Gifted

Chapter Twenty-two

Diana

“Where’s Momma?” Karin asks, her little innocent voice almost breaking my heart.

I squat down in front of her and gently hold her. “Your momma went somewhere where she can get the help she needs. She’s very sick right now, and she’ll come back when she’s better,” I say soothingly.

“What’s the matter with her?”

I hesitate, trying to think of a suitable answer. Children are much smarter than you think they are; if you hide something from them, they’ll almost always figure it out.

“Karin, your momma loves you, you know that, right?” I wait for her to nod. “But right now, she’s...she’s not feeling very well, and she has medicine to make her feel better, ok? She wasn’t taking her medicine for a while, and got really sick again because of it, and that’s why she did to you what she did—”

“When will she get better?” Karin interrupts, her eyes wide.

“Karin, your mother did some bad things to you. You know how you get sent to ‘time-out’ when you’re in trouble?” Karin nods slowly. “Well, your momma has to go to ‘time-out’ for adults for a while, too, ok? But she wants to come see you sometime, so don’t you worry. You’ll see her soon.”

Karin doesn’t want to let go when I try to stand up, and I gently disengage her from me, and look at her until she looks back at me.

“Karin, I have to go now. Miss Angela is coming to take you back to the playground, ok? You ok, honey?”

Karin looks at me, her dark eyes wet, and her lip begins trembling. Then she bursts into tears and I pull her into my arms again to comfort her.

“I want my mommmmaaaaa!” she wails.

I stroke her hair, rocking her slowly back and forth, until she slowly quiets again.

“Hey, kiddo, everything ok?” Angela Walters says as she crouches down beside us, looking sympathetically at Karin, who continues to sniffle. Karin nods, her whole face red, tears still glistening on her cheeks, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, let’s get you back outside, ok? I’ve got some sidewalk chalk, would you like to play with me?” Angela asks her. Karin hesitates, thinking about it, and then slowly nods her head. Angela gives me a quick smile as she leads Karin away by the hand. I sigh, slumping down in a nearby chair, feeling exhausted all of a sudden.

Darha Swan, my boss, enters the room a few minutes later, as I’m sitting with my head in my hands, staring at the floor. “You ok, Diana?” she asks gently, sitting in the chair next to me, patting me on the back. I look up at into her patient brown face, trying to rearrange my face into a smile.

I fail. “No, Darha, I’m not,” I tell her quietly. I try to stem the weariness, the psychological fatigue I’m feeling heavily right now, but I can’t, and soon the question I ask myself often resurfaces once again: why am I always given the families that usually make our other workers think of quitting their jobs, or even do quit? It does seem a little disproportional, when I look at other caseloads and mine.

“When I see cases like this...” I say quietly, my throat threatening to close.

Darha nods. “We’ve got some messed up families, don’t we?” she says, smiling sadly.

I nod. Yeah, we do.

There’s something else, too, beneath it all, something I can’t quite put my finger on, no matter how hard I try. It's started recently, this feeling of--

“What’s the problem, hon?” Darha asks, interrupting my train of thought.

I sigh. “I think something is wrong.”

Darha looks at me curiously, her interest piqued. “What do you mean?” she asks. She shifts in her chair to look at me closely. “Did you see anything?”

I struggle to get a grasp on the intangible, gloomy feeling. “You know what premonitions are?”

Darha nods, waiting for me to continue.

“For the last couple of months, I’ve been getting these...not visions, but feelings, really. I don’t really see much of anything, but it feels awful. I think there’s something coming, Darha, and I don’t know it is.”