Crown Sword

Chapter 2

     The driveway was clear when I got there. Phew. No one was home yet. I parked my car and went into the house. Everything was clean as I had finished all the cleaning work yesterday. Today I was decorating and setting up the catering. Suddenly, I heard the screaming of a small child outside the living room window. I ran to the window and looked out and sighed to myself.

     Out on the lawn was a small girl around five years of age laughing and screaming as she was being chased by a big dog. What looked to be her Dad was filming her on a phone while her mother laughed beside him. The girl ran up to her mom who picked her up and started to tickle her, while the Dad put his phone away and leashed the dog. They moved on, each one of them with a smile on their faces.

     I've always wondered how it would be to meet my real parents. I would ask them so many questions. Why did they give me up? Are they still together? I have no background information on them whatsoever although I imagine that they look like me. Before I was adopted I had wished and wished for a set of parents. For anyone to adopt me. That was back when I lived in foster homes, about seven years ago when I was ten. I was so stupid and naive then, as if getting adopted would solve all my problems and fix me.

     But looking back now, I could see that living in those foster homes helped me. It hardened me and made me indifferent to so many things. I was able to survive here much easier. Don't get me wrong, when I got here I thought my life was going to be changed, it was going to turn upside down. I was finally going to learn what love was like. I was finally going to be able to wake up with a smile on my face. Boy, was I wrong.

     The horrors I had faced in those foster homes were none I cared to share with Brenda or Dan. I thought that I would finally be able to tell someone about things and confide in them, the people I would call family. I was shaped up quickly once I learned what they were about. My so called parents Brenda and Dan would feed me and give me a place to stay, so as long I stayed and did the "chores" around the house while they received checks from the government. I demanded to get paid about 4 years ago, when I realized that I could get money out of the work I was forced to do anyway. They didn't dare refuse me although we had a bit of a struggle negotiating the pay.

     I remember the day I had come to their house so vividly. I was to unpack my few clothes quietly and come downstairs for a talk. Brenda showed me to my room. It was a very small room comparable to a closet with only room for a twin bed and a small dresser. I think it was an office space before. I put my things away quickly not wanting to be separated from my new family for even the slightest moment. This was before I was aware of Ashley, who was away at a friend's sleepover at the time. I was smiling as I came downstairs to see Dan and Brenda sitting side by side on the love seat couch with their arms crossed and a small chair before them. Dan lowered his reading glasses to peer at me. It was the quiet look of disdain that started to wake me up. I recognized that look from the various foster care workers I had known as a child. I stopped smiling that day.

     "Sit down," Brenda had said with that cold voice.

      I sat down on my knees jumping underneath me as I bounced my legs. That's another thing about me that they hate, I have ADD. Dan frowned.

     "Jane, you are old enough to start pulling your own weight around. Know that you will not be coddled. You will not treat this house as though it is your own because it is not. The house belongs to this family, and you are not part of this family. This will be like a trade agreement, okay? You pull your weight around by helping out around the house and doing what Brenda tells you to do, okay? Do them without complaint and we will not send you back to the foster home. Another thing, you may not call us Daddy and Mommy as you have the entire ride here. Instead, you will call us by our first names, Dan and Brenda. You may also call us Mr. and Mrs. Jameson."

     Brenda continued, "you must not expect anything from us. We do not take any sort of attitude and any sort of misbehavior. If there is any, however, we will immediately ship you back to the foster home, no questions asked. We are not your parents, we are your guardians."

     "Also" Dan began, "you are only to speak when spoken to. You cannot come to us bothering us about anything unless it has to do with the work you are given. But even with that, there will be no whining or complaints of any sort."

     Dan and Brenda looked at each other seemingly satisfied, "did we get everything?" Dan asked.

     "Oh yes, one more thing. You will be catching the bus to school everyday. We will give you a bit of money every year to buy one pair of shoes and a few new items of clothing for the school year." There was another pause as they remembered whatever else they had to tell me

     "Oh, honey we forgot another thing!" Dan said.

      "What is it?" Brenda frowned.

     "Ashley." Dan said, chuckling to himself.

      They went on to explain who Ashley was and as they did I realized how little of a connection they even had to their own daughter. They barely described her and I doubted they really could. Years later I would come to find that Ashley's bitterness came from the fact that she was never shown real connection and love at home. She didn't know how to share and was selfish and self centered. Her parents had made her become this way. They made up their little presence and interference in her life by spoiling her and letting her do whatever she wanted. She was an entitled bitter brat.

     "Okay, I think that's it." Dan sat back and resumed reading his newspaper. Brenda leaned forward and handed me a small paper.

     "This is a list of the things you must complete today, we let go of our housekeeper last week because we knew you'd be coming. I hadn't trusted her much, that old Mexican cleaner. We had her for a couple of years and I could swear I've been missing jewelry."

     By then, I hadn't been on Earth for long but I recognized the racism right away. I hadn't lived a sheltered enough life for me to have had the luxury of not knowing what racism was.

     I spoke up calmly, I was wide awake now and I could see that I wasn't wanted by these people. "What does her being Mexican have anything to do with it."

    Dan put down his newspaper with a frown.

     Brenda frowned, I haven't seen her without one to this day, "Now you listen here, Miss Jane, there's one thing you should know and I don't want to hear another word out of you today. There are rich white people, white people, and everyone's under them, you hear me? Now that's the proper hierarchy."

     I hadn't known the word hierarchy then, but it hadn't mattered. I was silenced by her command and was told to start my work. Things have changed very little since then. I learned that day that hope was futile.