"Oh, please don't call us Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. I'm Ami, and this is Wade," Anti insisted. She was still holding my hand. I didn't know whether to pull it out of her grip or just turn my fingers into limp noodles to get the message across.
"Why don't you take your seat, Ami," Wade suggested in a monotone.
She turned back to him sharply.
"So that we can get on with it," he explained with a little more feeling. "There's a lot to do."
"Oh, yes. Yes, of course," Ami said, and released me. She sat and folded her hands over each other on her lap, primping and smiling like an impatient little girl whose daddy had just told her to behave or she wouldn't get any ice cream.
"Please take a seat, Celeste," Mother Higgins told me, nodding at the chair across from the small sofa where both Mr. and Mrs. Emerson now sat, staring at me. Something wasn't right about them, I thought. Something wasn't quite right, but I wouldn't permit that feeling to frighten me. Instead, I let it make me more curious about them.
Wade Emerson had his legs crossed, but his back was so straight, it looked like a steel rod had been shoved alongside his spine down to his waist. He pursed his lips, which further tightened the skin around his narrow, almost square jaw. The eyebrows he raised for emphasis were long and full, but his hands were not much longer or bigger than Ami's, and just as soft looking.
I was still wearing the school uniform that the orphanage provided all the girls, a navy blue top and skirt with thick-heeled dark blue lace-up shoes and white knee-high socks. The navy blue top had a big, masculine-looking collar with large black buttons and tight cuffs. It was loose-fitting, and I'm sure appeared a size or so too large. However, I had long ago stopped being self-conscious about my clothes or my looks. As Mother Higgins often told us, "It's not how you appear on the outside that matters; it's how you are on the inside." I don't think any of the other girls ever really believed that, especially when they contrasted themselves with other girls who weren't orphans, but sometimes it helped us get through the day and kept the sadness from taking control of our eyes and lips.
Just on first glance, I could tell that I didn't have to be any sort of clairvoyant to easily conclude Ami Emerson wasn't someone who would ever believe in Mother Higgins's adage about what was and was not important. Everything about her outer appearance was too perfect, too well planned.
"The Emersons:" Mother Higgins began, "are very interested in providing a healthy home environment for a young woman just your age. Mrs. Emerson--"
Ami turned to her quickly and gave her a pained look.
"I mean, Ami," Mother Higgins corrected. Ami smiled. "--and her husband Wade are relatively newly-weds, having been married only four years."
"Four years and five months," Wade gently added. He looked at his wife. "Not that I'm counting the days or anything."
"I hope not. Only people in prison count the days," Ami said, and laughed. Mother Higgins nodded and smiled, too.
"Well then, Celeste," she continued, "as Ami has explained to me, she and Wade have decided to begin their own family in about two years, but in the mean-time, they'd like to offer their home, their family life, to a young lady such as yourself."
As if she could no longer hold it all in, Ami Emerson burst out with her own version of the explanation.
"I know the hardest years of my life
emotionally were the teen years. You're a woman, but everyone still wants to treat you as if you were a little girl. You're not sure of what's right and what's wrong. It's a dangerous time!" she declared, nodding in agreement with herself. "You are capable of making some very serious errors if you are not given the proper guidance and advice.
"I'm sure this is a wonderful place," she said, smiling at Mother Higgins, "but you can't possibly get all the personal attention you need at this climactic time in your life. And there are experiences that are just not. . . well, in the experience of your guardians," she continued. "Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that," she added quickly. "It's just not in their lifestyle."
Wade's eyes widened, and Ami caught it.
"I don't mean to sound critical of you or anyone else here, Mother Higgins."
"Of course you don't, dear," Mother Higgins said generously, a slight smile at the corner of her lips that only I could discern.
"Anyway," Ami continued, turning back to me, "it just came to me the other day that a girl in your circumstances would be the perfect foster daughter for us at this time, right, Wade?"
He nodded, now looking at her as if he was truly amazed by her himself.
"I said to Wade, Wade, why don't we do something wonderful and generous with our money and our time? Why don't we take in a young woman and provide her with foster care?
"I'm sure you understand why I don't want to start with a much younger girl. It's much harder, much more difficult, to care for a little person, and when my own baby is born, well, she or he would get all the attention. I would just hate to end it for the little girl we had taken in to live with us, or to have her think she isn't loved as much as my own child will be loved," she said, scrunching her face as though she were about to cry for this imaginary little girl.
Wade grunted again.
"That's why you are so perfect," Ami
continued. "By the time I give birth, you'll be out there on your own or in college. Why, we understand you have property, too. Of course, you'll always have a place in our home and our hearts, but that's quite different from being a year-round resident for the rest of your life or until you got married or something.
"What do you think?" she asked me, but before I could respond, she continued. "We have a very large house. It's a mansion, in fact."