She ate everything on her plate. Every single bite. Even the things I could tell she didn’t like. She ate fast, with her arm curled around her plate, like someone might take it away.
One night, Daniel found a dinner roll hidden under her pillow. And a granola bar in her sock drawer. And three packets of crackers in the pocket of her pink coat.
He came into our bedroom holding them in his hands. He didn’t say anything. He just put them on the bed.
I sat there and looked at those crackers for a long time.
Joanne had told us about this. Hiding food. Kids who don’t know if there’ll be food tomorrow.
Hearing about it in a church basement was different.
The next morning, I put a basket on the kitchen counter. I filled it with granola bars and crackers and apples and little bags of pretzels.
“This is your basket,” I told Ivy. “Anything in it is yours. Whenever you want. You don’t have to ask. And when it gets empty, I’ll fill it up again. Every time.”
She looked at the basket for a long time.
She didn’t take anything that day.
But the next morning, two granola bars were missing.
The morning after that, three.
A week later, Daniel stopped finding food under her pillow.
One evening, about a month after she came, she was carrying her glass of milk to the table and it slipped out of her hands.
It hit the kitchen floor. It didn’t break. It just tipped over, and milk went everywhere. Across the floor. Under the table.
Ivy froze.
Then she dropped to her knees.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
She was grabbing at the milk with her bare hands. Trying to wipe it up. Pushing it around on the floor. Her whole body was shaking.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry…”
“Ivy,” I said. “Sweetheart. Stop.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
I knelt down on the floor next to her. Right in the milk. I put my hands over hers.
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “It’s just milk. That’s all it is.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were huge. Terrified.
“Are you mad?” she whispered.
“Not even a little,” I said.
She stared at me.
She stared at me in total disbelief. Like I’d just told her the sky was green.
Daniel came over with a roll of paper towels. He sat down on the floor too. All three of us, sitting on the kitchen floor in a puddle of milk.
“You know what I did once?” Daniel said to her. “When I was about your age? I knocked over a whole gallon of milk. A whole gallon. In my grandmother’s kitchen. It went everywhere. It went under the stove. Her kitchen smelled like sour milk for a month.”
Ivy looked at him.
“Was she mad?”
“She was a little mad,” Daniel admitted. “But then she made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Because she said a boy who spills that much milk must be very hungry.”
Ivy looked at him for a long time.
Then, very slowly, the left side of her mouth went up.
Just a little.
It was the first time I ever saw her crooked smile.
But every night, she packed her clothes back into her duffel bag.
Every single night.
I’d go up to tuck her in, and I’d see it. Her clothes folded neatly and zipped into the blue bag with the broken zipper, sitting on the floor next to her bed. Her shoes lined up next to it. Ready.
In the morning, she’d take out what she needed for the day. At night, she’d put it all back.
“Sweetheart,” I said once. “You can put your clothes in the dresser. That’s what it’s for.”
“I know,” she said.
She didn’t put them in the dresser.
I didn’t ask her again. Joanne had told us. Don’t push. Let her decide when.
It took almost three months.
But slowly, Ivy began to feel at home.
It happened in little ways. So little you almost wouldn’t notice.
One morning, I came downstairs and she was already in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator, looking for the orange juice. She hadn’t asked.
One afternoon, she came home from school and threw her backpack on the floor by the front door and kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the couch with a big sigh. Like any eight-year-old in America.
“Margaret,” she called from the living room one Saturday. “Where are my crayons?”
“Under the couch, sweetheart,” I called back from the kitchen. “Where you left them.”
“And my shoes?”
“Also where you left them.”
“Where’s that?”
“Wherever you took them off.”
I heard her groan.
Daniel was standing next to me at the counter, making coffee.
He was grinning.
“She finally knows this is her home,” he said quietly.
That night, I went up to tuck her in.
The blue duffel bag was in her closet. On the floor. Empty.
Her clothes were in the dresser drawers. Not folded very well. Shoved in, mostly. A sock hanging out of the top drawer.
I stood there in the doorway looking at that sock for a long time.
I had to go downstairs and sit on the back steps for a while before I could talk to anybody.
A few weeks later, Ivy stormed upstairs because Daniel wouldn’t let her watch TV past bedtime.
There was a cartoon movie on. She wanted to see the end of it. It was eight-thirty. Bedtime was eight.
“That’s so unfair!” she shouted from halfway up the stairs. “You’re the worst!”
“Good night, Ivy!” Daniel called after her cheerfully.
“I hate this house!”
She slammed her bedroom door. So hard the pictures in the hallway rattled.
Daniel turned around on the couch and looked at me.
He was grinning from ear to ear.
“She’s finally being annoying,” he said.
I started laughing.
I laughed so hard I had to hold on to the back of the couch. I laughed until tears ran down my face. Daniel laughed too.
Upstairs, I heard Ivy’s door open a crack.
“What’s so funny?” she yelled down.
That made us laugh even harder.
But everything truly changed one evening in our kitchen.
It was a Thursday in May. Warm. The windows were open, and you could smell the lilacs from the bush in the backyard.
I was making dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs. The radio was on, like always. And an old song came on. Moonlight Serenade. Glenn Miller. My parents’ song.
I couldn’t help it. I never can, when that song comes on.
I started dancing. Just a little. Swaying back and forth at the stove, stirring the sauce. A little turn on my good knee. A little step.
Then I noticed Ivy.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway. Watching me. She had a crayon in her hand.
“Want to try?” I said.
She shook her head fast.
“I can’t dance.”
“Neither can Daniel,” I said.
From the living room, Daniel shouted, “Hey!”
Ivy almost smiled.
I turned the burner down under the sauce. I wiped my hands on my apron. And I held out my hand to her.
“Come on,” I said. “Just one step.”
She looked at my hand.
“What if I do it wrong?” she said.
“Then we’ll invent a new dance,” I said. “Nobody owns dancing, sweetheart. You can’t do it wrong. You can only do it your way.”
She hesitated for a long time.
Then she put her crayon down on the counter. And she came across the kitchen. And she took my hand.
Her hand was small and a little sticky.
