Nery Legacy (3): Troubles at Home*

    For a week, Charlie had been lying low. She tried to avoid her mother every chance that she got. Her father had relented and finally put his foot down with Mama, telling her that Charlie could work the homestead with him and do her lessons on the go. Though she didn’t particularly like the brutal hard work of the homestead, Charlie was grateful to the point of crying real tears when Daddy had told her that he would allow her to come with him instead of dealing with her mother all day, every day. She was still a little bit sore from the strapping that she’d gotten on the night that she’d broken her grounding, and she didn’t want to risk rubbing her mother the wrong way.

    It had mostly been a quiet seven days. She and Daddy didn’t talk all that much when they were doing their chores, and she found that if she didn’t bring it up, he mostly let her go without doing the lessons at all. It wasn’t that Charlie minded school; what she minded was the way that her mother was constantly on her case and always seemingly looking for reasons to be angry with her. The truth was that she was feeling pretty intimidated, especially after she’d snuck out of the house on Saturday.

    The nightmare that night had been terrible. It was rare that she woke up screaming in fear from a dream. In fact, Charlie thought the last time it had happened was when she was twelve years old. This time, a combination of the alcohol and the punishment had left her weakened, and she’d awakened feeling as though somebody was standing on her chest and strangling her. Daddy had stayed with her all night, rocking her until she fell back to sleep, comforting her and reassuring her that in spite of what she’d done, she was still loved. She’d needed it, and it still hurt her to think that her mother hadn’t been there when she’d needed her.

    Mama had always scared Charlie a little bit. Even when she was little, she’d felt very much as though her mother didn’t particularly like her, and more than that, she was sure that her mother didn’t love her. It had hurt then, but after last Saturday’s punishment, it was really sinking in for Charlie that her mother’s feelings for her weren’t ideal. She’d overheard fights between her parents that left her feeling vulnerable, confused, guilty and ashamed. She’d asked for some things that she’d wanted, and to hear her parents discuss how they couldn’t afford it, and her mother saying that she felt like Charlie was selfish and a brat... Well, those things had broken her heart, and she’d promised herself that she would ask for nothing else.

Nery Legacy (2): Playing Favorites

    The day had been pleasant. The weather was growing warmer, and Ruby enjoyed working outside. The garden was her baby, and it saddened her that her husband, Ben, wound up doing most of the work that she wasn’t able to do because she was inside home schooling their daughters. He’d talked to her about him taking over their older daughter’s education, but she’d asked him to give her one more chance. She had no idea how Charlotte felt about them being indoors together all the time, but if she had, she would have put it out of her mind, anyway. Ben was right; they had to act more like a mother and daughter than like sisters who were constantly sniping at one another. Separating themselves from one another wasn’t going to resolve their differences. This was something that they were going to have to work through, and Ruby wasn’t going to learn patience if she didn’t practice it.

    Because today was Saturday, however, Charlie was out with her father doing the chores that she had been assigned as punishment after the last big fight on Thursday. It was also a way, she hoped, to stop Charlie from continually asking about why she couldn’t see her boyfriend, Greg. The punishment, therefore, served a double-purpose of reminding Charlie to watch her language and the way that she spoke to her parents while also separating her, however temporarily, from a boy that both parents felt was bad for her. Besides, Ruby was pretty sure that Charlie would be exhausted by the time that she was done making up for the chores that she hadn’t done during the week. She’d found three more assigned duties that hadn’t been done, but this time hadn’t passed the information on to Ben, since it was apparent that they’d been left before Charlie had been punished for not putting the horses away on the night of the last big storm.

    Supper had been cleared away, and Rissa was in the living room, curled up on the couch with one of the Harry Potter books. Ruby wasn’t sure about Charlie, who seemed to have gone upstairs to shower and then retreated to her own room. Ruby stood in the kitchen, finishing off the dishes, when her husband came in through the back door. She went to the laundry room door and watched as he pulled his boots off. “I’m thinkin’ about orderin’ some more chicks,” Ben said. “Maybe get us some roosters. Work on sellin’ more of them. Or the eggs. Get a better production goin’ so that we can make more money.” There was a brief hesitation, and then he said, “I heard from Raph this afternoon.”

Foster Forest (16): As Seen in the Mirror

"I'm telling!"

At a place like Foster Forest, the sound of those words carried throughout the nearby area, and Cody looked up from where he was standing at the "playground" next to Carly. His eyes narrowed as he raised a hand to his brow and looked toward the porch. The little boy, Jackson, was cornered, his back against the wall of the house, and Lizzie had a wild look about her, from what Carly could see.

She'd been at Foster Forest for a grand total of three days. The atmosphere in the house during that time had been strange. Cody had spent two days in his room, not talking to anybody, and Peter seemed quiet after the first night's dinner. She and Felicity were in Feliticy's room when they'd heard a spanking happening on their floor, and that only left Lizzie. The younger girl seemed to have been strangely hateful in the few days that had followed. Quiet and broody, she refused her meals in spite of being made to sit at the table, and she wouldn't speak to anybody. It seemed to Carly that Lizzie had been doing a lot of chores over the past couple of days, and she never seemed to catch a break. She almost felt bad that she'd had some time to sit out here and chat with the fourteen year old for a while instead of helping inside the house.

So far Felicity had kept herself out of trouble, and Carly was relieved. She didn't have to step in and try to mediate or explain her sister, and she didn't have to try to get Felicity to stop before she made matters worse with her big mouth. How many times had Carly stood up to calm Felicity down before she did something she would regret? And now the twelve year-old knew that her older sister harbored a lot of regrets, now that their father was gone, the victim of his own handgun. The thought of it all made Carly shiver. She thought Felicity might still be in shock, since she'd hardly said anything since the night she found their father's body in his office. Carly knew that Felicity would never be the same. Neither of them would be.

"Busybody!" Cody said next to her. "I guess you know what she's like." He glanced at her, giving a shrug of his shoulders. "Betsy. You've met her, right?"

Carly frowned slightly, squinting in the direction of the house as she had done a moment before. "You mean Lizzie? Sure. I met her the day I got here," she said. "She's okay."

"Busybody," Cody grumbled again. "I'm going to go see what's going on and try to keep the kid out of trouble. Whatever he's done, she's gonna make it sound like it's a lot worse than it is, and I'd hate to see him get in trouble for something he didn't do, or something that's not that big a deal," he said with a shrug.

Cody darted off across the yard so quickly that Carly took a moment to realize what was happening. She leaped off the swing and jogged toward him. His movements were stiff, but he was quick, and there was a redness around his ears that she recognized. Carly put her hand on Cody's arm and gave him a gentle tug to pull him back. "What's going on?" she asked with concern. If he was anything like Felicity, there was about to be some serious trouble, and Carly didn't want to have to watch while Cody got his butt spanked. She'd already heard one of Lizzie's, and she didn't want to hear another.

Foster Forest (15): Mistakes They Made

Lizzie glared at the two girls who stood next to their social worker in the front room. Ms Becky seemed to be talking comfortably with the young woman with the black hair, and the smaller of the two girls was looking around the room, her blue eyes wide as she took in everything that the Foster Forest home had to offer. They were pretty, and both girls had the same dark, dark brown hair and blue eyes. The older girl was quite tall; in fact, she was taller than Ms. Becky, and very slender as well. She might be mistaken for a grown women if she had the curves that came with adulthood. The younger girl was petite, not much taller than Lizzie was herself. Her hair was shorter, cropped close to her head in a very grown up style that the ten year old didn't particularly like. The older one's hair fell close to her waist in twin braids.

At once Lizzie didn't like them. For one thing, she didn't like the way that the older girl was dressed. Her skirt was too short and she was wearing a blouse with a neckline that showed off the little swell of her budding breasts. The younger one wouldn't have been so bad except that she kept staring at everything as though she was in awe. Worse, Becky was smiling at both of them from ear to ear and spending time talking to the social worker.

The founder of The Forest had been so irritable lately that Lizzie had just been avoiding her, though that was nothing new. The home without books, however, caused the ten year-old to branch out more and seek other things to do. There was nothing to read since the fire that had consumed all of the books from the library, so she'd been forced to play outside with Jackson on the new playground equipment and even to spend time with Peter cleaning up the kitchen and scrubbing down windowsills and baseboards. It was boring and it was tedious and there were things she would much rather be doing.

It was bad enough that nearly the past week had been spent with Cody in a bad mood because of nightly punishments. Lizzie wasn't supposed to know about that, but she heard the grown ups talking often enough, and she'd caught on. Cody was in big trouble for the book burning, and before that for the stuff that he'd had on his computer, before that got taken away too.

Lizzie hated Cody. She would have been indifferent if he hadn't risked taking his laptop into the library that day while she was reading. The images on the screen were so disgusting, and they reminded her of how much it had hurt. At first Cody scared her, and she'd thought that maybe he would be just like the one guy, the guy who had called her Beth. To make matters worse, Cody was insistent on calling her Betsy, which not only rubbed her the wrong way but it also reminded her of being called Bethy, which was a name reserved for those special occasions when he...

Blinking several times rapidly, Elizabeth brought herself back to the present. She stood up from where she had been sitting at the bottom of the stairs watching and eavesdropping and went into the kitchen. Peter had been through earlier, scrubbing everything in a mad fury, and the usual lock was on the fridge to keep Jackson out. She sighed, bored out of her mind. She couldn't even eat when she was in one of these moods! Lizzie glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly four o'clock. Dinner would be ready in an hour anyway. In the meantime, there wasn't much to do. Cody was in the Great Room and she was pretty sure she'd seen Jackson follow him in there. She didn't want to be near the two of them, and she wasn't in the mood to go wandering around outside. She only hoped that perhaps Peter was at the bookstore buying the things on her list so that she'd have something new and different to do. One more day of cleaning and she thought she might crack.

"Liz!" Becky called, and Elizabeth felt a flood of relief rush through her as she trotted out into the entrance to see what her guardian wanted. The social worker, she noticed, was gone, leaving only Becky and the two girls, with Cody and Jackson off in the other part of the room. She put on her best smile, beaming up at the older girl and then the younger, the one she thought might be a year or so older than her.

"Hi," she said, turning her attention up to Becky.

"Lizzie, this is Felicity," Becky said, gesturing toward the older girl. Felicity just gave Lizzie a "look" and rolled her eyes away, crossing her arms over her chest. It was obvious that she wasn't in a position to be particularly friendly to the ten year old, and Lizzie just gave her a snotty look right back. "And this is Carly," Becky went on, acting as though nothing had happened.

Foster Forest (10): Watching

"And I don't want to hear a single sound out of either of you!" Becky said. She deposited Jackson in opposite corner of the kitchen, letting go of his ear and giving it a quick but gentle rub where the flesh had reddened as a result of her hold. She let her hand fall on his back as though patting him. Briefly Becky was able to note that Jackie had lost perhaps five pounds. There was still quite a ways to go, but she felt relief at knowing that her rules were doing their job. She glanced over at Lizzie and pointed her finger at the little girl. "You and I are going to have a very serious talk in just a few minutes," she scolded.

Then, with a heavy sigh, Becky fell down into the chair at the kitchen table, putting her head into her palms and rubbing at her temples. Her head was pounding, and her blood pressure was high. Her hands were trembling slightly, and she lowered them, placing them palm down on the table and taking several deep breaths.

These two had such an ability to make her angry! For the first time in her life, Becky was beginning to understand why her father had snapped at her the way that he had, or why her mother had sent her to her room to wait for her father instead of dealing with discipline herself. There was no way that Becky was going to force the two children in their separate corners to wait for Peter, especially when she knew that Peter had that awful little paddle. There might be a time that behavior warranted the paddle, but she sincerely hoped that it wasn't today.

Peter would arrive in fifteen minutes, right around the time that the newest member of Foster Forest showed up to be settled in. Her anger level as well as her sympathy told her she should deal first with Jackson and Elizabeth, but she didn't want to be caught in the middle of that when Cody showed up, the way it had been when Peter arrived. It was bad enough that Lizzie resented Peter's seeing her draped across Becky's thigh, or worse, that he had scolded her for rubbing her bottom. She didn't need that kind of resentment flying between two more of her youngsters. Lizzie seemed to resent everybody, in some way or another. It was something that Becky just wouldn't understand.

***

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.

***