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Growing Upside Down — Chapter 2
Almost immediately, the door swung open to reveal a teenage girl with long, braided hair and a dark complexion. She stared for a moment, chewing a piece of gum thoughtfully, before allowing them in.
"I'll go grab Jean," the girl said simply, leaving Temperance and Marla in the foyer. Temperance clutched her bags, not wanting to put them down. Marla had told her in the car about this family. Don and Jean Geary were a middle-aged couple who were unable to have children of their own, but chose to take in foster children instead. They had room for four children, and they currently had two; a 16-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy. Don was a Bible professor at Wheaton College, and the couple was religious.
"Hello," a chubby, round-faced woman with light brown hair pulled into a long braid down her back came into the foyer, smiling, tailed by the Black girl. "You must be Temperance. My name is Jean Geary, it's lovely to meet you." The two shook hands, and Marla put her hand on Tempe's shoulder. She turned to face the social worker.
"Well, good luck," Marla told her. "Call if you need anything. Have a good evening!" She handed the thin manila folder to Jean and saw herself out the front door. Temperance turned and watched from a window as the social worker climbed back into the old red car and drove away, leaving her in unfamiliar territory. A hand on her back turned her attention back to the two others in the room.
"Well, Temperance," Jean said kindly, hand gently patting her back, "Let me help you with your bags. You'll be sharing a room upstairs with Tasha here," she said, indicating the other teenager. "Why don't you two go upstairs, help Temperance get settled, and give her the grand tour of the house. Dinner will be ready in an hour, and Don should be home soon enough, so you'll be able to meet him."
"Cool," the girl called Tasha said, popping her gum and looking at Temperance carefully. "Mind if I take your bag upstairs for you?" Tempe shrugged, and Tasha grabbed the duffel and started up the carpeted staircase into a hallway upstairs. "Bathroom's here, at the top of the stairs." The very short hallway ended in two doors, and Tempe followed Tasha into the one on the right.
"Here we are," she declared. "You sleep there," she said, indicating the twin bed at the end of the room, where she placed the duffel she was carrying. "The closet is here, I cleared some space for you earlier. Don't go touching my stuff, not like I have tons of things anyway. And you get the two bottom drawers of the dresser. You can unpack if you want, I'll leave you alone and call you for dinner later." Tasha gave her a smile and left.
Temperance stood there for a moment. The room was small, but functional, the ivory walls clean and the blue bedspreads clearly worn, but cared for. It was just after 5pm, but the winter sun was already setting, the fiery rays coming through the window next to what would be her bed. She was forsaken, she thought, watching the last breaths of the setting sun disappear over the horizon. She didn't bother to take her bookbag off of her back as she sat on the bed, furiously wiping the angry tears off of her cheek.
Soon, Temperance was lying sideways on the bed, curled around her duffel, which contained the precious memories of the life she had lived only two weeks before. She pretended be asleep when Tasha called to her that dinner was ready, only curling tighter around her duffel bag. She hoped, prayed to a god that she wasn't sure existed, that this wasn't real.
But she knew she'd be disappointed by that hope.
Tempe didn't realize that she had been sleeping until she awoke what seemed like hours later. It took a moment to re-orient herself to her new surroundings, to remember that she was no longer at home with Russ. A soft, yellow glow illuminated the room, the light from the lamp on the bedside table. Temperance sat up and, realizing that her knapsack was still on her back, slid the bag from her shoulders and set it next to the bed on the floor.
"Hey," a voice came from the other side of the room. Temperance turned sharply to find the African American teenager pulling on her pajama pants. "I was wonderin' when you'd wake up." Temperance said nothing, only swung her legs around and allowed them to dangle over the side of the bed, moving her duffel bag, too, to the floor. "You hungry? We saved you a plate from dinner."
Before she knew it, Tasha had ushered her downstairs, given her a glass of water, and placed a steaming plate of chicken alfredo. She sat across from her at the wooden table and was quiet for a moment. A glance at the microwave told Temperance that it was nearly 10pm. She picked at the food in front of her.
"I know you prob'ly don't wanna talk to me, or to anyone," Tasha said. "I didn't talk at all my first week in the system. But I've been in this shit four years, so if you got questions, ask 'em." Temperance was silent, pushing a strand of her limp brown hair behind her ears and continuing to concentrate on her pasta. "Okay, then, I'm just gonna talk, give you the run-down, see? And if you got questions, just interrupt and ask.
"First off, you won't stay long. None of us ever do. But this place? This is a very good home. We get good food, and no one hits here. 'Cept maybe the other fosters, but that's another story. The Gearys give chores, but they ain't bad. Schools here blow, but really, school blows everywhere. This your first time in the system? You can always tell the newbies."
"How?" Temperance asked, forgetting herself and asking. Tasha shrugged.
"You still got bags. Nice ones, I mean. My old, shitty suitcase fell apart pretty fast, so now I gotta use garbage bags to pack my stuff every time I get moved. I didn't think it'd be a big deal, didn't think I'd be in the system so long."
"How long?"
"Since I was 12. Seen the inside of tons of houses round here. Some homes are okay. Most of them are hell, or worse. You'll see. Like I said, nobody stays nowhere for long."
"How long have you been here?"
"Month or so. Hillary, the girl before you, just got released last week. Parents cleaned up and got her back. Kevin, he's 7, he's been here months. They don't like to move the little ones if they can help it. Kids like us? Well, I dunno, they just bounce us around. The older you get, the harder it is to get adopted, so the less we care. You a good kid?"
"Yes."
"You won't be for long. Not many you can trust, no respect, see? They treat us like shit, so we treat them like shit. Tit for tat."
"I don't know what that means."
"You'll learn. You're lucky to start out here, lucky you got me to help you out. I had to figure it all out myself." She leaned back in her chair and grinned smugly, examining her fingernails. Temperance eyed her suspiciously, finishing off the food and setting down her fork.
"Why should I trust you?"
"Chickie, I dunno whether you figured it out yet, but you got no one else. None of us do. We trust our own, and even then, you gotta go with caution. Stick with me, I'll lead you right." Temperance evaluated Tasha for a moment. She seemed to be telling the truth, to have taken an interest in her. And the girl was right; what did she have to lose?
She nodded curtly, and that was all it took.
The weekend went by quickly. Despite some initial disorientation when she woke, Temperance was quick to steel herself before going through the motions of the day. She hardly spoke to anyone, preferring to keep to herself. The Gearys seemed nice enough, though they were a bit religious for her taste. They were regular churchgoers, and so she found herself being dragged to a Sunday morning service with Tasha and Kevin, a very pale but active little boy that she had taken a liking to. The family wasn't Catholic, and so the service was nondenominational one.
Temperance stayed quiet during the whole service. She could not believe in God any longer. No merciful God would do this to her, to any child. It wasn't logical, it wasn't fair. She sat up straight and pretended to listen, but she heard nothing of the sermon.
All too soon, Monday morning arrived, and along with it came the first day at her new school. She woke early, showered, dressed, and collected her knapsack before Tasha had even opened a bleary eye. Tempe generally liked school. She had always been the quiet one in the front of the large classroom, not particularly pretty or charismatic, but she was Russ Brennan's little sister. That was always something.
She stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom, combing her now-dry hair and gazing at her reflection. Her own face seemed almost unfamiliar to her now, her hair hanging past her shoulders, her skin pale. She had never really used makeup before, but now, as she stared at her own reflection in the mirror, she fished some dark eyeliner and mascara out of her bag and applied it with care.
"Whoa, what's with the do?" Tasha asked, having finished brushing her teeth and now pulling on her sneakers. Tempe only shrugged. Just then, little Kevin pounded on the door.
"Jean says time to go. Temperance has to go early, so we all gotta go now." The two girls rolled their eyes at each other.
"Coming, Kevin." Now with shoes, coats, and bookbags, they made their way out to Jean's car and piled in. After struggling with some snow and ice along the two-mile road to the high school, they pulled up in front of an enormous stone building with a massive parking lot stretching to one side and the stadium lights of the football field were just visible around the back of the school.
"You going to be okay by yourself?" Jean asked Temperance. "You're just going to go to the main office to fill out some registration paperwork before classes start at 8."
"I'll be fine," she told Jean, quite a lot more securely than she felt.
But she was fine. Tasha showed her where the main office was and waited until she was done filling out forms and getting her course schedule processed. New classes in hand, Temperance allowed Tasha to point her in the right direction before finding her locker, stashing her winter coat in it, and locating the rooms that her classes would be in. Soon enough, students began to pour through the front door, the bell rang, and she was carried through the hallways by the current of students into her homeroom.
It was a large classroom, and she was one of the first there. The teacher, a young man with a short, stocky build and a head of short, tidy blond hair, was seated at his desk already. He looked up at her.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Good morning," she said. "My name is Temperance Brennan, I'm a transfer student and, according to my schedule, I've been assigned to your homeroom." He smiled and stood to shake her hand.
"Ah, yes, I received that memo this morning. Welcome to Wheaton North High School. I'm Mr. Clark. Well, Temperance, we do have assigned seats in this classroom, and I'm afraid that you'll have to take a seat in the back row, toward the left." She nodded, made her way through the first five rows of plastic desks, and took a seat in the back.
Temperance had never sat further back in a classroom than the second row, owing both to her last name and her preference as a student. It was different back here. Harder to see, harder to hear, harder to be heard. But it was very interesting, fascinating even, to observe the activity of the classroom as the other students, her classmates, filed into the room and took their seats, chatting, laughing, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, greeting each other.
"Hey, new kid," Temperance swung her head around to find that a red-haired, freckled boy was addressing her. "What's up?"
She opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off as the second bell rang to begin morning homeroom. Mr. Clark stood, gesturing the now-full classroom to stand with him. They all faced the American flag at the front of the room. After the Pledge of Allegiance had been recited, the class sat
"Good morning, good morning," he said cheerfully. "As you may have noticed, we have a new student with us today. Temperance, will you please stand and introduce yourself to the class?"
Temperance swallowed nervously but rose to her feet next to the desk, keeping her chin up and looking much more boldly than she felt around the room at the sea of unfamiliar people. She had never been the new kid in class. She took a breath.
"Hi, my name is Temperance Brennan and I just transferred from Elmwood Park." She stood for a moment, dozens of sets of eyes turned toward her, wondering if she was supposed to say or do anything else. Instead, she forced a small smile and sat down again, feeling winded.
"Okay, thank you. On to attendance, Shannon?" Mr. Clark began to call roll, and Temperance sank back into her chair, tapping her foot nervously.
"Hey," came a whisper. The redhead was trying to get her attention again. He smiled and stuck out his hand to her. "I'm Tim." She shook his hand quickly, then went back to staring around the room, glad that she had, more or less, found a friend.
When the bell rang ten minutes later for dismissal to 1st period classes, Temperance saw out of the corner of her eye that Tim had pushed past two jocks to make his way to her side as they left the room.
"So what's your first class, Temperance?"
"Trigonometry, room 213," she said.
"Impressive. I'm right next door in 211. Algebra. I'm not what you'd call mathematically inclined." The two of them followed the flow of students toward a staircase and began to climb to the second floor. "So what brings you to Wheaton?"
"Moved to the area," she told him honestly. It was her evasion, and he didn't notice.
"Cool," he said. "Hey, here's your room. See you later? Maybe I could introduce you to some friends at lunch?" Temperance was hesitant. She remembered what Tasha had told her, warning her about not getting too attached. At the same time, though, she was in no position to turn down friends. In spite of herself, she nodded.
"See you around," she told him, ducking into her classroom.
The rest of the morning went much as she had anticipated. In each class, she was reintroduced. In each class, most of the students ignored her, just as they had back in Elmwood Park. The only difference was that now they were faceless, people that she didn't know, and she had no desire to get to know any of them. She immersed herself in her schoolwork, into the familiar world of academics.
The lunch bell came and she found herself lost in a sea of a thousand students. There were just under 4,000 students here, and a third of them shared her lunch period. She looked around, bewildered, half tempted to take the lunch that Jean had packed and eat in the library. That sounded good, she thought, turning to find her way out of the cafeteria, until she ran smack into Tasha.
"Girl, watch where you goin'," she said. "You gonna get trampled in here if you keep stoppin' in the middle of traffic."
"I-I was just—"
"Don't worry 'bout it. Where you sittin'?"
"Well," Tempe said as she and Tasha found their way to the rows of tables lined up in the dining area, "a kid from my homeroom—"
"No, no," Tasha said with a bit of an attitude that she didn't like much. "Nobody's interested, you be careful now. None of these roaches care nothin' 'bout kids like us. Oh," she started, comprehension dawning. "They can't tell with you, can they? You don't look or dress like a foster kid, and you started school at a normal time, know what I'm saying?"
She did. She understood perfectly, but she found that this information didn't matter. Not now. Which was a good thing, because at that moment she felt a hand on her shoulder and whipped around to see who it was.
Tim took his hand off of her shoulder, smiling.
"Hey," he said. "We still on for lunch?" Tempe looked over at Tasha, who only raised her eyebrows. "Your friend can come."
"You two know each other?" Tempe asked.
"No," Tim said. "You coming?" Temperance looked at Tasha, eyebrows raised. Tasha gave her a bit of an eye roll and a look that clearly told her she wasn't going. So Temperance turned, lunch in hand, and followed the redhead to a table across the cafeteria.
She had never acquired friends, acquaintances, she should say, so easily. Tim's friends were a good-natured, open bunch who liked to talk and didn't ask her too many questions. She was intrigued by this bunch, even liked them.
As the days passed, she got to know them better, and became more or less integrated in with the group. Kate, who was a pretty and social blonde, had even invited her to a slumber party to celebrate her 16th birthday party. Temperance, who had never received such an invitation from one of the popular girls before, was so flustered that she said no before she'd even had time to think about it.
Each day, she missed her family so much it felt like there was an ache in her chest so heavy that her back was curling in an effort to protect her chest from any more pain. She tried to put up a front, and she was quite good at it. She spoke minimally, even at school, except for when she was speaking with her teachers. They did not notice that she was shy and withdrawn outside of the classroom.
When she returned with Tasha each day to the Geary's home, she sat at the kitchen table or up in her room, doing homework and helping Jean out with the housework. After those first few days, she didn't even speak much with Tasha, though they coexisted well as roommates. Everything was going smoothly with the family.
Then, in the first week of February, Temperance and Tasha came home to a house in disarray. An unfamiliar middle-aged man in a suit stood in the living room, and Kevin could be heard screaming upstairs.
"NO NO NO NONONO!"
Tasha and Temperance looked at each other quickly. Temperance dropped her bag by the front door and went upstairs to the room where Kevin and Paul, an 11-year-old who had recently been removed from his own home due to neglect, usually slept. Kevin was hanging onto the posts of his bed, from which Jean was attempting to gently pry him.
"Kevin, sweetheart, we have to go," she said soothingly. "Henry is downstairs, and he wants to take you back to your daddy. Wouldn't you like that?"
"NO!" he sobbed. "I don't want to go back with Daddy! I hate it there! I want to stay with you and Don and Tempe and Tasha!"
"I want you to stay here and live with me, too," Jean told him calmly, rubbing his back to calm the small boy down. "But your daddy loves you and wants you with him very much, he misses you."
"That's not true."
"Yes it is, and you're very lucky to have your daddy. He's probably much more fun than I am to hang out with, right? Come on, Kevin. It's time for you to go home."
Kevin allowed himself to be led out of the room, crying all the way, his things already packed into a garbage bag carried by Jean. On their way out of the room, Kevin caught sight of Temperance standing there, and she gave him a small smile and ruffled his hair, gently helping Jean lead him down the stairs into the foyer.
By the time they reached the foyer of the house, Kevin's subdued cries had turned to full-blown wail. Tasha was nowhere to be found. Kevin hugged Temperance good-bye, still sobbing, but before he could give Jean a hug, he tried to bolt back upstairs. The social worker was too quick, and had picked him up and carried the small child, wailing and hitting the social worker's back with his little fists, out the front door.
Temperance picked up her knapsack and made her way back up to her room, where she found Tasha sitting on her bed, filing her fingernails with a slim pink emery board. She looked up when Temperance entered.
"Goodbyes come often and they come fast in this shitty system," Tasha said without looking up. "I just stopped sayin' 'em."
"I get that," Temperance said, slipping her shoes off and sitting, cross-legged, on her bed. She pulled a book at random from her knapsack and opened it to the pages that had been assigned as homework.
"Least Kev won't have to put another name on his list," Tasha added. "He's to little anyway."
"Wait, what list?" Tasha's mouth fell agape at this comment, then closed promptly.
"Cain't believe I never told you," she said. She began to undo her belt buckle, which Temperance thought odd until she slid the belt from around her waist and tossed it to her. "Take a look at the buckle."
It wasn't on the buckle, but near the buckle that she needed to look. There, a list of names was carved crudely into the leather with what was probably a penknife. There were 16 names in total, and one name was present twice.
"Families that threw me out," Tasha said. "Some didn't actually throw me out, this is more of a list of places that didn't work out."
"The Gearys aren't here."
"You think I didn't know that? Geez, girl, you ain't never write a family on your list before you leave. Terrible luck. Nah, you can't start your own list yet. Not 'til you leave here."
"My parents are still out there," Temperance said with an edge of defiance. "I may not need a list at all."
"Chickie," Tasha said, giving a hollow laugh as she slipped her belt back through its loops in her jeans, "One way or the other, you in this shitty system. You may only have one name, but you got a list now, don't matter where you go from here."
It turned out that Temperance didn't need to wait long before starting her list. Less than a week after Kevin's removal from the home, Don Geary suffered a heart attack. Though he was okay in the end, it was decided that the children in their care would all be removed and placed elsewhere.
A new social worker showed up, one that Temperance had never seen, a petite woman called Lyla Mattison with curly blonde hair. She collected their files from Jean Geary and gave garbage bags to Tasha, who had thrown her last two away when she moved into the home. Paul's garbage bag was still intact, and Temperance's bags were still in good condition. The three children piled into the car, everything they owned squished into the trunk, and drove back to Chicago's DCFS.
The office was just as she remembered it. Lyla instructed them to take their bags to the waiting area, a carpeted room with old books and broken toys that was not visible to visitors, and sit quietly until they were called. With that, she turned on her heel and left.
"Well, this blows," Paul said, throwing himself into a chair, sinking as low as he could without falling off and crossing his arms over his chest. Tasha sighed and, rolling her eyes, sank into a chair across the room and picked up an old magazine. Temperance sank onto the carpeted floor, back against the wall, and pulled a book out of her knapsack. All of her schoolbooks from Wheaton North would be returned soon, and her bookbag felt sadly empty without their weight.
Paul was first to be called out, and then Tasha five minutes later. The minutes ticked by slowly, and Temperance remained alone in the room. Suddenly, she remembered what Tasha had told her; it was undeniably time for her to make a list, she thought bitterly. She looked around at her belongings, trying to decide.
Grimly, she undid the laces of her purple Chucks. Pulling the left shoe off and turning it over, she examined the sole. There was a recess in the white rubber, flat and smooth, so that wear on the shoe wouldn't disturb any writing. She pulled a black ballpoint pen out of her backpack and, in tiny, capital letters, penned 'GEARY.'
Recapping the pen, she slipped the shoe back, pulling the laces tight.
Her list had begun.
That's all she wrote, for now.
Keep reviewing, and I'll keep on writing. To all who reviewed before, thank you!
The next installment within a couple of days.
Later, gators!