Authors: Jacqueline Sheehan
“Y
ou did
not
drag me over here to go to junk sales,” said Rocky. It was Saturday morning, and she and Isaiah were in his truck, idling at the curbside where a hand-lettered sign said E
STATE
S
ALE 9â2.
“No, we are here to see if we can squeeze another year out of the dog warden's truck,” said Isaiah. “And Tess told me that you have teenage girl trouble times two, not to mention the quandary about paternity. You've got troubles with the first man you dated after Bob's death, you quit your job back at the university, and you bought a fixer-upper house. You need what we refer to as an off-island respite. We all do at times. It cleanses the spirit.” He unsnapped his seat belt.
“Correction. Animal control warden. So I've got too much going on. Your solution is to bring me to an estate sale?” said Rocky. While irritated, she was relieved to be off the island, with the weight of Natalie temporarily lifted.
She had driven the yellow truck on the ferry and taken it to a garage. The truck had not passed inspection for as long as Rocky had been on the island. Isaiah had followed in his truck.
“There are treasures to be found at these sales. Come on, let me scratch this old itch. Besides, you're not going to find another black man who likes tag sales. It goes against our stereotype,” he said.
“There's a stereotype? I'm not in the loop on estate sales, tag sales, whatever you call them. I wouldn't know what's a stereotype and what isn't.”
Rocky sighed, pressed the release button on her seat belt, and opened the door. The house was small, one story, with a gaping garage spilling possessions. Rocky wanted to turn away. Isaiah caught her arm and led her up the cracked sidewalk.
“You'll love it, and we have four hours to kill before the truck is brought up to minimal standards. You might find something interesting for your new house. That's how island people shop: we find stuff over here in Portland that nobody wants anymore, and we drag it back over on the ferry. Charlotte calls it island chic.”
“Wait, what's the stereotype?” she said, dragging her feet as they neared the driveway.
“I had to take some refresher courses about ten years ago before I could start teaching shop at the high school. âTeaching Across the Cultures: A Multi-Ethnic Approach to Teaching.' It was taught by a skinny blond gal from Indiana. She informed us that black people don't buy used clothing. Just like that. She said it had to do with poverty and overidentification with the middle class and rejection of the lower classes. I raised my hand and asked if she thought that it might also be genetic.”
“You did not,” said Rocky.
“I did. Unfortunately, she tried to answer me. Just for laughs these days, I try to fracture any remnants of the myth. If I see anything good for Charlotte, I'll pick it up for her. Your young houseguest has a peculiar fashion sense that I can't put my finger on. But this could be the mother lode of clothing for her if she likes the vintage look,” he said.
“Buying clothing for an eighteen-year-old isn't safe territory. I've already said the wrong thing to her five times over.”
They approached a long table piled high with men's jackets and sweaters.
“Here's a great selection for you,” said Rocky. She held up a sweater with an LL
B
EAN
tag on the back of the neck.
“Are you kidding? I'd never wear used clothing,” he said.
Rocky whipped the sweater at him and lashed him on the arm.
“You are one crazy old man,” she said.
“I resent that. I'm not old. Go away and don't bother me. Go look through the house and appear interested.”
Rocky was left in the driveway between rows of tables stacked with record albums, mismatched plates, salt and pepper shakers, and a huge selection of dented aluminum pots and pans. Two men in overalls wore nail belts that jangled with coins; they were obviously the ones in charge. One man dipped his hand into the nail belt and made change for a customer who held a box of canning jars. The crowd was thin, not more than ten people in all. The two men had gray hair, with a matching two days' worth of beard along their jawlines.
“Ninety-two when she died. Listened to her records right up to the last minute. Stayed here in her house,” said one of the men.
With a suffocating tug to her throat, Rocky realized that this was their mother's house. They were selling off every single thing from their mother's life: her Tupperware, bath mats, her walker, and, in several boxes, a selection of hand-painted ceramics of birds and mammals that looked suspiciously Disney-like. Rocky looked too long at the box of creatures.
“That there is good stuff, very good stuff from the seventies. You don't see it anymore. My mother took a class and painted every one of them herself in a ceramics class.”
The genuine pride in his voice stopped Rocky. She squatted down and picked up a ceramic bunny.
“She had them for all the holidays. It's a complete set, right through the calendar,” he said, fiddling with his nail belt.
Rocky gently placed the bunny back into the box. “I wouldn't want to break up the set.” She backed away from the box as if it held cadavers.
“I can talk to my brother about a deal for the whole set. In the meantime, the whole house is open,” he said. Rocky looked up and saw that his eyes, a watery blue, held the tinge of grief that is impossible to miss once you've seen it in the mirror.
“Thank you,” she said. She entered the house through the garage reluctantly, like stepping into a mausoleum. It was worse on the inside; neatly ironed dish towels, threadbare and patched, sat on the kitchen counter, beckoning someone to touch them. No one else would ever wash and iron them with such care again; this was their last moment of dignity, carrying all the love and tenderness of the woman who had died.
B
y the time Isaiah returned to his truck, Rocky was buckled into the front seat with a box of dish towels and embroidered pillowcases on her lap. A ceramic bunny sat on top of the pile of cloth. Isaiah was empty-handed. He quickly scanned her haul while he started the truck. She stared straight ahead.
“Nice rabbit,” he said.
“They made me take it.”
“Of course they did. Those two looked like pretty tough negotiators.”
“Can we please see if my truck is fixed yet? And no more tag sales. Estate sales, call them what you will. This is too raw and primitive, pawing through the belongings of the dead.”
He drove slowly away. “The dead don't need orâone can only imagineâwant this stuff. What did you do with Bob's personal belongings?”
Rocky put her hand on the ceramic bunny. “Don't you remember? I told you that I put all of his clothing into black plastic bags and drove them to a Salvation Army store far enough away from our town that I wouldn't see men walking around in Bob's clothes. I threw away things like his combs, shaving equipment, and toiletry bag. I could never have done what these two guys did and let strangers paw through Bob's belongings. The weird thing is, I suddenly need something of Bob's for the DNA test, something mundane like a comb, just a piece of hair, a toothbrush.”
The day was hot, and a thick haze had settled, filled with pollen, carbon monoxide, and all the molecular castoffs from human activity.
“I just thought of something. After his veterinary business was sold to his partner, I never went back there again. He had a closet where he kept gym clothes and who knows what else. What if they haven't cleaned that out yet?”
Isaiah turned his head and frowned. “That was well over a year ago. Surely they would have cleaned out Bob's gym shorts by now.”
“But what if they haven't? This could be our best lead for the DNA test. I'll call tonight.”
Rocky shared almost everything with Isaiah. She would certainly share the result of the phone call to Bob's old partner. But she wasn't ready to tell anyone about the next phone call she had to make. The call to the foster care system felt deceptive and awful, and she wished that someone would stop her.
R
ocky didn't tell Natalie that she was going to the foster care office. If she had, the girl would have thought Rocky was checking into her background, which she was. She hadn't needed the prompting from Isaiah, and she wasn't sure that it was prompting.
“We've got people right here on the island who are foster parents, and they are solid and good in all the important ways that I can think of,” said Isaiah. “I don't think I could put in the labor-intensive parenting that they give to children.” He didn't say one word about doubting Natalie, but he knew the perfect way to let an unspoken sentence dance in the air.
T
he Southern Maine Foster Care office was within walking distance of the dock in Portland, less than a mile, and Rocky welcomed the walk. She had called ahead and requested an appointment with the director regarding a child who had been damaged by the foster care system. She hadn't known that her tone carried the steel brush of accusation. She had pulled out her best pair of black pants and uncomfortably tried on her best PhD credentials. Clearly, she had not endeared herself to the director with her phone message.
“I don't know where you get your information about foster parents, but your tone is insulting,” said the man behind the desk. His nameplate said I
RA
L
EVINE,
MSW
,
D
IRECTOR
. He notably had not risen when Rocky walked in. She truly hadn't intended to start the meeting off with an ignorant insult of his life's work. She had said, “I'm here to find out about a kid who was abused in the foster care system. One of many, I presume.”
I presume?
When did she ever use that phrase? Just that one word could have tipped Ira Levine over the edge. It would have had that effect on her.
“My apologies. I've been out of the psychological world for over a year, and even then I wasn't the most tactful person. My only experience with the foster care system was with college students who had been belched out of that system.”
Ira winced at her use of the word
belched.
He took a breath to quell what must have been a temptation to throw Rocky out.
“Let me start over. I have a kid who showed up on my doorstep. She thinks she might be the biological daughter of my husband, who died over a year ago. She looks damaged in eight different ways, and she has some horrific stories to tell about foster care, where she was . . .”
Rocky paused and deleted words like
dumped, thrown, composted
.
“ . . . where she was placed from age three or so until age seventeen.”
“I'm sorry about your husband. I assume that she was not just in one home. How many homes was she in?”
“She said about twelve or more. She said she might not remember all of them.”
“And you want to know what exactly from us, the perpetrators of her horrible existence?”
“I'm making a concerted effort to officially drop my offensive misconceptions about foster care, based on bad TV specials. I am dropping my weapons. My sarcasm has been checked at the door. Honest. I'm here to get suggestions from you about the best way to help her.”
Ira Levine rose with glacial slowness, walked around to the front of his desk, and extended his hand. “Dr. Pellegrino, please sit down. I'm very protective of the parents who open their homes to children and who do work that is so hard you cannot imagine. We have fifteen hundred children in foster care in Maine, all of whom were in crisis and needed a safe place to live. We try to provide that. We provide extensive screening of foster parents, mandatory classes, and ongoing support for the child and the foster parents. We struggle against a perception that parents take in kids for the money. Believe me, there is little financial gain to be had.”
If they both took off their shoes, Rocky knew she'd be taller than Levine. He wore the thickest soles possible, one step before something more contrived. But still, she'd never seen Vibram soles quite that thick. He had the slightly protruding belly that arrives so quickly for men in their forties, practically overnight, even if they've indulged in doughnuts and cinnamon rolls only as special weekend treats.
“She wasn't in the system in Maine. Natalie lived in Massachusetts. I know the system might be different in each state, but I wanted to ask you, or someone, what happens to a kid if, by consistently terrible luck, they did live in twelve abusive homes.”
“You should start with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I can give you a contact number for Boston. You might consider softening your approach before you call them,” said Levine. He wrote a number on a sticky note, tore it off, and handed it to her.
Rocky folded the yellow piece of paper in half and slid it into her pocket. The director had just lobbed her to the state of Massachusetts with amazing speed. And he hadn't answered her question.
“Thanks,” she said.
She turned to leave. To the right of the door, Levine had a bookcase crammed beyond capacity with books, newspapers, journals, photos of a boy and a girl in dated school pictures, and a small photo frame that held two words in the center, written in calligraphy: T
ZADIKIM
N
ISTARIM.
She picked up the framed words.
“Not enough vowels for me,” she said, holding it out to him with a shrug.
“Nor for most people,” said Levine as his eyes softened a bit and the muscles around his mouth relaxed.
“What does it mean?” asked Rocky.
“The full answer would take several decades of Hasidic study. But the short answer is âconcealed righteous ones who protect others from dark and mysterious forces.' ”
“Sounds like
Star Wars.
Sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but dark and mysterious forces are the bread and butter of George Lucas,” said Rocky. She placed the framed calligraphy back in its nook on the shelf.
“Who knows? Maybe our Mr. Lucas makes all his movies with
tzadikim nistarim
in mind. It is from Hasidic Jewish lore, and the belief has all the makings of the fantastical. But then, most religions lean in that direction, with seas parting, water turning to wine, and lions sleeping with lambs, metaphorically or not.”
“But what does it mean beyond that?” Rocky had her hand on the door handle.
Levine turned a level gaze on her and smiled. “That at any given time there are a specific number of people who support the world, or maybe it's just a village. Their caring and righteousness are what keeps the village alive. Without them, we would perish. But here's the thing: they don't know that they are
tzadikim nistarim
because of their extraordinary humility and goodness. In fact, if people think that they might be members of the club, then that alone is proof that they are not. The world keeps turning because of them, we keep falling in love, we keep having sweet babies, and we write books and make sculptures because of them. And they go unheralded.”
“Who do you think they are in your village?” But Rocky already knew what he would say, and now something was wrong and the sting of it settled into her.
“In my village? They are the foster parents who take in damaged, snarling children who have been through hell. They willingly love our throwaway children. They protect children who are ready to throw themselves headlong into the first disastrous pit they stumble intoâdrugs, sexual abuse, or worse. The foster parents think they are just average schmucks, doing what anyone would do to help a kid. They don't know that they are holding up the world.”
Rocky dropped her hand from the door handle. “Can I call you again? I know that I came here with an attitude, wanting you to help me fix this kid from what she said happened to her in fourteen years of foster care, but I've been ignoring an obvious alternative reality with her.”
“Do you mean the possibility that what she's told you isn't true? It may be true or not true, but I'm almost positive that all her years of foster care were not abusive. Call me if you think I can help.” Levine paused, realigned his posture, and said, “Leave me her name, and I'll see if I can help, although I'm not sure that we can offer anything. I have an old friend in the Massachusetts system.”
Rocky scribbled the girl's name on a scrap of paper from the bookcase. “Mr. Levine, did you grow up in foster care?”
“Yes, and then I was adopted by my foster family. They literally pulled me out of the ashes.” Levine rolled up his right sleeve and revealed a weave of burn scars that started at his wrist and ran up his arm, beneath his shirt, to a stopping place that Rocky did not want to imagine. “Fire and skin are unequal competitors.”
“Shit,” said Rocky.
“Exactly,” said Levine. “Your girl is eighteen now. She can access her own records. Perhaps she can show them to you. That might clear up a lot.”