AGNES
THERE WAS A CALENDAR IN THE HALL AND EVERY NIGHT, MOMMY made a red X through it like she did with our chore list. Done. Eleven Xs had passed since the last time Dad brought me back and I promised Jon I would see him soon.
Before she made the next X, though, I got the cough. Mommy gave me medicine and soup and told me to stay in bed. JimmyZaidieJonPrincie . . . I started to pray. By the time I got to Dad, the asthma was growling.
At first the sound was real low like the kind Princie makes when she sees a dog three blocks away: Don’t come any closer, you hear? But the asthma didn’t listen and after two more Xs, Mommy brought me to the doctor’s. He talked to her about breathing treatments and when to call the ambulance, but he didn’t say anything to me.
Mommy wasn’t talking to me much anymore, either. This isn’t what I bargained for, she said to Kathy when she set up a treatment. Probably caught it from those Moscatellis. (Here she gave me a bad look.)
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but talking only made the asthma madder so I stayed quiet.
When Kathy went to school, I lay on my bed and whispered to it like a mean dog, asking if it would please go away so I could get back to my sister’s house. It worked, too, because when Mommy took me back to the doctor, he said I was good enough to go to school.
Don’t let her out of your sight, she said to Kathy, pointing her finger the way she did when she was really, really serious.
She told the teacher and the crossing guard, too. If she runs away again, I’m going to have to call the state. She was looking at them, but she was secretly talking to me like people do sometimes.
Two more red Xs passed before I saw my chance. That made thirteen Xs and Zaidie said thirteen was unlucky. But if I didn’t go, Mommy might cross out the whole calendar before I got another chance.
I walked extra slow, talking to the asthma like Zaidie did with me after a nightmare. When we got there, I told it, I would put on my lucky shamrock barrette and ask Ma to make her tea with honey and lemon, and everything would be good. See?
Two streets from home I saw the first face.
Mr. Dean slowed his yellow car down and opened the window. “Well, if it isn’t little Agnes Juniper. I thought you were living in some fancy house on the west side. You must’ve missed me.”
He looked up and down the sidewalk. Then he smiled the way he did when he knew we were alone.
Inside me, I could feel the asthma growling like the dog was on the porch. Don’t run, it was saying. Don’t you dare run.
But Mr. Dean’s face was meaner than any asthma I ever met. I ran.
“Jesus Christ,” he spit out at me, and he wasn’t praying like Nonna. “Are you trying to bring on an attack? Get in the car and I’ll take you home.” It was pitiful how slow the yellow car had to move to keep up with me.
Only two streets away. One. With any luck, Jimmy was out on his bike and he would get Mr. Dean with his baseball bat like he promised. But like Zaidie said, there’s no luck on the thirteenth day.
At the corner of the street with the name that started with S for Sanderson, the rumble in my chest turned into a howl that knocked me onto the sidewalk. I tried to breathe, but the asthma was stronger. Inside, I was calling for Ma, but she didn’t hear me.
Mr. Dean slowed the car again. He asked me questions and answered them himself like he did when he came up the stairs to the attic. “Never listen, do you, Agnes? Well, now see what you done. I wouldn’t be surprised you die right there—and you know what? That’s what you get. Yup, that’s exactly what you get.”
Then just when the breath was almost all pressed out, the best thing happened: A lady opened her door and came running down the sidewalk. “Good Lord!” she was shouting like Ma says sometimes. And then she hollered to someone inside her house. “Call the ambulance! There’s a little girl out here who—” She never finished her sentence, but it was okay because only a few people were allowed to see how mean Mr. Dean really was and she wasn’t on the list. He took off in his yellow car.
THERE WAS NO calendar to count the days at the hospital, but I knew I’d been there longer than ever. Ma, I called when no one heard me, saying the prayer I started at the Dohertys’ house. ZaidieJimmyJonPrincieDadMa. Maaaa.
After a while, I must have said it out loud, too, because the nurse named Ellen patted my hand. “Who are you calling for, honey?”
I could tell she felt sad for me because whoever it was, they didn’t come. Not them and not anyone else, either. That night she brought me an extra bowl of green Jell-O.
After some more days passed, another hospital lady came to my bed, smiling, and said she had spoken to my case worker (Do you know what that is, Agnes?) and they had a surprise for me. When I was ready to go home, someone very special would be coming for me. Isn’t that good news?
I prayed harder. ZaidieJimmyJonPrincieDadMa. Still no one came.
Then one morning, I woke up and the second face was there at the foot of my bed. It was a lady I didn’t know. Except I did. I blinked at her, but I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t, either. I didn’t know her and I didn’t want her there standing at the bottom of my bed like that. Except I did. Some part of me always wanted her and always would.
She had brown skin like me. And her hair wasn’t the regular kind of black; it was very black black like mine and my doll’s. I could see her earrings peeking out from under it: two little crosses. Or maybe they were Xs like the ones Mommy made on the calendar, counting all the days that were done. She wasn’t crying, but there was water in her eyes.
Finally, when the quiet got too big for both of us, the lady with the Xs on her ears said my name—only wrong like I used to inside my head. Agnés. When she said it, a little of the water spilled onto her face.
“It’s Agnes,” I corrected her. “Agg-ness.”
I don’t know if she said anything else, cause saying my name right made me so tired I closed my eyes.
When I woke up, the second face was gone. I wasn’t sure if I dreamed the lady at the foot of the bed, but when I touched my face, I found the water that spilled on her cheeks had also spilled on mine.
THE NEXT DAY the nurse named Ellen came and threw open the curtain around my bed. “Have you heard the good news yet?”
I looked at her but didn’t answer.
She set a wrapped-up present on my tray table. It had a green ribbon on it, too. “Zaidie says my birthday doesn’t come till summer.”
“Well, Zaidie’s right—whoever she is. But some days are so special they’re almost like a second birthday.” She put the present in my lap. “Go ahead. Open it.”
The nurse whose name was Peggy and the lady who brought my supper came and watched me pull at the ribbon. They were all smiling and I could tell they wanted me to smile, too, and so did I. Except I couldn’t.
Inside the box was a plaid dress like the one Mommy gave me to wear for my first day at the Grainer School. It was blue and green and there were green socks, too.
“Your favorite color.” The nurse called Ellen traced a line of green through the plaid. “Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said, and “Thank you” like Zaidie taught me. I didn’t tell her I already had a dress like that at Mommy’s house or that I liked the secondhand one with a grape juice stain in the front that Ma gave me better. On account of it used to be Zaidie’s.
“Don’t you want to know why we bought it for you?” the lady who brought my food trays asked.
They stood there in a circle of three, still waiting for me to be happy.
“You’re being discharged tomorrow. You’re going to a home close to Boston,” the nurse named Ellen said. “A wonderful family.” Then she told me about the zoo and the swan boats, and the Christmas display at somewhere called Jordan Marsh.
“Zaidie has a book about swans.” I closed my eyes and imagined riding on the back of a tall white bird in the place where I first learned to swim.
THE NEXT DAY, just like they said, the doctor came in, listened to my chest, and wrote on the paper that said I could go home. He looked at his watch and frowned a little. “I thought they said she’d be here by nine.”
The nurse named Peggy checked the clock on the wall like it might say something different. “Probably got stuck in traffic on 128.”
She turned away so I couldn’t see her face.
After the doctor and the nurse called Peggy left, another lady came and washed my hair, buttoned up the new dress, and tied it in a nice bow in the back. Then she helped me pull on the matching socks like I couldn’t do it myself.
Whoever was supposed to come and take me to the place with the swans still wasn’t here yet, though. The nurse named Peggy gave me a picture book to look at while I sat in the lounge because someone needed my bed.
A little while later, I heard her talking to someone else when she thought I wasn’t listening. “They should have told the couple she was an Indian right off the bat—especially since they were hoping for a kid who might eventually be free to adopt.”
“Would have saved everyone a lot of grief,” the other one said. “Especially the poor kid.”
I didn’t tell them that I was way too old for The Three Bears. Or that I wasn’t a poor kid. I already knew about people who didn’t come when they were supposed to, especially the fathers and mothers. Everyone in the homes knew that. They just couldn’t; that’s what Zaidie thought. Or they were no-good louses, like Ma and Dad said. But I didn’t tell anyone that, either. I sat there looking at my book. I bet that girl Goldilocks had someone who didn’t come for her, too.
At lunchtime, one of the ladies gave me a tray with the kind of ice cream you eat with a stick for dessert. But by afternoon, everyone in the hospital was so busy they forgot about me. I put two chairs together and pretended it was a bed so I could go to sleep and forget about me, too.
Later I woke up and I was hungry again and the nurse named Ellen was holding my hand and calling me those sugary names she used when she felt sad.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” She brushed my hair out of my eyes. “But the family from Boston isn’t going to be able to take you after all.”
“Can I go back to my room and have supper?”
“Oh, honey, I wish you could, but you can’t stay in the hospital if you’re not sick. Don’t worry, though. Your case worker is sending someone to pick you up. Meanwhile, I’ll have someone bring you a sandwich. Ham and cheese—how’s that sound? And maybe a candy bar from the vending machine? Would you like that?”
I closed my eyes and thought of the lady with the cross earrings, she stood at the end of my bed and never said anything but my name. And I thought of the water that spilled on her face and mine. Somewhere that water spilled and spilled and never stopped until it became a great river.
“Yes, please,” I told her. “I’ll take a Sky Bar.”
When she came back with my candy, I wanted to make her promise it wasn’t Mr. Dean coming, but someone called her away before I had the chance. So instead of eating my Sky Bar, I just held it the way Nonna holds her beads or Zaidie clutches on to one of her books. Like just having it in my hand might make the world come out different.
After a while the nurse named Ellen and the nurse named Peggy went home and I fell asleep the way I used to do when I was in the attic and there was nothing to watch or do but listen for Mr. Dean.
When I woke up, a nurse whose name I didn’t know was standing over me. She picked up my white hospital bag. “Is this all you have?”
Yes, I said with my chin.
“Someone is here for you. He’s out there signing your discharge papers now.”
He? I thought of Mr. Dean, stopping his car beside me while the asthma tried to steal my last breath. How he told me maybe I was going to die right there. And that would be good.
No, I said with my head. No!
The nurse who didn’t tell me her name wasn’t looking at me, though, and when I tried to say it out loud, all that came out was a squeak from the asthma.
But then I saw the third face coming toward me in the hall. It was a face that had a rule against smiling and wasn’t about to break it for anyone. It was Dad wearing his long-day face and it was the best face I ever saw.
That’s when I found out I could still talk, and better than that, I could yell. “Daaad!”
“You want to end up back upstairs in a damn bed?” He scowled. And then to the nurse, “I hope you told her this was just for a day or two till they can find out if the mother’s back in Boston.”
He said mother that way him and Ma always did when they talked about them. But when I ran to him, he wrapped his grease smell around me and hugged me same as he did the other kids and that was the only thing that mattered.
THERE WAS ANOTHER face, too. The trouble was I couldn’t see it. I never can, not even when I have the penny dream like I did the night I went home to the Moscatellis to stay. It was after Ma gave me two Chips Ahoy on my Y plate and the kids let me sit in the best spot in the couch and Princie licked my face so hard I could still feel her scratchy tongue on my cheeks even when I went to my room.
In the dream, all I see is her legs next to mine. We are in the back seat of a car and it’s hot, and the sun makes white stripes on our brown legs. Then the car stops and the door opens and the girl starts to scream, and when they try to make her stop, she bites someone. Hard. Hard enough to make blood. After that, people are yelling and saying bad words. Only I’m just listening to her.
I don’t want to get out of the car, but someone pulls me by the arm and I drop the little change purse I’m holding.
“Agnés’s pennies!” I yell as they clatter onto the street.
Then the car drives away—away without me—and the girl’s scream is in my mouth. “Forget the stupid pennies,” someone says, and when I look up, that someone is Mr. Dean. Only I didn’t know his name because it was the first time I ever saw him. I try to tell him how the girl with the brown legs gave me a penny whenever she found one. I try to tell him they are lucky and I need them. Only he doesn’t listen.
Even though the car is gone and I have to go inside, I don’t forget the pennies shining in a puddle on the street. And I don’t forget the girl with the brown legs, either. I can’t see her face, but I don’t forget.
Most of the time I only have that dream when my eyes are open. That night, though, after Ma tucked me in and Zaidie read me a book, I fell asleep and dreamed the girl with the brown legs and me were wrapped up together in the same bed. So close I could taste her very black black hair in my mouth.
But when I woke up, the legs wrapped up with mine were pale, and the hair was yellow and the scream I made on the street followed me from the dream right into Zaidie’s room, where she was shaking me.
“Agnes! It’s a nightmare, Agnes! Look, I’m right here with you! Right here. See?”