Jolene said there were always adoptions around Christmas. The year after they stopped Beth from playing chess there were two in early December. Both pretty ones, Beth thought to herself. “Both white,” Jolene said aloud.
The two beds stayed empty for a while. Then one morning before breakfast Fergussen came into the Girls’ Ward. Some of the girls giggled to see him there with the heavy bunch of keys at his belt. He came up to Beth, who was putting on her socks. It was near her tenth birthday. She got her second sock on and looked up at him.
He frowned. “We got a new place for you, Harmon. Follow me.”
She went with him across the ward, over to the far wall. One of the empty beds was there, under the window. It was a bit larger than the others and had more space around it.
“You can put your things in the nightstand,” Fergussen said. He looked at her for a minute. “It’ll be nicer over here.”
She stood there, amazed. It was the best bed in the ward. Fergussen was making a note on a clipboard. She reached out and touched his forearm with her fingertips, where the dark hairs grew, above his wristwatch. “Thank you,” she said.
THREE
“I see that you will be thirteen in two months, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Deardorff said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Beth was seated in the straight-backed chair in front of Mrs. Deardorff’s desk. Fergussen had come and taken her from study hall. It was eleven in the morning. She had not been in this office for over three years.
The lady on the sofa suddenly spoke up, with strained cheerfulness. “Twelve is such a wonderful age!” she said.
The lady wore a blue cardigan over a silky dress. She would have been pretty except for all the rouge and lipstick and for the nervous way she worked her mouth when she talked. The man sitting next to her wore a gray salt-and-pepper tweed suit with a vest.
“Elizabeth has performed well in all of her schoolwork,” Mrs. Deardorff went on. “She is at the top of her class in Reading and Arithmetic.”
“That’s so nice!” the lady said. “I was such a scatterbrain at Arithmetic.” She smiled at Beth brightly. “I’m Mrs. Wheatley,” she added in a confidential tone.
The man cleared his throat and said nothing. He looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else.
Beth nodded at the lady’s remark but could think of nothing to say. Why had they brought her here?
Mrs. Deardorff went on about Beth’s school work while the lady in the blue cardigan paid rapt attention. Mrs. Deardorff said nothing about the green pills or about Beth’s chess playing; her voice seemed filled with a distant approval of Beth. When she had finished there was an embarrassed silence for a while. Then the man cleared his throat again, shifted his weight uneasily and looked toward Beth as though he were looking over the top of her head. “Do they call you Elizabeth?” He sounded as if there were a bubble of air in his throat. “Or is it Betty?”
She looked at him. “Beth,” she said. “I’m called Beth.”
During the next few weeks she forgot about the visit in Mrs. Deardorff’s office and absorbed herself in schoolwork and in reading. She had found a set of girls’ books and was reading through them whenever she had a chance—in study halls, at night in bed, on Sunday afternoons. They were about the adventures of the oldest daughter in a big, haphazard family. Six months before, Methuen had gotten a TV set for the lounge, and it was played for an hour every evening. But Beth found that she preferred Ellen Forbes’s adventures to I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. She would sit up in bed, alone in the dormitory, and read until lights out. No one bothered her.
One evening in mid-September she was alone reading when Fergussen came in. “Shouldn’t you be packing?” he asked.
She closed her book, using her thumb to keep her place. “Why?”
“They haven’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“You’ve been adopted. You’re being picked up after breakfast.”
She just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at Fergussen’s broad white T-shirt.
“Jolene,” she said. “I can’t find my book.”
“What book?” Jolene said sleepily. It was just before lights out.
“Modern Chess Openings, with a red cover. I keep it in my nightstand.”
Jolene shook her head. “Beats the shit out of me.”
Beth hadn’t looked at the book for weeks, but she clearly remembered putting it at the bottom of the second drawer. She had a brown nylon valise beside her on the bed; it was packed with her three dresses and four sets of underwear, her toothbrush, comb, a bar of Dial soap, two barrettes and some plain cotton handkerchiefs. Her nightstand was now completely empty. She had looked in the library for her book, but it wasn’t there. There was nowhere else to look. She had not played a game of chess in three years except in her mind, but Modern Chess Openings was the only thing she owned that she cared about.
She squinted at Jolene. “You didn’t see it, did you?”
Jolene looked angry for a moment. “Watch who you go accusing,” she said. “I got no use for a book like that.” Then her voice softened. “I hear you’re leaving.”
“That’s right.”
Jolene laughed. “What’s the matter? Don’t want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
Jolene slipped under the bedsheet and pulled it up over her shoulders. “Just say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘Yes, ma’am’ and you’ll do all right. Tell ’em you’re grateful to have a Christian home like theirs and maybe they’ll give you a TV in your room.”
There was something odd about the way Jolene was talking.
“Jolene,” Beth said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get adopted.”
Jolene snorted. “Shit,” she said, “I make out fine right here.” She rolled over away from Beth and curled up in bed. Beth started to reach out toward her, but just then Miss Furth stepped in the doorway and said, “Lights out, girls!” Beth went back to her bed, for the last time.
The next day Mrs. Deardorff went with them out to the parking lot and stood by the car while Mr. Wheatley got into the driver’s seat and Mrs. Wheatley and Beth got into the back. “Be a good girl, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Deardorff said.
Beth nodded and as she did so saw that someone was standing behind Mrs. Deardorff on the porch of the Administration Building. It was Mr. Shaibel. He had his hands stuffed in his coverall pockets and was looking toward the car. She wanted to get out and go over to him, but Mrs. Deardorff was in the way, so she leaned back in her seat. Mrs. Wheatley began talking, and Mr. Wheatley started the car.
As they pulled out, Beth twisted around in her seat and waved out the back window at him, but he made no response. She could not tell for sure if he had seen her or not.
“You should have seen their faces,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She was wearing the same blue cardigan, but this time she had a faded gray dress under it, and her nylons were rolled down to her ankles. “They looked in all my closets and even inspected the refrigerator. I could see immediately that they were impressed with my provisions. Have some more of the tuna casserole. I certainly enjoy watching a young child eat.”
Beth put a little more on her plate. The problem was that it was too salty, but she hadn’t said anything about that. It was her first meal at the Wheatleys’. Mr. Wheatley had already left for Denver on business and would be away for several weeks. A photograph of him sat on the upright piano by the heavily draped dining-room window. In the living room the TV was playing unattended; a deep male voice was declaiming about Anacin.