And then where would she go? She’d be passed over to another social worker, someone who didn’t like her and didn’t care, who’d throw Joey into a foster family who also didn’t care. Or maybe she’d be sent to one of those facilities she’d heard about at school, like a prison for girls, the place where bad seed kids were sent.
Because of course Joey was a bad seed. She’d come from a rotten mother.
“I’m so sorry,” she said desperately. “Carson, I love you, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Joey,” the little boy said, reaching for her, but Lola Celia held him firm.
Her aunt went to the closet and grabbed the tall plastic hamper filled with the kids’ dirty clothes. She dumped them out onto the carpet. Marching back toward Joey’s bookcase, she swept all the books off the shelf and into the basket, tossing in both the stripped paperbacks and the two brand-new novels Joey had just bought. When all the books were in the hamper, she dragged it out of the bedroom and into the hallway. A few seconds later, Joey heard thumping as her aunt pulled it down the staircase.
Panic set in, and Joey ran after her.
“Tita Flora, please, I’m so sorry. Please.”
Tito Micky looked up in surprise when the two of them came bursting out the back door. He was about to light a cigarette, and it nearly fell out of his mouth as his wife bumped past him to get to the steel trash can where he’d just finished burning the leaves. It was still smoking.
Tita Flora was small, but she was a nurse, and she was strong. Joey watched as her aunt, bending at the knees, picked up the heavy hamper and tipped the books straight into the metal trash can. Tossing the hamper aside, she grabbed the can of lighter fluid at Tito Micky’s feet. She generously doused the books with it and then snatched her husband’s matchbook right out of his hand. She lit it and tossed it in, stepping back as the flames flared up, renewed.
Burning leaves smell one way. Burning paper smells a little different, and the scent gutted Joey from the inside out. She sank to her knees as the orange flames roared. In that moment, it might as well have been Joey on fire. Her books were the only things that weren’t attached to painful memories. Nearly all those books had belonged to her mother. They were the only good things Joey had.
A sound beating would have hurt less.
Joey looked up at the bedroom window, where her little cousin stood watching the whole thing, his small face crumpled with tears and regret. Behind him was Lola Celia, her hands still on his shoulders, smiling a smile that really wasn’t a smile at all.
Joey knew that smile. Her mother had the same one, and it came to Joey then, what the old woman had said.
Burn her books. All of them.
* * *
Joey woke up the next morning after a fitful sleep. It was the day she would be heading into Toronto to testify, and she had been plagued all night with bad dreams she now couldn’t remember.
She rolled over to find a large envelope beside her on the bed. A floppy heart was drawn on the outside in red crayon, and inside there was a bunch of coins. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. A few loonies. And at the very bottom, a two-dollar bill.
Carson was sitting on the floor in the same spot where he’d cut up her books the day before, still in his pajamas. It was clear he’d been there awhile, waiting for her to wake up. Behind him, his older brothers were still asleep in their bunks.
“What’s this?” Joey whispered.
“My piggy bank money,” Carson said, struggling not to cry. “You can buy more books. I’m sorry, Joey.”
She put the money back in the envelope and carried it with her as she sat on the floor beside him.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said, her voice catching when she saw the bruise on his cheek. She looked him right in the eyes. “I did something very bad. Hitting is bad, and I promise I will never, ever hit you again. I’m so sorry, Carson. You are such a good boy, and I am so sorry. Nobody ever should be hit.”
“But Lola hit you,” he said. “At the pond.”
There was nothing she could say to that.
He scooched over to her and climbed into her lap. She hugged him tight and rubbed her cheek on his soft, baby-shampoo-scented hair. They stayed like that for a full minute.
I am not my mother. I will never be my mother.
I would rather die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
When the bailiff opened the doors, the first thing Joey saw was that all the spectator seats were empty, just as Deborah said they would be.
The second thing she saw was the judge seated at the very end of the aisle, up high on the bench, wearing a black robe, just like on TV.