Falling Harder (2 page)

One

Nadia

Officially an orphan.

After a furious
flurry of paperwork and a symphony of hushed conversations, I’m told that a
foster home has been found for me. I’ve been staying with Sarah all week, but
it’s time for me to move onto this next, strange stage of my life. My
babysitter helps me pack up my few belongings, the things we salvaged from my
parents’ home. I’m traveling pretty light, I guess. I’ve got a couple changes
of clothes, my stuffed Bengal Tiger whose name is Richard, and the tiny compass
that hangs on a chain around my neck.

My parents gave
me my necklace for Christmas when I was six years old. While all the other
girls in my class were dreaming about becoming ballerinas and mothers and
wives, I’d wanted to be an explorer.

My teachers had
laughed at my response to the age-old, “What do you want to be when you grow
up?” question, but my parents had taken it seriously. They’d bought me atlases,
and globes, and a little compass to wear around my neck.

I’m sure they
never could have guessed just how soon I'd be navigating strange waters. With
everything I own in the world stuffed into a backpack, I wave goodbye to Sarah
and let myself be ushered into Miss MacCoy’s car. We pull out of the driveway
and set off together.

Evanston, the
only home I’ve ever known, zips by in a heartbeat. I’m not even sad to leave,
not really. My parents’ home was the real center of my world, not some town.
With my parents gone, I feel weirdly unbound. Like one of those dandelion
blossoms, scattered on the wind.

Miss MacCoy
ferries me toward the city limits of Chicago. I’ve only been in this city a
couple of times before, for field trips and adventures with my parents. Some of
the streets we pass look stately, clean, and refined. But as we continue,
things become a little less charming. Little hints of violence, tension, start
to color the scenes playing out just beyond my window. Before my surroundings
get too dark, we pull off onto a side street.

It’s a little
dingy, this part of the city, but not too scary. At least not yet. We stop at a
little, narrow house with a sagging but brightly painted porch out front. The
small structure is in far better shape than some of those around it, and I even
spot a basketball hoop hanging above the garage door.

“What do you think?”
Miss MacCoy asks, turning toward me with a thin smile.

“I dunno,” I
mutter, unsure of what exactly she wants to hear.

“The Goldsteins
are long-time foster parents,” the social worker tells me, “I can’t tell you
how many kids they’ve taken in. Dozens, at least.”

“They’ve adopted
dozens of kids?” I ask, bowled over by the idea. As an only child, the notion
of so many siblings is staggering to me.

“Adopted?” Miss
MacCoy says, the corners of her mouth falling, “No, Nadia...The Goldsteins are
foster parents.”

“I don’t
understand...” I say, running my fingers nervously through my thick blonde
ponytail, “I thought that I was staying with the family that was going to adopt
me someday.”

Miss MacCoy lets
out a barely audible sigh. “In a perfect world, that’s what would be
happening,” she says, “But you have to understand, Nadia. It’s harder to find
adoptive families for older children.”

“It is?”

“Yes, I’m afraid
so. You see, most families that are looking to adopt a child prefer to take in
a newborn, so that they can raise her as their own. Foster kids get sort of a
bad reputation, so the older you get, the more difficult it is for us to place
you.”

“But...I’m
really well behaved,” I insist, fingering my compass anxiously, “I never leave
dirty dishes around the house, and I’ve never gotten less than a B+ in school.
Doesn’t that help?”

“I’m sure that
if a family is looking to adopt a twelve year old girl, you’ll be at the top of
the list, Nadia,” Miss MacCoy says with a sad smile.

It doesn’t
escape my notice that she uses the word “if” rather than “when” every time
adoption comes up. I clench my teeth, fighting to keep a sudden swell of
heartache down.

“I guess this is
OK for now,” I say, gathering my things. “Let’s go meet my new family, I
guess.”

Miss MacCoy walks
me up to the Goldsteins front door. As we approach, I can hear a noisy racket
leaking out through the cracks in the walls. My foot touches down on the first
step of the stoop as the front door flies open. I feel the wind get knocked out
of my gut as I hit the ground, toppled by some burly projectile. The world
spins around me as I struggle to suck in air. I’m vaguely aware of a big,
booming laugh sounding out overhead. I feel Miss MacCoy’s hands on me,
straightening me up. Blinking around, I struggle to make sense of the scene.

Two boys,
fourteen or so by the look of them, are wrestling viciously on the patchy green
lawn beside me. The front door of the house stands wide open, knocking against
the vinyl siding. They must have knocked me over on their way out onto the
grass. A plump, harried woman stomps out onto the porch, planting her hands on
her hips.

“Daryl! Chuck!”
she yells in a raspy, low voice, “Get your asses back inside! Quit making fools
of yourself, for once.” The two boys pay her no mind whatsoever, and she turns
to me with a grunt. “Oh, hey there!” she says, crackling a yellow-toothed smile
for my benefit. “You must be Nadia! Welcome to the Goldsteins."

I steal a glance
at Miss MacCoy, asking her silently whether there’s been some mistake. But
she’s wearing a resolute mask, and I know that this is it. This is really the
place that I’ll call home for the time being.

“Is this our new
sister?” hollers one of the boys, a thick piece of work with ginger hair and
freckles. “She’s cute!”

“Shut up dude,”
yells the other boy, chubby and blonde, “That’s freakin’ gross.”

“Get inside and
wash up,” Mrs. Goldstein commands the boys. They storm past us into the house,
stealing looks at me as they go. Something about the way their eyes linger on
my narrow shoulders and hips, the bare skin of my legs where the denim cutoffs
end, makes me uneasy.

“I’ll let you
take it from here,” Miss MacCoy says, pulling me into a brief hug. “Take care,
Nadia. I’ll see you soon.”

My social worker
hurries back to her car, leaving me in the care of my new foster mother. Mrs.
Goldstein plants a firm hand on the back of my neck and marches me up the porch
steps.

“You’ll love it
here,” she assures me, “We’ve got cable, and a tire swing out back, and
meatloaf every Wednesday. You like meatloaf Nadia?”

“Sure,” I say
weakly.

“Great!” Mrs.
Goldstein says, “You’ll get along just fine here.” She closes the door behind
us, and so begins my new life as a member of the Goldstein family.

For the first
few nights, I don’t even sleep. My room is essentially a laundry closet decked
out with a cot. I can hear my foster brothers and father snoring through the
door, and the house all but rattles with the force of the sound. I lie awake,
staring at the water stained ceiling, and wonder when I’ll wake up from this
strange dream I’ve fallen into. How long before this world vanishes before my
eyes and I feel my mother’s hands on my shoulders again, shaking me out of a
deep sleep?

But as much as I
keep hoping to be wrenched out of this place, I’m just not that lucky. The days
pass in a haze of boredom and wariness. Eventually, it sinks in that this is
simply the reality I’ve been dealt. This is what my life looks like, now. And I
have to figure out how to accept it.

I last at the
Goldsteins for the better part of a year. Every Wednesday, I obediently shovel
meatloaf into my mouth. I laugh along with the bad sitcoms that play nonstop on
the TV. I even manage to call Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein by their first names,
after a while. I’m enrolled in a new school, study hard every night, and bide
my time, waiting for something good to happen.

But that year, I
turn thirteen, and things start to change. My mother was always frank with me
about what was in store for me, as a girl. I knew that my body would start to
become more grownup, far faster than my mind and heart might. Overnight, it
seems, I stop being a little girl and start looking, and feeling, like a young
woman.

My chest starts
to swell, and my baby fat seems to disappear by the minute. I find baggy
sweatshirts to wear, to cover the unexpected shifts in my body, but I can feel
the eyes of men and women alike settling on me. People start looking at me
differently, especially my foster brothers.

One night, my
red-headed housemate Daryl grows bold and corners me in the kitchen as I finish
up the dishes.

“Have you ever
kissed anyone before?” he asks earnestly.

“No,” I say
flatly, drying off a plate with the hem of my sweatshirt.

“Do you want
to?” he goes on, his eyes fixed on me.

“Leave me alone,
Daryl,” I say, “I’m busy.”

“I said, do you
want to kiss someone?” he repeats, “Do you want to kiss me?”

“Not even a
little—” I start to say, but the words get cut off as Daryl spins me around and
mashes his lips against mine. I drop the plate, sending little sharp shards
flying all over. Daryl howls as a piece of glass nicks his shin, and he hops
mercifully away from me, cradling the shallow wound. I dash out of the room,
ignoring Mrs. Goldstein’s shouted questions as she pushes past me.

The next
morning, I wake up to find blood in my underwear. I figure that I’m being
cursed for letting Daryl kiss me, that’s the only possible explanation. Before
anyone else in the house is awake, I call Miss MacCoy and ask her to pick me
up.

Before I know
it, I’m off to a new home—an apartment on the outskirts of Chicago. My next
foster mother is a platinum blonde former model named Cheryl. She’s not a
serial foster mother like Mrs. Goldstein, she’s just trying the whole kid thing
on for size, or so she tells me. The first night I stay with Cheryl, she lets
me have a cold beer with her.

“To us,” she
says, tapping her can against mine. “This is start of a beautiful friendship,
Nadia. I can just tell.”

I smile and take
a tentative sip of my beer. The taste is overpowering, but I’m persistent. I
want my new mother to like me, after all. Maybe she’ll keep me around, if she
likes me.

“You have the
most beautiful blue eyes,” Cheryl says, setting back into the zebra print sofa
beside me. “Like little blue oceans. You have that whole...exotic thing going.
Are you mixed race?”

“I don’t know
what that means,” I admit.

“Never mind,”
she says, “You can just say that you are. Multi-ethnic people are so hot.”

“Cool,” I reply.

“I bet you’re
going to be stunning when you grow up,” Cheryl goes on, lighting a cigarette on
the butt of the one she’s just finished. “Just you wait. We’ll go shopping
together, get manicures, do the whole mother-daughter thing.”

It sounds great,
everything that Cheryl promises. For a time, I really believe her. I spent
another year living with Cheryl in her tiny, smoky apartment. But as I continue
to grow up, she doesn’t seem as thrilled with me as she promised. The more men
start to notice me, the less Cheryl likes me. By the time I’m fourteen, she
sends me packing to the next home with a bitter scowl on her face.

For the next ten
months, I live with some bible thumpers in rural Illinois. I ask to be taken
away from them when they start telling me that there are demons in my guts.
Right before my first exorcism is scheduled to go down, Miss MacCoy snatches me
away.

At fifteen, I’m
sent to live with the elderly Mrs. Tyson, who has about five other girls in her
home. When a cat fight breaks out over an allegedly stolen hairdryer, I get a
couple ribs broken and a bad black eye. Just before my sixteenth birthday, I
find myself back in Miss MacCoy’s office, without a home once more.

“Does everyone
move around this much?” I ask, tucking my long blonde hair behind my ear.

“Mostly,” she
says.

“So, where am I
off to next?” I ask with a sigh.

“We were able to
find a place last minute,” she tells me. “You’ll be staying with Paul and Nancy
Daniels. They’ve already got a few kids staying with them, so you’ll have
plenty of company.”

“Oh goody.”

“I know it’s
been a rough ride,” Miss MacCoy says earnestly, “But I’ve got a good feeling
about this place.”

“Whatever you
say,” I tell her, tucking my knees into my chest. “Wherever I’m going can’t
possibly be worse than where I’ve been.”

Someday, maybe
I’ll learn to stop thinking things like that. After everything I’ve been
through, you think I’d have better sense. If there’s one thing growing up as a
foster kid has taught me, it’s that where you’re going is almost guaranteed to
be worse than where you were before. The devil you know, right?

And so, for my
sweet sixteenth, I get a new dysfunctional family, gift wrapped just for me.
Not exactly what I would have wished for, but then again, when do wishes ever
come true?