White Oleander

"What do you know about a noble home? Just a common piece of street garbage. Mother in prison. You know, you stink like garbage. When you come into a room, the girls hold their breath. You soil my home. Your presence insults me. I don't want to look at you." She turned away, pointed to the polished stairway. "Go to your room and stay there."

 

I stood but hesitated. "What about dinner?"

 

She turned on her patent leather heel, and laughed. "Maybe tomorrow."

 

I lay on my bed in the beautiful bedroom smelling of cedar, my stomach clawing inside me like a cat in a sack. During the day, all I wanted to do was sleep, but at night, images of my days returned like a slide show. Did I really smell? Was I garbage, hideous?

 

I heard Silvana come in, settle on her bed. "You thought you were something special, eh? Some hot shit. Now you see, you're no better than us. You better shut up, or you'll end up at Mac." She tossed a dinner roll onto my blanket.

 

I ate it in two bites. It was so good, I almost cried. "What's Mac?" I asked.

 

I heard her exasperated sigh. "Mac's where they put you when you got no place to go. You won't last a day. They'll eat you for breakfast, white girl."

 

"Least they get breakfast," I said.

 

Silvana chuckled in the dark.

 

A car went by outside, its headlights painting the ceiling in moving shadows. "Were you ever there?" I asked.

 

"Nidia," she said. "Even she said it was tough, and she's a loca. Better shut up and take it like everybody else. Remember,

 

eighteen and out."

 

But I was only fifteen.

 

Now KIKI TORREZ was the pet, the one who sat on Amelia's right and ate scraps off her plate like a dog. I was both envious and disgusted. It was Kiki who turned the pages of the Argentine scrapbooks and ate butter cookies, while I washed Amelia's dirty underwear by hand in the sink, scrubbed her bathtub, ironed her clothes and her lace-edged linens, and if I got any idea to ruin anything out of spite, then no dinner.

 

She played us off one another. I stole a can of yams one night, and she made Kiki tell her who did it. I lost more weight, my ribs stuck out like the staves of a boat. I was beginning to understand how one human being could kill another.

 

"You should take in girls," I heard her tell her friend Constanza one day while I was polishing the silver. "It's easy money. You can remodel. I'm remodeling the bathroom next."

 

I polished the intricate coils of the fork handle with a toothbrush. I'd done it yesterday, but she didn't like that there was still tarnish in the crevices, so I had to redo them. I would have liked to plant it in her gut. I could have eaten her flesh raw.

 

Finally in the darkness of March, after weeks of near-daily phone calls, Ms. Cardoza dumped me and I got a new caseworker, an angel of the Lord called Joan Peeler. She was young, wore black, and had long hair dyed rock 'n' roll red. She had four silver rings on each hand. She looked more like a poet than a government drone. When it was time to go for our visit, I asked if she knew any coffeehouses.

 

She took me to one on Vermont. We ducked in past a few outside tables occupied by shivering smokers trying to stay dry, and into the warm, humid interior. Immediately, I was overcome by memories, the black walls and fragrance of hippie soup, the table by the cash register cluttered with handbills and flyers and free newspapers. Even the laughably ugly paintings in thick pigments seemed familiar — green women with long breasts and vampire teeth, men with baroque erections. And I could remember my mother's voice, her irritation when the roar of the cappuccino machine interrupted her reading, her books stacked on the table where I drew and took the money when someone bought one.

 

I wanted her back. I was overwhelmed with a need to hear her low, expressive voice. I wanted her to say something funny and cruel about the art, or tell a story about one of the other poets. I wanted to feel her hand on my hair, stroking me while she spoke.

 

Joan Peeler ordered peach tea. I took strong coffee with cream and sugar and the biggest pastry, a blueberry scone shaped like a heart. We sat at a table where we could see the street, the funereal umbrellas, hear the soft hiss of cars through puddles. She opened my case file on the sticky tabletop. I tried to eat slowly, to enjoy the buttery biscuit and the whole blueberries, but I was too hungry. I finished half of it before she even looked up.

 

"Ms. Cardoza recommended you not be moved," my new caseworker said. "She says the home is perfectly adequate. She says you have an attitude problem."