Sadie shook her head.
She knew, she said.
Her mother wrapped her arms around her, pressed her lips to Sadie’s forehead. Sadie hadn’t understood, yet, what was going on, but dread seeped into her like a chill against her damp skin. She leaned against her mother, burrowed her face into the soft crook of her mother’s neck so hard she couldn’t breathe.
Don’t forget us, okay? her mother had said, and Sadie was still confused when the bathroom door opened. A man, in a police uniform. Sadie’s father was still shouting downstairs.
There were four officers, it turned out. Two stayed with her father downstairs and one stayed with her mother upstairs and one stood guard outside Sadie’s room while she got dressed. Unsure what to do, she’d put on her rainbow-striped pajamas, as if she were simply going to bed like any other day. Let her go back and change, her mother had said, when Sadie came out into the hallway, at least let me braid her hair. But the man in the hallway shook his head.
From now on, he said, she’s not your responsibility anymore.
He put his hand on Sadie’s shoulder and steered her down the stairs, and Sadie understood that something terrible was happening but was positive, at the same time, that it could not be real. She’d tried to look back at her mother for a clue—if she should scream or fight or run or obey—but all she could see was the broad blue chest of the officer behind her, blocking everything but a sliver of her mother’s arm from view. And so she remembered what her mother had always taught her: be extra careful around policemen, say please and thank you and ma’am and sir. Whatever you do, don’t make them angry. They’d shuttled her into a big black car, and the policeman had buckled her into the back seat, and she’d said: Thank you. After they’d driven away, after they’d taken her to the station, then the airport, then a foster home, after she’d realized she wasn’t going home again, she’d regretted that thank-you, she’d regretted going so quietly.
* * *
? ? ?
Her first foster parents had wanted to rename her. A new name for a new start, they’d suggested, but she’d flat-out refused.
My name is Sadie, she said.
For two weeks they’d tried to convince her, but eventually they’d given in.
So many new things for her in those early days. Some—new family, new house, new city, new life—she could not fight, so she resisted in the few places she could. On the way to school, she’d stopped on the front step and stripped off the flounced, flowered dress they’d given her, left it on the lawn, walked the rest of the way in her underwear. A phone call from the principal; a stern lecture from her foster parents. The next morning she did it again. You see, everyone said. What kind of parents—？ She’s practically a savage.
Her second foster mother tried to untangle the dense cloud of her hair. We’ll have to have it relaxed, she said, despairing, and that night, after everyone was asleep, Sadie snuck downstairs for the kitchen shears. From then on she kept it clipped to a curly halo around her head. I don’t know what to do with her, this foster mother said once to a friend, when she thought Sadie couldn’t hear. It’s like she takes no pride at all in her appearance.
They were kind people who thought they meant well. They’d been government-selected as fit parents, certified as people of good moral character who could teach good patriotic values.
There’s something wrong with her, Sadie heard her latest foster mother say into the telephone: the weekly check-in with the social worker, pumping for evidence that Sadie would need to stay. She hasn’t cried once, all the time she’s been here. I even sat outside her room and listened all night. She doesn’t cry at all. Now tell me, what kind of child goes through all this and doesn’t even cry? Yes. That’s what I think, too. What kind of parents she must have had, to make her so cold and unfeeling.
She’d sighed. We’re doing what we can, she said. We’ll try to repair the damage that’s already been done.
A few weeks later, a letter, which Sadie had found in her foster mother’s desk: In light of severe emotional scarring inflicted by child’s previous domestic situation, recommend permanent removal. Permanent custody granted to foster parents.
And it was true, Sadie never cried. A few times she’d given Bird letters to her old address, scribbled on notepaper, but the last had come back stamped recipient unknown. Even then, Bird had not seen her cry.
Sometimes, though, when he saw her squatting in the corner of the playground, head leaning against the chain-link fence, he turned away, so she wouldn’t have to pretend to be brave. To let her be alone with her grief, or whatever heavier thing she’d put on top to hold it down.