Chapter 2: A Cause for Alarm

The next two weeks seemed to drag by impossibly slow for Kira. The other children who lived in the house were a bit older than she and had no interest in playing with her; when they were allowed to play that is. Each child had tasks that they had to complete each day before they could enjoy precious few moments to themselves after they returned to the house from school and completed their homework.

Kira figured that they were lucky since going off to school gave them time away from Mama Selma. She wasn't so lucky, though she wasn't always in the house while they were at school. Kira was frequently told to go out to play in the yard and once she did she often heard the door lock behind her. She then would remain outside until just before the other children were returned by way of the school bus.

By the time that the door had been opened back up to permit her back in the relative warmth on the cool and rainy spring day, Kira had been soaking wet . Of course, Selma had been more than just a little upset when she began to drip water all over her allegedly clean floor. Kira had been forced to strip out of her wet clothes right there in the kitchen and was thrown a couple of towels to clean her mess up.

"I swear you make more messes than any child that I've ever seen." Selma shook her head in dismay as she wondered just how she was to train such a child to keep things in order.

Kira reached across the large table to try to grab her juice drink. The table was too big to reach the glass without getting up on her knees. Climbing up, Kira took a sip of her drink and went to put the glass back onto the table when she hollered at her.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kira flinched as Mama Selma chastised her for having such bad table manners. When she jerked, Kira lost her grip on the slippery juice glass and dropped it, sending shards of glass everywhere. "Look at what you've done! How many times have I told you not to sit on your knees at the dinner table? Has no one ever taught you decent table manners? You are old enough to know better than that by now!"

Selma jerked the young charge up from the table and yanked her behind her as she headed down the hall. Why couldn't the Division of Family and Children Services send her children who didn't need such a firm hand? But then, she was good at what she did. Maybe that's why they kept sending her these delinquents for her to straighten out. She knew just how to drill discipline into these kids. Opening the door to the basement, Selma pushed the girl into the stairwell.

"If you can't make it through just one dinner without making a mess, then you can just stay down there for the night. Only good kids deserve a bed to sleep in."

Kira tumbled down the stairs and felt sick to her stomach when she felt her right arm explode in pain when she landed hard at the bottom of the stairs. Later she'd learn that it was broken, but that was only after it was broken for a second time and was reset after never healing properly from the first break.

She spent all night crying in pain as she clung to her injured arm. Somehow, she'd thought that she would have gotten a toy (a doll perhaps) for her fifth birthday, not a broken arm. That was just the first of many long, dark nights locked away in the basement of Mama Selma's.

(Three years later)

Kira sat on the edge of the exam table and brought her hand up to touch the new cast on her right arm. This was second time that she had been given a cast on that arm in the more than three years since she had first been sent to live with Selma. Just outside of the pulled curtain, Kira heard her foster mother and the social worker talking in hushed tones.

Kira had been surprised that the woman had made it to the hospital before she was release. Normally she didn't show up until days after a trip to the hospital due to an accident. For Ms. Roe to actually make it to the hospital while Kira was still being seen was unheard of. Now Kira leaned toward the two who were just a few feet away and listened as the two women spoke on the other side of the curtain.

"Selma, I've told you before. We can't keep having these kinds of accidents."

"It's not like I had anything to do with them, Connie. You know that. That girl has been a problem since the very first day that she was brought to me."

Kira furled her brow as she rolled her eyes. Oh yes, all of the trips to the hospital were her fault. She had lost count of all of the trips to the emergency room or even the times when she should have gone to the hospital but didn't as well.

"I know. But I have to tell you that people are starting to get curious. If she ends up in here again my bosses are going to start nosing around. If that happens we both could have a lot of hard questions to answer."

Kira couldn't hear Selma's response, only the social worker continued in her diatribe and the urgency in her voice; Kira's mind began to mull over just what that could mean for her. Perhaps she now had a means to get away from Selma and her strict discipline.

When the doctor finally released Kira while giving Selma instructions on how to care for the injury, Kira made a promise to herself that this would be the last time that she would be sent back to that house after an injury. She didn't care what she had to do. Even if she as to run past the security officers themselves here at the hospital to do it.

Kira awkwardly grabbed her pencil and did her best to try to do her homework with the wrong hand now that her right arm was in a cast. Her writing looked like a mess and was illegible but she knew from experience that there would be no excuses for not getting her homework done. Neither Selma nor her teacher at school would accept any of them. Kira was just glad that school work came so easy for her. At the moment, doing the math figures in her head was a lot simpler than getting it down on paper. Once the math was completed Kira would then be able to work on her favorite subject, history.

Across from her at the table, a younger girl sat writing out her spelling words as yet another girl studied for a geography quiz that would be given the next day. None of the girls had spoken in more than two hours since they each knew the price of talking during study time. A reminder of that cost had come when the youngest of the house had forgotten the rule of no talking and had started to giggle about her day at school shortly after the girls had all sat down to begin their homework. Selma had immediately jerked the first grader up and took her off to the basement and had yet to return. Kira knew that she likely would still be down there through dinner and possibly until the morning. More than likely she would be sporting new bruises as well.

Kira listened to the sounds that were coming from the lower floor and gritted her teeth. With tomorrow being Friday, Jamie likely would end up staying home from school which would give the bruises a whole weekend to fade before the girl would return back to school. Selma would tell the school that Jamie was sick and her work would be sent home with the rest of the girls for her to do over the weekend and if the teachers ever suspected the real reason for the girl's absence no one would ever say anything.

That was one thing that Kira couldn't understand. If others knew what was going on here in this house then why didn't anyone ever do anything about it? Shouldn't someone say something? Here there were six of them all living in a house with a woman whose ideas of discipline were tantamount to torture and anyone who knew the girls just turned a blind eye to each and every injury that was sported after the slightest infraction of the rules.

As study time came to an end, Selma returned to the room and began to scan over the work that had been done by the young students. When she stopped behind Lottie, each of the girls stiffened as they waited to learn just what had caused Selma to pause.

"Lottie, tell me. How many regions is the United States divided up into?"

Lottie swallowed hard as she bit her lip. She had eight on her paper but by Selma's reaction, that must be wrong. She racked her brain and tried to see which one she'd missed.

"Um... Nine, maybe?"

"Nine? List them." Selma crossed her arms and glared down at the fourth grade girl.

"Uh...um...Pacific Coast... Atlantic... South... Southeast... Mountains... Midwest... New England... and...West?"

"Wrong," Selma bellowed as she reached down to pull the girl up on her feet. "The correct answer would be TEN! Pacific Coast, Mountain, Southwest, Heartland, Midwest, Appalachian, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, New England and Noncontiguous."

"I'm sorry," Lottie squealed as she pulled on her arm knowing that it wouldn't help. "I'll remember them; I promise!"

"Yes you will, after I've drilled them into you! Now time to go downstairs!"

Selma turned toward the basement door with Lottie in tow and casually reached out to grab the wooden paddle that she kept on the peg near the door that was just out of reach of the children. It had several holes drilled into it, as well as some small ball bearings glued throughout the paddle to make the tool a more effective device in disciplining her charges. The whole time, Lottie pled her case as tears streamed down her face.

When Kira saw the paddle removed from its hook, something inside her just snapped. With her good hand tightened in a fist, she quickly stood, causing the bench behind her to tip over. She then ran over and pushed Selma against the wall as hard as she could.

Selma cried out in surprise and released Lottie as she turned to glare at Kira for her impertinence. "How dare you?!"

Selma revved back with the paddle and struck the eight year old. Kira had brought her already injured, casted, arm to protect her face and was sent backwards onto the floor from the impact. Her head bounced hard on the kitchen floor causing her ears to ring and her vision to turn red. Kira turned to her side and braced for what she knew from experience would come next. Once Selma lashed out she rarely quit before she was exhausted.

Meanwhile, the other girls all ran out of the house as they tried to put as much distance between themselves and the angry woman. Lottie eventually found a neighbor and asked for help which led to calls both to the police and the hospital. Within a week, all six girls were removed from Momma Selma's and were sent to new homes. Some were better than living with Selma, others were not.

Kira was sent to a home of a nice couple who both loved children and for the first time in her life, she no longer lived her life in fear. Unfortunately, it would not be a permanent home. The couple moved out of state only four months after she had been placed with them which sent her back into the system. At nine years old, luck with her next foster home was not on her side.