printed in the school newsletter.