Four months ago
on a Sunday afternoon
I told a father
we tried.
We tried.
We tried to fix his home
but it was not enough.
Not enough for the trash.
Not enough for the bugs.
Not enough for the urine-soaked beds.
Not enough for the smell and rot
that had settled itself into the walls.
It turns out
some things cannot be rescued
by twenty-four hands
and a wrench and
lots of good intentions.
And little girls
who are ten and eight and six
deserve more
than survival.
They deserve to write their names
to know how to sound out each letter
as they put pencil to paper
proof of their existence
and evidence that they belong here.
They deserve to count
how many flowers they found
or how many clean socks they have.
They deserve to open a book
and not look at it
like it was written in another language
asking what do these numbers say?
Not knowing what letters are called.
Four months ago
on a Sunday afternoon
I told a father
I could help take his girls to school
so they would not go to foster care.
I said
you can visit them.
I said
you can call every day.
I said
when you are really ready,
you can bring them back home to stay.
And maybe I believed
that would be simple
Or more truly I believed
the were no better options.
Four months ago
on a Sunday afternoon
I picked up three little girls
and brought them home.
Little girls excited for sleepovers
and learning and school
because "we've never done that before in our life."
And now?
Now they have my bed.
My room.
My food.
My schedule.
My gas tank.
My floor covered in somebody else’s hair ties
and paper scraps
and tiny socks
and all the evidence
that children are here.
Now we drive to school
and count every trampoline we see
and wonder how the world can be
so big.
Now they can write their names.
Now they can count all the way to fifty.
Now they can read little words
like cat
and hat
and mom
and dad
and if you do not think
that is a miracle
then you have never met a child
standing on the edge
of her own beginning.
Cleaning lice.
Treating scabies.
Eighteen doctor’s appointments.
Eighteen.
Not because they are sick or dramatic.
Not because I am exaggerating.
Not because hardship makes a better story.
Eighteen-
because neglect
is expensive.
Little girls who ask me
if hot air balloons are real
and if they exist in our world.
Our world.
Like maybe there are worlds
inside worlds
and theirs had been so small
they were not yet sure
which one they were living in.
Little girls who ask me
why they never went to school before.
Little girls who ask me
why the other children
can read and write
and know big numbers.
Little girls who ask me
how there can be that many children
for real? For real?
As if a classroom
is some kind of impossible abundance
filled with all the children there could ever be.
As if a hallway full of backpacks
and lunchboxes
and sharpened pencils
is too much
to be believed.
Little girls who save
every penny
every nickel
every dime
every quarter they find
because Daddy is going to buy a new house the littlest one says.
And what do you even do with that?
What do you do
with hope
when it shows up in the hands of a child
who still believes
adults always mean what they say?
Little girls who have birthdays.
Little girls who turn eleven
without knowing
how to say eleven.
So I called Mom
and said
there’s a birthday.
Would you like to come?
And then I taught this little girl
how to count to eleven
so when mom asks her age
she would know how to answer.
Do you hear me?
I taught a child
how to say
the age
she already was.
And if that does not split you open
then I do not know
what will.
And she draws us pictures
of the inventions she makes
from pipe cleaners
and paper towel rolls.
And her sister pulls magnets
from the refrigerator door
and says, Look!
as she sends them spinning across the kitchen floor
like she has discovered physics and magic.
And there are cartwheels.
And handstands.
And climbing trees too tall.
Catching chickens.
And songs.
And stories.
And all the loud bright wild ordinary things
children were always meant to do.
And then one says
with no change in her voice at all
that she is surprised our puppies are still alive
because all the ones they had always died
but that is okay
because they know what to do
you dig a little hole
and bury them under the house.
And just like that
grief walks into the room
wearing a child’s voice
so it sounds a lot more like
a question or a naive confidence.
And just like that
you remember
that children can hand you horror
the same way they hand you a St. Patrick's day clover.
Four months ago
on a Sunday afternoon
I became an Auntie.
And somewhere between the school drop-offs
and the doctor visits
and the lice treatments
and the birthdays
and the trampolines
and the little words
and the refrigerator magnets
and the questions no child should have to ask
something in me
became slightly mother-shaped.
I do not know
how long this will last.
I do not know
what will be healed
or returned
or kept or left behind.
But I know
that four months ago
on a Sunday afternoon
I thought
I was helping some children.
I did not know
we were becoming family.
And love arrived like this—
welcomed and unexpected,
hungry,
needy,
sleeping in my bed,
asking impossible questions
on the way to school.