What Comes After by Steve Watkins Page B

stuff. I don’t want any of it.”
    Mr. Trask didn’t respond. He just rubbed his teeth with his finger, like a toothbrush.
    “Is there anything else?” he finally asked.
    “Yes,” I said, though it was clear whose side he was on. “Aunt Sue hit me. Twice.”
    Mr. Trask steepled his fingers and looked at the ceiling. “I was made aware of the incident — of both incidents,” he said. “My understanding is that there was some provocation. An act of vandalism.”
    I slumped back in my chair. Whatever anger or self-righteousness I’d come in with had vanished. “She shouldn’t be allowed to hit me, or steal my dad’s money, no matter what,” I said weakly.
    Mr. Trask ran his tongue over his teeth. “A foster parent has every right to discipline a child, Miss Wight,” he said. “These acts of vandalism on your part, should they continue, will require us to take matters before the Juvenile and Domestic Relations authorities. We are all sympathetic to your loss. But that does not give you license to be disrespectful. Or to vandalize.”
    “Weren’t you supposed to meet with me?” I said, grasping for something, anything. “Check up on me? Make sure I was OK? Isn’t that your job?”
    He folded his hands on his desk.
    “Is there anything else, Miss Wight?” he asked again.
    It took two hours to hike out to Aunt Sue’s; once I got there, I went straight to the barn to milk the goats. I’d just gotten Patsy up on the milking stand and laid my cheek against her warm side when Aunt Sue came in. She stood in the open barn door, backlit by what was left of the afternoon sun. Mr. Trask must have already called her, though she didn’t say a word. I stayed as far away from her as I could while I milked Patsy, then Loretta, then Tammy. Nervous Reba, more anxious all the time as she got closer and closer to kidding, must have picked up on my anxiety, too. She kept nuzzling me, rubbing against me, gently butting me.
    Aunt Sue was still standing in the door when I finished, and I was a wreck, waiting for her to say something, or do something, wondering if she was going to hit me again. Wondering what I could do to stop her.
    Loretta and Tammy went back outside through their stall door, and Reba surprised me by following them out. Patsy stayed. She stood next to me, actually between me and Aunt Sue.
    Aunt Sue finally spoke. “I know where you been,” she said. “Don’t you even think about trying to make a federal case out of this-here with anybody else. You’re lucky I don’t have you already locked up in the juvie detention for that little vandalism of yours. You step out of line again, and you better believe we’ll be considering that option. You understand me?”
    I put my hand on Patsy’s shoulder. I didn’t say anything.
    “There better be a ‘Yes, ma’am’ coming out of your smart mouth,” Aunt Sue said.
    My jaw tightened so hard it ached, but I managed the “Yes, ma’am.” She’d been blocking the door, but now she stepped to one side to let me pass. I couldn’t help flinching as I walked by her, and I could practically feel her smug grin burning into my back. Patsy came with me. I stayed in the field with her and the others until long after dark.
    I e-mailed Beatrice the next day at school, and she said all the right things when she wrote back — how sorry she was, and how terrible she felt, and how hard all this must be. Things were better between us since that night I called and let her talk, but she was still a thousand miles away, and besides a little sympathy I figured there was nothing she, or anybody, could do to help.
    I started a letter to Dad but couldn’t think of anything to say after the salutation. So I drew a picture of our old house, and our old barn, and our old hog, who Dad never had the heart to have slaughtered. It was a pretty nice picture. I tore it into tiny scraps when I finished and fed the scraps to the goats.

We had to write an explanatory essay that week in