I wondered if Miss Barks had told the Peggots I was a hard kid to handle.
“I won’t do any of those teenager things,” I told her. “I would mind you. You and Mr. Peg both, I promise. I could probably get Maggot to do better.”
Mrs. Peggot looked at the window instead of me. Snow was starting to fall, the whole world so damn quiet. I could hear their big clock ticking from the other room where it sat on the mantel with the picture of Holy Aunt June. She wasn’t going to save me, either.
“But what if,” I started, and backed up, started again. “I can be a lot of help, like carrying in groceries and heavy things. What if I just stayed until Maggot’s mom gets out, and whenever he moves, I’d find another home too?”
Mrs. Peggot said they had discussed this too with Miss Barks. But she gave them the advice that it wasn’t a great idea. She said teenage boys are the hardest of all to find homes for, and it was better to get them in some kind of permanent situation while younger if at all possible. She’d promised the Peggots she would keep working on it.
And that was it. Mr. and Mrs. Peggot wanted to try out being regular grandparents for a change, and not be parents anymore. I needed to let Miss Barks find me some nice people that were younger and could take me in for good.
I shouldn’t have been shocked. Emmy had warned me, and honestly I knew better, but something in me was holding out. Now it fell to pieces. I cried in front of Mrs. Peggot. That was horrible. She had to go hunt up a box of tissues and then rub me on the back like a baby.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over. Words I hated so much I wanted to smash them with my fists.
Crying was the sickest part, in how shamefaced I felt. Even at Mom’s funeral I never shed a tear, because of hating everybody. Hard as a rock. But with Aunt June being so nice and Emmy in love with me, I’d let myself get soft. Thinking the Peggots were not like everybody else, but special, as regards the Jesus thing of loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself. For fuck’s sake, hadn’t I learned that lesson? Sunday school stories are just another type of superhero comic. Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal.
20
Starting from that day, in that kitchen, I was on my own. New year, new life, not yet in my own house making the payments, but that’s how I felt: my own man. Not liking it a bit.
Miss Barks found me a new foster home, which was the McCobb family: Mr. and Mrs., first and second grade boy and girl named Brayley and Haillie, plus two babies with names I never did get straight due to everybody calling them the Twins. Screamer One and Two would cover it. One would fall asleep, the other would start up a fit, they’d get each other going and not a lot of sleeping happened in that house. Nor cheerfulness either.
This family’s main problem was being flat broke. You never saw people so stressed out over money. Mr. McCobb oftentimes did have work, but between one thing and another, Brayley needing the better kind of tennis shoes, Haillie wanting five dollars to try out for junior tumbling squad, the babies needing Pampers and so on, plus whatever was going on with the credit cards as far as robbing Peter to pay Paul, they ran out of cash every single month without one end meeting the other. Mrs. McCobb worried herself sick over Brayley and Haillie getting tormented at school for not having what the other kids had. Which is a legit concern, take that from me, a person that lined up every Friday of all times for the Backpacks of Love aka food sacks the church ladies sent home on weekends for free-lunch kids so we wouldn’t starve. I never knew any different, I was always that kid, so I grew up being as tall and tough about it as I was able. But you don’t want to go down that road if you can help it. Brayley being one of those small but chubby, grub-worm type of kids, and Haillie in her own little world of troll dolls and rainbow ponies, they both had targets on their backs. If those two went over to the Backpacks of Love side of things, you’d fear for their lives.
Mrs. McCobb told me she’d never in a million years thought they would stoop to taking in a foster child. But hopefully having that little bit extra every month from the DSS would turn things around. Plus they were being good Christians, and if it came up at school I was to say that.
Mr. McCobb was big on ideas for making that little bit extra to turn things around, and had tried most of them: selling Amway, breeding AKC pups with fake papers, human advertisement, sperm donor, etc. Plus buying lotto tickets, obviously. His newest idea was taking in a foster. If I went okay, they might take in two, for twice the cash. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Creaky made no bones about wanting that five hundred a month per head. I knew the score.