Chapter 2 - The Divided House
The social worker who kicked our door open on the morning of December eighteenth was named Mrs. Vance.
She wore heavy winter boots thattracked dirty slush across the linoleum I had spent two hours scrubbing the night before.
Behind her stood two police officers who kept their hands rested casually on their utility belts.
“Lily Carter?” she asked, looking at a yellow carbon sheet on her metal clipboard.
I was standing over the stove, stirring oatmeal made with tap water because the formula was already half gone.
Noah and Owen were babbling in their dresser drawer, chewing on the wooden handles.
“My aunt is at the pharmacy,” I lied smoothly, holding the wooden spoon like a shield.
“She had to pick up asthma medicine for the babies.
She’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
Mrs. Vance didn't even look around the room before stepping over to the drawer.
“Your aunt was arrested forty-eight hours ago on Liberty Avenue, Lily.
She won't be back for quite some time.”
The air left my chest in one cold, violent rush, as if someone had dropped an iron anvil on my ribs.
I dropped the wooden spoon into the pot, not feeling the hot oatmeal that splashed across my wrist.
“I take care of them,” I said, stepping between the social worker and the dresser drawer.
“They are fed.
I give them their bottles every four hours, and I change them before they sleep.”
The officer on the left looked at the clean counter, then at the single can of formula sitting next to the stove.
“She’s ten years old, Vance,” he muttered, his voice sounding genuinely troubled.
“She can't raise twin infants in an unheated walk-up, Dennis,” Mrs. Vance replied without looking back at him.
She reached down and lifted Noah out of the drawer by his underarms.
Noah immediately began to wail, his small legs kicking against her heavy coat.
Owen heard his brother screaming and joined in, his face turning an angry, blotchy purple.
“Don't touch them!” I screamed, lunging forward to grab Noah’s blanket.
The second officer caught me by my shoulders, holding me back with gentle but unbreakable pressure.
“Easy, kiddo.
Nobody is going to hurt them.
You have to let us help you.”
“You aren't helping!” I thrash against his grip, kicking at his shins with my torn sneakers.
“They don't know you!
They won't sleep if I'm not there!”
Mrs. Vance ignored me, placing Noah into a portable plastic bassinet she had brought from the hallway.
She went back and scooped up Owen, who was crying so hard he was gagging on his own breath.
“Pack your personal things, Lily,” Mrs. Vance said, her eyes fixed entirely on her paperwork.
“One small bag.
Clothes only.
No toys.”
“Where are you taking them?” I choked out, tears finally burning tracks down my face.
“There is an emergency infant placement home in Shaler Township,” she said, zipping Owen into a nylon carrier.
“They have space for two infants.”
“And me?”
Mrs. Vance finally looked me in the eyes, her expression as flat and gray as the Pittsburgh winter sky.
“You're going to the girls’ temporary dormitory on Perrysville Avenue.
They don't take infants.”
“No!”
I threw myself against the officer holding me, clawing at his thick leather sleeves.
“We stay together!
My mother said we stay together!”
“Lily, calm down,” the officer pleaded, wrapping both arms around me to pin my arms to my sides.
I watched Mrs. Vance pick up both bassinets, her hands steady, her face indifferent to the sound of my family being ripped apart.
“Where is their formula?” she asked, looking at the counter.
“Leave it alone!” I spat at her.
“I paid for that!
That belongs to them!”
She took the metal can anyway, dropping it into her canvas tote bag beside her files.
As she turned toward the hallway, I wrenched my neck around, fighting the officer's heavy grip with every ounce of strength in my small body.
“Noah!
Owen!” I screamed into the hallway.
The sound of their twin cries echoed down the stairwell, bouncing off the peeling green paint.
The heavy wooden door clicked shut, cutting off the sound of my brothers forever.
The officer slowly loosened his grip, his breath coming in a long, ashamed sigh.
“Go get your clothes, Lily.
Don't make this harder than it has to be.”
I didn't pack clothes.
I walked to the drawer under the bed and pulled out the spiral notebook with Daniel Mercer’s debt recorded inside.
I shoved the notebook down the front of my jeans, pressing the cardboard flat against my stomach.
Then I reached up to the high shelf, took the jam jar down, and took the twenty-dollar bill and the black business card.
I slipped them into my dirty sock, pulling the wool tight over my ankle.
Only then did I toss three shirts and a pair of trousers into an old pillowcase.
As we walked down the stairs to the police cruiser, the cold East Side wind hit my face like a slap.
I looked down the street toward the corner where Frank had spat his toothpick.
Mercer Market was five blocks south, its bright red neon sign glowing through the falling snow.
I knew that inside that warm store, Daniel Mercer’s registers were humming, counting thousands of dollars by the second.
He had told me I owed him ten dollars.
He had treated our encounter like a contract between business partners.
If I became just another broken foster kid who cried in a corner, that contract was void.
If I let the state swallow me whole, I would never find Noah and Owen, and I would never pay back the man in the charcoal coat.
I climbed into the back of the cruiser without another word, resting my forehead against the cold metal cage separating me from the front seat.
The officer looked at me through the rearview mirror.
“You’re a tough kid, Lily.”
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“I’m not a kid,” I told him, watching the neon sign of Mercer Market disappear behind a wall of grey slush.
“I’m an account that hasn’t been settled yet.”
