My Brother's Dirty Secret

1. Prison Song

Some days, you know exactly what will happen. You wake up the same way you always have, you go through the same morning routine, eat breakfast, and then you go through the motions of your typical day. It’s lame, droll, abysmal--the horrors of a boring life.

When all you’ve ever known is mundane activities and disappointing people, you’ll find yourself dreaming of a different life… This is especially true if you’re me.

An orphan.

How does an orphan wake up, you ask? Well, on a dreary gray day like today, set in an overcrowded, underfunded orphanage in just a miniscule corner of Gravehurst, we orphans are usually awoken by the cheerful sounds of our director, Miss Celia, shouting obscenities at the guys hanging out on our front steps.

“How many times I gotta tell you to find somewhere else to park your no-good asses at the end of the month?!” she all but screams. I can hear them shuffling down to the sidewalk and muttering curses under their breaths as I sit up and stretch.

“C’mon, Miss Celia,” one of them pleads. “What difference does it make if we’re on the steps or by the street?”

“You know exactly what the difference is, Angel! Get the hell down there and don’t harass the parents. Goddamn kids…”

I bit my bottom lip, stifling a laugh. For the last few days of every month, Miss Celia opens up the doors of Hope Springs Orphanage and invites prospective parents to walk through the building and meet all the children that are available for adoption. She’s been ragging on us for the past two weeks to be sure that our living spaces are up to her standards, and I can confidently say that the girls' room has never been this spotless.

She claims the reason we can’t let those guys sit around our steps during this time is because they scare away anyone looking to adopt. They are a group of guys from around the block--dropouts and small-time criminals, all members of a gang that runs West Gravehurst.

“Why doesn’t she just tell them to stop coming around, or threaten to call the cops since they’re gang members?” If that’s the question on your mind, then you’ve never come up in the underbelly of a city too busy for its own good.

First of all, that’s Leo’s crew right there. Leo, Angel, Juelz, and a couple others came up in Hope Springs right alongside us. When they weren’t doing time in juvie, they were right here in this building. This is their childhood home--not some three bedroom behind a picket fence in the suburbs, or a fancy townhome with rooftop access. They’re orphans who were never adopted; friends who aged out of the system before potential adopters could unclutch their pearls long enough to see the bleeding hearts that reside in their chests. They look out for all of us, keeping bullies off the boys and handsy guys off the girls.

Angel is always up to date with what’s happening in the street; everyone knows him as a spotter, always alert, but Mister Mariano just called it being un chismoso. Juelz reads to all the younger ones, and when we ran out of books he just fabricated fairy tales and make-believe adventures. To this day, his storytelling skills are the reason I’m so interested in reading books. Leo’s the only one not around these days, but that’s because he caught a charge for putting some old jackass in the hospital. The pervert was catcalling my friends and managed to grope me before Leo shoved him off and told me to get inside. I did as he said; next I knew, red and blue lights were flashing outside the building again.

I always had the biggest crush on Leo, so when he got arrested for assault, I took it very hard. He was smart, never one for violence--he knew how to talk his way out of trouble. I tried to apologize to the guys for getting him locked up, but they could barely understand me through all the gross snot crying. Once they realized what I was trying to say, Angel just laughed and gave me a hug.

“Stop crying, Mimi,” he implored. “You’re the only one he’d risk it for, entiendes? He’s fuckin’ crazy about you, ma.”

“Yeah, so maybe don’t get knocked up in the next eighteen months,” Juelz half-joked. I say half-joked because I already knew four girls around my age that were pregnant.

I got up and made my bed, eager to avoid the director’s wrath and any unwanted attention. Don’t get me wrong, Miss Celia is actually the nicest adult I ever met. She was also the realest adult I ever met; she didn’t sugarcoat anything. Her late husband, Mister Mariano, used to joke that that was why he did all the cooking and baking. Since his passing, she had to hire a chef to cook all our meals, and it turns out that no less than three chefs could manage the workload that man was handling. He was a saint; the closest to a grandfather figure I’ve ever had. It hadn’t been that long since his death, but it was a subject we tried not to broach around the widow.

Then again, I thought as I collected my toiletry bag, a change of clothes, and a book from my area and made my way to the girls bathroom. Even though I was one of the first to rise, a line was already beginning to form. Thinking about how easily I won’t get adopted today will help keep my mind off of Leo.

Eighteen months. They gave a twenty-year-old with non-violent priors eighteen months! Just the thought of it filled me with rage. According to Angel, Leo’s public defender “got him a deal” since the guy he beat up had just committed s****l battery against a minor in front of various witnesses literally seconds before. Not that the cops bothered to actually investigate that claim.

“Whatcha reading?” asked Lola, one of the girls in my grade.

I blinked, my eyes focusing on the paperback in my hands. I had it open to where my bookmark was sticking out, but I wasn’t actually reading anything. I was so focused on looking like I wasn’t thinking about Leo while I was definitely thinking about him, that I went into “autopilot” again. And considering how close we are to the bathroom door now, and how many other girls have lined up behind me, I must have stepped forward as well.

“Ah, just another Harry Potter book.”

I showed her the cover, and she arched her eyebrows, clearly not buying it. “Yeah? You weren’t staring at the pages and thinking about your boyfriend again?”

“Leo’s not my boyfriend!” I reminded her, doing my best to speak under my breath.

Lola burst out laughing. “Damn Mimi, I was messing with you! But now that I know you were thinking about him, I’m gonna make sure Angel tells him at his next visit.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Wait, don’t--”

Lola disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. I could still hear her cackling through the slab of wood, and I had to resist the urge to pound on the door with my fists. The girls behind us shot me weird looks but overall ignored our interaction. Lola may have been well liked, but I was the weird quiet nerd that everyone thought clung around Leo and his crew as a way to seek attention. It was more like one of the guys would notice me alone, and either they would convince me to chill with the group or the group would find its way to us.

And before you even think to ask if I’m a virgin, the answer is yes. They didn’t keep me around in the hopes that I’d put out--or at least if they did, I never got that impression. Most of them treated me like a little sister or female cousin, mainly because that’s how they saw all the other kids at the orphanage. They were never untoward with me; never creepy, or mean, or anything other than just chill. They were just chill.

Even I had to admit, though, that there was a shift in our dynamic. Only Angel and Juelz seemed to bother checking on me since Leo got locked up.

Since I got him locked up. I clutched my stuff to my chest, swallowed over the lump in my throat, and waited for my turn. Just like any other day.

“Mimi!” I jumped as Miss Celia’s voice reached me, and I turned just in time to see her climbing up the stairs. “Oh, good. You’re already up. After you’re dressed, come down to my office.”

“Yes, Miss Celia.” What the hell did I do now?

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

After I cleaned myself up and put on my torn skinny jeans and a shirt that was too big for me, I hurried downstairs and right up to the director’s door. It only took a couple timid knocks for Miss Celia to ask me to enter. Her hard-set expression relaxed as she recognized me.

“I should have known it was you. You need to knock louder, girl! I’m getting older, soon I won’t be able to hear you!”

She always said this even though she always heard me knock.

“You asked me to come see you--?” I began, only for her to nod and wave me in.

“Yes, yes. Shut the door and sit down, Mimi. Come talk to me for a minute.”

Uh-oh. I did as she instructed and sat in one of the guest chairs placed before her desk. It was an old wooden piece with drawers along one side and a cabinet on the other. She kept it fairly organized, while the wall behind her was covered floor to ceiling with picture frames.

Photographs of the directors together, of them with groups of children from the orphanage, of them individually with kids, of children’s artwork and letters from those who were adopted over the years. I knew one of the older group portraits included me, but I couldn’t wait for the day I would get out of here and send Miss Celia a letter thanking her for all she did for me. I always wanted to get adopted into a nice family that would nurture my curiosity and support me as I pursued a career. Now that I was so close to eighteen, I just wanted to finish high school and get into a decent college on a scholarship.

Miss Celia must have noticed me staring at the wall behind her, because she gestured to it with a knowing smile. “Anything particularly interesting?”

I simper and point to a photograph of her and her late husband. The colors were slightly faded, but I could still make out Miss Celia’s warm sepia complexion beside Mister Mariano’s earthy copper. “The one with you and Mister Mariano in Colombia. You both look so young and happy.”

She grins, her eyes shining with nostalgia. “We were. That was two years after we married--we had another miscarriage, so we went back to Ibagué to visit his family. The kids in his neighborhood loved Mariano, and they seemed to like me, so we were always outside playing with them, teaching them things, keeping them out of trouble. We noticed some of them stuck around longer than others; they had no home to run off to after sunset. That was when we got the idea for Hope Springs. I wanted all the children of the world to have a home to run to when things get tough.”

My gaze fell to my lap, where my clasped hands rested. “Like Leo.”

“Yes, like Leo,” she affirmed, her dark eyes softening. “And like you.”

Then she opened a binder and began thumbing through its contents. “So, to the matter at hand: there is a family that wants to adopt you.”

My heart skipped a beat. “H-Huh?”

“There is a family that wants to adopt you,” repeated Miss Celia, beaming from ear to ear. “They’re a wonderful couple. He’s a businessman, she’s a housewife, and they’ve successfully adopted before with no returns or incidents. Smart, clean records, and as soon as they saw your profile they were insistent that they give you a home.”

“B-But I thought I wasn’t adoptable,” I muttered.

She frowned. “Artemis Hunter, while you might be older than most children up for adoption, that does not make you any less adoptable. You are a brilliant girl with a bright future ahead of you--and not to mention beautiful! Any family would be lucky to have you.”

I scoffed. “There are four families that would beg to differ.”

I was only seventeen years old, and I had already been adopted by four different families--and, as you can tell, all four of those families returned me to the orphanage and reversed the adoption. The first was a large family with several kids that lived in the suburbs in the northside, so they thought a seven year old who had only ever known West Gravehurst would make a great addition. Technically, I got along with everyone except the snot-nosed d**k who made fun of my accent. He got a black eye and I got sent back.

The second family was kind of similar, only smaller--and one of the older teenagers in the home would corner me for some very unwanted “play time,” if you get what I mean. I was there for six whole months. It took a nurse realizing I wasn’t getting my period at the age of eight before anyone did anything. He got a slap on the wrist and I got severe emotional scarring. Hooray.

The third and fourth family were thankfully less traumatizing. The third was just an older couple who took pity on me and tried to get me to open up. After nine months, my so-called mother was begging Miss Celia to take me back, citing that I was “so quiet and creepy and jumpy” that she thought I might kill them in their sleep. The fourth family gave it a year but had similar concerns, though they had the decency to put it more eloquently.

“She refuses to open up to anyone, including her therapist.”

“There’s a wall around her that hasn’t budged the whole time.”

“How can we raise a kid and not know what’s going through their head?”

By the time I was fourteen, I was back in Hope Springs and realized that I preferred it here. Miss Celia and Mister Mariano were my guardians, and the other children were my peers. Even those who weren’t too fond of me could relate to me better than anyone out there.

“Mimi,” Miss Celia grabbed my attention again, her stern expression not erasing the understanding in her eyes. “This won’t be like those other times. This family isn’t like those other ones. Because of your past, they agreed to foster you for a trial period of one month. If you feel comfortable enough, they’ll sign the adoption papers.”

“But why me?” I probed, growing bolder. “I’m not in any academic clubs at school. I’m turning eighteen in three months--what, they want to play house for three months? With a troubled teen with my track record?”

“That’s enough!” she declared, her eyes wide at my outburst. “Listen to me, Artemis. You can’t let the difficult situations you were put through keep you from moving forward. Those families saw a broken girl because they didn’t know the real you, but I do. You’re not broken because of them--you’re tougher.”

My bottom lip trembled. “How do you know?”

She threw me a knowing look. “Because that’s how we raised you, baby girl.”