Patrice talks about feelings all the time. She taught me how to do it too. So I say, “I feel really bad. My Baby Doll is all alone.” Then I look at Patrice over my glasses to see if she understands.
“I know your Baby Doll was important to you,” says Patrice. “Do you remember what we said last time we met? We said that you were a little like a baby doll when you were in the apartment, getting left by yourself all the time. But you’re safe now. Don’t you feel safe?”
“Yes,” I say but I don’t care about being safe. I don’t care if Gloria hurts me or Donald gets his gun. I have to find out what happened to my Baby Doll after the police took me away. I need to know if anyone found it in the suitcase or if I’m too late.
“Good. And the best way to stay safe is to make sure you never, ever get in the car with Gloria if you happen to see her. No matter what she says. Can you make me that promise?”
I make sure my mouth is shut tight and then I nod my head yes.
“I know I’ve said it before, but you’re lucky you got out of that apartment alive. But if she were to come here and then get you to get in the car with her, it would be considered kidnapping. Do you know what that means?”
I don’t so I shake my head no.
“Kidnapping is when someone steals a kid. If you go with Gloria, Gloria will be stealing you. And stealing is against the law. Does that make sense?”
It does so I nod my head yes. Three times because I think getting kidnapped is a great idea. That way I can go straight back to the apartment and run into my room to check the suitcase.
“And I need to ask you about what happened with the baby doll from school.”
“You mean the plastic electronic baby,” I say.
“Yes, that’s the one,” says Patrice. “I understand that you hit it, and then you put it in a suitcase. Why would you do that?”
“Because it wouldn’t stop crying.”
“But there are other ways to calm a baby down, aren’t there?”
“Oh yes,” I say. “You can give it some milk or pick it up and rock it. And if there’s no milk or food you can give it your finger to suck on. You can sing it ‘The Eensy-Weensy Spider.’ You can change its diaper or give it a bath. Or just let it rest on you.”
Patrice is looking at me funny. “You sure seem to know a lot about babies,” she says. “Where did you learn all those things?”
So I close my eyes and yell, “From taking care of my Baby Doll!”
Then I look at her to see if she understands.
“You don’t have to shout,” she says. “But remember, your Baby Doll wasn’t a real baby. You had to have learned those things somewhere else. From television, maybe?”
I shake my head no. “My Baby Doll was a real baby,” I say.
“Ginny, that’s not true,” says Patrice. “Gloria didn’t have any other children. I’ve been over your case file a thousand times, and you were the only one in the apartment. Did you have a baby cousin, maybe? I remember your aunt used to come visit you sometimes.”
“Crystal with a C,” I say.
“Right, Crystal with a C. Did Crystal with a C have a baby?”
I shake my head no. I am too mad to say anything else with my mouth now.
“At any rate,” says Patrice, “I need you to know that your parents and I have come up with a new rule. It’s the most important rule we’ve ever given you. When Baby Wendy is born, you’re not allowed to touch her. We have to make sure you learn the right way to act around babies first. It’s a scary thing when someone hits a doll and puts it in a suitcase, even if the doll isn’t real. Suitcases aren’t good places for putting babies at all, right?”
I pick hard at my fingers. So hard a dark drop of blood comes out. I watch the drop get bigger and bigger until it breaks and drips down my thumb.
“Ginny?”
I look up and at the same time put my hands behind my back. Where neither of us can see them.
9
11:03 AT NIGHT,
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH
I am in bed now breathing fast and trying to calm down. We went to Portland today to see the tall ships. Plus the fireworks. It’s the last fun thing we’ll do before my Forever Mom starts getting ready to have the baby, she told me. I left my watch at home because I got poison ivy on my hands and wrists yesterday. I thought it was okay to leave my watch at home because there’s usually a clock nearby to tell me what time it is but I got distracted because the fireworks were loud and made lots of smoke and everyone kept saying “Ooooh!” when they saw them. It was like they were all ghosts. And the smoke was like the ghost of the fireworks. Then I learned that you can keep fireworks and smoke in your brain if you just close your eyes afterward. The pictures stay there with you.
Which was what I was doing when we got back to the car. That was why I didn’t see what time it was right away. I sat in my seat with my eyes closed and leaned my head against the window and kept looking at the blue and green and red and white sprays of fireworks in my brain. Only the music was different. At the fireworks there were big speakers playing music with flutes and drums. In the car my Forever Parents had the radio on instead. Someone was singing about a girl whose name wasn’t even Billie Jean or Dirty Diana. It was Caroline or something. So I opened my eyes and said, “Can’t we get some flutes and drums? I’m trying to watch the fireworks.”
And then my Forever Mom said, “Honey, the fireworks are over.”
Which was when I saw it was 10:43. It was way past nine o’clock.
I started picking at my fingers. “Do you see what time it is?” I said.
“It’s 10:44,” said my Forever Mom.
I looked and she was right. The clock had changed. It wasn’t 10:43 anymore. It was 10:44 so I said, “Well dang!”
I started biting the skin on my lips. “It’s past my bedtime,” I said and in my head I wrote,
Bedtime = 9:00 at Night
“That’s okay,” my Forever Dad said. “It’s okay to stay up late once in a while, isn’t it?”
“But it’s past nine o’clock,” I said.
“That’s right,” said my Forever Mom. It sounded like she wanted to say something else but then she didn’t. She just sat there quietly in the front seat while someone on the radio sang about the numbers twenty-five and six-two-four. And now the numbers on the clock said 10:45. None of those numbers were like the numbers in my head which were still nine and zero and zero.
“I have to go straight to bed,” I said.
“Do you want to stay up a little to watch some TV? Just to decompress?”
Decompressing is like deescalating. It means let’s take a little time to calm down. I shook my head no. “I have to go to bed now,” I said because nine o’clock is my bedtime and I have to have nine grapes with my human milk in the morning. Nine years old is how old I was when the police came. It’s how old I was before Forever started.