Sisters in the Wind(27)
WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN
DECEMBER 2004
I ran from the storage unit to the last place where I had felt safe. The police found me at St. Francis Xavier. I was shivering in a corner of the front entrance of my old school, protected from the wind and sitting on my backpack as a barrier to the concrete. They took me to the emergency room, where I was checked for hypothermia. Instead of Bridget, a social worker named Mrs. Clark showed up for what she called an intake interview.
“I think my birth mother is Native American,” I volunteered, remembering Bridget’s words and all the times Native Americans had asked where I was from and who my people were.
“I wouldn’t mention it, Lucy,” she said, not looking up from her paperwork. “It complicates everything. Just say you’re Mexican.”
That was it. Don’t mention it. Be Mexican.
It wasn’t until later that I thought, Who does it complicate things for?
I was arrested and charged with arson. Due to the extensive damage to multiple storage units, I was adjudicated on felony charges.
But the case went nowhere. Bridget convinced the other storage-unit renters to settle the case out of court. I assumed that she used money meant for raising me to pay off the settlements.
Bridget requested to terminate the adoption. I didn’t know it was possible to undo an adoption. It was called a “failed adoption.” I was to become a ward of the state. Bridget’s attorney worked out an arrangement with the state family court to pay toward partial reimbursement for my care.
I never saw her again.
* * *
By the end of December 2004, I was placed in the foster home of Miss Lonnie Lawton. She lived on Beaver Island in the middle of Lake Michigan. About six hundred people lived year-round on the remote island, which took a two-hour ferry ride to reach. Miss Lonnie went a step further; her stone cabin was located as far away as possible from the main settlement. A man arrived by snowmobile twice a week to check on us.
Miss Lonnie was kind. She was a foster parent for girls who needed special care because she herself had also gone through tough times.
“Kids in foster care aren’t bad kids. Just good kids in bad situations,” she said.
Miss Lonnie believed in teaching young women survival skills like ice fishing, snaring rabbits, and differentiating the edible plants and mushrooms from the toxic ones. Being away from distractions and living a subsistence lifestyle would occupy our bodies and minds.
The north and west sides of her cabin were bermed into a mound that sheltered it from strong winds. Only the south and east sides had windows. She relied on energy from old windmills, new solar panels, a propane tank, and a backup generator for emergencies. We kept a cast-iron woodstove going around the clock, which meant constantly hauling and stacking wood that Miss Lonnie chopped and split.
Sometimes Miss Lonnie would talk about fire in a way that made me wonder if being placed with her wasn’t random at all.
“Fire speaks to something chaotic inside us. It has the power to destroy, but if we respect and recognize the ways it keeps us warm and safe, we can coexist with the fire.”
More than once, Miss Lonnie described herself as a child of ash and air. “I survived the flames and crawled from the ashes to breathe fresh air.”
Her thoughts about fire took me back to the night I’d lit the fuse at the storage unit. How angry I’d felt in that moment. My fury had built up. I wouldn’t have cared if the entire world had caught fire. I wasn’t the ashes. In the instant the lit fuse reached it, I was the firework.
I didn’t want to talk about that night with Miss Lonnie or my foster sister.
* * *
For the first time in my life, I had a sibling—a foster sister.
The Beaver Island public library had a selection of old movies we could check out and watch on Miss Lonnie’s VHS player. My heart leaped when I found The Trouble with Angels. After we watched it, my foster sibling started calling me Mary Clancy and then just Clancy. She let me call her Devery, the last name of Mary Clancy’s best friend, Rachel Devery.
Devery had bright red hair like Pippi Longstocking from the books I’d read as a child. She had just turned seventeen when I arrived but, short and petite, looked much younger. Her husky voice was the biggest thing about her. We whispered confidences and giggled quietly, pausing to listen for Miss Lonnie’s snoring from her bedroom next to ours.
Devery had been in foster care since she was six. Miss Lonnie’s was her ninth placement. She said foster care could be fun. Some group homes had boys and girls together; those were the best. The worst were juvenile detention facilities, where staff could do anything to you, and no one dared report it. Miss Lonnie’s was just okay, according to my foster sister.
“She’s a nice lady, but living like pioneers is whack-a-doodle.”
As tiny as she was, Devery ate more than I did. She had an odd habit of sneaking food and squirreling it away in an old fruitcake tin. Sugar cubes, peanuts, hard bits of cheese. When I asked why, she said in case the food ran out.
“But Miss Lonnie always has something,” I assured her.
“Good. Then I better never catch you raiding my stuff.”
Just once, she let me take something from her cache. I surprised her by selecting a cigarette. She followed me outside, where I crumbled the tobacco and set it next to the cabin.