Tanya's Nighttime Screams

I was munching on some grapes and sipping on cold coffee even though it was two am. I was reading more from my foster daughter Tanya's personal time line at the round old oak kitchen table that served as the runaway shelter's work area and Tanya's nightly desk. The thing read like a fictional horror story.



I had just finished reading one of her items from age ten she had on her time line. She had written the simple sentence: “I hitchhiked from Bellingham to Los Angeles by myself when I was ten.” I was lost in visualizing what that must have been like for her when I heard a loud scream that made me flinch. I heard yet another, slapped the notebook down and sprinted up the stairs two at time. It was dark in the hallway and I tried to make it to Tanya's room at the end of the hall by memory. I fumbled around trying to find the knob, and slowly opened the door. She was sitting straight up, her normally neat Afro all mused up and holding her head in her hands. “Tan, are you okay?"



“Yeah, I just had a nightmare, I'll be okay in a minute.”



“Sure you're okay? I'm still up so...”



“What time is it any way?”



“It's real late, going on three. I 'm reading your time line and staying up a bit. Come on down. I'll make you some hot chocolate or something.”



“I want something to eat, too,” she announced as she threw off the covers and bounded up.



“Who said anything about something to eat? Jesus Christ, I mentioned hot chocolate 'cause it seemed like a fatherly thing and now you want a full meal?"



“Oh, and tell me that macaroni mess we ate tonight filled you to the brim. ” She patted my growing stomach which was becoming a concern and continued: “ You were skinny when I first met you, that thing is starting to look like a melon.



“Nightmare, huh? You keep talking shit to me like that and I'll be a living nightmare everyday for you.”



“You already are,” was her near perfect answer.



“Come here my child. You are getting really, really good at this. I am so proud. Remember my words of wisdom- a good smart ass is never bored.” I grabbed her in a big hug.



“Get away from me.”



“But Tanya, you are my first daughter. Lord, I may have created a masterpiece!” I said and added a dramatic, theatrical arm swing which caught wife Wanda directly in the right eye.



“Ouch, you dipshit! What are you guys doing? Keep it down or you'll wake up the other girls."



“Honey, I am so sorry, ” I said in a false whisper. “Come here, I'll give you a hug.” I grabbed her and tried to give her a smooch but she pushed me away. “Damn it! Get off of me. You do know it's nearly three in the morning, don't you?”



“Shit, that does it! We're having a family meeting tomorrow and I am going to lay down the law. I try to hug and give out some tenderness and what do I get? Get off me, get away! What is wrong with you womenfolk? Don't you appreciate a sensitive man? And the language around here is fucking horrid. It has to stop. Remember, it says straight in the Bible that the man is the head of …..



“Yeah, you're a head all right, a dickhead. Now go to bed, both of you.”



"But Wanda, our little queen bee here wants me to cook her something to eat. Aw, come here you two, group hug, group hug" and I grabbed them both in headlocks and we bounced down the stairs as one unit. I even got in a little groping of Wanda in on the way down. Hey, a desperate man takes advantage of any opening, know what I mean?



“Wanda, I making bacon and eggs and French Toast, want some?



“Sure, why not? We're all up now, that macaroni didn't quite cut it for me. But pay attention and don't start screwing around and burn the shit."



“That will be a quarter, after tomorrow's meeting. That's the new rule, a quarter a swear word."



“You'll be broke in two days, dipshit," my own once loving wife said to me.



“Bullshit, I am nearly a college- educated man with a sterling vocabulary. Hear that, Tanya? You have to use the word , 'sterling' in your autobiography. Wanda look at her time line." I started breaking eggs and frying the bacon.



The two women I loved most in the world were huddled up close in deep discussion about the time line. I felt a rush of thankfulness and true affection. I felt lucky to be alive and knew I would never forget that simple scene. It was one of those beautiful pictures that stays with you and becomes the best part of your life. I looked at Tanya and for a moment I saw a little girl instead of a the tall nearly fully mature young woman. I reminded myself that I needed to be more aware of her age, after all she was only sixteen. I imagined her at age ten, scared on a lonely freeway trying to make it to LA hoping the act would finally make her mother proud of her; make her mother love her. I started to tear up or maybe it was the pain from the bubbles of bacon grease that were suddenly hitting me all over the arm. “Shit,” and I grabbed the now smoking pan and moved it off the burner.



“Hey, are you paying attention over there? Did you burn something already?” pointed out the ever vigilant wife.



“It ain't burned, its crispy, just like you like it.” I was getting tired of her, should have left her upstairs.



I finished the cooking, put the stuff on the plates and set them down. "Here you go. No, don't thank me. No it was nothing. My pleasure, anything for my two queens. Either of you want a foot rub?"


“Where's the hot chocolate?" Tanya said on cue.



I got right on it and also got out a couple of grapefruit and cut them in half. I added them to each plate and sat down. We talked about Tanya's life. We joked around with each other talking with our mouths full. It was a weird night, breakfast in the huge house at three am, but a good one. We were just finishing up when I started on the grapefruit which turned out to be an error.



I stabbed the juicy fruit with the fork and a shot of citrus juice went flying exactly like a guided missile toward Wanda's unsuspecting right eye and hit dead center. She leaped up and started screaming, “Fuck, Fuck, Jesus Christ, Fuck", and ran one-eyed to the back bathroom.



Tanya gave me a dirty look and said, “Did you do that on purpose?”



“Yeah, she's been giving me crap all day, thought I teach her a lesson. Jesus, do you think I went to trick grapefruit shooting school? Was a direct hit, can you believe it? Slightly funny, don't you
think ?"



“Yeah, it was something. By the way, she would owe a buck, I think, in your new system. She had three f-words and one Jesus Christ. Would that be one or two quarters?”



I snorted and could only manage to get out in between laughs, “Just one, it's just one. You're getting awfully funny." We stifled ourselves as Wanda came back to the table.

"That really hurt!" She went back to eating her food. What happened next was simply unreal and I swear to the Lord and all that is holy that it is true. I stabbed the fruit again and another stream of deadly juice went flying. It hit the left eye dead center this time and the entire scene was repeated. She ran back to the bathroom leaving Tanya and I falling on the floor howling. Wanda wasn't happy, not one bit.



“I'm going to bed. " She stomped off. Lucky for me she had given away our bedroom for the night to the two Oregon girls who had just come in that afternoon or I'm certain I would have gotten the cold butt treatment for the rest of the night.



“Seriously, how did you do that?”, Tanya asked fully convinced I was a trick grapefruit shot.



“Honest to God, it was an accident, I swear. Boy, she was really pissed off."



I was doing the dishes and it was now nearly four am. Tanya said, “How do I start this? “



"Honey, it's four am, why not get some sleep and then I'll help you after school."



"I need to do it now. Bob. Why does everyone think I'm black? My mother's a white girl from Mississippi but I'm always the little black girl. I don't get it."



"Hell, start right there. Write that down". I went and made a pot of coffee. She had her title: Always the Little Black Girl, My Life Story.



Yeah, that will do. But if we're staying up I want to know about those screams." There was a long pause. I still remember waiting with the ticking from the antique clock the only sound.



"I think I hate my mother were the words," that broke the silence. " The screams were because I was dreaming about her and I know, I know that she is close by and coming soon and she'll want to take me away from you and Wanda. I know she's coming, I always know. " She grabbed her head and dissolved in a heap of tears. I was desperate and wanted to scream for Wanda to come down, this was her forte. I was the house mascot. She was the real rock around here, I knew that. I sat stunned and befuddled in silence and scared to death. I touched this young girl's hand and listened without interrupting as the words gushed out of her like a spring waterfall in the high mountains.

She told me of how her mom would always show up whenever she was in one place for too long and demand that she run away with her. She would and then her mom would abandon her. Not once, not twice, but dozens and dozens of times over the years. That is how she had burned through 57 foster homes. She told me of the fear of going out on the highway after getting the phone call from her mom demanding that she come and see her in Los Angeles and how cold she had been with just a skimpy sweater on with her little thumb out begging for a ride on the freeway. How she had run and hidden in the bushes at a truck rest stop from the trucker who had started rubbing her legs which she didn't really understand but knew was dangerous. How the kids in LA had called her "whitey" and spit on her. The words just kept cascading from her telling me about things that no little girl should have had to go through. A ray of sunshine came peeking into the kitchen when she told me of the first rape.



I sat there begging for some words, a way to take it all away. All I could come up with was, “Write, write what you have just been telling me. You're staying home from school and you and I are going to write all day. Get it out! Write!" She was scribbling with the pencil into the notebook, focused. I took the opportunity to go to the back bathroom and bawled like a little toddler while taking a piss. “Shit, I don't know what to say or do, I'm an emotional retardo , why me? Wanda should be doing this." Tanya gave me a quick glance but went right back to the notebook. I went upstairs, told Wanda my plans. "I want to adopt this one," I had said. I told her the scene, about the last two hours. She gave me a huge hug and a deep kiss." I'll be down in a minute. " I returned to the kitchen.



“Tanya, look at the colors in the sky." She stopped.



“Wow, it looks like a painting. We stayed up all night, didn't we?



“Looks that way. Fuck your mother, nobody's taking you anywhere. Do you understand? You're staying right here. Do you get it?"



“Yes, I believe you." She jumped up and threw her arms around me. She released me and then held out her hand, "That will be a quarter, sir."



"What?"



"You just said ,'Fuck,' and according to your new rules that will be a quarter." Her deep brown eyes laughed at me.