Foster

"Thank you so much for coming," The woman threw a smile over her shoulder as she pushed open the door with her forearm. One thing instant was the smell of children — for a woman housing no more than ten, the place reeked like thirty. It didn't stop there, it looked like thirty, also. Toys were strewn across the floors, the walls were lined with sheet paper and decorated with crayon, half-eaten meals decorated almost all bare surfaces; and though the room itself lacked children dancing like lice, the windows of the far face of the room presented lively images of the tots swarming the backyard. Nine of them... No, eight. "I didn't know what to do, she refuses to move so I can't take her to the doctor,"

He had the kind of friendship with the woman that saw neighbourly duties -- she called him over for help fixing her sink or changing a tire on her car. He called her for assistance cooking or repairing the odd thing around the house. It seemed their capabilities were similar, although only limited in the select fields they always seemed to have troubles with. Life was odd in that way. Striving to be inconvenient. 

"Don't worry, I owe you quite a few anyway," The man returned the smile she had offered as they sank further and further into the throes of child chaos. It was a draggle-tail's heaven, to be frank. The place had not a trace of cleanliness or order -- but at the same time, it was a perfectly nice place to be. The walls oozed the spirit of children, and for that reason, it wasn't entirely awful. "Where is she?"

He couldn't muster much more than the tone he had spoken with all day, brief and barely escaping expressionless. Truth be told, the man was fücking tired. But still, he managed to scrape together the motivation and the false enthusiasm to drag himself into the car after a ten-hour shift and help the woman who had no one else to turn to. It was comforting in a way to know one was a person another was solely dependant on. It had a way of making a person feel valued; needed, in a sense; with purpose. "Just at the window,"

The man didn't hesitate to approach the direction the woman before him had pointed. Maybe he should have. Maybe he did just as he should. He'll never truly know — but that's how it was with most things; a fifty-fifty toss-up on a constant basis. What he did know, was that the moment he stepped exactly five tiles length towards the girl, her eyes snapped to his.

The little girl was just as young in the face as she looked from behind, curled up in the corner, staring out from the length of the floor-to-ceiling window, a mere ball against the tiling of the floor. She stared at the man with a large pair of green eyes, and a pair of lips with a dramatic cupids bow only softened by the corners of her lips which tugged downwards. She looked fearful, with an insane amount of curly, dark hair. She even flattened against the wall behind her even further than she already had been, somehow. It was enough to make the man hesitate in his own bird-like steps, falling to a halt as he spared the woman now behind him a questioning glance. "How old is she?"

"Barely five,"

"What do you think the problem is?"

"I'm not sure — she came from child protective services in Spain only a couple of days ago... she hasn't eaten or drank anything since," She spoke of the child as if she were a pet coming from a sketchy breeder, not used to the food the poor thing was being fed. The woman crossed her arms and lifted a hand to her mouth as she stood. It was fascinating she still wore her wedding ring, since her husband had up-and-left almost a year ago now. Perhaps she considered the man to simply be dead. Perhaps she was too immersed in her role to sit back and think about the possibility her husband had left her and wasn't coming back.

She was a foster mother, an emergency contact for child protective services in Britain — acting as a temporary home for up to twenty children at a time until they were able to be properly fostered. It was not a role for the faint-hearted -- and not much of a role at all. The idea was still young, the idea of volunteering to keep young children stable and in one place until they could find homes -- it was a good idea, a modern orphanage of sorts, but like many good ideas, it had no recognition or respect whatsoever. It was the twenty-first century, the only ideas people got behind were exceeding the legal limit of campaign funds to pay off pörnstars and provoking powerful political enemies on Twitter.

And so it would make sense for the woman to be so preoccupied that she didn't miss her husband enough to think about if their marriage had deteriorated, or if she truly had been left. For that very reason, the children were both a blessing and a curse.

"How long do you think it's been since she last drank?" The man crouched right on the line of the five tiles, his eyes holding the pair of the girl before him. She was unmoving, not even daring to blink as she flattened even further against the wall. She looked dehydrated, from his assessment — she also looked like she had lived off of a poor diet for years now; meals few and far between. It was almost more heartbreaking than watching true fear flash in the eyes of a mere five-year-old with more shape in her hair than her body.

"A bit over three days, maybe more — but she hasn't been to the bathroom either," The woman's hand remained over her mouth — perhaps she was chewing on her nails with the same nerve the man faced as he attempted to evaluate the best possible way to approach the girl. It seemed to greatly resemble a situation in which a large predator was injured at the zoo, but unable to be approached due to the frightening mate guarding the animal closely. In that situation, the animal would most likely die. It was odd that it felt like a definite outcome in this resembling situation.

"Depending on the amount of water she's consumed, her bladder will either burst soon or spill into her renal system," The man lowered from a crouch and instead crossed his legs as he sat, his eyes holding the girl's. "Either way, she'll either die of dehydration or complications,"

"Do you think that's the problem?" The man could have laughed at the woman when she spoke. It was a rather senseless thing to say, as she stood with a worried stance behind him, but he had the courtesy not to; he knew having nine other children would be a pain in the ass at best. Perhaps she was too exhausted to think — hell, he knew he would be if he was in the same situation. It would be inevitable that he lost his mind and his own free will to these kids in a matter of days, and for that very reason, these children were frightening. Not because they were violent or vindictive or manipulative in any way, but because it would be hard to keep in touch with an external reality when you had that many children at all hours of the day. 

"No, the problem is that there is a reason she won't move, let anyone near her, eat, drink or use the bathroom," The man finally lifted his eyes from the girl before him, meeting the gaze of the now familiar woman. She truly did look tired, a fact that only further supported the idea she didn't even have time to think — and he felt immensely bad for the poor woman. He wished she had the time of day to sit down or even just to make the cup of coffee she so clearly needed. Having a minimum of ten children has a way of setting back the good old biological clock. There was only a matter of hours before it reared its physical head in the form of crows feet and premature menopause... though that may have been a given to some. What other reason would she have to take in so many children that her being incapable of producing her own? Do people really live beyond that depth of self-serving volunteer work?

"She's let one person near her,"

"Who?"

"A boy her age — he's just in the bathroom right now because he got sauce all over himself but he's the only child who doesn't make her scream when they get near her," The woman knew she had to check on said boy any minute now; he didn't yet have the motor functions to hold paper towel firmly, let alone wipe sauce from his jacket with such a thing. What she also knew was that she couldn't bear to lift her eyes from the little girl, shadowed by the walls of the corner and barely able to remain awake.

"Did he come from Spain, too?"

"No, he just met her on the way here and I haven't been able to pull them apart yet — it's impossible since I can't get close enough to her to get him into bed unless he makes his own way," It was interesting that the girl had attached to a random boy, out of all the people; but it ultimately showed she wasn't completely afraid of other people. Still, it offered almost nothing to the situation -- how were they supposed to benefit from a five-year-old boy when the little girl was equally likely to either piss herself or drop dead at any given moment?

"She's definitely suffering from post-traumatic stress of some kind,"

"You're nuts, she's hardly five," The woman spoke only bluntly — but she finally lowered her hand from her mouth and took a step closer to the man before her. It did sound ridiculous to the woman, though more of something she didn't want to believe, as opposed to something she couldn't. It was a hard topic to swallow that a child could have experienced something so bad as to evoke post-traumatic stress. It was just something no mother would ever want to believe. -And understandably so.

"It's not uncommon in children — she hasn't slept, she hasn't spoken to people; they're activities a child experiencing it has trouble engaging with," The man turned back to face the girl before him. The little girl truthfully had no idea what he was talking about — all she knew were broken phrases of English she had picked up in memories she couldn't even recall; enough to understand, far from enough to communicate. Even when she did understand the odd, simple word, she plainly couldn't focus enough on what the large, clumsy people were saying. It only made her more afraid, and even more exhausted. "If she's come out of a bad home, it's no surprise that she's had some rough times,"

"All my kids have come out of bad homes,"

"But you don't know just how bad hers could have been, Caroline," The man turned away from the girl just as he had before, watching her press her palms into the sides of her thighs. She was attempting to still the shaking, he could tell by the flexing of her biceps. She was angry. But over what? What exactly was she angry about? Had the man's diagnosis been undesirable? Had she wanted to hear something different? 'She's got a fever, she'll be back to normal in a few days — definitely not mentally ill before she could read and possibly debilitated and therefore In need of extensive care.'

"I have to go check on James, please be careful with her — don't frighten her too much, will you?" The woman turned and began to walk as she spoke, watching the man nod with few words of his own-

"Is he the boy she's close to?"

"Yeah," She shrunk further and further away from the man with hurried, backwards steps. He didn't blame her for the rush — who knew what exactly a five-year-old could get up to in a bathroom, alone for five minutes? The answer could surprise just about anyone. "I'll bring him back with me and we can see if we can get her to talk," The man nodded as she watched the woman duck through a doorframe, her footsteps echoing. It was evident she was climbing a staircase, from the way her lumbering steps bellowed and grew further and higher from sight and earshot. It was a strange thing to note when there was not much else to listen to.

The man turned back to the girl before him and met her eyes. It seemed they hadn't moved since they first met his own — as if she were incapable of shifting or any kind of change as she sat, frozen; fixed; numb; stunned, startled, ossified... It didn't take much to come to the conclusion that she was permanently petrified and even more so when exposed to sudden movements. It really did make him wonder what had happened to her. What made her so distant and fearful in a way he had never experienced first-hand in a child so young. And yet somehow, he had no will or desire to look away — she was the very trainwreck people were attracted to, the child being swept to sea... she was gut-wrenching and pitiful yet gripping and impossible to look away from. People loved a good tragedy – they always will.

He had met some pretty messed up children through Caroline, but this one had to be the most severe case he had yet been exposed to. He was completely sure there were countless other five-year-olds just like the nameless one before him, but it truly was haunting to sit in front of a girl who stared up with the same raised eyebrows as if she had died in the very position and was eternally incapable of moving. It was just how the girl was. Out of reach. Deceased.

He reached to a table by his side with only slow movements — but the girl still didn't move. Her eyes didn't dare to shift from the space she knew he would be in few moments when he leant back once more, and so she didn't care much at all for the green fruit he picked up. She didn't even notice as to wonder what the clumsy, large person was doing. She was too terrified to think about much at all -- and as repetitive as that was, it seemed to be stuck in that very place; a place where she's too scared to do anything other than stare blankly at the same very space she had been ever since he walked in. 

"I like apples," The man bit into the fruit, crunching slowly. The girl watched the way his lips moved as he chewed, listening for the telltale, crisp sound. It almost made her smile and laugh, the way his lips moved, but she was too trapped in an anticipation of when the man was going to hit her, or yell at her, or pick her up and drag her away... "They make the coolest sound," He paused as he spared a glance to the fruit. "I like the green ones the best — they make me-" He bit into the apple again. "-make this weird face because they're so sour," The girl watched as he scrunched up his face, lifting the apple away from his mouth.

Then something happened that made the man's heart sink in his chest and his stomach flip; the girl laughed. She had the cutest, smallest teeth as she smiled and giggled, twisting her hands in her lap — but even the short giggle was enough to heat the man's cheeks. The world truly was missing out on something spectacular when the girl huddled up in a corner without a single word. "Do you want some?" He slowly extended the apple between them and watched as the girl laughed again.

"No!" Her voice was just as sweet as her laugh as she sat, fidgeting, the word another laugh in itself. His heart somehow sank even further — and it didn't take long at all for the man to pinpoint that the five-year-old girl had left him in awe.

"What if I get you a pink one? Do you like the colour pink?" The man scrunched his nose as he spoke and reached behind himself once more. When he extended his hand again, he held a fruit of a warmer colour. A shy red. The girl nodded. "Do you want me to have some first and tell you if it's any good?"

The small girl laughed and instead took the apple from the man clumsily with both hands, her eyes falling from his and instead, landing on the fruit. She really did look hungry as she gazed intently at it, a small smile settling against her skin. The expression did her the justice she deserved and gave her face the childish substance it was missing -- rounded cheeks, narrowed eyes -- but was soon gone, as she lifted the fruit to her mouth and took a struggling bite in her best attempt to mimic the man. This time, it was the man who laughed. He could have told himself he hated children and the mess they made over and over, but would he ever be able to truly take himself and that seriously? 

"Is it good?" His voice was gentle as he took another bite of his own fruit. It was a wondrous sight to watch the girl as she struggled to fit the thing in her hands, eyes studying the flesh as she calculated childishly which way best to eat it. It was an even more wondrous sight to watch the girl with dark, dark hair and the largest, brightest green eyes. He hadn't seen anything in his thirty-one years that felt to be a greater violation of the laws of nature. Those very eyes found him again as she nodded with a full-mouthed smile. Children were a thing he told himself he could live without when not faced by the short, full-bodied things, but further, beings he couldn't separate from the desire to be close to when he was on the cusp of interaction with. It was a strange thing to admit to himself, but he (much like others) had stranger things to admit. It was a moment he'd have to remind himself that adults weren't drawn to puppies or toddlers because they were cute -- it's because they're so incoherent that their thoughts were a mystery; and people are drawn to no end to problems with solutions just beyond a fingertip's reach. It makes people feel significant. It gives them temporary, subconscious self-worth and even a brief escape from their miserable lives. Maybe children and puppies were a gateway into another dimension. Maybe they secretly knew something that people with high-order thinking lose the capability to understand. Maybe they were just dumb. Dumb and hairless (at least the children).

It didn't take long at all for the woman to return, bent over slightly and with a short and grubby boy in tow, hand clasped to hers. That must have been why she was bent down; to accommodate the hight of the small boy who struggled to match the woman's steps — but when she did come in sight of the man and the young, skeletal and discoloured girl, she too, lost her breath. "You're officially my baby whisperer," The woman murmured the words to herself as she approached, releasing the boy by the hand. It was the sight of the little girl actually eating something that kicked her in the chest and winded her -- the sight of the little girl in a position of crossed legs, as opposed to knees tucked into her chest. Maybe the child wasn't as damaged as she seemed, after all; and in a socially sick way, there was nothing like paying shipping just to receive a broken product.

She watched as the small boy darted forwards and stumbled towards the girl, planting himself at her side. It was an adorable and unspoken fact that he had spilt sauce over himself trying to get the girl to eat something — he had even offered up his chicken nuggets; and to him, that was the purest form of friendship and admiration. It didn't matter if the meat was cold and the coating was now soggy, they were still little pieces of his tiny, grubby heart. 

The man rose to his feet before he could talk himself out of turning away from and leaving the little girl, and from there, he approached the woman without another word to said girl, who now made odd faces herself as she ate the apple. It was the odd faces that presented her struggle to open her mouth enough to fit a bite from the apple. It was the odd faces that greatly resembled how adorable it was to watch children eating foods larger than their hands. "Why aren't you working childcare?" The woman shook her head as she planted her hands on her hips, her remark breathless. It was probably the most still she had stood in days. She herself, had sauce spilt on her shirt. It was supposed yet again, that she had less time to worry about herself and more time to worry about her children -- as the stain on her shirt versus the stain of her temporary son would suggest (as blunt as 'temporary son' would sound).

The man laughed before he spoke a sentence of his own. "I'll stick to the hospital, kids are a nightmare," He paused and crossed his own arms over his chest as he stood. He knew that much like the fifty-fifty toss-up of almost everything within a day, there was an equal chance he would regret speaking as there was he would thank himself for it. It was a split second decision, a weigh-up of the pros and cons that didn't last anywhere near long enough for a proper evaluation -- though the proper evaluation would have led the man to keep his mouth shut. "I do have a question for you, though,"

"Go ahead," Not only did she speak, but the woman dragged the back of her hand over her forehead. It was almost humorous, a small smudge of sauce now above her brow. The poor woman seemed to be covered in snot and condiments — motherhood sure was not glamorous.

The man breathed in before he spoke, and he breathed in a rather long breath. He looked nervous, antsy -- but for what? Was there really much fear or decision on the basis of his question? Was there much at all to be worried about? Again, a proper evaluation would have led him to the conclusion that there was no point, no worth to his question. It would have led him to solidarity.

"As insane as this is... would you help me out in the process of me fostering her?"