Raven (Orphans 4)

"He wouldn't do those things," she said. "He wouldn't." She looked up at me hopefully.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Clara. I think you know he would," I said.

Aunt Clara brought her small fist to her mouth to stop the cry that strangled in her throat.

Marjorie moved me ahead. I looked back just before we entered the judge's chambers. Aunt Clara had her hands over her face and was rocking gently on the bench like someone in great pain. My heart felt like a lump of lead.

"I hate hurting her," I said.

"You're doing the right thing, Raven. Just answer the judge's questions," Marjorie said.

I sucked in my breath and stepped in, feeling like someone on a roller coaster who was just reaching the top of another incline. In moments, I knew I would be raging downward, holding on for dear life, closing my eyes, screaming, wondering where the next turn would take me.

Epilogue

Uncle Reuben denied everything, of course. He admitted beating me but claimed that I was so rotten to the core he had no choice. The judge didn't believe him and certainly had no intention of placing me back in Uncle Reuben's home. With my mother gone and no other relatives who could bear responsibility for me, I became a ward of the state. It was what Uncle Reuben had predicted for me all along, so in a way, I suppose he got what he wanted.

I felt sorrier for William and Jennifer, since they had to stay in the home, and told Marjorie so. She thought William eventually might be the one who came out of the family's self-imposed cocoon and eventually helped everyone, especially Aunt Clara.

"In therapy," Marjorie said, "it will all be exposed."

I didn't know whether to believe her or not, and at the moment, I couldn't think about anything else but what was happening to me. She saw how anxious I was and decided she would be the one to bring me to the new foster home herself.

"It's one of our best facilities," she explained the morning she drove me there. "It used to be a small hotel, and the couple who ran the hotel, Gordon and Louise Tooey, now run the home. The grounds are beautiful, and there is lots of room in the building?'

She made it sound as if I was going away to summer camp. She said there were other girls my age, and the school I would be attending nearby was one of the better schools in the state.

"Prospective adoptive parents come by frequently, too," she told me.

I didn't know if I wanted another mother. I had never had a father, and my experience with Uncle Reuben made me anxious about being in anyone else's control.

Why would someone come along now to adopt me, anyway? I thought. If I were a woman looking for a child to adopt, I would try to find one who was relatively young, one I could teach and develop. I wouldn't want a daughter who had lived the life I had already lived.

Marjorie saw the pessimism in my face but nevertheless talked continuously about the bright future that awaited me. She promised me that the worst was behind me. She assured me that the state would make sure I was never in the hands of someone as perverted and cruel as my uncle or as troubled as my mother.

"We don't let just anyone take in one of our children," she said, as if the state were a gigantic mother hen with eyes that really saw and examined and knew each and every one of her young chicks.

I was too tired and too depressed to argue or even to care. This would be the third school I would attend in less than six months. There would be new faces, faces with distrustful, cautious eyes. The hardest thing in the world was making a real friend, developing a relationship with another human being who trusted you and cared for you and had confidence that you trusted and cared for her as well. I really never had a friend like that, and now I wondered if I ever would.

A little more than an hour later, we drove up to a place called the Lakewood House. The first thing Marjorie had told me proved to be true. It was a very large building with the biggest wraparound porch I had ever seen. Marjorie helped me with my things and gazed at the grounds. She took a deep breath as if the air was fresher.

"Isn't it beautiful here? Look at the lake back there and the flowers. It's very nice that these people decided to become foster parents and share all this." Why would they? I wondered.

We started up the steps. There was a screen door, and the door behind it was open. We heard a woman's voice.

"Coming," she cried.

Marjorie opened the screen door, and we faced a tall brunette with shoulder-length hair. She looked about fifty, with vibrant and friendly blue eyes.

"This is Raven Flores," Marjorie said. "Raven, meet Louise Tooey."

"Hi, darlin'," Louise said, reaching for my free hand. "You just come right in. I know all about you," she continued in a soft, sad voice. Her eyes actually became teary. "What we are doing to our children," she remarked to Marjorie, and shook her head. She smiled at me again. "Come on. I'm going to introduce you right away to your roommate. Her name's Brooke, and I'm sure you two will be fast friends. We're like one big family here. We all look out for each other."

I gazed at Marjorie, who nodded and smiled again. I couldn't help being skeptical. I was like the girl who had so many unfulfilled promises that one more just weighed her down deeper into a well of sadness. I'd rather not be promised anything, I thought. Disappointment lingered in the shadows, hungry, eager, ready to pound on my little bit of hope.

"Louise," we heard, and looked up the stairway. "The toilet is running over again."

A tall, thin girl with braces and stringy dark hair looked down at us, her hands on her hips.