Linda Martin had been my social worker when I was placed with the Levines. I hadn’t seen her since then. Hadn’t needed to. Or maybe hadn’t wanted to.
Her office was plastered with posters. One was a superhero decal with a big purple SW and the words Super Social Worker emblazoned across. Above her desk a bright green poster declared, There can’t be a crisis today, my schedule is already full. But the best one featured a trim fifties lady and read, As a social worker, doing a good job is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling but nobody else notices. I was chuckling at that when Linda’s trilling voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Anna – I had to do a double take when I saw you there. I barely recognized you.”
I blinked my eyes twice and looked at her. She was wearing a turquoise jacket I’d seen last year in the clearance section at the Gap and she’d cut her hair in a short, choppy style that emphasized her sagging jowls. Her attempt at pleasantries left a sour, flat feeling in my gut.
I tilted my head away and concentrated on the fifties lady in the poster. She was stylish in a neat Audrey Hepburn suit and Gucci pillbox hat.
“Did you pull my file?”
“Well it’s been a while, so I had to dig deep to access it.”
I turned to watch her shuffling through a green folder. “Did you read my email?”
Red blobs flared across her cheeks as she lowered her eyes away from me. “I did.”
“And?”
She glanced over some papers she’d taken from the file. “You mention an address.”
“And I told you about Birdie climbing up the wall? The laughter? My swollen eye?”
She sighed and picked up a printout. “I’ll read your statement: I remember seeing Birdie climb up a wall with flowered wallpaper. There was a stink of burning plastic in the air. It felt like my eye was injured,” she recited, her eyes flickering over the paper. She looked up at me, her eyebrows lifting. “Shall I go on?”
Yellow light buzzed around her head. I blinked my eyes. There were penciled-in gaps on her sparse eyebrows. I shook my head. “And what do the records say about that placement?”
She sighed, her face settling into a martyr’s smile. Rainbow letters above her head spelled out the words, I’m a social worker. I do my own stunts. What was with this hero fixation?
“The records show, Anna, that Birdie wasn’t with you at that particular placement. Before the Levines.” She pursed her mouth so tight, her lips disappeared. She stared at me, tapping the desk, waiting for me to talk.
I didn’t.
I knew silence was poison for people like Linda, so she kept on babbling as she pulled out a dog-eared paper and waved it in the air. “This report shows there’s nothing to connect that particular place with her disappearance.”
I brushed aside the desk magnet with all the little pins sticking to it. “I happen to know she was there. I keep remembering her there. And I remember other placements. Rosa Flores-Rivera. The cop station. The donuts. After that the group home, then some other useless placement, then the place with the wallpaper.”
She sat back, her eyes crinkling with the semblance of pity. “I don’t mind going over this with you, Anna. The system didn’t give you what you needed at that time and yet you’ve done so well for yourself. Overcome chronic instability, neglect as well as unbelievable trauma. Some kids never recover from the horrors you’ve been through, but you’ve triumphed. Look at the way you’re dressed. Gorgeous,” she said, her watery eyes devouring my camel coat.
“Anna, I understand how trauma and chronic grief can change the way you remember events in your life, so I’ll clarify it all for you. You were taken from the Rivera place after the double stabbing.”
“What stabbing? We left before anyone was hurt.”
She shook her head. “Mr. Vincent Cavallo, an ex-marine suffering from PTSD, fatally stabbed Rosa and her husband Perez. You and Birdie witnessed the whole thing. Luckily, Mr. Cavallo spared the two of you and took you out onto the street just as the police arrived.”
I vowed I’d never cry again but the tears started to trickle down my cheeks. “That’s not how it happened. Vinnie was protecting Rosa. Perez stabbed her then attacked Vinnie.”
“That’s not the story that the jury heard, Anna. Cavallo was found guilty of killing Perez and Rosa.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He was trying to save her.”
“At the time you said you didn’t witness the incident, Anna.”
“I was a kid. My head was mixed up.”
“They decided not to press you for information in view of your age and the traumatic circumstances.”
“He’s in jail?”
“Not exactly. He was found to be suffering from severe PTSD.”
“But he’s locked up?”
She nodded. “Probably for life.”
Her voice became so soft I could barely hear her through the buzzing in my head. “The emergency social worker took you back to the group home on Ardis Street. During that period you turned thirteen, a kid hanged himself there and Birdie got involved with an older crowd. There was substance abuse involved and she ran away several times after that until she finally disappeared later at the age of fifteen.”
“No – never. Not without me.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. I ripped it away.
“That all happened before my time, Anna, but the documentation is all here. There’s even a picture of her at an ATM machine with one of the older teens, withdrawing money on a stolen card.”
She pushed a grainy black and white picture towards me. Two hunched grayish shapes in a glassed-in space. Formless blobs that could be anyone. I looked away.
“This is all a mistake. Why do I keep seeing her in the wallpaper room?”
Sympathy dripped from Linda’s eyes. “Like I always tell you. Almost fifteen years ago, somebody did a sloppy placement job. Failed to conduct a thorough background check. You were put into a house of substance abusers. They gave you drugs. Bad drugs that messed with your head. The memories are probably hallucinations, Anna. Distortions of the truth.”
I pulled the picture towards me. It was hard to make Birdie out from the mass of gray-white pixels, but a hunched form slowly materialized, her hair a shock of black static. I shoved it away.
“I have to go. Get ready for a trip.” I stood up, tipping the chair over in my haste.
She moved around the desk, a turquoise smudge. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Anna? You can wait here. I’ll get you a coffee. I’ll get our psychologist to go over some of the difficult stuff.”
I had to get air. That office was squeezing the life out of me.
“Gotta go,” I mumbled and flung the door open. I strode past the cubicle offices, avoiding eye contact with anyone and stopped at the Missing posters. Grainy, smiling faces looked out at me. A row of them. But where was Birdie’s picture? The one that said, Have you seen this girl? Disappeared without a trace. Her face. My face. The fuzzy dotted picture of her at the ATM.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I looked back. Linda stood at the far end of the hallway watching me, her arms folded, her eyes filled with pity. The elevator doors swished open and I dove inside. Guy could never know about any of this. I’d always looked out for myself. Didn’t need anyone sharing my private pain, so I wasn’t about to let anyone else into that world. Especially Guy. Too much was at stake. Besides, I’d come this far in my life by treating everyone as an outsider.
I burst out into the open air, longing for the calm anonymity of the mall. I was drained. Sucked out. Only the flowery coconut warmth, the tinkling music and the glitter of new things would soothe me. And I could also check out the shoe stores that I’d forgotten to even glance at the day before. After all, we were going to Vegas for five days. I’d need sandals for the pool, and some strappy, glitzy evening shoes. Hell – maybe I’d buy two or three pairs or more if the mood struck me.