Maybe I'm Home

I'm Going To Be Sent Back, For Sure

Did I mention that I have no hope?  Because it’s true.  I miss a dinner here or there, over the past week, and tonight I decide to just once more, because I’m that close to finishing my art, and I have to complete it within a week, and I still want to work on my other artwork.  So yes, I’m skipping a couple dinners with the Attles.  Most of my foster families wouldn’t have cared, and my birth parents certainly didn’t, once I became an atheist.  They loved it, actually.

So, I don’t see the issue!  But Laila and Walter… Well, let’s take a walk.

“WE GIVE YOU A HOME!  AND YOU IGNORE OUR FAMILY FOR MULTIPLE DAYS BECAUSE OF AN ART PROJECT!?”

“Now Laila, dear, let’s all be calm, please, we can talk about th-”

“WALTER, NO!”

“Please, yelling at poor Arlen won’t make a difference,” Walter argued.

“IT MIGHT SCARE HER INTO LISTENING!”

“Laila, you know very well she’s had that tried on her a thousand times and it isn’t going to work, she’s used to it!”

I sigh.  Walter is, as usual, very correct.  I look blankly at Laila, because even if I am a bit scared- still- I need to give her that extra effect.  She stares back at me, brown eyes shooting daggers.  I draw back a bit, but quickly try to look firm.  Now, I’ll admit, for someone as short as I am, that’s a bit difficult, but whatever.  It works.  I clench my fists and hope that I, too, am glaring daggers, even though internally one sentence is going through my mind.  And it’s making me feel sick.  I wish it wouldn’t, I wish I could just accept and understand it like always, but today, for whatever reason, for the first time I can’t stand the prospect- They’re going to send me back.  I know they are.  When a foster family acts like this, you aren’t getting out unscathed, but you’re certainly getting out.  

Laila hasn’t given up, so I break my gaze away, and Walter looks so utterly defeated by his wife that I’m not sure what to do.  Comforting him could make matters worse, but he surely needs it after that, right?

I decide against trying, since I’m not good at comforting people anyways. I’m more the person who makes matters worse, as shown in this fight.  I’m not even sure what it’s about anymore.  Skipping dinners for the art contest that Laila herself wanted me to take part in?  That doesn’t make sense, but I’m beginning to realize that Laila never makes sense.  I nod sadly to Walter and rush back to my room, where I take out a polished ring- my only ring with pure diamond in it.  I scratch a small note onto a notebook page, which reads,

“To Raymond and Anthea, I am writing this because I expect to be soon sent back to foster care.  Your parents clearly can’t handle having me around, so for once my assumption isn’t illogical (though it has always been right since my first foster home, thank you.) and I admit that for the first time in a few homes, since my second, I feel deep regret at needing to leave.  I actually enjoyed my time here and I hope one of you treasures this ring, because I like to think that maybe we had some sort of bond, that none of us will forget.  But I wouldn’t know, I suppose, what you do with the ring.  Still, I hope you love it.

To Walter, thank you for trying to stand up for me, you were a good father figure while I was here and I’ll try to forgive you, eventually, for agreeing to send me to the group home.  I promise, I know how hard it is to stand up to Laila.

To Laila, you were a jerk, and you’re sending me back, so I’m not sure I can ever forgive you.  This is the one place since the Mercia house where I felt wanted, ever, and I’m so sorry to go.

So, goodbye forever, Attle family, I am so heartbroken to leave.

-Arlen LaVeque”

It looks pretty good.  I think for a moment about whether there’s anything else to add, and then I write,

“P.S. Thank you, Raymond, you know what for.”

I tape my ring down to the poster, and debate my art.  I don’t know that I’ll ever complete my paintings- at least not until I leave, which won’t help me much, since we don’t get to mail stuff at the group home.  So I make the next best decision and take out my sketchbook, and for the first time, I shade and color the submarine, the same way I would with paint, and work to make it look almost as stunning.  It doesn’t look quite as nice, of course, but it’ll do.  I’m planning to leave them with the ring and note.  I spend hours adding yellow, gray, blue and purple, every color I can think of that fits a submarine.  I sit in the same place for hours, focused directly on the sketches, ignoring everything else.

Finally, after a couple of hours…

It’s perfect.

As perfect as I can make a pencil and paper drawing, that is.  It does appear to be a submarine, but I know it doesn’t have my slightly messy style that I get complimented on- a bit abstract, but still understandable.  That’s what I pride myself on.  But this is so cut-and-clean, I don’t know how anyone could stand to look at it.  Everything in the lines.  I sigh and start thinking, when I get an idea.  I take a pencil and make one, dark circle on the gray part of the submarine.  I then use my right index finger to create smudge marks and other circles around it.  It looks similar enough to my painting without being annoying to look at, even if it isn’t exact.

Nice, I think smugly.  Then, I start coloring the happy puppy dog I wanted to paint for Anthea.  It looks so exciting, rainbow, and bright.  Like Skittles.  Like me, I guess, because I’m apparently lesbian.

So, that’s how I’m interpreting this art now, is it?

Can I just not for one moment? I think, annoyed.  I know what my brain has to say about that, though.

“NOPE, LOL LOSER.”

Sigh.  I take my pencils out and start filling in the dog’s coloring.  I choose a light toffee brown, because I just think it’s cute.  An hour and a half later, I’ve completed my two pieces of art (but not the art I need to complete, thank you) and I set them down with the note.  I then hide them in my dresser until the day that Walter and Laila alert me that I’m leaving.  Now that I’m done drawing, I actually see how everything looks.  Gray.  Dead.  Like nothing really matters anyways.  That’s such a new feeling, outside of the Mercias and my birth parents.  I’m honestly feeling mildly depressed, empty.   I don’t know how to handle this, I realize.  I go over any advice that may have ever been given to me, throughout the course of my wreck of a life.  

From my birth parents, of course, the LaVeques, it would be the ever-persistent “Pray to God, and he will free you!”

Yeah, no, thanks.

From the first foster home… The Red family, of course, was quite plain and boring all around.  It was just two parents and an emo seventeen year old girl.  The advice from them?  Probably something as lifeless as them; “It’ll get better” or something.

The Mercia family was so kind- I’ll never forget them.  Ellie Mercia, Diego Mercia, and their ten year old son, Benjamin Mercia.  All three were just warm, loving people.

Until you commit a crime, anyways.  Their wisdom would have ended up being, “Turn to those you trust!” Which is great and all, except I don’t have anyone I trust these days.

My third… Poor woman.  She wouldn’t have understood if she tried, so she wouldn’t have given advice.  Likewise, the family that was abusive- Mr. and Mrs. Tanner- would have ignored me at best, or berated me at worst.

So, the fifth home was a lady in her twenties, Rain, and her new husband Thomas.  They were nice enough and would have said something like, “Just look for the good in it!  The silver lining.”  I almost jump to take that advice when I realize there is no silver lining to my situation.

Oh, joy.

Well, I suppose I ought to head off to bed, because I skipped dinner, finished my homework, and worked on art, so that means that in the darkness of tonight, I’m prepared to sleep.  Sounds like a good, sound plan to me!

I curl up in the bed, pillow over my head, trying to block out the imaginary screaming of Laila, trying to tell me off in a way I’m so used to anyways.