ELIOT

Cradling the container of sourdough starter, I followed Marj back into the living room for our serious talk, glad the suspense was almost over. Marj sat on the sofa; I perched on the other end.

Marj rubbed her temples with her thumbs and sighed. She slipped off her flip-flops, then pulled up her bony knees and hugged them, her chin resting on her knees, staring at me. “We need to talk.”

I caught myself drumming the side of the jar and forced my fingers to be still. I waited.

“You saw the envelope.” A statement, not a question.

I nodded and hugged the jar–a cold, hard security blanket.

“You probably guessed, it’s the adoption papers. I just don’t know what to do.”

I looked at her face, but she dropped her gaze. “Sign them?” I whispered, but too soft for her to hear.

“Without Griff,” she said, “everything is so hard. I’ve never been a mother. Never even owned a house before. Just lived in apartment complexes. There, if anything goes wrong, you call the manager, and it gets fixed. And you never worry about grass.” She waved toward the back yard. “That grass out there–” she sighed deeply and sagged, “– it never stops growing.”

A warm flush swept through me, and I was embarrassed I hadn’t thought to do the mowing. “Grass? Is that what’s bothering you? I can mow. Right now, if you want. I can keep that done. Yard work, I can do that. I swear, I can keep it all done.”

Marj grimaced. “No, it’s not just that.”

Now, I set the sourdough jar between my feet and sat on my hands to make sure I was quiet. She liked it when I was quiet and listened.

“You know that Griff and I were high school sweethearts?”

I nodded, interested as always in Griff’s background, his life.

“But we lost track of each other,” she continued. “I married someone else. Jack was, well, he was great, but we couldn’t have children. And then, he got cancer and died four years ago.”

“Oh.” That I hadn’t known. Griff just said he met his high school sweetheart and wanted to date her again. Nothing about a first husband, especially one who had died of cancer.

“When I met Griff again,” Marj said, “it was like a dream. He was so strong and confident. With Griff beside me, I felt like I could climb Mt. Everest.”

Oh, yes, I knew that feeling.

She stopped talking, so I risked a glance. Her eyes were half closed, and she was half smiling; then, her brow wrinkled and she squeezed her eyes tight, like she was trying not to cry.

Yes, I thought, memories of Griff were hard. But good.

Squinting, Marj whispered, “I don’t know anything right now. Except that everything is difficult with Griff gone. And I didn’t count on being the single mom of a twelve-year-old boy. Without Griff, well—” she hesitated.

I looked away, staring at the dark TV screen. I waited.

“—well, maybe it would be best to stop before we get started.”

“But. We’re a family.” Her words stung, but I couldn’t think about the hurt. I had to make her understand that we had to stay together. We had been a family for four weeks. Marj and Griff married early that summer and took a two-week honeymoon. When they came back, we all had a week together before Griff got sick. That week, we had filed papers for Marj to officially adopt me, too.

“Are we? A family?” Marj shook her head and sat up, planting her feet on the ground and leaning forward to speak with a firm voice. “Don’t think me harsh. This is just more than I ever expected and I’m not ready to be a single mom. I’ve already talked with your old social worker and explained my hesitation. They are experts in children; they’ll know what to do. They said you could move to a foster family this fall. They have a family ready for a boy. A really nice family. Who will know how to take care of you much better than I can. They are experts in children.”

Confusion swirled around me. Marj believed what she was saying, that I’d be better off with a foster family. It was true, in some ways. Marj didn’t know things about kids, like not even thinking about giving me an allowance. But she had no idea how bad foster care could be. From between my feet, I picked up the sourdough jar, unscrewed the top and leaned over for a deep breath. And time stood still.

Home. The sharp smell of sourdough always brought memories of Griff. On one of my first visits to Griff’s house, four years ago, when I was just a foster child for another couple, we made our first loaf of bread together. It was a long holiday for Presidents’ Day in February. My foster family went on a family trip, so Griff invited me to stay over. Friday night, Griff pulled a glass jar from the fridge. “Ever make bread?”

I tapped the jar, puzzled. It seemed to be full of a yellowish-white liquid with foam on top. “No. Doesn’t bread just come from the store?”

Griff launched into a big lecture on sourdough. He was like that, knew so much about science and the world. Loved explaining things. Not like lecturing from a teacher, so much as giving me a gift of knowledge.

Griff’s voice still echoes in me, like echoes from a booming voice would linger for a long time in a canyon: Sourdough, he said, is made from a combination of yeast and bacteria. The yeast gives off gases that makes the bread light and fluffy. The bacteria gives it a sour taste. Today, most breads rise too fast and the bacteria doesn’t have time to develop that sour flavor.

Taking off the lid, he held out the jar.

I took a whiff. “Stinks.”

“Heavenly smell,” Griff said and grinned that huge grin that showed his one false tooth in the front of his mouth. “Kinda like dirty socks.”

That smell, that amazing smell, followed us all weekend as the bread rose, was punched down, and rose again. Finally the loaf came out of the oven, and Griff slathered it with real butter and handed it to me.

I chewed and considered.

“Well?” Griff demanded.

I made him wait, taking another bite and leaning my head from side to side.

“Well?”

I gave in and giggled. “Heavenly,” I said, using Griff’s word.

And Griff beamed, lighting up a place in my heart that I thought would never be lit by anyone again.

Suddenly, I thought of Alli, living with the Porters. I could not go back to being a foster child, I could not.

Panic rose now, and I breathed faster. Marj had to understand. She had to give us more time. Time. Griff would understand: it took him two years to decide to adopt me. Taking time to make a decision was fine, as long as Marj and I stuck it out and tried. Griff had truly loved Marj, and that meant she was a good person. We just needed time.

I screwed the lid back on the jar. Then stared at it like I had never seen if before. A minute ago, the Bread Project had seemed impossible, almost a thing that would disrespect Griff. Something that would leave me exposed, hold my grief up for everyone to see. But maybe Dad had left me one last thing, a way to convince Marj to give us time, time to get to know each other, time to become a family.

I looked up and blurted, “What about the Bread Project? We want to make it work, right? To honor Griff and his memory. Right? We have to work together. You work with the PTA, and I get the kids excited. Right?”

Marj opened her mouth, and then shut it.

Maybe she was rethinking her decision. I pressed harder. “The Bread Project has to succeed. For Griff’s sake, we have to see it through. Together. Right? Through Thanksgiving. We can’t change anything until after Thanksgiving. At least. Right?”

“O-k-a-y,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “I do want the Bread Project to be a success. We could wait until Thanksgiving to decide something about the foster family.”

My shoulders sagged in relief. Time. We had time. A chance at Marj as a real mother–it was worth people poking around in my feelings. The final success or failure of the Project–well, it would probably fail but that didn’t matter. What I really needed was as much time as possible. But this was going to be tricky. The Project would be like a time bomb that would go off when the timer stopped. I had to keep winding the clock. The Bread Project had to start well and keep going.

And in that space of time, from now to Thanksgiving, I had to convince Marj that we were family, that she should sign those papers.

“But I really don’t know what to do with a house like this.” Her voice was brisk again. “I met Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at the party yesterday. They paint and fix up houses. We set up an appointment to look things over and get an estimate. Get it ready to sell. We’ll go on and do that. It will make it easier to move on—if that’s what we decide.” She saw that I was about to speak, so she raised a hand. “Like Mrs. Lopez said, it’s still hard for me to make decisions. I get so sad sometimes—” She trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut again.

“No big decisions right now then,” I said quickly. “And I’ll do better about helping. With everything. You’ll see.” I loved this old house, but that wasn’t as important as keeping the family together. I would gladly move if only Marj would stick it out.

Marj rubbed her temples again.

Quickly, I asked, “You need some headache medicine? A glass of iced tea?”

“No, I’m fine. Just need to be a couch potato for a while.”

“You want me to take this sourdough over to Alli?” Suddenly, I needed to talk to Alli.

Marj nodded. “Explain it all to her again. And be back in an hour or so.” She stretched out on the couch and reached for the TV remote.

I ran upstairs for shoes and was soon marching toward the Porter’s house. The Bread Project had just bought me twelve weeks to change Marj’s mind about putting me in foster care, three short months for us to learn how to be a family together.

Step One: make dead sure Alli still supported the Bread Project and would help make it a smashing success.

 



 

The evening was hot and sticky, the late summer still heating up into the 90s during the day, and not cooling off until midnight. I strode quickly to the Porter’s house, my flip-flops rhythmically slapping the sidewalk. The plastic jar with sourdough starter was lightweight, but rehearsing the arguments for the Bread Project, I felt heavy, dragged down. Alli already liked the idea of the Bread Project, though, so maybe this would be easy.

Half a block away from the Porter’s house, the upstairs light went off, the only light in the house. I almost turned around and went home, thinking everyone had gone to bed early, and I’d have to deliver the sourdough starter tomorrow.

Squee! The upstairs window opened with a loud protest. Probably hadn’t been opened in years. Following the sound, I spotted her. Alli was leaning out of the upstairs window.

I hated the Porter’s house. First time I went there with Griff, Mr. Porter bragged, “This house is on the Historic Register. Oldest on our street, a modern-style house of the 1950s.”

You ask me? It was ugly. Made of concrete that might have been white when it was built, but had turned a muddy gray. Besides, the whole thing was too square. Only one good thing about it. The trees and shrubs were so overgrown, they hid the actual house from view.

Alli reached for a tree limb, grabbed hold, and then swung out.

She was sneaking out?

Her legs hung a minute before she pulled them up to wrap over the branch. She hitched herself closer to the trunk, till she could set her feet on a branch just below. Quickly, she dropped to the ground.

Why was she doing this? She’d only been with the Porters for a couple days. You didn’t want to get in trouble that fast. Not without a very good reason.

I could have said her name, made her stop. But curiosity won: where was she going?

I stashed the plastic jar of sourdough in the bushes and followed.

The Porter’s neighborhood was older, but richer than mine, the yards all picture perfect like in a magazine. It was a pleasant neighborhood for an evening walk.

I kept a block away from Alli, tailing her like a P.I. on TV. It was a thought that made me smirk at myself.

Alli turned two rights, heading toward a main street. Where was she going?

She turned off into an alley and crossed the road into the parking lot of a grocery store. I debated what to do, but finally decided to wait outside.

Waiting, I counted sixteen carts of bagged groceries, three bicyclists dropping coins in the machine outside the front door for Gatorade, five men coming out with a single bag–probably Hungry Man dinners–and one old lady who tottered along on too-high heels, and I ran to help her carry a watermelon to her car. She tipped me a whole dollar. Nice neighborhood.

By then, I was bored. Time to find Alli.

I walked into the store, blinking at the sudden bright lights. And there was Alli, just slipping under the security gates at the opposite door.

Beep! Beep! Beep! The security alarm blared.

A uniformed guard grabbed Alli’s arm. “Hey, kid. Where you going? What did you steal?”

Alli’s eyes bulged large, scared. She held a small bag of chips. Just potato chips, plain, nothing special.

Heart pounding, I reacted instinctively—knowing even as I did it that I’d regret it later. I ran toward Alli and the guard and stopped in front of them. “Sis, I said I’d be right in to pay.” I tried to sound angry.

Alli just stared at me.

“Sorry, officer, I was just trying to lock up our bikes, and then I was coming in to pay.” I pulled out the one-dollar tip I had just gotten. “See?”

“Hmmm.” The guard wore three gold rings on the hand that held Alli, and he wore a thick gold chain. “You’re brother and sister?”

Once you start lying, you have to keep on. I punched Alli’s thin shoulder. “We fight like brother and sister, believe me.”

Still, the gold-rings-hand didn’t turn loose of Alli. He must work here, I thought, to pay for his bling. He didn’t really care about the store; I just needed to bluff him.

“Different mothers,” I said, trying to think fast. Then, before the guard could say more, I pulled the chips from Alli’s hands, walked over to the self-serve station, swiped the bar codes, stashed the chips in a plastic bag, and fed my hard-earned money into the machine.

Alli was still mute, a small miracle, but now, the guard had let her go. I marched past her, grabbed her arm myself, and dragged her out with me. She was smart enough not to resist—after all, I was saving her. Without looking back, we hit the open air and ran. Didn’t stop till we were two blocks away.

I held up the grocery bag. “Okay, explain.”

“Why should I to explain to you?”

“Because I just saved you.”

“I was hungry.”

I groaned. Porter wasn’t feeding her? “You’re being stupid. Do what Porter asks and you’ll get fed.”

Alli jerked the grocery bag away from me and hung it on her arm while she opened the chips bags and started stuffing it in. “You don’t understand. I don’t have any chores at all.” Through loud crunchy bites, she explained about the maid, the eating out and the laundry. “Got everything covered, except Mr. Porter misses his nephew, who went off to college this year on a golf scholarship. Thought he needed another kid. Except he’s not used to a kid who needs to eat.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s no food in the house. Well. Six bottles of pomegranate juice and a jar of stuffed green olives. Well. Four bottles of pomegranate juice, now. And Miss Porter brought home 100 cream puffs from some fancy party.”

“Ugh. I hate pomegranate juice, but cream puffs are good.”

“Yeah, the first five or six are good. The next dozen can make you sick of them.”

“Okay.” I reached in and took a chip. “But why steal? You get an allowance from the state. Right?”

“The first check will come later this week. But Mr. Porter has already said I don’t get an allowance.”

I studied her thin face. “How did you say you wound up in foster care? What happened to your dad?”

“State couldn’t find him. Not after he got out of the army.”

“Did you ever try to find him?” I asked. “Surely with the Internet, you could look for him. If he’s still alive.”

“Me? No. He didn’t care enough to find me, so why should I look for him?”

“To get out of this.”

“He should look for me.” Her voice was hard now. She shook out the last of the chip crumbs and licked the salt from her hands. “I think Mr. Porter will buy groceries tomorrow. I hope.”

“And after that, what else will he forget to do for you?” I was really, really, really going to regret this. And suddenly everything about Marj swept back over me. My parents had been unwed teenagers. They gave me up for adoption right away. There I was a nice new baby, and I should have been adopted by a nice family who really wanted me. Instead, for some reason that no one told me, the first family didn’t adopt me. At age two, I had to move to a new house and a year later to another and two years later to another. I blinked hard, and took a deep breath. “I can help. But I want something in return.”

Alli’s brow wrinkled. “You want me to mess up the Bread Project. Right?”

“No.” I had to be careful what I said here. “I changed my mind. The Project is a good way to honor my dad. I need you to help make the Bread Project a success.”

Now, she stared. “Yeah, right.”

I started walking down the sidewalk, back toward the Porters, avoiding her doubt. “It’s true. I was just scared to try before.” I chewed my bottom lip, aware of how weak that sounded.

“Really,” she said. “What happened?”

Maybe she would understand. Maybe another foster kid was the only one who would understand. But I still couldn’t explain. “Look, Griff, my dad thought up this project. But he died this summer.” I tried to swallow, trying to bottle up my feelings. To get time with Marj, I had to make this project work. But I didn’t have to hang my feelings out for everyone to see. That part was for me alone and I would shove away anyone who tried to see inside. “Marj thinks this is a good way to honor him. We talked tonight and now I understand her better, and I agree. We need this project.”

She stopped under a streetlight. “You wanna try that again. What really happened?” Then, her head snapped around to look directly at me, her eyes glittering in the streetlight. “Oh. You called her Marj, not Mom. You are a foster child, too.”

Funny how foster kids recognize each other. Nothing on the outside to say I’d been a foster kid. But you can feel it. Maybe it’s something about the hunger on our faces when other kids talked about family.

I clenched a fist to keep it from trembling. “No, I’m not a foster kid. Griff adopted me this year.”

“And with Griff gone, Marj isn’t sure she wants to adopt you.”

When Alli said it so bluntly like that, it sounded even worse. I ducked my head and shoved my hands in my shorts pocket and walked, the slap of my flip-flops echoing my bouncing emotions. Anger. Longing. Anger. Longing.

Alli was matching my stride again, when she clutched her stomach, and I heard it growl. Suddenly, she burped. An innocent burp.

We looked at each other and suddenly, we both laughed.

“Look, Sis, it’s easy,” I finally said. “I make sure you get back-up in dealing with the Porters. Food. Whatever you need. And you help me make the Bread Project work.”

“Done.” Alli stuck out her hand to shake. “I get help when I need it. You get help on the Bread Project.”

My arms were frozen to my side. Could I trust her?

Impatient, she said, “You think I don’t care about anything, but you’re wrong. Decent food is my goal today. And tomorrow. Just making it through one day at a time, that’s my goal.”

If Alli had said she cared about my problems, I wouldn’t trust her. But making it through one day at a time was an honest thing. “Done,” I agreed and shook her hand.