Foster Forest (4): Meeting Peter

The house had been buzzing with an air of anticipation for the past three days. Becky had observed that Elizabeth was making herself scarce, and every time she'd checked, the ten year-old was in he room curled up with a book. The child had an easy, if anxious, smile for Becky whenever they met, and the conversation was finally beginning to flow easily at mealtimes. Becky knew that she was going to need to work out some chores for Elizabeth during the summer vacation from school. There was a lot to be done and she couldn't allow the little girl to idle. Wasn't that, after all, part of her purpose in building her home?

She'd had a bite. Not an application for a child, of course -- she had suspected that word would get out about Elizabeth's problems in school and that it might take quite some time before social workers were really comfortable sending more children to her. Instead she had received a very interesting application to assist from a very wealthy local man.

If it wasn't for his money, she would have been interested. If it was only for his money, she would have been interested. But he was not only talking about making a sizeable donation to her organization, he was talking about joining her staff.

Foster Forest (3): The Schoolyard Fight

The anger was fading quickly. As it went, it was replaced with a deep sense of dread. This time, she knew what to expect. This time, she couldn't claim that she hadn't known what the rules were. It was clear that she was in trouble, and in some serious trouble at that.

Elizabeth fidgeted. The red was slowly beginning to go out of her face, and she was finally able to unclench her fists. The shaking wouldn't quite subside, and she closed her eyes, blinking back the hot, angry tears of shame that had built up in her eyes. She didn't want them to see her crying -- not any of them! The two sixth graders had already been picked up and sent home, and the other fourth grader had gone back to class. It figured. She'd known that everyone would take the side of the paying kids. Nobody ever sided with a foster kid. That was just how the world worked, and the sooner a foster kid had it all figured out, the better. At least she wouldn't be too hurt when Becky took her home and gave her the spanking she was sure she was in for.

Becky would probably do some yelling, Elizabeth thought as she gripped the hem of her white school blouse in her hands, twisting it back and forth. The anger was quickly giving way to fear as she realized how glad she was that school paddling was no longer popular. Mrs. Laurel had pointed out to all three guilty students that their situation would have been much worse if she was still allowed to apply the paddle to their backsides. Elizabeth thought she was nothing more than a stupid, sadistic old biddy who needed to keep up with the times. Becky could do with having an attitude adjustment for the age, too.

Indignation was easier to accommodate than fear.

It would be a while before Becky arrived. The two sixth graders had parents who lived within ten minutes drive of the school. Becky had to come from nearly an hour away, twice a day. Elizabeth had at least another half hour to sit and contemplate her crime.

***

Foster Forest (2): Breaking

Things at the Forest Home seemed to be settling down. Lizzie was eating, and that kept Becky off her back. Although they rarely spoke to one another except during the mealtimes (and then it felt mandatory to talk to one another since it couldn't be avoided), it seemed that a kind of peace had settled itself over the home.

Underneath it all, however, a tension was bubbling.

Elizabeth was ten years-old: far too young to be expected to think of the needs of others. If she didn't notice that Becky was on edge, it could hardly be considered her fault. Young and narcissistic, she believed that she was the source of the tension, and so avoided Becky all the more.

This was easy enough during the week, when Elizabeth was able to escape the private school where she was being sent on a scholarship. During the week she could gobble two meals without worrying about somebody scolding her for eating too fast. During the week she didn't have to watch as her guardian stalked around the cabin, slamming the doors behind her when she went outside to care for the horses. During the week she didn't have to try to watch out, always wondering what she had done to make the woman so angry.

On the weekends there were many tears, but Becky didn't notice. Elizabeth would watch the woman go back and forth, pacing through the great room, sometimes on her cell phone, her voice raised. More often than not, Lizzie would retreat to her bedroom where she could grab a book and lose herself within the pages. Becky wasn't even trying to talk to her any more. Maybe it was better that way. That way she would never get attached, she couldn't be hurt when it was time for her to move on.

Although it was easier on Lizzie now that Becky no longer expected her to "talk about it," her loneliness was all the more pronounced. She was beginning to slowly run through the young adult novels in the small library at the home, and she knew that soon she'd be down to the mid-grade stories, since the adult books were just too much for her, and besides, she'd discovered that her teachers didn't approve. The books, at least, were her friends, with characters she could relate to. However temporarily, she could lose herself within the pages of the books she read.

Some days Lizzie allowed herself to miss Gran. As best she knew, the old woman was still out there somewhere, living in a nursing home with no idea that her only granddaughter was wasting away in "the system." She missed her grandmother, and it was difficult for her to understand how the woman could forget everything that was important to her. Nobody had ever even tried to explain it to her, and Lizzie had given up trying to understand. It was just stupid anyway!

School was easy though. There was always something going on, and the seat work took enough of her attention to take her mind off of her "situation" as one family had called it. She could spend six hours every day forgetting that she would ultimately have to go home to a huge, cold house with an angry, brooding foster mother.

Even at recesses, Elizabeth took a book with her to the playground. The other students, most of them the children of wealthy families in the area, were prone to poking fun at her for being a scholarship case. At least they didn't know that she was a foster child. That might have been deadly in the long run. With her nose buried in a book, it seemed as though she was practically invisible to anybody who happened to pass her. She liked it that way.

The illusion was shattered, however, when three o'clock rolled around and she had to make the walk to the black Ford waiting for her outside the school. The buses didn't go out far enough to pick her up or take her "home" and that meant that she missed the last half hour of aloneness before and after school.

After the first week they had stopped trying to talk on these journeys. Lizzie sat in the back seat and put her nose in her book, and she never noticed the way that Becky worriedly glanced in the rearview mirror to check on her. She had shut down on the feeling of abandonment that she'd suffered when the last parents had moved and left her behind. If she didn't get close again, then she couldn't get hurt again. That was how Lizzie viewed it.

Every evening Becky told Lizzie to do her homework. And every evening, Lizzie took her homework to her room. None of it was particularly difficult, and she spent the rest of the night after supper and a bath reading one of her books. Becky had even stopped coming in to tuck her into bed.

Elizabeth continually told herself that she wasn't lonely; that she didn't miss her Papa at all. She struggled to convince herself that she had no expectations of being loved in this new place, so if Becky didn't talk to her any more, or tuck her into bed, it didn't mean anything to her. She suppressed the pain and didn't let it show on the outside. If anything, she gave the appearance of being too tough for her own good.

It was that toughness that first got her into real trouble.

***

Foster Forest (1): Setting the Groundwork (Elizabeth's Arrival)

There was a headache brewing behind her eyes like a storm. They always came slowly, and although none had ever progressed to the status of "migraine" she had, in the past, often gone to bed with one of her headaches. When she was a teenager, the headaches were always worse around term time, and she'd struggled for acceptance to university based on her absences from her high school.

Tension, and sometimes exasperation, caused the headaches. Today's headache was caused by the stress of an expected new arrival, the end result of months of frustrating back and forth with the relevant departments. The tug-of-war had finally ended two months ago when an agreement was reached. Rebecca Thomas and her home for unwanted children would fly below the radar. She would be the one asking the questions, and as long as her system worked, nobody would complain.

She had faith that things would work out fine in the end. She'd fought for her organization and for the children she knew would soon follow. She have been able to relax, but she felt a deep sense of disquiet as she considered the manila file folder on her desk.

With one finger, she flipped it open, the fingers of her opposite hand massaging her temples as the headache threatened to spread. Inside the folder was a photograph of a blonde haired little girl along with three sheets of paper. The first was the case worker's notes, which had clearly been kept to a minimum. The second was a report from the child's last doctor's appointment, and the third was the results of her psychological profile. The file told Becky absolutely nothing.

She'd accepted the application robotically, without thinking. It had taken two months for the first caseworker to make an application and she'd begun to worry that she would fail, even after all the work that she had done. Justine Hodges had put her faith in Becky and the Forest Home, and even if the young redhead couldn't understand the case worker's reasoning, she had chosen to extend herself toward Elizabeth Moore.

Now, two weeks after accepting the application, Becky was worried. There was very little information and the case worker had done little to be in contact with Becky. She was agitated and more than a little bit suspicious.

The home existed in order to help children who were considered a "problem" in traditional homes. She had equipped her home to handle the toughest youngsters and desired for it to be a place where they could receive both the discipline and the love that they didn't get from traditional foster placements. Whatever Elizabeth could dish out, Becky could handle. She was confident.

The internal struggle only began when Becky realized that there was nothing at all to suggest that Elizabeth as a "problem child." The child was ten years old and had been through four homes in the past three years (a good track record, in Becky's mind). Elizabeth was healthy according to her most recent check up, and there were no psychological problems to speak of. Even where Becky might have expected trauma, the psychologist reported it strangely absent.

She had to cease to be suspicious of the little girl. The child would be arriving within the next three hours. Becky flipped the file closed and put it back in her cabinet, where she hoped it would multiply into more applications. For now, she had to swallow the feeling that she was being tested, and make sure that everything was ready for the ten year-old.

***