A/N: Hi there! I wanted to start this story because I really like the Serpents and their story in Riverdale. Evidently, I especially like Sweet Pea as a character on his own. There isn't an awful lot on his backstory (and for Toni too there is not a lot of concrete, definitive information yet) so I'm gonna tweak stuff a little bit. I also want to add that this version of the foster system is meant to be a little more exaggerated, because I like in Riverdale that there is an aesthetic of cartoonish, old-timey institutions (for example, the style of doctors and the hospital, particularly in Season 2). Just wanted to point that out, this is not meant to reflect what I actually think of the system. Otherwise I hope you like the story!
Warnings for: language, mentions of violence, verbal stuff more so.
chapter one: sewing love into your is my job
Bathed in the soft, orange warmth of sunlight, slumped against a bench with shoulders held tight together, our hands pulled at strips of cotton-candy, little tufts held in a cone of lilac-coloured paper, curled against the tongue and sizzled into pools of sugar; she told me that cotton-candy came from the clouds spread in dense folds, lost in a slow drift against a rich blend of pinkish streaks and yellowish swirls, that small fairies had been sent for each spool spun from that delicate fluff. Beneath a wooden pier, there had been the faint lap of the ocean against a beige shoreline, the froth of whitish foam, breath of the ocean, made of kisses from the mermaids whose flicked tails created those speckles of glitter; and those speckles kept them hidden from us, she told me, kept them safe against the seabed.
Seagulls swept toward distant rocks, small beaks stretched from echoed caws. She said that the seagulls warn the mermaids once humans come too close. Shreds of newspaper billowed in a crisp breeze, which brought the aroma of salt in the air in the curls of each gust, strands of her hair had whipped against her skin, wrinkled from the lines of laughter that she told me I had brought her; each laugh had drawn a line in her, she said, and so she could trace them in her reflection and remember each breathless wheeze with a mouth stretched like the beaks of seagulls, each bright smile that I had brought her, each shred of happiness that had ever filled her, it had all come from me, she said, and then she had held me in her arms, held me against her chest; bathed me in her soft, orange warmth, my Grandmother held me there.
ii
Bleached in sour-lime frost of the hospital, all of her orange warmth has been deflated from the punctured onslaught of needles, burrowed beneath her skin now speckled in liver-spots and swept of glitter from those mermaids still lain against the seabed. I tear stiff eyeballs around crusted sockets and blink tiredly in the blistered shriek of artificial light in her bedroom, a harsh crack of acid-blue, the stillness of the air, trapped in this stationary existence alongside us. She breathes in a wheeze of mechanical exertion, lungs blown like balloons, all that filled her had been pulled out, unfurled in the pluck of wires, the string of drips, the throb of her heartbeat cast into a rhyme of blips.
I fluff her pillows, brush those fuzzed strands of hair which rest against her now, there comes no curl of wind, no scent of salt in this staleness. I smooth out the crinkles of her bedsheets, fill the bedroom with the sound of idle chatter – but there is not much to tell her, in this place, and the quiet hums between us. I await mouthfuls of sugar and laughter. I await more than acid-blue, more than sour-lime. I await orange warmth, but her hand is cold against mine.
iii
November comes in a rich blend of mellow purples and rich blues spread against the clouds, like an artist had dipped their fingertips into little pots of paint and splashed the earth. Cocooned in pastel wallpaper and linoleum, I sink against an armchair with a pillow beneath me, a hand still looped around hers, and dream of distant beaches, flush woodlands, the old places that we used to drift through. I dream of puddles splashed beneath boots dotted in daisies, the scatter of butterflies from sticky hands outstretched, because I had just been an eight-year-old kid, then. She had been tired, but she had brought me, anyway, swept me from all that pastel, all that linoleum, swept me into colour.
iv
There had been a bedroom for me, too, in her house; she had dipped her own fingertips into little pots and painted the sun upon its powder-blue walls, she painted stars, and then she painted rainbows, painted all that she could think of whenever she thought of me. She let me paint with her, and said, this will be your bedroom, Mila, your home. She danced barefoot, too, spun me around with her, wild circles. I tried to paint her between the suns and stars, a blob with waved curls, black dots framed in stick-lashes, two wobbly lines for lips. It is still there, in our home, those wild sketches, our handprints pressed into eternity – or until the paint flakes, she said.
v
Somewhere in December, the symphony of her life fizzles out in the tired reeds of her heartbeat, plucked with the melodic percussion of the machines; the orchestra of the nurses summoned in the scuff of shoes, the scramble of doctors like the strings of violin. I wail, bleed myself hoarse in sorrow, the nurses cuff me at the arm and contain me, there are soft words spoken everywhere at once, but those sounds are mute against the shriek of a whistle, pure white noise, but it all becomes a monotonous echo, eventually. and I push from unfamiliar hands which are never hers, stumble backward against pastel, stumble from it all and find myself in a swell of acid white, so much white.
In this blindness, I tear posters from walls, rip them into shreds, kick at the orderlies, snatch a vase of tulips from the windowsill and toss it so that it shatters into greenish trickles and scattered petals, curled in the water, there are shards embedded into me and I push them further, there is too much noise, too much sound in all of this, I push and push at those shards-…
vi
Glimpsed in the swell of sound and colour, I spot a poster not yet torn from its place, not yet torn apart between hands now slick with blood and thin, narrow cuts; but the poster shows lines of soft blue with the froth of whitish foam speckled upon its wavelets, the orange blob of the sun, smudged and echoed outward behind the stretch of seagulls' wings – and suddenly, it becomes apparent, the harsh inhales of each breath, the frail curl of petals furled beneath my boots, the dull throb in hands torn open.
I tremble so much that it frightens me, so I allow those unfamiliar hands to touch me, hold me, haul me outward into offices for reprimands; it is habitual, the biting pluck of shards pulled from skin between the pinch of tweezers, the smoothing of plaster against cut flesh, the blistering sigh of resignation from the next social-worker whose stare is pitiful, whose stare is another flush of: who would ever take a kid like this?
one year later
vii
Bound in purple bands of rubber, folders slop from a pile, filled with details, foreign names, photographs held beneath colourful paper-clips, composed of foreign faces and foreign smiles, tabbed with little handwritten notes. Through the heaviness of sunlight breathed between off-white blinds in this mint-coloured office, I read about the other children in their homes which I might share – snippets of Daisy upon a swing-set, snippets of Abel at a birthday with cheeks rosy in the stickiness of strawberry jam and cream. I notice that all of these children are much younger, barely more than ten, and the social-worker clucks sympathetically that it is a little more difficult to find a place for a sixteen-year-old.
Tactfully, the social-worker does not mention that it is even more difficult for a sixteen-year-old whose files are plump with behavioural issues, whose files are scratched all around the margins with frantic, ballpoint-blue notes, whose files are stamped in circles of red, but I am hopeful that all of those stains might be scrubbed clean with all the effort of these last couple of months, with neither a fight nor a scream - not even a shout. I used to shout a lot, but nobody ever heard me; now, there is a semblance of sound, even if it comes from a soft mumble, and it seems as if I am heard, if only a little.
Nothing has ever confused me more than that.
Between all of the folders, I notice there is one folder which has a black rubber-band and dog-eared edges, separate from the purple smoothness of all the others. I lean forward and place it gently in my lap, leaf through the photographs of a woman whose name is etched into the edges of each Polaroid: Ruth, whose face holds quiet beauty in the warmth of her peachy cheeks, flowered in plump lips, the faint scatter of freckles, and she seems youthful, at the cusp of her thirties. Slowly, I turn each page and pause at the bold red which fills her margins, like mine, stamps of red because her home is nestled in a neighbourhood which is considered hazardous –her handwritten note is almost apologetic for all of those spots of red, those ballpoint-blue word, those dense splotches of disapproval, but she finishes it with: oh, and there is a place nearby that has the greatest chocolate sundaes you could ever dream of, more than you could ever eat no matter how much you tried – or until the ice-cream runs out.
Dropped from the folder, another photograph falls out and I bend to snatch it from the carpet. I read the chunky letters etched around its white frame: Rosie, balanced with arms outstretched and a grin made of gums, dressed in this little mustard coat, and there is a letter attached in the folder, drawn in childlike stars, dotted in flowers from the blunt-end of a crayon, even though Rosie was not meant to put stuff in there. Still, I peel off the sticker of a blue monster with an overbite for its fangs and pull open her letter; her lines tend to dip toward the end of each sentence, and she writes about her bedroom, she writes about her fishes – Spot and Sunny.
Drawn with large arrows all around it, she has sketched her fishes, scrunched tight at the bottom because she could hardly fit more than that with the giant loop of her letters. I squint at the wonky squiggle of an orange blob, its bulbous lips and coal eyeball, then look toward its companion, a black fish with its fins held high – and from its puckered mouth, she had drawn a bubble that showed the words: Hi, I'm Sunny.
I let out a small laugh; it deflates something held in me, some coiled breath, held tight in the chest for much too long, it floods from me in that simple exhale. I place her doodles between the photographs, close the folder and nod. I nod and nod, nod and nod, because the social-worker asks if I can handle little children and handle the neighbourhood and handle all this other stuff before the telephone is lifted, before Ruth is called. I look at the folder, pull it toward me once more, trace them into memory, especially little Spot and Sunny. Stamped beneath all that other stuff about names and dates and intentions, is the town: RIVERDALE.
viii
Bruised in rich blues, mellow purples and rings of pink, the clouds drift in a slow crawl; the Southside of Riverdale hums in neon screeches of green from corner-stores, blisters of red from laundromats, but muted brown from the houses boarded at the windows and painted in tags, bubble-names and skulls, love-hearts with initials stretched in between the lines. Somewhere along the line, the houses dwindle into burnt-out hovels, blackened pits, dotted in steel panels in front of each window and door, but then the social-worker turns a block and I glimpse narrow houses, yards split with half-bent fences and yellowed grass. Eventually, we slow in front of a house and I am stood with suitcase in hand, stood with this social-worker on a dark Tuesday night, in this strange town. I feel the flutter of butterflies and the bloom of nausea.
I almost want to ask if I can just be alone, in the old house, in our house – but then the door opens, and there is Ruth, with the same smile from all of those photographs, only there is a nervousness behind it, just like mine. Rosie is not behind her. I wonder if she has switched foster-homes already, because that happens, sometimes. Ruth hops from the porch and pushes toward me. I am grateful that she does not pull me into a hug or anything, but rather holds out a hand that I can shake.
The social-worker brings us into the house, explains the usual stuff about this trial-period, about how I can call if there is ever a problem, there will be regular visits. Then it is just – well, over, and the social-worker departs into the dense fog, into the orange clouds made from the saturation of the streetlights. Ruth catches loose strands of curly brown hair, pushes them behind her ear, then clasps her hands like she had earlier, as if she wants to appear a bit more…adult. She still seems young, even younger in person, late-twenties or just on the cusp of thirty.
I sit with her living-room and glance around at its mint-coloured walls, colourful furniture, small plants all over, drooped from the windowsill, trickled branches dangled from the rim of each flowerpot, and there is something endearing in its fractured terracotta, something familiar in all those cracks. The whole house seems much too bright for the bleakness of the town, or at least, all that I had seen of it so far.
Ruth has a quiet beauty, held in the warmth of her peachy cheeks, flowered in the purse of plump lips and the scattering of freckles that perhaps adds to that youthfulness. Her shoulders are bare, she sits in a pink spaghetti-string top and dark blue jeans, tennis-shoes, a studded belt. I watch her form words in her brain almost as if there is a projector sat behind her eyeballs and it splatters the letters against her walls, so that I can read them, pick them apart. I am used to speeches from foster-homes and social-workers about those same rules, this trial-period, ever a problem, et cetera, et cetera. I await them with dulled patience, worn from repetition. Ruth opens her mouth and says, "Look, I need to be honest with you-…"
For a brief moment, I flush with worry and wonder if she wants to return me; like an unwanted present. She searches for the receipt, she has had enough of me already, she wants me out of this house-…
"Rosie painted your bedroom with me, but she made a little bit of a mess. So, if you hate wonky elephants with even wonkier tails and ears, then you don't need to worry, there's enough paint to fix it. I had planned to do it this morning, actually, but then things got a little busier than expected. I had to get you some bedsheets and new clothes – oh, and if you hate the clothes, we can totally change those too. Rosie chose some pretty cute stuff, but she has this weird thing for rhinestone tops. We can talk about the paperwork, or I can just show you your bedroom and we can figure that stuff out tomorrow, because I want you to do whatever you feel is best to help this transition. I know that sounds awkward, like I read it from a book – because I sort of did, actually-…"
She trails into silence. I watch the awkward furl and unfurl of her hands. I start to realise that she might be more nervous than I am, that maybe it was a little easier with a kid like Rosie, too small to understand all the shifts in her life. I was in the system for four years before my Grandmother tried to claim guardianship. Even then, I had trial-periods with her, swapped between her home and the foster-home.
Ruth seems to fidget, she toys with her hands, eternally in a tremble, but her voice is soft, her voice is like honey in the hum of this small house, with the thrum of its refrigerator, the fuzzed throb of its radiators, it all melts together. I want to be okay here. I want to be okay. So, I straighten tired shoulders, smile warmly at her.
"Thanks, Ruth. I think I'll like all of it – even the rhinestones. Thank you for taking me in, too," I say quietly, even a little shyly, totally unlike myself. I want to be okay, I tell myself. I had tantrums all the time, when I was a kid. Like Rosie. Even older. I used to kick against wooden floorboards, held around the waist and torn upward into the arms of another social-worker, flushed beetroot from the screams. I used to scream a lot. I think of my Grandmother, now. I think of oceans. I think of puddles. Wonky elephants, too.
"Oh, Mila, you never need to thank me for that," Ruth replies fondly; there is that childlike smile. In the hall, she taps a fingertip against her lips to shush us both once we shuffle past Rosie's bedrooms, its door decorated in splotched flowers against her door, her name printed in squiggly letters, squiggly like her drawings of her fishes.
The door is slightly ajar. I glimpse a slack mouth, a little mop of black hair against a mountain of pillows and a teddy-bear drooped from a small hand draped against the edge of the mattress. She has a night-light in the shape of a cat's face, whiskers and all. I am in the bedroom across from hers, and the hall is narrow enough that it seems as if we are all cramped together. I am oddly comforted by it, this closeness.
ix
Ruth flicks a switch and holds her arms out with a soft ta-da! I drink in the lilac paint, drift toward the floral bedsheets and bookshelf unfilled, the desk tucked into the corner, the wardrobe and fluffy rug, then notice the splotch of lilac paint that mats it with a snort, because I guess that was another mess which Rosie had made, earlier. I follow the trail of lilac toward the skirting-board and find swirls, handprints, and suns painted across the wall nearest to the window, painted in bright yellow. I look at Ruth, who snorts and says, "The yellow was for the bathroom, and I was going to paint a small sun on your door. Left Rosie for two minutes to talk with your social-worker and-…well, like I said, I can fix it by tomorrow."
"Please don't," I respond softy. I watch her surprise, but then she nods, and I am even more grateful that she does not question me more than that. She lets me unpack, alone. I peel out pyjamas folded in pairs, take off my loose green jacket, brush at its tattered cuffs and stitched patches – cut and sewn, it is the only coat that I ever wear, loose enough that it brushes against my thighs and the cord around its waist is so worn that it only marginally cinches at the waist, and the fur which once lined the hood has been torn off in tufts over the months.
The cord around its waist is so worn that it only marginally cinches at the waist, and the hood is a low scoop, rarely used. I glance at the hospital package of her clothes and place the bag into the closet, then sit on the bed and look at those painted shapes which Rosie had made, the swirls and suns, little handprints.
x
I think of the bedroom that I was supposed to have, and all of the other bedrooms I have had since then, full of the shoes of other children and bunk-beds scrunched together, coated in the drawings of home, mothers stood in triangular skirts, stick-armed fathers nearby or entirely absent, circular doodles for the bodies of dogs, tails pricked out in a straight line. The earth was always just a patch of green, the sky stood in narrow blue, and the sun never quite connected, just thrown against the white space in between. I used to help the children draw, used to collect the crayons and place them in boxes afterward – and I did it just to show the social-workers that I was much more calm, much more capable, but then this one kid, Lucas, brought me a doodle of myself, with thin black lines for hair and dressed in a square of green for my jacket with two black lines jutting out at odd angles for my legs. I decided it was not that bad after all, helping them. I did it more often and I forgot about social-workers and all that stuff.
I kept all of the drawings; each wobbled circle which made a face, each butterfly whose colours stretched outside of their wings, each drawing of myself with the artist stood alongside me in front of whatever home we were in then, our fingers linked through the three lines that composed our hands. I kept all of them.
xi
In the hospital, I used to dream about her a lot, almost nightly. I never really dream about anything at all, anymore. I think about stuff too much. I think about old foster-parents and wonder if I am remembered there, in those old houses, like a ghost whose spirit still drifts around the halls even if I am still here, with a heartbeat. I think about the photographs taken of me at parties, before tantrums, before screams and bruises, and wonder if all of those little snippets of me are held somewhere, like in the shoeboxes that I was told to make to rid myself of anger. I had to write about myself and all of these feelings in me, fold the paper, press them into a shoebox and then – well, stuff them beneath whatever bed I was in that month and let the dust swallow them.
I never brought them with me, so I think about whether some other kid has stumbled across these confessions about the intense need to punch and kick at stomachs and shins, to take each punch from the curled fist of another kid and throw it right back. I think about the shatter of knuckles, the crack of a bone. I broke a hand at ten from a hit, and it still took three social-workers to lift me from the soil, peel me from another kid with arms held around him, to lift me and take me from him, from them.
xii
Sat outside another office, in another hall, I heard one say, "Who would ever take a kid like this?"
xiii
She was meant to take me; my Grandmother, I mean. She used to say that sometimes things went too fast, things slipped from her hands much too quickly for her to grasp, and then she looked at those hands and found them old, found them tired, and she told me to quit the fighting – are you stupid, Mila, do you even think before you act, you think you're ever gonna get out of that place, you know this is why your father could never deal with you-…
xiv
I would rather dream.
xv
Vibrant sunlight pours into the bedroom, canary-yellow in colour. Sprawled against the mattress on my stomach, poised between that haziness of half-sleep and consciousness, I hear faint giggle, followed by the harsh whine of my wooden floorboards. I squint at a blurry silhouette, pressed against the doorframe with small fists, a familiar mop of dark curls stood in wild, matted bunches all around a pale face. I flop against my pillow with a quiet snort, which I quickly pretend is a snore, snuggling against my blankets and peeking at her from between the folds. I had shared a bedroom with another kid called Brady once, whose morning ritual was a blend of giddy shrieks and leaps around my mattress to wake me – it took a lot of tickles and pillow-fights to make him quit.
Rosie shuffles forward, her small hands clenched against her chin in anticipation; she studies me, studies this stranger thrown into her tiny world of flowerpots and cat-shaped nightlights, studies me with scrunched eyebrows and a tight pout. Carefully, I hold myself still, let out cartoonish snores and shift around tiredly. Rosie pauses, hands held aloft, and pout lost in momentary trepidation. Slowly, she continues, casting suspicious glances at me. I smother a grin, even though my lips twitch and I want to surprise her – so, I bolt upward, collapsing into laughter once she lets out a frantic shriek, her hands clamping against her eyes in little fists and hopping in little jumps for a couple of seconds before she peels apart her fingers to peek out at me.
Grinning at her, I smooth out the clumps of knotted hair from my face and say, "Hey, Rosie. Couldn't wait until after the eggs and bacon were ready to wake me, huh?"
Rosie drops her little pose and clambers onto the mattress. I am a little surprised by her boldness – a lot of kids like me, sure, but most of them are pretty shy in the first few hours, testing out the waters. Rosie, apparently, is not like most kids. I let out a small, pained groan once she buries my legs beneath her weight, releasing me once she finally reaches the headboard, settling against it. Quite factually, Rosie says, "We only have eggs and bacon on the weekend. Ruth says they're bad for you if you eat them every day. Are you gonna be staying here for a long time?"
I scoot upward to sit alongside her, feeling the carved, wooden outline of the headboard pressing into my spine as I shrug. "Might be. Why, do you mind?"
She shrugs, too. "No. I guess we have enough eggs and bacon to share. Did your Mom leave?"
Thrown by her bluntness, I flounder for a moment. Her stare never wavers from mine. She curls a fist beneath her chin and waits. Slowly, I mumble, "Um, not really – I mean, I was never with her. And I don't really know my Dad, either. Sometimes, I stayed with my Grandmother, but most of the time, I was with foster-parents like Ruth."
"Why?"
"Why?" I repeat dumbly. "Oh. Well, I guess because my Grandmother was ill, and she couldn't handle me, and-…well, I'm a little older than you, so it was harder to find somebody who might-…want me."
Rosie is momentarily quiet. "I saw this film once - or at least, I think it was a film, but it might have been something else. It was about this dog. He was really old. He had to live in this small kennel because nobody wanted him. He had to watch all the other dogs who were chosen instead of him, and it was really sad. But then this one family came in and they wanted him. The little dog was so happy, because he got to live with the family forever."
"Do you think I'm the little dog?"
"Not really. He had floppy ears and you don't," she answers lightly, but then she cocks her head in confusion at my snort. "But I think Ruth wants you, even if you're older. I don't think she cares about stuff like that, but she cares about you already. Ruth is like that. But the other kids who came here didn't like Ruth."
"Why not?" I ask, worried.
She shrugs her little shoulders. "I think-…I think it's not that they didn't really like Ruth, it was more that they just didn't really like the school or the neighbourhood because it looks kind of scary at first. But I like it. Those kids kept asking Ruth, why would anybody ever want to live in a place like this, it's scary-…But there are nice people here too."
"Are you going to show me around, then? Maybe introduce me to these nice people?"
The intense contemplation which had pinched her small face smooths into a bright grin. "Yeah. I can do that. And I guess you can stay for a little while. You can meet Spot and Sunny first, they're my fishes. I already told them about you, but they want to see you in person. Then I can show you all the clothes we got for you. Do you like rhinestone tops? I do, so you kind of have to like them too now, because I was here first, you know, so even if you're older, you have to listen to me anyway, and Ruth said-…" She looks at me, confused again because I smile. "Hey, what's so funny?"
xvi
Thundering through the hall toward the kitchen with Rosie right behind me, I find Ruth with three bowls of cereal, along with a carton of milk and a jug of orange juice already plopped onto the table, just waiting for us. She looks between me and Rosie in surprise, because she probably thought the introductions would happen a bit more formally. Then her stare drops toward my t-shirt, and her lips twitch just a little; hot-pink in colour, clustered in hearts, its sparkling rhinestones read: CUTIE.
two weeks later
xvii
Ruth finds her old bicycle crumbled in the shed; she fixes its shattered spokes and deflated wheels, cleans its rusted yellow frame, cleans its basket had been coated in thick cobwebs – but it made us all shriek and kick at it once a nest of spiders crawled out from its folds, scattered before Ruth could pour a basin of sudsy, lukewarm water across it to rid the handlebars of all that dust and dirt. Shyly, I tell Ruth that I never learned to ride a bicycle, not in all of those foster-homes. Instead, she scrapes off the clumps of dried dirt between the petal-folds of each plastic flower and tells me to hop on, that she can teach me now. Anxiously, I let her hold me at the shoulder and arm, a tight enough grip that I never topple. She never calls me stupid, not even once. I thought she might, because it seems obvious, to just push against the peddles – but Ruth smiles and, with that honey-toned voice, she tells me everybody is a beginner at something, sometime.
I like the softness of Ruth, the calmness of her. I never had a foster-parent for this long before and I never had one so calm, either.
"Focus, Mila," Ruth urges softly.
I wonder if she can tell that I drift off, sometimes, that I think too much and hardly ever dream anymore. I hold onto the handlebars so tight that my knuckles are bathed in white, but it is much better than those knuckles bathed in cuts and strips of skin torn in shreds from scrapes. Rosie chases after us in delight, her cheeks beetroot from the effort, but she tires herself out and collapses on a curb with a breathless giggle. She wants a bicycle, too. Ruth says, "She wants to be like you, I think."
I blush and shrug it off. I am not sure that anybody has ever wanted to be like me.
Ruth loosens her grip upon the handlebars but remains close so that she can catch and reassure me at each wobble. Sometimes, my boot drops from the peddle just to balance myself, too afraid to hold the bicycle upward for more than a couple of seconds – but soon, it smooths out, and I can loop around the street in a slow circle. Ruth cheers for me, claps her hands.
"You're clapping like I'm a kid," I laugh at her.
"You are," she says. "You are a kid, Mila."
I pluck off a loose petal from those plastic flowers and do not answer her.