“I know I did some stupid things this summer—”
“Well, not stupid—” she begins, but Juliana cuts her off.
“Yes, stupid,” she says sharply. “But they were my own choices. I just thought...”
There’s such a long pause then that Nicola thinks she might have forgotten she hadn’t finished the sentence, so she prompts, “Just thought what? Juliana, what is it?”
Juliana drains her flute and pours herself more. “Do you need a refill?”
“No, thank you.” Nicola has only had a sip. She’d brushed her teeth before she decided to make tea, and the taste of the champagne mixed with mint made her shudder. She waits a minute to see if Juliana will pick up the train of her unfinished sentence, which is currently dragging on the ground, and when she doesn’t Nicola says again, “Juliana, what is it?”
“My heart is broken,’” she says. “That’s all. My heart is broken.” Her voice cracks.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “Juliana. What happened?”
She swipes at her eyes and clears her throat. “It’s such a long story.”
Nicola tries not to peek at her watch. “That’s okay,” she says. “I have as long as you need.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Okay, thank you.” She takes a deep breath. “The first thing I should tell you is that I’m not really Juliana George.”
***
It’s true what Juliana first told Nicola. Jade Gordon never knew her father. But Jade Gordon’s mother didn’t die when she was thirteen. There was noGilmore Girlsvibe, no mother-daughter bonding. Jade’s mother died when she was seven. A drug overdose. Jade doesn’t remember much about her. Jade’s uncle, who she was sent to live with after, was an on-and-off-again addict.
That’s not right. There is no such thing as an on-and-off-again addict. There is only clearing yourself of the addiction or feeding it. Her uncle was an on-and-off-again feeder of his addiction.
Jade was nine years old when Talia came to live with them; Talia was three. She was the daughter of a girlfriend of her uncle, who also lived with them for a time. Was her uncle Talia’s father? This was never clarified for Jade, but probably, yes. Because her uncle and Talia’s mother were often out, Talia’s care often fell to Jade. Eventually Talia’s mother disappeared, yet Talia remained.
“I realize, by the way,” says Juliana at this point, “that all of this sounds like a far-fetched plot for a network television drama that would never get picked up because it’s too hard to believe. But this time, everything I’m saying is true. This is the real story.”
In the sky, night clouds race by, covering the moon, then uncovering it once again. A small breeze comes off the water. Not enough to require a blanket, though Nicola knows there’s a basket of them near the furniture, behind them.
“I don’t believe you,” Nicola says. “Go on. Please.”
Jade didn’t mind caring for Talia. In fact she loved it. She felt like Talia was a doll that had been given to her as a gift: someone to dress up and play with, someone to keep her company. She loved Talia.
Time passed. Jade turned ten and Talia turned four. Jade went to school every day and Talia went to the subsidized preschool attached to the same school. They took the bus there and back home at the end of the day, sitting together always, even though other siblings split up to sit with friends on the bus. They were not really siblings, but it felt like they were.
When they were home, Jade spent hours braiding Talia’s hair, painting her tiny fingernails, reading to her. When the TV worked, which it didn’t always, they watched cartoons and shows on the Disney Channel. Jade knew the Disney Channel shows were meant for kids older than Talia, but still, this is something the two girls bonded over. The kids on Disney shows typically had stable familiesand social structures and tiny, easily surmountable problems within those families or social structures. Neither girl could get enough of those story arcs wherein things mostly turned out okay for everyone. Jade taught Talia the few life skills she herself had learned up until that point: How to call 911 in an emergency. How to cut an apple, peel an orange, recite your address to an adult at school. How to see if someone was following you without turning around.
One night, sometime after 11p.m., Jade was making macaroni and cheese from a box. Why were they doing this so late? The girls were home alone, and they had nobody to tell them to go to bed, nobody to feed them at a normal time. Where was the uncle? Who knows. He never told them when he was leaving, and he never said where he’d been when he came back. Jade had climbed on the counter, the way she often did, to reach a cupboard shelf high above her head. But the hinge to the cupboard door was broken, so when she opened it the whole door came off in her hand, and she fell off the counter, hitting her head on the corner on the way down.
She was fine, as it ended up. Eventually. But there was a lot of blood; even minor head wounds can bleed profusely. Alotof blood. Talia screamed when she saw it, then she called 911, just as Jade had taught her. Life skills!
The EMTs who came, winding themselves up the narrow staircase with the gurney, took care of the head wound first. They loaded Jade on the backboard, and then they turned their attention to the situation at hand. Two kids of those ages, alone, fending for themselves so late at night? One of them hurt, bleeding from a head wound with only a four-year-old to call for help? No. Not okay. The EMTs reported the situation at the hospital, and someone at the hospital called social services. After that things happened quickly. Jade was treated for her wound, and Jade and Talia were both removed from the care of Jade’s uncle and placed in foster homes.Separatefoster homes.
Now Nicola isn’t looking at her watch anymore. She’s rivetedby the story, which is giving off Dickensian vibes: Juliana (Jade) as Oliver Twist or Pip, dressed in rags, holding an empty bowl out to someone.
Please, sir, may I have some more mac and cheese?
She looks up and sees again the night-shining clouds—those thin clouds high up above Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists think these are created from ice crystals that form on fine dust particles from meteors, which, if you think about it, is pretty astonishing. It’s rare to see them too. It feels portentous.
Between the night she hit her head and the day she left for Boston College, Jade lived in nine different foster homes. The American foster system, she told Nicola, like so many American systems, is broken.
