down here now. Would you like to try some toast and tea?”
“Well,” I said doubtfully, “at least I could try.” I really would have liked a hot dog, but a person with a sick stomach couldn’t ask for a hot dog. It was toast, or starve to death.
“I’ll make it,” I said, as Aunt Grace started to get up from the redwood table.
I went through the back door into the kitchen and made the tea and toast. I ate it there, where nobody could see me wolfing it down. I had four pieces of toast with chunks of Velveeta on them and two cups of tea.
I went back outside, holding my stomach.
“I don’t know if eating was such a good idea, Aunt Grace.”
“Oh, dear. Maybe we’d better call Dr. Fitch if you’re still feeling this way tomorrow.” I could see Aunt Grace didn’t like that idea too much. Monday was canasta day. Well, I didn’t want the doctor either. I had to be just sick enough to stay home from school, but not sick enough to have Aunt Grace miss her game at Millie Reemer’s.
“Are you going to throw up, Sylvie? Are you going to throw up?”
“Stop it, Honey!” Aunt Grace said sharply.
“I better go back to bed.”
“Take the little fan from our room, Sylvie,” Uncle Ted called after me as I went inside. “That’ll stir the air around, anyway.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The afternoon dragged on forever. I lay on my bed with some of my magazines, the fan whirring away on my desk, the radio playing the top twenty-five songs of the week.
I began counting how many hours I had left to live in this house. Each hour that dragged by seemed longer than the year I had already been here.
I don’t really know for sure why Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in, especially because the way I got myself out of the O’Connors’ was by being as much trouble as possible without actually being a JD.
Like I said, I knew the social worker wouldn’t believe me if I told the truth about Mr. O’Connor and what he was trying to do, so the only thing I could think of was to make the O’Connors want to get rid of me.
I started not answering them when they talked to me. I didn’t do anything they told me to. I went out of the house and wouldn’t come back till all hours of the night. If I didn’t have a baby-sitting job I’d usually go to the movies and then just walk around till I was sure it was late enough for them to be plenty worried about me.
I knew what I was doing was making Ernie and Georgie very nervous and upset, but I couldn’t help it. I had to get out of there. I was a nervous wreck myself, from having spent all those months practically running from Mr. O’Connor, and not always getting away. Somehow he always managed, no matter how cagey I thought I was being, to get his hands on me one way or another, a couple of times a week.
When I started acting like a real “troubled teenager,” Mr. O’Connor got madder and madder.
One night when I came in late from baby-sitting, Mr. O’Connor was dozing in front of the television. All the lights in the house were off. I closed the door real softly behind me, but just then the TV blared out the “Star-Spangled Banner” and Mr. O’Connor woke up and saw me.
“This is a fine hour for you to come waltzing in,” he said, snapping on the floor lamp next to his chair.
“How do you know what time it is?” I said. “You were asleep.”
“Don’t be fresh with me, young lady, or I’ll teach you some manners with this.” He held up his fist.
“You lay a hand on me,” I said, my voice all shaky, “and I’ll tell the social worker and you’ll never get any other kids at eighty bucks a month.”
He dropped his fist to his side. I guess the thought of losing the money the county paid for the three of us made him think twice about hitting me.
Then he got this real sly look on his face.
“Why do you have to be that way, Sylvie?” he said. “Why do you always have to make me mad? I don’t want to be mad at you. I don’t want to hit you. I want us to be friends.”
He started walking toward me, a phony-kind smile on his face.
I darted toward the hall to run to my room, but for a heavy guy he was pretty fast. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him.
“Sylvie, be nice. I’ll be nice to you, you’ll see how nice I can be.” He slobbered on my neck, his fingers pawing at my collar.
My heart hammered in my chest. I was smothering, I was suffocating, my face pressed into his shirtfront, his sweaty hands grabbing at my buttons.
I socked him in the ribs and screamed.
“You dirty old pig! You fat old pig! Don’t you dare touch me!”
I ran down the hall to my room, just as Mrs. O’Connor came running to see what the noise was about.
“Sylvie, what is it? What’s going on?”
“Ask him!” I yelled. “Ask the fat old pig yourself.”
“Sylvie!”
I slammed my door shut and threw myself across the bed, crying like crazy.
I was scared to death. I was crying because I was mad, but I was crying because I was really terrified, too. I’d made him too angry. It wasn’t my fault, this time I hadn’t started it, but I’d made him so mad I knew he was going to get me. He was big and he was strong and he was an adult, and he’d figure out a way to lie to the social worker so she’d believe him and not me.
It wasn’t going to be all fake fatherly smiles and accidental touching anymore. He wasn’t going to bother to pretend after this. It was too late for pretending. I had hit him. He knew he wasn’t fooling me. And he was going to get me. He was going to force me.
Even crying into my pillow, gasping for breath, I could hear him yelling. “Impossible! Incorrigible! . . . don’t know what gets into her.” I couldn’t hear what Mrs. O’Connor was saying, she was talking too softly, but I was sure she would believe whatever lies he was telling her.
And then she’d go back to bed and he’d stay up and wait, until he was sure she was asleep, until he thought I was asleep....
I groaned and slammed my fist into my pillow. No!
I hauled myself off the bed and looked around the room. There was a big, old oak chest of drawers next to the door. I ran to it, leaned my shoulder against it, and pushed. I couldn’t budge it.
Still crying, still hardly able to catch my breath, I opened all four drawers and dumped the things in them on the floor. Then I pulled the drawers out and pushed the dresser against the door. I put the drawers back in and threw all the stuff back into the drawers.
“Sylvie, what are you doing? Sylvie, what are you moving around in there?”
I fell back on the bed, exhausted. The doorknob turned, rattled, the door thunked against the dresser but didn’t move another inch.
“Open the door, Sylvie! Open the door this instant!”
I didn’t answer.
I never spoke another word to Mr. or Mrs. O’Connor.
I sat straight up in bed all night, staring at the dresser.
The next afternoon, Miss Jenks, the social worker, came to take me to “Aunt Grace” and “Uncle Ted” Tyson.
So like I say, I don’t know why Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in, what with the reputation I had from the Framers and the O’Connors. Especially since I was the first foster child they’d ever had. And why they’d want to trust someone like me—or