Four Lesson Emma Swan Learned (and How She Forgot Them All)
When she's ten, Emma Swan learns how to steal.
By ten, she's already termed a "special needs" foster. Hard to place. Older, and already with behavior problems. Fighting, skipping school, disobedience. This social worker tells her to be happy someone's willing to take her. Take her. Not love her.
The Jones' are religious. Very. Church every week, grace at every meal, prayers any time of the day. They don't believe in a lot of things. Candy, soda, television. Video games, modern music. girls wearing pants. Emma gets her first slap the first day when Mrs. Jones realizes she only owns jeans. They have six other foster children, all boys. All cases no one else would take.
A couple of the boys have wandering eyes and grabby hands, but kicking and biting are second nature to Emma by now.
She keeps to herself. The kids at school know all the Jones's kids by now. Rejects in old fashioned secondhand clothes with records a mile long. The teacher's know they're trouble already and watch them closely out of the corner of their eye.
When she can get away unseen, Emma skips school and wanders through town. Its a sprawling, sad place. No one stops to question a ten year old out in the middle of the day. She wanders through parks, and convienence stores. One day she's poking through a rack of discount cassette tapes in a corner store, and finds one she's heard before. She has a cassette player donated in a gift drive by someone, probably after their own kid broke it. Its held together with duct tape, and the radio wont tune, but it plays tapes fine. Not that Emma has any music of her own. The Jones' confiscated anything any of them had. The Devil's music they said, would further pollute their corrupted lives.
The label says $3. That's not a lot. Some kids at school get that for allowance every single week. But Emma has no money. She doubts the Jones' would believe in children having any power at all.
The clerk is in the back and Emma picks up the tape, and a couple of others. She looks at them idly while walking. When she passes behind a row, she slips the one into her backpack. She continues back around looking at the tapes, pauses long enough at the rack to look like she's considering it hard, and puts the others back.
Her heart doesn't stop pounding until she's nearly a block away.
After that, shoplifting becomes almost a pastime, as much for the rush as for the possessions. Emma gathers a small collection of cassette tapes; Lita Ford, The Runaways, The Cure, they all hide in the space between her mattress and her headboard. A handful of paperbacks; adventures, scary stories, the good kind of mysteries where people actually get hurt, hide under her mattress. She has candywhen one of the Jones decides that their polluted souls could do with a little starving. Her socks now have hearts instead of holes.
She learns the tricks. Where cameras are pointed. How to take advantage of a distracted clerk. What can be taken and not sound any alarms. Where she can't take her backpack and has to rely on her pockets.
She's good at it. She only gets caught once, over a pair of clip on earrings, her own stupid vanity. Even though that's the time that ends with the back of her legs beaten bloody and eventually sent on to another home, she doesn't care.
The world has never been fair to her, and Emma Swan can trade fire for fire.
When she's fourteen, Emma Swan learns how to fight
That isn't to say, that she's never been in a fight before. Dozens. Throwing rocks at the kid who called her ugly in fifth grade. Cornering the girl who'd laughed at her secondhand clothes in sixth. Just last month, she punched a guy for making a lewd gesture at her with his tongue. She'd nearly broken her hand that time. He'd been one of her "friends" even, though she'd long since accepted that they
only let her stick around because she could shoplift them beer.
But she's never felt trapped like an animal before, facing someone at least as strong as her, and far more willing to hurt than her.
It was all Gina's fault anyway. Her and her endless parade of skeevy boyfriends that stank of cigarettes and cologne, and had mustaches and smirks, and tricks up their sleeves. It was bad enough when she'd drag them upstairs into their shared bedroom, leaving Emma stranded outside, alone. This particular set of foster parents were never around, and its not like Gina with her heavy makeup and stuffed animals could be bothered to make dinner for either of them when there were guys with cars around to fuck.
Gina was 15. Some of these guys could drink legally already.
But as creepy as they could be, they had all completely ignored Emma so far. Even the boys her own age still did, the tiny, slight girl with a bad temper and no friends. Even the ones with liprings seemed to bolt if she looked at them cross-eyed. But then Tony happened.
He has her by the elbow, crushed against the wall in an alley near the high school. His mouth is far too close to her face, she can feel his breath. She tries to wiggle free, but his grip is tight. He's going on about wanting to know where Gina is, apparently things have gone sour between them.
"And you tell that little whore if she so much as..."
He doesn't get to finish that thought, because at that instant, Emma lashes out with her teeth, biting down on whatever she can get. Which turns out to be the edge of his lip. He howls in pain and shock, and drops her arm. She takes the opportunity to drive her knee into his groin as hard as she can, and just like on TV, he goes down. Her cheap sneakers leave their mark in the flesh of his face, and
something shiny slides out of his pocket.
A knife.
She grabs it off the ground, and before Tony can react, she bolts, runs as fast as she can out of that alley and away, her heart pounding its way out of her chest. He doesn't follow her.
She keeps the knife tucked into her shoe for quite a while.
When she's sixteen, Emma Swan learns how to hope
Her latest foster home is comparatively not terrible. There was always food. She was the only foster, and Keith and Mary's only child was grown and kept to himself. There were no drunks, or slaps, or leering "relatives". It didn't bother her that the Keith's mechanic business was a cover for a chop shop. He'd even taught her a thing or two. If Mary hadn't been so overly fond of Jerry Springer over
housework, and Keith didn't spend most of his time home stoned out of his mind, it might have even been nice.
But Emma has a future in mind now.
It was something mentioned when the social worker had come before her exit from her previous placement. One of Gina's asshole boyfriends had gotten her pregnant. It had gotten ugly, with yelling and things breaking, and Emma had been removed after the neighbors called the cops.
At some point she'd asked what was going to happen to Gina now, as obnoxious as she could be, she was the only of the kids, most of whom came and went, that Emma almost considered a real sister.
The social worker had explained that since Gina had a job she had decided to petition the court for emancipation, after which she would be considered legally an adult and wouldn't need a legal guardian anymore. Emma laughs herself sick. Gina works at the Yarn Barn, fine place that is to raise a child, and she skips school so much she'll never graduate.
Admittedly Emma's grades aren't any better. She skips school as much as Gina does, and that swing she took at the cop who broke up their party last month is probably going to come back and haunt her. But now she has a goal. A point of light, no matter how far in the distance.
When she's packing her bag to leave for her next placement, Gina's on the twin bed on the other side of their shared room, her own things spread out and sticking out of her pink little-girl suitcase, crying her eyes out. Apparently "Jerry", this particular boyfriend's name Emma guesses, decided he wouldn't stick around when he found out about the baby. At this sight, Emma snaps.
"God Gina, if you're going to be a fucking adult soon, you should fucking act like it. Jerry's a 25 year old pervert who knocked up a teenager, you're not going to get married and live fucking happily ever after. Get a grip and grow the fuck up".
She takes the garbage bag full of all her worldly possessions, her clothes, the knife she took off Tony, her baby blanket and her small stash of paperbacks, and storms out. She'll never end up like Gina, crying over a man who used her up and left her without a second thought. She'll make it on her own, and find her own home.
Keith and Mary's home is in a nicer town than she's lived in before. The boys here don't know her as a fighter or a biter. And she's started to grow, losing her tiny stature, and the rest of her beginning to round out, and they take notice. She tells them invariably to fuck off. Whereas she may have at one point jumped at being wanted by others, she wants something in life for herself now. She cloisters
herself in empty janitor's closets, studying for her GED so she can get a full time job. She attends class enough. She learns to bite back her hissing words and fists, at least until no one can see.
She'll be out as soon as she can. And she can hope for happiness, love, even a home at this point. And it would all be of her making.
When she's eighteen, Emma Swan learns how to love
She's still not quite sure when Neal Cassady managed to sneak up on her. One minute he's vaguely creepy and she only sticks around because she wants claim to the bug, the next they've been together two months and their stretched out on a blanket on the roof pointing out constellations.
South Oregon's nice in late summer. Their on the edge of a forest of trees taller than Emma's ever seen. The ground under the bug slopes downward, and they can see the screen of a drive in in the town below.
The movie, silent as it was, hadn't kept their attention, and the sky out here is deep blue and clear as if it were day. Emma's never seen so many stars in her life.
"Look there's Lucinda the Six-fingered Sorceress" Neal says, pointing to a group of stars in the east.
Emma laughs "You're just making that one up"
Neal looks offended "I am not!" He points to a random spot "See? There's all six of her fingers and all 10 of her breasts!"
"I don't think they give constellations breasts. Look." she points to another spot "Orion doesn't even get pants, just a belt! He's got nothing to hold up!".
Emma's almost giddy. There's a warmth bubbling up throughout her entire body. This moment, as ridiculous as it is, feels perfect. She's happy. The night is beautiful, she knows who see is and why she's here, and Neal doesn't act like he's going anywhere. She's happy and he seems happy that she is. That's more than she's ever had.
Later, she would say she was surprised that its at this point that Neal leans over and kisses her. But right then, it felt like something she'd been waiting for her whole life.
Before Emma can even notice, its two more months down the line, the leaves are turned and the world golden, and they'd crossed the border into Washington. The towns are smaller here, and the people more unassuming. There's a chill in the air this time of year, and Emma lets Neal wrap his arm around her shoulders when they walk down the streets. She lets him lean over to kiss her at red lights. She's
even OK with him calling her his wife when they're scamming someone.
But something in her still seems to be keeping him at arm's length.
Late in the month, they've just had a run through at a small town's Harvest Festival. Festivals had become a favorite of theirs- both a pleasant place to walk through holding hands, and enough people for no one to notice the hands snatching a mug of cider off a table or an apple out of a barrel.
Neal's handling his bag oddly when they're getting back in the bug later that night. Their parked outside the festival grounds, not wanting to draw attention to themselves in case anyone noticed their sticky fingers.
"What did you steal the prize pig and stuff it in there?"
"Not quite".
Neal shuts the door and slips the hidden object from the bag. Its a pumpkin pie. Specifically, one with a single candle stuck in its middle.
"Happy birthday"
Emma's rendered speechless. And not just because she actually hadn't remembered the date until now.
"How did you..."
"Read your fake driver's license. Figured you'd only change the year, not the day."
Emma's face remains blank and Neal starts to sound a little crestfallen "Look, if you don't like it, I really have no problem eating the whole thing myself..."
He really doesn't get a chance to finish that thought because its at that moment that Emma practically throws herself across the space separating them, capturing his face in her hands and forcefully pressing her mouth to his.
The pie remains on the dashboard, forgotten, as Emma pulls Neal into the back seat underneath her.
Sex and Emma have a rocky history. Her education had consisted of the Jones' fire and brimstone lectures, Gina's pathetic and disturbing escapades in the next bed, and the wisdom of an older coworker who told her that the older men who smiled at her at work were in no uncertain terms, perverts. Her experience, a tipsy blowjob at one of Gina's parties with a boy who wouldn't even speak to her sober and one handsome, young diner patron who had taken her out back and pressed her against a wall. His roaming hands had excited her, thrilled her. At least until his angry girlfriend had appeared, and she had to suffer through the catcalls from his friends for the rest of her shift.
None of this has exactly created a favorable view of the act.
But here, right now, with Neal underneath her, solid and kissing each bit of newly exposed skin, there is absolutely nothing in the world she wants more.
And even though Emma smacks her head on the ceiling, and she has to guide Neal's fingers to find her clit, and that it ends with them in a sticky, sweaty pile far too quickly, Emma wouldn't change it for the world.
Later, when they're still in the back, naked under a blanket, eating the pie Neal stole with plastic forks out of the glove box, Emma fesses up.
"I've never celebrated my birthday before".
"Really?" Neal looks surprised "never at all?"
"Most of the homes I lived in, nobody could be bothered to rememeber. When I was five, the couple that had me said that since I was found on the road, that that day couldn't really be my birthday and so I had no reason to celebrate it."
Neal makes a face Emma has trouble deciphering. "Well if it makes you feel any better, I haven't had a birthday in years. My papa used to always insist on celebrating, but then things with him got bad, and..."
"And you ran away?"
Neal makes that face again "yeah...tell you the truth, I'm not sure I could remember my birthdate anymore, I've been faking it for so long. I remember its in late winter, but that's it." His face perks up and he gets his familiar devilish grin again. He scoops Emma up onto his lap, and whispers into her ear "And some of us are very glad that you appeared on the side of the road that day".
The way he's looking at her right now, and the warmth of him plastered against her, she just HAS to kiss him again, even if he still has pie in his mouth.
When she curls up to him, face pressed into his neck, Emma muses, that THIS must be what love feels like, even if she can't quite find a way to say it yet.
By the time she's twenty one, Emma Swan has forgotten all of these.
Her sticky fingers were a chore to stop. If she wants to stay employed, her parole officer has made it clear that any sort of theft will be a violation and she'll be back in prison. She's working to get her record sealed, get into a real apprenticeship with the bondsman who hired her to do filing. She can't do that if she can't control herself. She learns to keep her eyes forward and her hands in her pockets.
She has to stay in shape for work. Guys who jump bail aren't as a general rule wimps, and they can put up a hell of a fight. But these are never about her. Fights in the joint earned her several scars, and she doesn't want to gain any sort of reputation to proceed her. She stays alive by being invisible.
Hope, for her, died that one morning on the inside when she was shocked awake bleeding and in pain. Henry is tiny, and very early. She doesn't even get to hold him before the nurses take him away and hook him up to so many machines that he hardly even looks human anymore. She hadn't been able to bear the thought of keeping him before, but this, the utter and complete helplessness she feels here that cements it in her mind. She signs the papers before the end of the day, and for the next three weeks that Henry is still in the hospital, she closes her heart.
And as for love, Emma remains staunchly in denial of the tiny, painful, scar in her heart that refuses to let her completely forget.