The Big Sister - Part One (7 page)

My grades improved at school, the tone of the letters my teachers sent home changed from concerned to congratulatory, and every week, Harry and Charlene would treat me to some special experience — the movies, the shopping mall, bowling, parks, everything. I stopped having to remember to put on a pleasant face and started smiling and genuinely having a good time at the activities my guardians planned for me. Pretending to have fun and pretending to be happy was so difficult when I realized how easy it was just to let go of my worries and have the fun my guardians wanted so badly for me.

As the years passed, I never forgot what I’d promised the social workers and what Charlene had told me was possible — that when I grew up, I’d care for Luke. I didn’t know what he would look like at that point, or where his interests would lie. In the still moments of the night when I would lie awake in bed, thinking deep thoughts, I would imagine being reunited with him, welcoming him with open arms, starting our new life together somewhere far away. I would let him choose where he wanted to move. I didn’t care, as long as we were together. Sometimes, however, I feared that Luke had no idea who I was, that he would think I was nothing more than a stranger to him. Those thoughts were painful, imagining that he would push me away if I wanted to hug him, telling me to get lost, that his new family was his real family, basically denying everything that I worked so hard toward.

For the most part, though, I shunned my negative thoughts as I became familiar with the concept of aging out of the system and sometimes dreamed about the day that would happen for me. I grew pretty fond of Harry and Charlene, but I knew that they weren’t my parents. Even if they offered to let me stay beyond my eighteenth birthday, I still wanted to be out of there by seventeen, existing in the independent living program. I craved independence, sure that it would impress that imaginary judge I’d stand in front of in the future who was good at everything from dissuading me from spending time with troublesome peers to saying no to drugs and drinking. I had to have the future I envisioned for my brother and me.

On my sixteenth birthday, I got my driver’s license, and my guardians bought me a reliable used car.

“We know how hard you’re trying,” Charlene said, wiping at her eye and laughing about unseasonable allergies. “We are so proud of you and have been so blessed to watch you grow into such a well-adjusted young woman.”

I threw my arms around both of them, hugging them tightly to me. Maybe they weren’t my real parents, but they’d become family nonetheless. I had no idea where I’d be if I’d been placed with another family — or, God forbid, had remained at the orphanage in lieu of that.

With my new car and increased independence, which I loved, I ferried myself to and from school, and soon got hired as a waitress at an eatery not far from the campus. At first, it embarrassed me to wait on my classmates there, but in time, I began to feel superior. I was earning more money than they were, and it was all going toward the day I’d become independent, the day I’d get Luke from his temporary home and reunite our family. It was the restaurant where I learned how to be friendly and polite to strangers and people I flat out didn’t like. If I could make people believe that I liked them, they’d pay me more when the time came to tip. I suspected that I learned more about human nature at the restaurant than I did at school.

At seventeen, I had my own apartment, supervised by my social worker and my guardians. It was thrilling — and more than a little scary — to have that kind of freedom, but I adapted well. I enjoyed keeping house and cooking simple meals, even if Charlene did drop off covered plates and dishes about every day. Even if all I was doing was popping one of her creations in the microwave, I felt as self-sufficient as if I’d just slaughtered, butchered, and prepared a cow myself.

At the back of my mind always — and sometimes at the very forefront of it — was the idea that I was doing this for Luke, that I was just racking up points to impress that imaginary judge into letting me have my family back. Every tip I earned was squirreled away — what I didn’t use in my specially priced rent, of course, for the day I’d be able to be there for my brother.

That day came much sooner than I thought, however, and at a cost I couldn’t comprehend.

Unable to hide my scowl at the drawing of a knife my little brother had tried to hide, I let the sketchbook drop to his desk loudly enough to make him stir in his bed.That made me wince and regret my anger — well, my fear. I couldn’t really be angry at Luke. He’d been through too much.

I smoothed back his corn-silk hair and thought about how things would’ve been different if our parents were still alive. I wouldn’t be dancing for dollars — or even sleeping with men for big payouts — and Luke wouldn’t be drawing knives in his sketchbooks.

No, we would’ve been two normal kids doing normal things. Maybe I would’ve been playing soccer in college, making friends and falling love with boys I met in chemistry lab. Luke would’ve been into baseball, maybe, and would enjoy going over to his friends’ houses for binge-playing the latest video games. He wouldn’t have been the sad, quiet, troubled shadow of a little boy and I wouldn’t have been … well … me.

Such things were pointless to think about. I tucked the blankets more securely around my brother’s shoulders and crept out of his room, easing the door shut. He needed his sleep. I knew from experience that if I lingered too long over him, he’d wake up in terror. School started next week, and I finally had the money to fund it. Things were finally going to start turning around.

Things weren’t so bad. Marcus had been so nice — and instrumental to the success of Luke’s future. Neither of them would ever really know it, of course, but I did, and that was the important thing. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. Besides, Marcus had been really good — amazing, in fact. My body still thrummed with the memory of his hands over it, his mouth in places I’d never imagined mouths could go.

“Hey.”

A sleepy greeting made me jump and flush. Thank God my thoughts were private. I didn’t want to be broadcasting to the entire apartment that my mind had previously been entrenched in filth. Delicious filth, granted, but filth nonetheless. I tried so hard to leave work at work, to not drag it home with me. Home was another place, a place apart from what I did to ensure its success.

“Hey yourself,” I said, plopping on the couch and yanking my cowboy boots off. I loved them, but I suspected I loved the moment they came off and my feet got to breathe even more. It had been a long night, I realized. “How was everything?”

“Everything was just fine,” Jennet said, yawning widely as she stretched her long arms out. Her long blue hair was standing up on end, hopelessly tangled, and I had to smile. The contrast of the bright, sky blue color contrasted wildly with her milk and coffee skin. She looked like a crazy cloud of slumber. “What’s funny?”

“Your hair’s pretty rad,” I joked, reaching over to try to pat down an errant lock.

“Not as rad as yours, Ms. Bed Head,” Jennet said, playfully swatting my hand away while yawning again. It made me yawn, myself. “What’ve you been doing all night? Rolling around in the sack somewhere?”

It would’ve usually been a comment that earned a snort or a laugh out of me. I almost always came home from dancing in various states of dishevelment. It was like working out at the gym all evening — for hours and hours. No hairstyle, no matter how carefully applied and how many pins I used, would withstand that.

But tonight all I did was gulp. I shared everything with Jennet. I wouldn’t dream of keeping secrets from her. But what I did with Marcus … I just needed some time to process it. It didn’t have to be a secret for long. I wanted to worry about how I was going to react to the whole thing before I had to wonder how Jennet was going to feel.

“Are you okay?” she asked, placing her hand over mine, her elfish face pinched with concern.

“Fine,” I said, only half lying. “It’s just been a really long night, I guess. How was Luke? Any trouble?”

I expected some terrible revelation or something, with what I’d found in the sketchbook, but Jennet only smiled and shook her head.

“No problems whatsoever,” she said. “That kid’s as good as gold. He could practically watch himself. I don’t know what you pay me for.”

I took on a bigger share of the rent and the bills in exchange for Jennet helping me out with Luke whenever she could. In reality, I paid her for my peace of mind. Sure, I could probably get away with leaving my brother alone when I worked. But I didn’t trust that he’d be completely all right. The demons he carried could be very heavy.

“He loves you, you know,” I said, thinking back fondly on the scene I’d stumbled onto when I got home to the apartment — Luke curled up with Jennet. He didn’t trust easily, but my roommate had patiently — and relentlessly — wormed her way into his heart. She did that to loads of people. I was a testament to that.

Luke and I had run — literally — into Jennet when we’d first moved to Miami. We’d both been on the verge of tears at the time, I remembered, frustrated with the heat and the humidity and the sense of being constantly lost, physically, and adrift, spiritually. We were hardly better than drifters those early days, staying in a cheap, nasty motel while I searched fruitlessly for a waitressing position that would enable me to keep an eye on my brother.

There were so many obstacles to overcome back then. I didn’t have the advantage of my foster child rent rate working in my favor, nor the kindness and charity of my own foster parents, slipping meals — and dollar bills — into my life to bolster whatever I was pulling in at the restaurant. And now I had two mouths to feed completely by myself. Nothing in this city was good enough. All of the daytime waitressing jobs were eaten up by other struggling girls. I couldn’t leave Luke alone at night. Not with what had happened to him in those dark hours.

So we stumbled down the sidewalk, Luke pouting because some perverts in the room next to ours in the motel had been at it all night — and I mean all night — meaning that I had to blare the television to drown them out and try to protect what was left of my brother’s innocence. Neither of us had gotten enough sleep, compounded by the fact that I was burning through the reserves of my money thanks to the hefty price of having a roof over our heads.

“The Corn Queen wants you to — oof!”

I’d been scowling at the sidewalk at my feet, doggedly hanging onto Luke’s hand even if he was maybe a little too old for that kind of treatment. It was a new city, and I wasn’t about to lose him to the crush of people walking around us.

In my haze of exhaustion and worry, I’d propelled Luke and myself directly into a huge, squishy woman — or at least a woman inside a huge, squishy costume. Jennet’s hair had been a blinding, brassy blond at that point, matching the ear of corn ensconcing her body.

Luke was still a child. Despite his age, despite the way he kept to himself, despite his relative independence in that sense, he was still a tired, stressed out child. Running into Jennet hadn’t so much as knocked the wind out of him, but his mouth pulled downward and he started to cry big, salty tears.

“Come on, Luke,” I chided. “No harm, no foul. We’re all right, aren’t we?”

There were too many answers to that question, and I found my own eyes welling up with tears I’d left unshed for weeks. This was too hard, this thing I’d looked forward to for my entire life — taking care of my brother and being a family again. It was so much more work than I’d ever imagined. Part of that couldn’t be planned for. Things that no one could’ve seen coming had already happened. It just wasn’t fair. We needed each other, but life wasn’t making it any easier on us.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jennet said, putting her arms and both my shoulder and Luke’s. “The Corn Queen has decreed that there shall be no crying in her presence.”

I spluttered for a moment at the absurdity of the situation, not sure if I was laughing or crying. A giant corncob had reduced my brother and me to tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, wiping my cheeks with the heel of my hand. “We’re both pretty clumsy right now. Neither of us got much sleep last night.”

“Just like you said,” she reminded me, a smile brightening her already cheerful face, “no harm, no foul. I take up a lot of real estate in this costume, anyway. I’m surprised you’re only the first people I’ve almost knocked out. Let me get you all a couple of corndogs — or anything you want — to make it up to you.”

“Really, it was my fault,” I said quickly, not wanting to accept charity. It was the only thing keeping Luke and me from a shelter. I wanted to do this myself, wanted us to be a self-sufficient family if we couldn’t be a nuclear one. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“Too late,” she said cheerfully. “The Corn Queen has decreed it, and it is so. Corndogs for all.” She wrinkled her nose a little and wiped some sweat beading on her forehead. “On second thought, it’s too freaking hot for a corndog, am I right? That’s what I’m supposed to be selling, of course, but I just can’t fathom how anyone would want to eat one when you have to practically swim through the air just to get down the street. How about an ice cream instead?”

Luke had stopped crying as soon as Jennet started talking, and he nodded in fierce agreement that ice cream was the way out of this current predicament.

“You really don’t have to do this,” I said, following Jennet and Luke into the cool air conditioning of the snack shop she’d been hawking outside. My brother tugged on my hand impatiently.

“No, but I want to,” Jennet chirped, her tone friendly but allowing for no more arguments. We were going to have those ice creams, by God.

Luke slurped his down as if I’d been starving him, and maybe I had. He’d been getting plenty of sustenance, of course, but I hadn’t budgeted money for throwaway calories like ice cream. But maybe ice cream counted for something more, some kind of essential vitamins for the soul that scientists hadn’t pinpointed yet. Yes, that was it, I decided, as I licked at my cone, making sure the rivulets of sweet vanilla couldn’t find their way to my fingers. Ice cream was good for the soul. I’d have to remember that the next time I drew out a budget for our remaining pennies.

We all three of us jammed into a booth — even Jennet with her enormous corncob costume — and I think I was as surprised as Luke when instant sleep found him and he jammed his face into Jennet’s side.

“I’ve never seen him do that with anyone before,” I said, my mouth agape as he snored softly, a crusty chocolate moustache darkening his upper lip. Of course, we’d never been close enough to anyone to allow for such a situation, but my gut knew that Jennet was different.

“Something about being Corn Queen makes me super trustworthy,” she said, smiling fondly at my brother. “I think it has to do with me looking so ridiculous. Nothing else can compare — even things you’re afraid will catch up with you.”

Succumbing to the same spell Jennet had cast over Luke, I told her everything, right there in that snack shop. Every gory detail. Our stories poured out of my mouth as if I’d been drowning and Jennet had hauled me to shore and was pumping the water from my lungs. I wouldn’t have been able to stop talking if I’d tried.

“We’re looking for a place to live,” I summed up, even though I was pretty sure that was what I’d started with. “But I don’t have any hope of making rent without getting a job. I have a couple leads on some jobs, but I don’t know what to do about looking after Luke. He’ll be in school, of course, once we get the place. But who’ll pick him up? Who’ll help him with his homework if I’m at work?”

“Well, the solution’s right in front of you,” Jennet said, nodding sagely. “You two are going to come home with me.”

I blinked at the costumed woman sitting across the table from me, stunned. How had she arrived at that solution? We didn’t even know each other’s names. My brother and I were just two strangers who’d broken down into tears on the sidewalk at Jennet’s place of work. Why in the world would she want to help us more than she already had?

“That’s very kind of you,” I began, but Jennet cut me off with a slash of her hand.

“Save your platitudes,” she said, “and save your breath. You’re dead on your feet. I saw it the moment I saw you two drifting my way. Don’t you believe that things happen for a reason?”

Did I? So many bad things had happened in my life — losing my parents, losing my brother, and the cost of regaining him — that I hesitated to think that things happened for a reason. What reason could there possibly be for the bad things?