The road to Ithica(GENESIS)

Warnings: Adult! I'm not kidding. Don't read this if you're underage and/or easily offended. It deals with matters that aren't pretty. Frank language and discussion of unpleasant topics. That will go for the entire series. Graphic sexual descriptions so if you are not over 18 don’t read it.

Notes: Foster Care services have changed a lot from the time that this story takes place. Unfortunately, things aren’t so easy. Run a Google search on ‘foster care’ and the state in question. Know your rights. Text in Arial, is from Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ book. Don’t read my story, read that instead. Last but not least, a big thanks to Ace.


III
(FINDING ATLANTIS)


I wake up in a place. It’s not a weird place. If you have been on the streets long enough, nothing seems weird anymore. I’m laying in a bed. The bed is very comfortable and dry. The walls are too bright and too far away from each other. I’m definitely not in my bed. In fact, I don’t think that I’m in town anymore.

Ocean, I can hear the ocean.

For a moment, I’m thinking that I’m in my room at Tamales and nothing ever happened. For a moment I’m thinking that all it was was a bad dream. My father is okay and my mom isn’t at the mental hospital. For a moment, I smell the ocean and I drift with the sounds. I close my eyes to hear the waves and the seabirds better. For a moment, everything is perfect.

And then, things aren’t.

My whole body hurts. I think that my head will burst from the headache. In fact, I’m sure that it will do just that. Terrible pains rock my body. The fever makes things worse. I feel like my bones will crack any second now. I want to throw up, but the thought of that makes me want to scream. I’m not sure; I might have screamed and didn’t realize it in my daze.

“Good afternoon,” a strange voice says, and I swallow hard with great effort.

Maybe for you.

“What have you done to me?” I ask the woman that’s sitting in a chair next to me.

“You did all that to yourself, child,” she says, “or did you believe that drugs were harmless?”

I don’t answer back. I’m too busy trying not to throw up, but after a while, I lose the battle. She helps me to miss the bed. She brings a metallic bucket when she sees that I can’t hold on anymore.

“That’s it, child; throw the drugs out of your system,” she whispers and caresses my back after I’m done.

“I hurt,” I say, trying to make her give me something. Even a Valium would be nice now.

“The pain will pass, sweetheart,” she says, “Soon you’ll be feeling better.”

She leaves and I’m alone. I feel a little better now that my stomach is empty, but soon another wave of nausea hits me. The bucket is a few feet away from the bed and I run there. When I finish, I look for the exit. I know what I need to feel better, and it’s not time. I need a dose.

The room has a wooden door, which I can tell is locked. A big window is on the other side, but the shutters are down as well. I’m locked in this place. Fortunately, I don’t panic because it hurts too much to breathe. The door opens and the lady comes inside holding a tray. She sees my position and shakes her head, but she doesn’t say anything. She helps me lay down again.

“I know that even the thought will seem repulsive to you, but try to drink some tea. You need fluids,” she says and takes a teacup from the tray.

She’s right. Smelling the tea was the worst thing ever. I get dizzy from the smell, but I manage to drink few sips. It’s not hot; it’s warm enough to calm my trembling stomach and ease my thirst. I didn’t know that I was thirsty until now. The lady doesn’t say anything when I give her back the cup, barely touched.

“You remember what happened?” she asks me, and I nod.

I remembered a while ago. It was a very bad night, and all I wanted to do was crawl to my room and hit some. I remember doing that; I remember doing the preparation and hitting. I remember feeling like flying for a while and then feeling like dying, and for one moment, I felt okay with that. People come into life to die, right? That was the last thing that I remember.

Then I wake up here. But where is here?

“Where am I? Is this a clinic?” I ask, knowing already that this can’t be a hospital. Doesn’t smell like one.

“You are at my house.”

Well, good, but that’s hardly an explanation.

“Thank you,” I say shakily, “Can I go now? I really need to go now.”

“You really need to stay, child. Loren said that you are a smart girl, Sara, and if you are half as smart as Loren says you are, then you’ll know that the best thing is to stay,” she says and leaves with the tray.

Loren had something to do with this? I haven’t seen Loren for three months now. Last time I saw her she was having fun with her friends. Her ‘real’ friends. I hid behind a van, not wanting her to see me. I was barely standing on my feet; I had just hit a dose, and besides, she had told me that I was alone from there. Hadn’t she? She hit me and told me that I was alone. I remember that much.

I’m too tired to think straight. I want to sleep, I want to sleep, I want to sleep. I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes waves of nausea or cramps rock my body and don’t let me relax. I spend hours turning around in the sheets and trying not to scream from the pain. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was just minutes. At some point, I must have fallen asleep from the exhaustion because when I open my eyes, the lady is back again, and this time she’s holding a bowl of soup.

“Feel like eating?” she asks me, and I shake my head. “Well, I’m not going to push you, but it would be better if you…”

“Maybe later, okay?” I ask her, and she smiles.

She’s maybe forty years old and has grey eyes. They match perfectly with her black hair. They make her look like a fairy or like a demon; it depends upon how you look at her. She looks like a fairy to me, but I know that she’s not. She needs something from me; that’s why she offers the tea, the soup, and the hospitality. People aren’t good for nothing, and she’s not an exception.

“I bet you are wondering what you are doing here, huh?” she says, “Maybe you want some answers.”

“Answers would be good,” I say and wrap the blanket around me better.

“Do you like the house?” she asks me, and I can’t help but look surprised.

“Uh, I…”

“It’s a beautiful house; you’ll see soon enough. It cost me, with everything inside and outside, a little less than $1.8 million. It has everything money can buy: cable TV, an astonishing view, security, a fireplace, a swimming pool, six rooms, two bathrooms, and a three car garage. Wood cabinets, but do you think that I’m enjoying it?” she asks me.

“You don’t?” I ask her, a little confused.

“I have two kids, Sara. Robert, my first child, is with his father. You’ll like him; I’m sure. He’s coming next month for a visit. But he’s not my worry. As I said, I have two kids, but I only mention one. You know why?”

“No,” I say, and I don’t feel strong enough to hear the rest of the story, but I don’t say a thing.

“My other child, my daughter Lisa, died two years ago. You see, I was too busy trying to build this house that I forgot all about her. William was never here, and I thought that I was giving her the best money can buy. Lisa didn’t want the best money can buy; she wanted me to love her, but I was never here for her too. When she was twelve, a friend of hers gave her some marijuana to try. I guess that Lisa found in her friends what she couldn’t find in her family. I wish I could say that Lisa turned her back on this family, but the sad truth is that this family had turned its back on Lisa long ago. You know the story better than I do, Sara. You know the needle, and you now know the damage that the needle does. Fortunately for you, you have a choice. Unfortunately for Lisa… Lastly, I’ll tell you something, and then you can decide if you would like to stay or leave; I’m not keeping you here without your permission. When you lose your parents, people call you an orphan. When you lose your husband, people call you a widow. But when you lose a child, they don’t call you anything ‘cause there’s no word strong enough to describe the pain that you feel. Do what’s best for you, kid; not for the others or me, but for you.”

She leaves as quietly as she came in.

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“Want to take a shower?” Samantha asks me.

I learned her name when I decided to stay here. After she left three days ago, I did some serious thinking. I could go away and face the same shit two or three times before an OD released me from this nightmare. Drugs are a nightmare; I understand that now. When I was smoking joints or swallowing pills, I thought that it was okay just because everyone else was doing the same.

I spent the last three days with headaches, muscle aches, diarrhea, upset stomach, and fever alone. I think it was at the end of the second day when I promised myself not to touch that shit again. I had spent the ten hours trying to find some peace, but all I found were lies and artificial heavens that lasted as long as the next fix.

“I would like that,” I say, and she helps me out of bed.

I haven’t felt so weak in my life. She holds me with strong hands, and I hate myself for being so weak. We walk slowly to the bathroom, and when she asks me f I want her to leave, I shake my head. Every move makes my muscles ache more, but the pain has eased a little. Mostly I’m weak from being in bed for so long.

The water is hot and I moan in satisfaction. I let the water wash away the sweat from my body before taking the shampoo and washing my hair. It smells like wild flowers. Samantha gives me a conditioner for my hair. My curls are all messy. We spend some time trying to untangle my hair.

Finally, I’m clean and she gives me a white towel to wrap up. The towel is soft and smells nice. She uses the good detergent and not the cheap one we used to wash our clothes.

“I believe that you needed that,” she says while she tries to dry my hair with a red towel.

“Yeah, uh, thanks Miss Vaughan…”

“Sam, child. Call me Sam; everyone else does,” she interrupts me.

“Thank you…Sam,” I say after a while, and she smiles.

I was worried about my clothes, but it turned out that I shouldn’t be. After Sam makes sure that my hair is dry, she goes and brings new clothes from the closet. I wear the clean clothes, and even if they are too big for me, I feel nice in them. Now that I’m clean and fresh and my body doesn’t hurt, I find it difficult to keep my eyes open.

Sick days are over for me.

“Food or sleep?” Sam asks me, and I find it wonderful that she describes my needs with only three words.

“ Food,” I say when my stomach rumbles.

“‘Bout time if you ask me,” Sam smiles and leads me to the kitchen.

Wow! She wasn’t kidding about the house or the money. My mouth opens when I see the biggest and coolest TV ever. That TV is as large as a wall.

“You’re drooling, child,” she calls from the kitchen.

Sam calls me ‘child’ in what I think is an attempt to bring peace to her soul. I only stayed here for two reasons: first, if I left, I would be back on dope in seconds, and second, her words the other day did something to me. I can’t describe it, but I felt something break inside of me. I didn’t want to go back there again after that.

“Oh, fuck,” I yell when I remember something.

“What’s wrong?” Sam comes quickly to the living room to see me shaking. “Sara, what’s wrong?”

“I have to, uh, I mean…” I bobble my words, not knowing how to say this.

“You’re worried about something?” Sam asks me, and for the zillionth time, I’m surprised how easily she reads me.

“Yeah, uh, sort of something.”

“Well, if you’re worried about a specific someone, don’t,” she says and leads me into the kitchen where a warm bowl of chicken soup and a glass of milk wait for me.

“What do you mean?” I ask her and wait for her to sit down.

Sam smiles at that. She’s not used to such good manners, not when these manners come from a street kid. I’m surprised that I haven’t forgotten them by now. I don’t know if I ever lost all of my manners. I lost a few, like respecting elders. When I suck their dicks, I have no respect for elders.

“It’s being taken care of; you have nothing to worry about.” I look at her with a mix of fear and hope. “Arthur will not go after you, kid.”

She calls me kid every time I feel like the earth is being taken away from my legs. How does she do that?

“I g-got a c-contract,” I whisper, nearly in tears.

“Well, you can pay me back when you find a job.”

I believe that it’s the first time in years that I have cried from happiness. She stands up and hugs me and I can’t tell why, but I know that she’ll never leave me. I know that she’s not doing this for me, well, maybe not only for me. She’s paying her dues to her lost daughter, but I don’t fucking care. This is good for me, and all I have is me, so I’ll take whatever Sam has to offer me.

She wipes my eyes when I finish crying, and I curse because the soup is cold now. I tell her that I don’t mind, but Sam doesn’t take no for an answer. She throws the other in the garbage and cooks some fresh. It’s only tomato soup, but to me it tastes like the most delicious food.

After that, I can hardly keep my eyes open and I go to sleep. It doesn’t take long before I’m sleeping like a baby. With my belly full, warm sheets, clean clothes, and the hypnotic rhythm of the waves, I feel like heaven. And unlike the heaven that heroin provides, this is the real one.

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“What do you mean you want me to take an HIV test?” I say angrily, “That shit is for the faggots.”

“Sara, calm down,” Sam says and I sit back in my seat at once, “and watch your language.”

“Sorry,” I murmur with embarrassment.

I’ve been here three weeks now, and I can’t understand why she wants me to take an HIV test. A part of me is afraid that she doesn’t want me anymore, and another part is afraid of what the test would show. I read newspapers; I know that AIDS affects a large group of people, like that baby. God, that baby was only two years old. I’m sure that sucking dicks and hitting smack wasn’t in the baby’s daily program.

“I don’t feel sick,” I say in an attempt to avoid the test.

“I’m not going to send you away, kid.” And with that I agree to take an HIV test the next day.

Sam is very patient with me. I would be a liar if I said otherwise. Somehow she knows what I’m thinking, and that ability of hers has stopped me from running away quite a few times, especially the first days that I had stopped heroin. I won’t lie; I had a huge urge to go and dive in a mountain of dope, but Sam kept me out.

When I was strong enough and didn’t spend all my time sleeping, she came to me with a guitar and taught me how to play. She only taught me one song, “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, and that took me almost two weeks to learn. She says that it’s an after effect of the long drug use, but I’m afraid that my mind doesn’t work right anymore.

The next day we drive to the clinic together. She even comes with me when it’s my turn to give blood. The nurse there asks me questions, and I turn scarlet red. I thought that they would only take my blood and call me when they had the news. But the nurse wants to know how many men I have had sexual contact with and how many I used a condom with. She asks me if I was on drugs, and when I answer affirmatively, she looks up from her questionnaire.

Sam holds my hand and smiles when I look at her. On our way back I can’t think of anything else but the test. What if it is positive? What if I have AIDS? Then I remember that when Sam took me home, I had a cut on my arm. What if she’s affected too? If I’m HIV positive, it’s all my fault. But Sam didn’t do anything wrong, she just wanted to help me.

“Sam?”

“Yes, child?”

“I was thinking,” I swallow hard, “If I’m, if the test is positive, I want to leave,” I say, and she doesn’t say anything for a while.

“And go where? You’ll need treatment, Sara, and besides, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll be fine,” she says, and I wish I could believe her.

“What if I’m not? You did nothing wrong to be stuck with me…”

“I’m not stuck with you! I want to help you, can you understand that? God, Sara, for three weeks now all I’ve heard from you is that you’re not worth it…why don’t you let me decide that, huh?”

We don’t talk for the rest of the ride. If she’s not willing to make an effort, then I will. At lunch, I make sure that I wash my plate and spoon twice, and then I put them aside from the rest. When Sam notices what I’m doing, she screams, but I have made up my mind. I need to keep her safe from now on.

I know the AIDS symptoms. The most common is night sweats, then muscle aches, diarrhea and fever. AIDS symptoms are the same as detox. I haven’t realized that until now. Maybe I have AIDS and don’t know it.

“Does it hurt you?” she asks all of a sudden.

“Huh?” I say without paying attention to her. I’m worried about the results.

“To smile. Does it hurt you?”

“No,” I say angrily.

I don’t smile because I have nothing good to smile for. I mean, luck gave me some credit for once, and now she’s taking it back. Give and take, that’s my relationship with lady luck. And the past few years, I give more than I take.

“Are you worried about the gap then?” Sam talks all the time, sometimes I think that she took me home just to have someone to talk to.

“No,” I lie.

“Well, it’s who you are, Sara.”

Samantha is very Zen. She is very much a Buddha type, and that drives me crazy sometimes. I’m the pessimistic type, always looking for the disaster to come. I’m the type that always thinks a car will hit them if they walk down the road, or that the sky will fall on our heads. That’s me. Always thinking the worst.

I fell asleep reading the booklets the nurse gave to me. There were so many things that I didn’t know about AIDS. It’s a slow disease; it doesn’t kill you at once. It’s like cancer, but there are treatments for cancer. AIDS just has medicines that slow the progress. For the first time in years, I pray to God. I don’t want to die like that.

I wake up sometime after six. I yawn and wipe the sleep from my eyes. I stretch my body and take some pleasure from the fact that I don’t have to dress for the night. I don’t have to wear make-up or clothes that don’t keep me warm but show what the clients want to see. But the best part is that I don’t have to spend hours hiding my freckles.

I take a quick shower. I had forgotten how it is to have hot water all the time. I shave my legs and armpits, and when I finish, I roll the blade in some paper before I throw it away. It’s the least I can do for Sam; make sure that she’s safe from my blood until the results say otherwise. I wear black shorts and a black t-shirt and I go to search for her. Usually she’s in the living room, watching her favourite soap opera, but not this time. This time, there are voices coming from the kitchen.

“So where is the little protégé of yours?” a strange male voice asks, and I hear the amusement in his voice.

“She’s not my protégé, Bobby. I don’t teach her anything and she’s probably sleeping. She doesn’t like sun,” Sam says, and the ‘Bobby’ dude laughs.

“Should I be worried, Mom? What else doesn’t she like? Garlic, crosses, holy water?”

“Bobby,” Sam laughs but soon stops, “You will like her; I’m sure of it. And you have nothing to worry about; Sara might act tough, but she’s not.”

Mom? Bobby is her son? I remember what she told me my first day here. Robert, her son. I was too sick to understand it that day.

“I still can’t believe that you took her home. Dad’s pissed off at you, you know. I mean, I’m too. A little maybe, but I am.”

“William can go to hell; he has no say in that,” Sam says with anger. Whatever happened between William and her wasn’t good. Wasn’t good at all.

“And what about me? Should I go to hell too?” Bobby asks her, and Sam sighes.

“She’s unique,” she whispers the last word, and I almost don’t hear it.

“Unique how? Mom, you’ve known her for three weeks; how is she unique?”

“I just know it, Robert. Every time that I look at her, I know that I did the right thing with her. Sara’s…different from Lisa. She’s different from you and from every other kid that I have met. Sometimes she can be so difficult with me that I think ‘that is it,’ but the few times that she’s opened up it’s been enough to know that she is worth it.”

I bite my lower lip. I’m a true bitch to her sometimes. I know the reason for that. It’s not my fault that I have lost faith in people. I don’t trust people anymore. And I don’t open myself up because it hurts so much when they abandon you.

“You know what, Sammy? If you say that she’s okay, I believe you,” Robert says after a while.

“Thank you,” Sam sounds so relieved that I stay to stare at the door without having the power to walk in.

Not wanting to be caught spying on them, I call Sam’s name and walk inside. The first thing that I notice is that Robert took after his dad. Samantha is petite, only 5’3 and thin. Robert, on the other hand, has beautiful dirty blond hair and the same amazing grey eyes as Sam’s. He stands at 6’2” and has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen in a man. He’s like an ancient Greek warrior.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that you have company. I’ll come later,” I say, and Sam smiles.

“Sara, this is Robert, my son you heard so much about.” She had only said that Robert was an artist. “Robert, this is Sara.”

“Hey,” we both say, and I have a hard time trying not to stare at him.

“Are you hungry?” Sam finally asks me when she realizes that I will not speak any time soon.

I nod, and Robert smiles. I sit down in a chair opposite of him, and Sam brings bread and some cold chicken from the fridge. Robert stands up and takes the mayo and a few tomatoes from the fridge. I watch his big hands wash the tomatoes, and I can’t stop thinking about how his touch might feel.

“You want some soda?” Robert asks me, and I nod again. “She doesn’t talk?”

“Bobby!” Sam yells but has a smile on her lips, “She said ‘hey’.”

“Oh, I see. So she talks, like, once a month?” Ah! Robert is a joker.

“I speak,” I say, and I take a huge bite from my fresh made, cold, chicken sandwich, “I just have nothing interesting to say.”

Robert raises his left eyebrow, and Sam looks at him with an ‘I told you so’ look on her face. I’m not good with people, period. Sometimes they scare me and other times they confuse me, but most of the time they leave me wondering. I can tell that Robert fits in with the first; he’s so big, and I can’t help but feel awe for him. Sam definitely has me wondering.

“Redhead, pass me the salt, please,” Robert says, and my mouth drops.

“I’m not a redhead,” I say and give him what he asked for.

“Well, you have the temper of a redhead,” Robert murmurs, and Sam just laughs.

It takes me a while to understand that Robert makes fun of me because he wants to break the tension between us. That’s when I realize that I was acting like a hurt child and he was acting like a big brother in front of his new baby sister. Both, in different ways, were seeking Sam’s attention.

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It’s raining outside, but here I’m warm. The room is one-half the size of my last home, and it is warm, dry, and safe. It’s past midnight, and I’m comfortable in my blue sweats, reading a book. Outside all hell breaks loose, but inside, nothing can touch me.

‘Dean stands in the back, saying, 'God! Yes!' -- and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. 'Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.' Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C's, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing 'C-Jam Blues' and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody's head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. 'Bourbon-orooni -- thank-you-ovauti ...' Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of colored men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said, 'There you go-orooni.' Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. 'Right-orooni,' says Slim; he'll join anybody but won't guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said, 'Orooni,' Dean said 'Yes!' I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.'

“Jack Kerouac, ‘On the Road’. I love that part,” a voice says from behind me.

“It’s…what diversified him from the other authors of that period,” I say, closing the book and turning to look at him.

“What fifteen-year-old uses words such as ‘diversify?” he asks before he hands me a cup of tea.

“I went to school,” I answer back harshly.

“You should go back to school, James Dean,” Robert says, and I smile.

He started to call me ‘James Dean’ a few days after he came here. There was some problem with his father, but I didn’t ask them anything. I think that Robert liked me after that. Before he just tolerated me. The first time that he called me ‘James Dean’, I panicked. I thought that he knew James D, the guy from the Ocean Beach, but then I realized how stupid that was. Robert is twenty going on thirty, and if there’s one thing that he dislikes, it’s water.

“I want to go, but…”

“But what? You’re too smart to serve burgers, Sara.”

I found a job. It’s nothing special. I take orders in a McDonald’s. The money sucks, but at least I don’t bother Sam for money. She fought against that, yelling that I should go back to school, but I’m more stubborn than she is. We went to the manager together, and every afternoon for the last three months I’ve worked there; eight hours, from four o’clock ‘til midnight, seven days a week, thirty days a month. Last night the manager forced me to take three days off, and I took them with a heavy heart.

After Sam took the results from the clinic, I asked her to go because I was too afraid to go myself, and after I found out that I wasn’t HIV positive, I spent one day thinking of my life thus far. The next day I took the job at a 24 hour McDonald’s. I don’t know how much she paid Arthur to let me go, but I guess it is much more than the tips that McDonald’s pays me.

“You look tired; want me to leave so you can sleep?” Robert asks me, and I shake my head.

The job is more tiring than I thought. I kind of miss the old days when I was laying in a bed. No, I don’t. In fact, that’s the reason why I took that job. I don’t want to have time to think, and with this job, I don’t. My shift ends at midnight, and I have to walk four blocks to get to the bus stop. Sam wanted to come and get me, but I didn’t let her. She’s usually in a deep sleep by this hour.

I arrive at home about one after midnight. I take a quick shower to wash the smells away, I grab something to eat, and I fall in bed around two, two thirty in the morning. I wake up at ten, with some effort, I might add, and help Sam with the house or the groceries. I don’t want to think, so I kill the mind by killing the body.

“I’m not working tomorrow,” I say and yawn, “I have the weekend off.”

“Working or not, you still look like shit.”

“Kiss my ass, Roberto.” He laughs at that.

“Honestly, Sara, why don’t you want to go back to school?”

“I don’t think I’ll fit in with them anymore,” I finally admit, and Robert shakes his head.

“You did what you had to do to survive, Sara. You were a kid, fuck, you still are a kid, and kids shouldn’t live what you lived, but you did. And you survived, and I have more respect for you than for the girl that spends daddy’s money, kiddo. I mean, for crying out loud, ‘diversify’ Sara! I turned twenty to learn the meaning of this word,” he cries out.

“Too many gaps, Robert.”

“Okay, then don’t go back to school,” he stands, and I watch him with confusion, “Don’t go back to school until you’re ready.”

“Huh? What does that mean?” I ask him, more confused than ever.

“We’ll fill in the gaps together. I’m good at math and physics, and mom’s good at history and literature, and you can always read a dictionary for language.” I actually laugh at that. “C’mon Sara, what do you say?”

“I don’t know; I mean, it’s been a long time since my last day at school.”

“But you think that’s a school,” he says, and his grey eyes shine like diamonds.

“If it’s not school, then what is it?”

“The first day of your new life,” he says before he jumps out of the room, “Oh, and tomorrow we’re going shopping.”

He doesn’t gives me a chance to ask him about the last thing since he was already outside, but I stay a few minutes to watch the door before I realize that that’s plain stupid. I drink the tea, and when I make sure that no one is outside, I bring out my diary. Well, it’s not a diary, but it’s more than a notebook.

Sam said that it would be good to write down my thoughts, and, to my surprise, it helped me a lot. The first days here, I was lost. I didn’t have the ‘need’ for heroin, but I had the ‘urge’. Sam gave to me this old notebook, and she forced me to write down every time that I had the ‘urge’.

I look at the entries now and I feel shameful. Pages and pages where I wrote down how badly I wanted a fix. I’m more ashamed that I still write down that I need a fix. Not so frequently as before, but I do. My last entry was a couple of days ago, after a really busy night. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get clean from drugs. God knows how many times I was tempted to take the bus to the Tenderloin and fill my blood and mind with whatever drug I could find.

This little notebook, Sam likes to call it ‘The book of life’, and Sam saved me. Robert thinks that I survived out there. I survived when I took the decision to stay. Sam is not like the other women in foster houses. She’s very patient, something that all the others lack. I don’t get how she could have possibly been a bad mother; she seems to know every little mood of mine and adjusts with them.

After I write down a few things that I couldn’t keep inside anymore, I go to the kitchen to eat something. I open the fridge and search for chocolate milk and something to eat. I had a hard time opening the fridge or wandering around the house. I couldn’t stop thinking that if I made one mistake, they would throw me out. I still feel weird when I take things from the kitchen, and I do my best not to come here often.

“There’s some apple pie left,” I hear Sam say before I see her.

“Groovy,” I say, and Sam smiles.

She sits down, and I bring the apple pie and two spoons. I’m thirsty, and if I have to choose between chocolate milk and water, it’s chocolate milk every time.

“No wonder you’re so tall,” Sam says but takes the glass with the milk.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask her when I see that it’s two in the morning.

“I was sleeping until Bobby came. You talked?” she asks and takes a bite from the pie.

“Yeah, he, uh, he talked and I was listening.”

“And?”

“And I said okay to your little plan,” I say, and she smiles.

We eat the pie, drink our milk, and talk about my future. I look at her with surprise. I have a future! I never thought so until now. Sam starts to talk about schools and colleges, and I almost choke from the shock. I mean, I agreed to let them teach me a few things but college? I don’t think that I’m ready for college. Shit, I don’t think that I’m ready for school.

“You know what? Let’s see how things go, okay?” she asks me, and I nod.

I wash the dish and the glass and head to my room before Sam stops me and calls me to hers. I go and she invites me to sleep with her. We slept together a few times, and I like to feel her body next to mine. She likes to make me feel safe, and I’m not one to complain. I accepted the fact long ago that she doesn’t want sex from me. I would do it if she wanted it. I have done it before for less. But she doesn’t want sex, and she doesn’t want anything from me, and sometimes I find that hard to believe.

But other times, like tonight, I just lay in bed with her and sleep the most peaceful sleep.

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“You’ve lived with us for five months and your room is like a fucking guest room, Sara girl,” Robert says, and Sam agrees.

I don’t know what their fucking problem is. I like to keep my room clean; Sam’s not my slave or my fucking maid. I have an order with my stuff, and even if I didn’t, Sam’s doing enough for me already. It wouldn’t be fair to have her cleaning my room or washing my clothes. I can do my laundry on my own, thank you very much.

“It’s a nice room,” I protest, but Sam rolls her eyes.

“We’re talking about personality, Sara. Here,” she hands me some money, “Down the street there’s a shop that sells posters. Buy a few, okay? I don’t care what you buy, just buy something.”

I look at Sam first and then at Robert. I feel like a big asshole here. They give me money to buy a poster for my room, and I refuse. Talk about irony, huh? I take the money and I walk down the street. I see the shop and I go in. It’s hard not to actually. Bright colors, huge pictures, and a naked model hung on the door. My kind of place.

I look around and then I go to the ‘Movie’ section. I see that they have almost every movie ever made, even the B ones. I take the one from The Taxi Driver because I dig the girl. I search some more, but I don’t like anything else. I move to the ‘Actors/Actresses’ section, and I take James Dean’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams poster. I spent some time admiring how well this photo was taken. It captures everything the photographer wanted to say.

I leave holding ten posters. I took one poster with Jack Kerouac, two with The Smiths (I just adore Morrissey), “The American Poet” Jim Morrison poster, a Depeche Mode poster group, one with Oscar Wilde, more like some Wilde’s quotes, and a second one with James Dean.

I lick my lips when Sam takes a look at them. If she believed that I was depressed, she had a right to. She shakes her head while Robert laughs. But she doesn’t say anything. She had ordered a coffee for me, and I take a sip. It tastes like shit, and I leave it untouched. I think that I’m spoiled; not long ago I would sell my body and soul for a coffee in a place like that.

“You know what, mom?” Robert checks out a girl passing by, and when he makes sure that her picture is stored to his brain, he turns and looks at Sam, “I believe that it’s time for our little surprise.”

“Bobby!” Sam spits half her coffee, “We said to wait until…”

“Yeah, but mom, this is the right time. What do you think, Sara girl?” Robert says, trying to catch something from the air with his hands and failing miserably.

First, I believe that you’ve watched Karate Kid way too many times. Second, what do I think about what?

“We talked and we decided that it’s time to meet the Judge,” Sam explains, and I swallow hard.

The Judge? I thought I could trust them. What the fuck?

“Oh, she’s got that look again,” Robert warns Sam, and she laughs.

“Calm down, kid; Judge is Bobby’s father. If things go well with him, he will say a few things to a few people about you.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, having no idea what they’re talking about.

William, or Judge, as they like to call him, must be like the mythical creatures that I read about in mythology books. I haven’t figured out yet if they like him or plain hate him. Sometimes they act like Lisa’s death was his fault, and other times they blame the family. From Robert, I learned that he, the Judge, was cheating on Sam. From Sam, I learned that William was never home, and she found pleasure in Judge’s best friend, Seth.

One big, happy, family!

“You know what that means, right?”

“Sure,” I say because I don’t want to look like an idiot.

“Sara, you are a nice kid, but you don’t lie well,” Sam says, “What Bobby and I are trying to say is that…I’m thinking of adopting you…”

“WHAT?” I yell and a few people turn and look at us.

Robert smiles polity at them, and Sam bites her lower lip.

“Please, Sara, think about it for a while, okay?” Sam says in a low voice, and I look away from her.

Adopt me? I’m not a fucking baby anymore. I’ll never call her ‘mother’ or bring her flowers on Mother’s Day. I can’t understand why she’s so willing to adopt a person that she doesn’t know well. I mean, sure, I live with them and I know that I have nothing to fear, but there’s this small part of me that can’t stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, all that is fake. I still don’t trust them 100% and I’m sure that they don’t trust me 100% either. So why adopt me?

I’m still thinking of that when we return home. Robert helps me hang the posters and for the first time since the ice broke between us, doesn’t speak. Robert was suspicious of me, no big deal; I would be too if my mother brought home a stranger and I had to gain his trust.

As much as Rob loves Sam, he has a mind of his own. He trusted Sam about me, but he had to check me out too, just in case. One time he left a hundred bucks at the kitchen table to see if I would take it. I didn’t. Another time, he left his golden watch in the bathroom. I took that. I took that and I put it back in his room. After that he stopped being so obvious and became more sneaky. For a period of three weeks, Big Brother was watching me.

Surprisingly, I feel closer to Robert than Sam. Robert is like…the big brother I never knew. He’s kind and cool; he’s a comic artist, or at least he wants to be one. One Sunday afternoon Robert had the idea to teach me how to draw, and when I managed to draw something that looked like a human body and not like Ms. Piggy, he was so happy that the next day he bought me my own sketch book.

It is true when they say that you need something to bond with someone. Robert says that he bonded with his father after the Judge took him fishing. We bonded with something less disgusting and much more fun. I’ll never be as good as Robert, but I’m enjoying the times we spend drawing together.

What I love the most is when I cut out the characters from comic books and write my own dialogue. Robert complains about that; he says that he should do that, but he has long accepted the fact that he’s as bad a writer as I am a sketch artist. He’s a fine inker too, but his first love is drawing.

They trust me alright, but the question is, do I trust them?

NEXT: SARA’S JOURNAL OF LIFE #1


SEPTEMBER 2005