Something Like Hope (5 page)

       
D
elpopolo tells me we don’t have to talk so much if it upsets me. Instead, he’ll give me writing assignments. The first one is to write about a single good childhood memory. I tell him that I don’t have any good memories, but he ignores my comment.

“It needs to be at least one page long, and when I read it, it should seem real and honest. So include as much detail as you can.” He also says he doesn’t want to keep the assignments. “They’re really for you, but you can read them to me in place of us screaming at each other, okay?” He smiles just to let me know that he’s kidding and not being disrespectful. I appreciate the gesture, however small. After a while in the Center you suspect everyone is trying to fuck with you and cut you down.

The memory: I am a little girl, swimming off a wooden dock with my father. It’s a reunion of my family on my father’s side, but I hardly know anyone. I don’t think my
father got along with his family, but at this party, everyone seems happy. We are having a picnic next to a lake, and there is so much food: fried chicken, potato salad, greens, hot dogs and hamburgers. There’s a couple of pies, too, and I can’t wait to eat them.

My father is big and strong, and his body is covered with tattoos and scars. He has just been released from prison, but no one talks to me about this. They do, however, tell me that I resemble my mother, and this makes everyone look sideways at each other, the way people do when there’s stuff going on that you’re too young to understand.

After eating, I go down to the edge of the lake and dip my feet in. The water is cold enough to leave goose bumps, but it is very hot outside and it feels good. I am too skinny to fill out my bathing suit, and my father says, “Girl, you need to eat more.” I am not used to him, and the attention is almost too much, too good. And being around these kind people, even if I don’t really know them, is so nice. They keep asking me if I want more soda or pie. They call me lovely and beautiful.

The absolute best part is when my father decides to come swimming with me. He gives me his good leather basketball to use as a float because I can’t swim. “Be careful,” he says.

I jump in, but the ball pops up without me. And just as I start to go under and swallow the water, my dad’s arm plunges into the dark green water and he pulls me up. He
swims me over to the basketball, makes sure I’m okay, and asks if I want to keep swimming. I nod.

The next time, he holds my hand and says, “Ready, set, go!” We jump together, knees drawn up in the air, mad grins on our faces, water flying off our nappy heads in silvery beads. The drops of water hang in the air. They catch the sun’s rays and bend them into different colors, and it’s just me and my dad playing together. The sky is extra blue with cottony clouds, and he loves me. I am his little girl.

Another memory: my dad no longer lives with us. He moved out of state and doesn’t call or send money anymore. I’m alone with my baby brother. My mother is out, but I don’t know where because she doesn’t tell me. My brother clings to me for warmth and comfort. It’s cold and he doesn’t have a sweater or even toys. No stuffed bears or soft blankets. I carry him everywhere and he cries when I put him down—so I don’t put him down.

I make up a game and pretend that I’m his mother. Kind of like what other little girls do with their favorite dolls.

“Do you want me to be your mommy? Okay, I’ll be your mommy. Are you a good baby? Marcus, have you been a good baby today? I think you have.”

Marcus puts his head down on me and falls asleep. He is warm and soft and he loves me. Even though I am only a little girl myself, I can tell that he loves me and trusts me, and this fills my six-year-old soul with happiness. I lie back on the filthy sofa and pull an old blanket over us. I am
cold and tired and my belly growls for food, but for the moment I am content, because there is someone in the world who loves me. Someone who needs me.

Marcus’s little hand wraps around my pointer finger, and I feel the tremendous power of this bond. His tiny fingers wrapped around my own. A hand inside another hand. I watch his eyelids flutter with dreams. I kiss his forehead and say, “I love you, little baby. Momma loves you.”

       
M
s. Choi is pissed today. She will take out her seething hatred on one of us. We all wonder who it will be. Coffee? China? Kiki? Tyreena? Me? No. It will be Samantha, this skinny Hispanic girl with wild frizzed-out hair and a bad case of ADHD.

“Samantha, put your hand down and turn in. I ain’t answerin’ no more of your dang questions.”

“But Ms. Choi, I gotta go to the bathroom. Goddamn, you gotta let me go. The ombudsman said.”

Samantha is hyperactive and special ed, always bouncing off the walls and getting on people’s nerves. She’s harmless, though. One of those kids who talks tough when she’s threatened but never does anything.

“We just had a bathroom break. How come you got to go whenever there’s schoolwork?”

“But Ms. Choi, I really gotta go. It’s for real! I ain’t messin’ around, I really gotta pee.”

“You know, Samantha, maybe if you spent more time studyin’ you wouldn’t act so retarded. Now face forward and do your work. We’ll have another bathroom break in a while.”

The special ed teacher, Ms. Sheffield, pretends not to hear the retard comment. Ms. Sheffield is even more frightened of Ms. Choi than she is of us kids. Instead of reminding Ms. Choi that Samantha is a bed wetter and sometimes has accidents in the daytime, she shuffles her papers together and leaves.

Samantha tries to keep her cool. For about eight seconds.

“Maybe I am retarded, but at least I ain’t no fat bitch!” She mutters it under her breath, but everyone hears. Tyreena, Kiki, and the others all say, “Oooh! No she didn’t!” as though they’re on the set of the Jerry Springer show. It’s all very predictable.

Ms. Choi has a way of knowing just how to push people’s buttons. With Samantha it’s the retard thing. With another girl it’s calling her baldheaded or the daughter of a whore. (“You know the apple don’t fall far from the tree, especially when Shaquana and her momma be out there sellin’ they asses together.”) Nothing is off limits with Ms. Choi.

In the end, she beats Samantha’s ass for her comments. The 250-pound woman hooks the girl’s arms behind her back and hip-tosses her on her face. Once Samantha’s down, Ms. Choi levers her skinny arms as high as they’ll go without breaking and continues to torment her.

“See, girl? That’s what you get for runnin’ your mouth.
Always talkin’. You wanna talk now? You still got somethin’ to say?”

During the takedown part, Samantha crashes to the floor on her face with the big woman on top of her. Her chin cracks hard and blood drips onto the dirty white tiles.

“I can’t fucking breathe! You’re hurting me! Owww! Shit! Owww!”

“Oh yeah? If you can’t breathe then how come you’re able to scream so damn loud? If it’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a liar. Liars be runnin’ they mouths all day and they can’t even back it up ’cause it’s all bullcrap.” When Ms. Choi gets fired up, her language gets more street.

This only brings out more fight in Samantha, which I think is the point. She thrashes and kicks and screams under Ms. Choi’s weight. Her blood smears everywhere as she wails in a god-awful way. A couple of minutes later, four guards respond. One grabs Samantha’s legs so she can’t kick. Another cuffs her hands behind her back; the two other guards stand next to the pileup with their arms crossed, looking tough and official.

Samantha continues to fight like crazy until the cuffs are on. She almost bucks Ms. Choi off her. She has that wiry strength that only crazy people have. The rest of us are sitting at our desks, trying to stay calm. It’s disturbing when a girl gets taken down like that. It feels wrong to just sit there and do nothing, but if you try and help,
you
get slammed. Then they give you a rule violation for inciting a riot. That adds thirty days to your sentence and means you have to go before the review board, like when
I stole the sandwich and hit Ms. Williams. Go to the review board too many times, and they can send you to adult corrections.

As Samantha screams, so do I—inside my head. I yell, “Stop it! Stop it!” over and over. I don’t even know if I’m yelling for the guards to stop hurting Samantha or if I’m yelling for Samantha to stop fighting and screaming. It doesn’t matter. I just can’t take being around any more of it. My fists are balled tight, my ragged fingernails digging into my palms. In my mind I try to block out what’s happening.

I put my head down and hum real loud to drown out the noise. Michelle, who sits next to me, begins to rock in her chair. She rubs a pencil eraser back and forth across her wrist to burn her skin. Michelle has cuts and burns all over her arms, legs, neck, and chest. The behavior specialist woman made a plan to get her to quit, but it obviously hasn’t worked.

Finally, Samantha stops struggling and cries, “I can’t take this no more. I can’t. Somebody call my mommy because I can’t be here no more. This place is no good for me! You people ain’t even helping me. You’re hurting me. I’m not getting better, I’m getting worse. I need help. Please. Somebody help me!”

It makes me sick, the idea of all these full-grown men and women beating the shit out of this girl. Samantha talks shit and annoys people. But that’s hardly a reason to torment her and bust up her chin.

Later, we line up and move to the cafeteria for dinner. They’re serving burritos with Spanish rice and nachos. Even though it’s our favorite meal, no one eats. Samantha is getting stitched up in the clinic, which is close enough to hear her whining and crying. It goes on forever: “I want to go home!” and “I want my mommy!”

Kiki and Tyreena mumble, “Shoot. Shut the fuck up, Samantha. We heard your stupid ass already.” But I notice they don’t touch their food either.

Only Ms. Choi eats. She pretends not to notice the screaming. She smiles and sings to herself, “Don’t worry. Be happy!” She asks me to get a plate for Samantha in case she’s hungry. Then she proceeds to eat Samantha’s dinner. Kiki rolls her eyes in a visible display of disgust, as if to say, “Dang! That’s mad grimy, eatin’ that girl’s food.” Ms. Choi notices the look and says, “Kiki, you got somethin’ to say, then say it. Otherwise shut your face, girl. I already had enough drama for one day. Don’t nobody need no more.”

The rest of us try to bury our noses in our books, but Ms. Choi won’t let us. Instead, she bullies us into phony conversations about Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige. She turns on her charm and tells jokes and funny stories, making a false display of everyone being cool with each other. It feels even more wrong than the actual beating.

Samantha comes back to the unit after dinner. She has a gauze pad taped over her chin. She’s spaced out on painkillers. It’s strange to see her sit there quietly. Her
hands don’t fidget, her skinny butt doesn’t slide all over the chair, and you can almost read the thoughts in her head: “I want to go home. I want my mommy.”

And even though it’s selfish to think of myself, the thought forms: “At least she has a mommy. At least she’ll go home to someone when this is all over. She’ll get off the van with her garbage bag full of state-issue crap clothes, and her mother and grandma and aunt will hug her and cry with happiness. They’ll all board the city bus and go back to their shit hole apartment in the projects and have a big party with fifty brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends. Old women will bring casserole dishes of plantains, rice and beans, stewed chicken, and flan for dessert. And, in their own imperfect and beautiful way, these people will love Samantha because they don’t care if she’s imperfect herself. They don’t even know what a learning disability is, or conduct disorder, or ADHD. All they know is that Samantha is one of them and they love her.”

       
S
usan, my daughter’s DSS worker, calls me on the phone today. Department of Social Services is the agency that takes kids away when they’re abused or neglected. They save them from abuse by putting them in foster homes where they’re abused and neglected worse, this time by strangers.