Suki said, “None of it was her fault. Snowflakes.”
Francine said, “Wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t your fault, neither. I’m not saying it was. I’m talking about whatever you might do next.”
I might get in trouble, but if I do, it’ll be Suki who gets me out. Always has been. Suki ran with me from trouble, took my hand and yanked me away from trouble.
I don’t need anybody but Suki.
Suki said, “Maybe we can get her a government phone.”
Government phones are free phones, for people who can’t afford regular ones. No data and not many minutes, but they’ll always work to call 911. Teena’s mom had one once. It was better than nothing.
Francine rolled her eyes. “Nobody gives kids government phones. This lack of a cell phone thing, it ain’t the tragedy you think it is.”
“You could sign up for one,” Suki said, “and let Della have it.”
“How poor do you think I am?” Francine said. “I don’t qualify for a government phone. I got a real job. I don’t make minimum wage.”
“That’s right,” Suki said, “’cause you’re getting rich taking care of us.” She’d looked it up online, at school. It was a boatload of money. Like, I can’t believe the state of Tennessee gives anyone that much money just for housing Suki and me. We could live on our own with that much money, just fine. We would have.
“I get money for you and from my day job,” Francine said.
“The minute I turn eighteen, we’re out of here,” said Suki. “Della and me both. I’ll get custody of her and we’ll live by ourselves.”
“That’s fine,” Francine said. “You got, what? Eighteen months to go?”
Suki glared at her. “Seventeen months and three weeks.”
Francine didn’t seem offended. She just said, “It’s all right. You’ll get there.”
When Francine said things like that, all calm and understanding, it felt like she was on our side. Teena’s mom—I’d always thought she was on our side, but now I wasn’t so sure. She called the cops when Suki begged her not to. She wouldn’t let us just stay with her. And that emergency foster placement woman, the one the cops gave us to, she was nothing but nasty.
We were at the police station being interviewed. It was past midnight. I was so tired, I could barely keep my head on straight, even with Suki beside me tense and shaking. I asked could we go sleep in the jail. The policewoman said no, they had people on standby to take kids in, and someone was already on their way. She said it real nice, like we were going to get some sweet grandma type like you’d see on TV, who’d smile at us and tuck us in and maybe feed us cookies. Instead we got this worn-out white woman wearing too much makeup for that late at night, chewing breath mints, probably so she didn’t smell like beer.
“This them?” she said. “Got any stuff?”
We shook our heads. We didn’t even have Suki’s purse. I wasn’t even wearing shoes.
That lady—I forget her name ’cause I really don’t care—she had kids and a husband and a nice little house, and they’d made over the garage into a kind of extra bedroom for emergency placement kids, with three twin beds and a crib, I guess in case they needed to take in babies in the middle of the night. (Who does that? Loses their babies in the night? Though Suki says our mama might have. It was just a matter of luck and timing.)
We curled up in one bed, Suki’s arms around me, Suki’s chin trembling against my head. I felt safer than at Clifton’s, though that wasn’t saying much. Suki and me have always slept tangled up together. We had two beds at Clifton’s house too, but we only ever slept in one.
The next morning the emergency woman liked to have a fit when she saw Suki and me sharing a bed. She yammered on about how it wasn’t right, like somehow we were using the bed for something other than sleeping in. She said, “I heard what kind of accusations y’all are making.”
I didn’t get what she meant, not right away. Suki’s eyes flashed fire. She said, “Then you know my little sister needed someone to protect her.”
Nasty woman said, “How do I know what’s true?”
That was my first understanding that what happened to us was going to be hard to talk about not just because I didn’t want to or really know how. It was going to be hard to talk about because people didn’t want to hear it.
I hadn’t said one word to the emergency woman, not a single word the whole night before. I said one now. “Snowman.” Only it wasn’t snowman, of course, and it may have rhymed with something you’ve gotta scratch.
So that didn’t go well. She couldn’t send us to school because I didn’t have shoes, and she didn’t want to spend money buying me shoes, but on the other hand couldn’t exactly expect me to show up at school or later in court barefoot. Finally Suki said, “There’s a free clothes closet downtown.” Which you would have thought the woman would have known, but I guess when you’ve got your own house and nice cars and kids that eat designer cereal and get onto the school bus with fancy backpacks with their names printed on them, you don’t have to wear clothes other people have thrown away.
Teena and her mom went to the free clothes closet every couple months—there’s a limit to how often you can go—and they usually took me and Suki with them. The clothes closet is this big warehouse that smells like old socks, no windows, full of beat-up clothes like you’d expect, run by church people who say things like “Have a blessed day” while giving you pity looks. The church people dress nice. They don’t never shop at the free clothes closet themselves.
Anyway, we told the emergency nasty foster woman where it was. She took us there, and I found an old pair of tennis shoes that completely creeped me out ’cause I hate wearing other people’s shoes. Those were the shoes I hid as soon as I got my high-tops. Then I went along to the school, not my old school and not the one I go to now, some other school because it was supposed to keep me from feeling bad, somehow, about running away from Clifton, or who knows, maybe that woman just couldn’t be bothered to drive me across town.
A whole new school for just three days and you can imagine how well that went. I was standing up front in yesterday’s clothes and used shoes, and the teacher was looking like she couldn’t believe she got stuck with a new kid half an hour before lunchtime on a Friday, and she said, “Here’s our new girl—Delicious!” before I could get a word in. I said, “Call me Della,” but nobody could hear me because they were laughing so hard. That’s when the kid tried to lick me and I kicked him and the day kind of went downhill.
Francine is a big improvement, if you want the truth.