Chapter 4

There is a darkness in all of us, struggling to project itself onto the screen of our minds. But for five troubled teens, that darkness will project itself in a new form. The hate, mania, and sadism have chosen a new vessel. That vessel is a taxidermy

Rachelle LeRoy

 

I didn’t choose my first name, but I got to pick my last one.  At first I’d just take the name of any family that I was part of, but I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t part of a family.  And I never would be.  When I was little I had a few good families.  I stayed with the Lenards for a while, about two years.  I took to calling the lady of the house “mommy”, and learned to walk and talk and use the bathroom under that roof.  But one day a lady in a blue suit took me from the house in a powder blue van, and I never saw the Lenards again.  I was only a little baby, not even three years old, so I don’t remember much about them. 

 

Everybody wanted a pretty little baby girl, so I usually stayed in a house for about a year.  And then once I turned eight, the year became six months, than four, than one, than none at all.  I was in a group home that year, which was just a pretty name for an orphanage.  It was the lost and found for kids that nobody would ever come looking for.  I was my own mommy, and mommy to the babies that came in and out with fancy adoption papers; people were just dieing to take them in. 

 

The orphanage wasn’t run down like in Annie, and nobody hit us or starved us or anything like that.  But nobody loved us either.  I needed to talk to somebody, so I went to see Serenity.  Serenity was a year older than me, and pretty.  She was smart too.  On the inside, she was perfect. 

 

But her parents heard the word “cerebral palsy” and couldn’t get rid of her fast enough.  Nobody knew her real name, but she’d been there longer than anybody else, and we’d never heard her be called anything other than “St. Serenity”.  How she got that name was a great mystery that turned into a mythical legend.  My older “brother” Jacob tolled me that her body didn’t work because god needed her to stay in one place, that if you asked Serenity for advice, or tolled her of your problems, god would send you the answer.

 

I didn’t fully believe him though.  Jacob wasn’t right in the head, and we all knew that he’d wind up in a home for the mentally ill.  He preached hellfire and brimstone about god and his miracles until his face turned red and he was screaming out the horrors of hell, and the nurses would have to calm him down. 

 

But that afternoon I paid my dues to St. Serenity, sitting on the stool next to her wheelchair, which was placed in front on the TV.  The TV had been off since the end of her videotape, an old worn out VHS copy of West side story that had been watched and re-watched so often that it was just a blurry mess of static with an audio track that sounded like it was being played under water.  We had a DVD player, but no DVD’s except for 3 volumes of Barney and two volumes of “once upon a potty”, one for boys and one for girls. 

 

I placed my shoes to the left of her wheelchair and picked up the worn out bible from the floor and started to read from where the last kid left off. According to the rules, or the superstitions of whatever they were, you needed to read her 77 words or St. Serenity wouldn’t deliver your message to god.  I started to read from the book of Job, feeling pretty bad for the poor guy as I read.  I left off after the devil smote Job with boils and killed his family and took away everything that he had, feeling bad that she would have to wait for the happy ending.  But I knew that she probably knew the entire bible cover to cover by that point, so I didn’t feel too horrible.

 

“I’ve come to ask you to deliver a message to god for me” I half mumbled “Could you tell him that I want a mother and father.  I honestly tried to pray myself, I really have, but he wont hear me.  Could you put in a good word for me?  Could you ask god to send me a mom and dad who’ll take good care of me for the next four years?  If you do, I swear I’ll go to church every Sunday and take all of my children to Sunday school and bible class, and I’ll make sure that they do it with their babies too.”  I knew it was a big promise, but I was desperate.  St. Serenity drooled a little, and sort of jerked her self in a full body nod.  I smiled and kissed her on the cheek, then re-wound and re-started west side story for her and went on my way.

 

I shared my room with three other girls.  One was Tania, who I really didn’t like at all.  She was sort of prissy and looked down at us like we were trash, as if she forgot that she was in no higher a position.  Nikki was nice enough.  She was nine and slept with a stuffed rabbit that smelled like a port-o-potty, but was quiet and kept out of my way.  Demitra was in my grade, and a few of my classes.  She was really off in the head though, she hadn’t had quite as loving a series of fosters as I had, and on top of that had all of these weird illnesses.  She was a lot like Jacob, only she had nothing to preach about.  She hated god, and day after day screamed that if he existed, he sure as hell didn’t love us. 

 

I didn’t fully believe either sometimes.  If god really loved me, I would have had parents by then.  I would have had a boyfriend, and been popular, and lived a perfect life.  I’d never done anything bad enough to be thrown out and unloved, and I wasn’t even sure what sort of crime could condemn a kid to a childhood of being lost.  I’d never even had a best friend.  And sitting in my room that day, I felt cheated by god.  

 

I sort of ran over my talk with Isaac in my head.  He was a little creepy, and I guess that I was a little bit afraid of him, but there was something about him that I loved.  He wasn’t bad looking at all.  Maybe a little bit feminine looking, but certainly cute to some extent.  Nikki was on the other side of the room with her headphones, and Tina was at work.  She babysat for this family who went to our church, and loved to wave the cash in all of our faces.  My “job” was passing grade nine, which I was doing just barely, pulling a 72 as my highest grade.  I was repeating grade 8 math, which I guess didn’t do wonders for my social status.  I just didn’t see the point in doing good in school.  When I failed I got lectured, and in the rare occasion that I pulled an 80 on a quiz it was just totally ignored, there were no pats on the back or congratulations.  So I just sort of gave up.

 

I wasn’t a bad kid though.  There were a few bad kids in the home, a few girls with babies, a few pothead boys, and some other assorted trash that was caught somewhere in between.  I just wasn’t smart, that didn’t mean that I didn’t try my best.  I was more of an invisible kid. 

 

I could hear somebody crying from the boy’s room next to us, probably the new boy that they’d thrown in that morning.  It was no big deal though; new ones always came and went.  But like I was saying before I started talking about St. Serenity, I got to pick my last name.  My birth mother’s last name was Jamie Elroy, which is where the “Roy” came from.  And then I took the “Le” from “Lenard”, the name of the people who raised me.  And whenever anybody asked who my mother was I tolled them that her name was Jamison LeRoy, the first name of my birth mom combined with the first name of the woman who raised me, Madison Lenard. 

 

I sort of imagined Jamison LeRoy as a Virgin Mary type lady, perfect and holy in every way.  I imagined that one day she’d walk in the door and adopt me and take me away to live in a happy little house by the sea, with no brothers or sisters to take her attention away from me.  And I started into my little daydream world, with every intention of staying there for at least ten minutes, but the sobbing child in the next room was invading my head, and I felt too bad to spend my time in fantasy land. 

 

I went into the room and the little blonde boy who they’d dropped off that morning was sobbing his pretty green eyes out, crying out words that no longer sounded like words, just a jumble of grunts and shrieks.  He was only about four years old, and would probably be in the arms of a loving mommy before the month was out.  But he was still sobbing.  I sat on the bed next to him and sighed, trying to make my presence known.  It worked, and he removed his head from the pillow and looked up at me with big, puffy, red eyes, mouth still half open so that his quivering lips formed a tilted square.

 

“hay” I said, half smiling and half serious “what’s wrong?  Why are you crying?”

“I wanna go home to my momma” he blubbered, collapsing into the pillow once again.  I picked him up and put him on my lap, which usually made the sobbing.  Once again, it worked.

“Crying isn’t going to bring her back” I told him, trying to sound adult “besides, why would you cry over something as silly as a mommy.  A mommy is just one person, and no person is worth crying over”

“mamma!” he screamed, and started sobbing again.  I picked him up and spun him around so that he was looking me in the face.

“You know, you’re lucky than most kids.  Most kids only get one momma, you know that?  And they live their whole lives trying to make that momma happy, and skipping out on all the fun in life trying to keep momma from getting mad.  You’re better than that” he wiped his eye with his fist, snot rushing out of his nose, over his lip, and halfway down his neck. 

“You get to love lots of different mommas, and you’ll never have to worry about them getting mad or sad at you because you’ll never need any of them.  You’ve gotta learn to be your own momma, you cant depend on anybody else”

But I could tell that I was talking way too far over his head. 

“You ain’t gonna cry, you hear?” I started to get frustrated “because if you cry, nobody is gonna want to be your momma.  Maybe that’s why your momma left you, because you cry so damned much!”

He stopped sobbing and looked up at me with wide, shocked eyes

“That’s a bad word”

“You bet your a*s it is.  I’m sick and tired of you damn spoiled brats pissing and moaning about ‘mommies’.  You can’t trust ‘mommies’!  If you could, you think that any of us would be here?  You ain’t above any of us here, you don’t deserve a mommy any more than we do, but shut your trap because you’re gonna get one because all the mommies want is a pretty little blonde boy and the rest of us can go to hell.  So if anybody should be in here bitching, I should!”  and then I felt bad for exploding on him.  He started hyperventilating and whimpering and making little baby noises, and then for some reason that I couldn’t understand, he threw his little arms around me and started sobbing into my chest.

 

I put my arms around him and started patting his little back.

“I’m sorry” I kept saying “shhhh, don’t cry baby, I’m sorry”  His whole body shook violently with each sob

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry baby, please don’t cry.  Please don’t cry baby, shhhh, I’m sorry.  Shhhh, don’t cry baby, I’m sorry”

 

He sobbed for what felt like hours, and then finally stopped, face still buried in my shirt, fast asleep.  I laid him out on the bad and tucked him in, then went back into my room and put on my headphones and took a nap of my own. 

 

 

Author's Note

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