It occurred to me that I had forgotten to apply my hair gel, and I hoped I didn’t have leaves stuck in my hair. I shook my head self-consciously before I spoke. “Are you hiring?”
She looked me up and down. “Do you have experience?”
Running my toe along a deep line in the concrete, I considered my experience. Jam jars full of thistle and duct-taped spikes of aloe didn’t count for much in the world of flower arranging. I could spew scientific names and recite histories of plant families, but I doubted either of these would impress her. I shook my head. “No.”
“Then no.” She looked at me again, and her gaze was as unwavering as Elizabeth’s had once been. My throat tightened, and I clutched at my brown blanket petticoat, afraid it would come loose and pool at my feet.
“I’ll give you five dollars to unload my truck,” she said. I bit my lip and nodded.
“Do you need my help?” she asked.
“No.” The bathtub was sparkling white, the soap nestled among seashells in a reflective metal dish.
“Come down when you’re dressed, then, and be quick.” A clean outfit was arranged for me on a white wood vanity.
I waited until she left, tried to lock the door behind her, and saw that the lock had been removed. I pulled the small chair from the vanity and propped it under the doorknob, so at the very least I would hear her coming. Taking my clothes off as fast as I could, I submerged myself in the hot water.
When I came back downstairs, Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table, her food untouched and her napkin on her lap. I was dressed in the clothes she had purchased, a white blouse and yellow pants. Elizabeth looked me over, undoubtedly taking in their enormity. I had rolled the pants down at the waist and up at the legs, and still they hung low enough to show my underwear, if my shirt hadn’t been so long. I was a head shorter than most of the girls in my third-grade class, and I had lost five pounds earlier in the summer.
When I told Meredith the reason for my weight loss she’d called me a liar, but she pulled me from the home anyway, launching a formal investigation. The judge listened to my story and then to Ms. Tapley’s.
For the entire month of June, Ms. Tapley had made me prove my hunger. It started on my first day in her home, the day after school let out. She helped me unpack my things in my new room and asked, in a voice kind enough to arouse my suspicion, to know my favorite and least favorite foods. But I answered anyway, hungry: pizza, I said, and frozen peas. For dinner that night, she served me a bowl of peas, still frozen. If I was truly hungry, she said, I would eat it. I walked away. Ms. Tapley locked the refrigerator and all the kitchen cabinets.
For two days I left my room only to use the bathroom. Cooking smells pushed under my door at regular intervals, the phone rang, and the TV grew louder and softer. Ms. Tapley did not come to me. After twenty-four hours I called Meredith, but my reports of starvation were so common that she did not return my call. I was sweating, shaking, when I returned to the kitchen table on the third night. Ms. Tapley watched my weak arms attempt to pull the heavy chair away from the table. Giving up, I slid my paper-thin body into the crack between the table and the back of the chair. The peas in the bowl were shriveled and hard. Ms. Tapley glared at me over the top of a dish towel as grease popped on the stove, lecturing me about foster kids eating because they were traumatized.
Elizabeth smiled as I entered the kitchen.