Earnings Season #10
at a time, short-term placements cycling through every few weeks, longer-term kids staying for a couple months. “Empty, how
come?”
“That’s right, I don’t think we’ve told you.
Not sure when we last spoke, it’s probably been a little while”—Literal months, Jane, Lili thinks, a bit uncharitably—“but we’re winding down, with the fostering.
Our last kid—Tobias, you didn’t cross paths, he’s a sweet boy, we’re helping with his transition to independent living—he’s heading off to college soon, and the toddlers—June and Ezra—their adoptions are underway.
Mickey’s already left—she was staying with us again; I don’t know if you knew that?
The placement with her aunt didn’t work out, sadly.
But she’s graduated, she’s backpacking in Europe, I think her older half sister goes to school in Ireland.
Matter of fact, I told her to reach out to you, said you could offer some good advice about colleges and whatnot—”
“You’re done?” Lili interrupts, aghast. “Why?”
Jane laughs, a little worn. “Well, we’re getting old,” she says, good-naturedly. “Ezra, no, settle down please—I just hit sixty, Robert’s pushing seventy. We’re not as young as we used to be. My joints hurt on rainy days. And I’d like
to travel a little, maybe head down the coast to Mexico. Who knows?”
“I just—I suppose I never thought of you two, like, not fostering,” Lili says, at a loss.
“Ah, well—change is inevitable, I suppose. Let go of what’s familiar, welcome what might be new and wondrous, all that. Maybe
that’s why you’ve been on my mind, too. Reflecting back on the last years, that manner of thing. You were with us the longest,
you know—Ezra, can you please get your sister—”
“Jane, why did you never adopt me?” Lili blurts out, suddenly.
A pause, and then: “Oh, wow.” Jane laughs, a little chuckle. “Now that’s a question.”
It’s almost disorienting, how it feels to have it out there, this question that’s been so heavy, weighed her down so much.
“Was it just not a fit?” Lili insists.
“Well, no, not that. I mean, you know my philosophy: help as many kids as we can. Benefit the many, not the few.”
“Yes, but—but you kept me,” Lili presses on. She feels like she’s teetering.
“Well, I suppose we got fond of you,” Jane says. “Adopting isn’t our approach. I always think it’s best for kids to be reunited
with their birth families, you know that. Help be a stepping stone, don’t take up the whole pond. After you came to us, the
state kept trying to find your other family members for a while, but nothing viable came through—I think we told you this,
even though you were a little young for all the details, the death from the war—so in the end, we thought, let’s keep things
as is. Why break what was working, you know?”
“So, adoption was never an option?” Lili whispers. “Not even elsewhere? No one else wanted me?”
“Oh, I think we had our own fondness to blame there, too, a little,” Jane admits.
“We liked having you around. If we’d ever had a kid, or decided to adopt, we’d have wanted a child like you: so smart, so sweet, so quiet, so considerate.
” Quiet, Lili thinks; not one person I know today would call me quiet.
“Your social worker agreed—Rebecca, remember her?
Lovely girl. I think she actually asked you what you wanted, once the immediate
family checks had been run, you’d been with us for about six or seven months by then. And according to her, you said you wanted
to stay. So, that was that, on our end. You took to the forests so well, it was good to keep you close to San Francisco, not
inject too much change. You were always reading, always taking care of yourself. Very independent.”
“Right,” Lili manages. Never wanting to be a burden—the refrain of her childhood.
“I guess we could have formalized it, but it didn’t seem necessary,” Jane acknowledges. “And we’d been burned in the past,
too.”
“Burned?”
“Oh, nothing all that dramatic. But when we first started, we got too attached to each child we fostered—wanted to adopt everyone,
wanted to heal the whole world. It’s not really how it works. Financially, too, it’s not sustainable—you get support from
the state for fostering, not the same for adoption. You can help more kids. Be a safe space for them to pass through, whether
for a few weeks, like most, or years, like you. And you turned out well, look at you: Ivy League, lives in the big city, doing
a master’s—you did so well. Kids, dinner’s ready—Ezra, no, go get your sister,” Jane calls out on her end, muffled as if she’s tilting the phone so as not to yell directly into it. “Anyway, I won’t keep
you any longer, we’ve got dinner ready here.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Take care, Lili. It was good to hear your voice. Look after yourself, yes?”
“Sure,” Lili whispers.
The call ends.
Lili looks down at her phone. The screen goes dark.
After a moment, she lets out a small, shaky exhale.
She’s not entirely sure what she feels.
It’s not—negative? It’s a little like recovering from a bout of vertigo near a cliff’s edge.
Similar, too, to the sensation after the last push on a long hike, catching her panting breath.
She feels a bit dizzy. Like she could tip one way or the other, but she—there’s an unsteady balance, under her feet. Swaying, a little. But there.
She lingers in it for a few moments, this strange new feeling, before she stands, plugging her phone into the wall, and heads
back downstairs to her friends.
“Hey, Li, can I come in?” It’s Amina, cracking open the bathroom door, letting out steam from Lili’s shower. “I can’t find
my hairbrush, I think it’s in there.”
“Yeah, all good!” Lili calls, wrapping a towel around herself. “I’m just getting out.”
“Sweet, thanks.” Stepping out of the shower, she starts drying off as Amina searches the humid bathroom, opening and shutting
drawers. Looking into the small, fogged mirror, Lili starts rubbing moisturizer onto her face, skin scrubbed clean after a
full day outside in the dirt and sun.
She hadn’t told her friends about the call with Jane last night, but she’d felt lighter, quieter today—processing. Her hair
is twisted up into a loose bun, not enough time to wash it before dinner. Downstairs, she can hear Jackie and Jamie in the
kitchen, starting to cook. Amina rustles through their toiletry bags, mascara tubes plunking against bottles of sunscreen—
“What’s that on your neck?”
Fuck. “Nothing!” Lili says, slapping a fast hand over her throat.
But Amina is faster, yanking her hand away from the bruises she’s trying to cover up.
“Li, these are fucking intense.”
“It’s fine—”
“Has Jackie seen these?”
“Jesus, let go of me—”
“When was this?”
“It’s fine,” Lili repeats, tugging her hair out of its bun while simultaneously rummaging through her makeup bag for the tinted sunscreen
she’s been using daily to cover up the marks, along with concealer, the collar of her worn flannel work shirts, and her long,
dark hair. “It’s just sex, it’s not a big deal.”
“Is that, like, clearly established? Between you two?”
She scoffs, unscrewing the concealer. “Calm down.”
“I’m serious,” Amina insists, crowding between Lili and the sink. “I know you like rough sex, but this is—there’s already,
like, a power dynamic between you two—”
“What, because he’s a white man?” Lili mutters. She wipes away the condensation on the mirror and starts dotting concealer
onto the bruises. They’re fading, easier now to miss in daylight, but still clearly there under the harsher bathroom light.
“Because he’s older. And he’s fucking rich, Lili.”
“You’re objecting to him on the basis of his money?”
“Are you defending him?”
“Not his money, but the sex I asked for, yeah.”
“He has a lot more money than you.”
“That’s not exactly hard to do,” she snaps, glaring at her friend in the mirror. But genuine concern is so clear on Amina’s
face that Lili immediately feels regret. “Sorry,” she sighs, turning around to lean against the sink. She grasps Amina’s hands
in hers. “Sorry, I’m sorry. But I’m fine, I promise. I know what I’m doing. What we’re doing—we’re clear about, like, boundaries
and limits.” It’s not quite a lie, but not quite the truth.
Amina raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “You used to say talking about limits before sex was inherently unsexy and the equivalent
of spoon-feeding.”
A complicated bit of shame and discomfort sparks; she is not used to opening up. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ve grown up. It’s not—he’s
not doing anything I don’t want, nothing I’m not asking for. It’s . . .” She exhales. This is hard to talk about, even with
her closest friends. “It’s good, okay? Like, all of it—I think it might actually be good for me, with him. This time we just
got a little carried away.”
“Li, what are you . . . “ Her friend sighs, choosing her words. “What are you getting out of this?”
Lili stiffens. “What do you mean?”
“I mean: You’re a brilliant, beautiful, young woman. He’s very handsome, and he’s filthy rich. I get that he’s intelligent, too,
and has this Old World charm. I see the similarities, between you two, and how the differences—the age gap—might appeal to
you. But what are you actually, truly, getting out of this?”
Lili frowns. “I don’t understand. Do you mean materially?”
“No, Lili—underneath the sex, why is this the sex you want? Sex where he hurts you?”
Lili blinks, surprised. “Wow, okay—next time, I’ll make sure to lie back and think of England, Jesus.”
“I’m not judging you,” Amina insists, grasping her hands. “I’m just trying to understand, I promise—I’m trying to look out
for you.”
Lili lets out a thin exhale. It goes against her well-oiled protection mechanisms, to spell things out like this, to share
what’s raw and dark inside of her. But after a few moments, she tries. “It . . . it makes it a bit easier,” she says, quietly.
Shaking free of one of Amina’s hands, she toys with the edge of her sunscreen tube. “Like, sex like this—sex with him, specifically—it . . .
it makes it easier to deal with all of this. All of me.”