“I can get into bed myself,” I said. “I’m not a baby anymore.”
“You certainly aren’t,” he muttered.
“TED!”
I dived into bed and pulled the sheet up to my chin.
“Coming, Grace!” he yelled. He leaned over me. “A little good-bye kiss for Uncle Ted?” he asked teasingly.
I turned my head away. “I might be catching,” I said, and then groaned like I was in pain.
He brushed my ear with his lips and patted my hip. “See you later.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest and mumbled good-bye into the pillow. I didn’t relax until I heard the front door slam. Even though I was nearly sweating to death under the covers in my flannel bathrobe, I didn’t move a muscle until I heard the Chevrolet pull out of the driveway, brake, and squeal off down the block.
I breathed out with a whoosh. I felt like I’d been holding my breath for the last five minutes. And even if I hadn’t actually been holding it in my chest, I was holding it in my head.
I threw the covers off, jumped out of bed, and untied the cord of the bathrobe. I was dripping with sweat. I wiped my face and neck on one sleeve, then threw the robe on the floor and kicked it under the bed. Hollywood is warm and sunny. I’d never need flannel bathrobes there. Not to keep out the cold, and not to protect me from “uncles” either.
Uncle Ted and Aunt Grace aren’t my real aunt and uncle, of course. They just told me to call them that because Mr. and Mrs. Tyson sounded too formal, when I was going to be part of their family, just like their daughter.
I figured I had about an hour and a half before they came back from church. I wished I could take a nice, cool shower, but there wasn’t time. Everything had to be packed and my hatbox and suitcase had to be hidden before they got back from church.
Church. That was a laugh. Uncle Ted going to church and singing the hymns and praying to God and looking all Christian and holy five minutes after trying to tuck me into bed. What if they knew what he was really like? What if Aunt Grace knew? I bet she’d drop dead right in the middle of her paint-by-numbers oil picture of the Last Supper.
But maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d look straight at me and say, “Sylvie, you must be imagining things.” That’s what had happened the first time, when I was twelve.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” Mr. Framer had told the social worker, holding his hands spread out wide as if to show her he had nothing to hide. “It must be some sort of misunderstanding.”
“The child has such a vivid imagination,” Mrs. Framer said. “You know how she’s always playacting, doing impersonations. And of course, she’s not used to the natural affection of a father for a daughter. That’s why she’s here, after all.”
Even though I was only twelve, I knew I wasn’t imagining things. Maybe I wasn’t used to the natural affection of a father for a daughter, but I knew darned well that wasn’t what Mr. Framer wanted. I was mature for my age. That’s really why all the trouble started. That’s why I had to get out. Right then. Before it was too late.
One thing I learned from the Framers was that no one was going to take my word over the word of a perfectly respectable-looking foster father. They didn’t believe me that time, and they would never believe me.
Everyone agreed that even if I’d been making up the story about Mr. Framer trying to get his hands on me, it was probably the best thing all around for me to be placed with another family.
Which is what happened. Which is how I got to the O’Connors’. Which is where the whole thing started all over again.
“Come see what I’ve got, Sylvie. Come see what old Dad has for you.”
“What?” I’d ask suspiciously.
It would never turn out to be anything that great, but for some reason, whatever it was he wanted to show me, I’d have to sit on his lap to see it.
It didn’t take me a long time to catch on.
I spent a whole year making sure I was never alone in the house with Mr. O’Connor, never alone in the same room with him, unless Mrs. O’Connor was nearby, and never, never getting undressed unless I was in the bathroom with the door locked. Mr. O’Connor had walked into my room without knocking at least three different times while I was getting ready for bed. A decent person would have said, “Oh, excuse me, I should have knocked,” and gone right out and shut the door behind him.
Not Mr. O’Connor. All three times he just stood there, staring, licking his lips, while I grabbed for something to cover myself with. And then he’d say something like, “My, my, aren’t you getting to be a big girl?”
He was horrible. He was disgusting. And old. He must have been at least forty-five, though I’m not very good at figuring out ages. He had a big beer belly and no hair on the front of his chest and he chewed with his mouth open and talked at the same time.
There were two other foster children there too. Brothers. Georgie and Ernie. They were younger than I was, and I think Mrs. O’Connor took me to be a built-in baby-sitter for them. But they were no trouble. They were kind of quiet and watched television a lot, and since the O’Connors didn’t go out very much, there wasn’t a lot of baby-sitting to do.
Not for the O’Connors, anyway. But I found there were other people who needed baby-sitters, and I started right in three weeks after I saw how it was going to be with Mr. O’Connor. I sat for people almost every Friday and Saturday night, unless I had to stay with Georgie and Ernie, and I saved everything I could in a red-plaid rayon change purse that I kept pinned to my pajamas when I was asleep and inside my underpants when I went out.
What else could I do? If I went and told the social worker that Mr. O’Connor was exactly the same as Mr. Framer, would she believe me? She didn’t believe me before, and if I told the same story again she’d probably be convinced I was a troublemaking liar.
I pulled the suitcase down from the top shelf of my closet. It was the color of straw, with brown bands and a brown handle, and even with nothing in it, it was heavy. A neighbor had packed it with my things after my grandmother died and the social worker came to take me to the Framers’.
I was only seven, and too little to carry it myself. The social worker took the suitcase in one hand and held me with the other as we went out to her car. I took the suitcase with me when I left the Framers’ for the O’Connors’. That time, the social worker didn’t carry it for me. She didn’t hold my hand, either.
Now I knew I had to take only the most absolutely necessary things with me, but since I didn’t have that many clothes anyway, it wasn’t a big deal deciding what to pack. I was going to take only the clothes that made me look eighteen, and my cosmetics, of course, but they would go in my hatbox.
That hatbox was one of the very few things I’d bought for myself out of my savings. It was beautiful, ivory-colored simulated leather, and even though it cost $14.99 on sale, I knew I had to have it. I’m very realistic and practical, and I knew it might take me a while after I got to Hollywood to get my first break in the movies, so I figured I would do some modeling until I was discovered. A lot of movie stars start that way, and models make sometimes $35 to $50 an hour. And all the models go from job to job with their stuff in a hatbox, just like mine. It’s a model’s trademark, her hatbox, and if I had one, they’d know I was a professional just by looking at me.
The only things I regretted leaving behind were my movie magazines. I’d read them already, of course, and they were all cut up where I had clipped out pictures of my favorite stars, but I still liked to go back and look at them and read the articles about how the stars live.
They’re very helpful, some of those articles. I’ve learned everything I know about how to be a star from movie magazines. That’s why I look so much older than fifteen, and why I’m more