it feels as though her guts have been scooped out, left on the floor of the courtroom. ruthe stays silent in the back seat of the car -- she shouldn't have taken a taxi. her foster mother said it’d be safer than the subway. the driver kept throwing wary glances in the rear-view mirror at first, baffled, but now seems to have gone silent, eyes trained forwards and knuckles white on the steering wheel. it must feel strange having a faceless monster in your backseat.
she squints through the dirty windshield, unblinking. rain rises like mist through the gray spindly trees that line the new york pavement passing by, most dead from the bitter winter. she looks at the destitute people who sit squashed up and bundled against the walls of buildings. i might be you tommorow. i could have been you yesterday.
the car shifts beneath her, slides along, bouncing back and forth between the white dotted lines as traffic squeals and honks outside. she feels cavernous. skin stretched too tight, heart clenched in a fierce grip. when was littler she didn't like car rides. still doesn’t, really. she balks at the thought that soon she may need to use a more public method of transportation. will she die in a subway tunnel? she thought she'd have died five weeks ago, when the facility went up in ice, soldiers and security guards frozen to the ground, scientists impaled on pillars brought forth from a thirteen year old boy's hands who had been pushed just a little too far. but he and the others with more potent capabilities were the only children who died that day. or so she assumes. she didn't see him in the courtroom, among the crowd of crying children's faces. some were stony and cold, expressionless as their monotone voices. they went through a different conditioning than her. she's lucky, in the worst of ways.
he pulls up along the curve and she feels her heart skip a beat, then another, then it rockets up into her throat as the taxi driver gestures towards the door. 'your stop.' he grunts, and she rushes out, limbs fumbling to escape the confined space. her foster mother, bernadine finkelstein, steps out calmly behind her.
the paper in her hand is rough at the edges from where she anxiously picked at it; it’s the address, scrawled in messy text. she asked to help to feel at all useful. ruthe doesn't know how to just insert herself into a family. she tries hard, but sometimes it’s difficult just to speak.
they are moving apartments, because the last one wasn't big enough for their new addition to live in, and she wonders if the change will make her better or worse at any of this. bernadine coughs as the taxi squeals away. ruthe pulls impatiently at the tulle of her stiff, scratchy dress. a suitcase thumps down next to her. it feels very empty in comparison to her foster parents bags -- they’ve still had few opportunities to go shopping for new things for her. she grabs the handle of it and struggles to tug it up over the first set of stairs. bernie helps her the rest of the way. they walk in. take the elevator to the 9th floor.
it’s a lovely little place. maybe not what most teenage girls imagined when they dreamed of a new york apartment to live in with a shiny new family. there’s a welcome mat, and a mezuzah alongside the door. the carpets are thin and worn out, the floral wallpaper old and stained. but its charming. its better than clinical hollowness. and it has windows. ruthe hasn’t had windows in a long, long time. she walks in and stands in the middle of the empty living room. they’ll be getting furniture soon. she slinks closer to the window, as if wary she’ll crash down the nine stories to the pavement if she gets too close.
‘do you want me to open it?’ bernie asks, and ruthe almost flinches. bernie is so soft spoken. kind, but does not speak much. she’s so different from --
‘yes please,’ she says, quietly slipping off her shoes and walking closer. the air that comes in stinks of smoke, diesel and cooking food, but ruthe likes it. she stands and breathes it in and bernadine just sets her hand on her shoulder. ruthe thinks about that shrouded mother in her memory -- that woman who could not bear to see her own striking resemblance fade from the features of her daughter. the mother who put her hands on clothed shoulders instead of her face because her face was too frightening, it was too scary to see her own hands and arms turn invisible upon contact. where are we going, mommy, and, we’re taking you somewhere where they can help you, and i love you so much, and we need to get you all fixed up. ruthe wishes sometimes she hadn’t loved her enough to care. hadn’t loved her enough to leave her there. where is she now? does she hate her child, love her, ever think of her? ruthe’s fingertips tighten on the windowsill. bernie’s voice is soft in contrast to her sharp, painful thoughts. she’s noticed her distress. ‘do you want to help me clean up?’
she nods her faceless head and takes bernie’s hand in her own. it wobbles and fades from view, older womans skin now completely invisible to the naked eye. ruthe’s nervous heart beats quicker -- bernie notices the disappearance of her own limb and, unbothered, pulls her along.
