Who Owns Kelly Paddik Read online

  I went over to the banner and read the words as I picked it up: ONE PERSON IS WORTH MORE THAN THE WHOLE WORLD. Yeah, right, I thought. If they think I’m worth something, why lock me away like this?

  Sister Mary was perched on top of the ladder, staring at a spot on the wall. “I think we’ll put it right here,” she muttered to herself. She looked down at me and grinned. “Ready, kiddo?” she asked. As she bent forward, the ladder creaked loudly. Chris gripped it tighter and made a face.

  I held up one corner of the banner. “Maybe I should get on the ladder?” I said.

  “Think I’m too old for this, young lady?” Sister Mary demanded. Her glasses made her eyes look huge. Taking one corner of the banner from my hand, she started to fasten it to the wall. Suddenly there was a loud crash on the other side of the gym. We all jumped. I turned quickly to see that one of the tables had fallen over. Chris whirled too, jerking the ladder so that it wobbled. Sister Mary dropped the banner and grabbed for the top rung. She missed and began to fall backward. Jumping towards her, I tried to catch her as she fell. She landed on my shoulder and we went down together.

  I knew I was okay — maybe a bruised hip. I could feel Sister Mary on top of me, her head on my shoulder. She didn’t hit her head, I thought. Then I saw she’d twisted her leg under herself. It looked like a bad sprain. I made sure I didn’t move an inch, even though my hip ached — it might have hurt Sister Mary’s leg.

  Then I saw the set of keys lying between my knees and the wall. Sister Mary’s! I thought. I grabbed them and slid them into my pocket just as several nuns ran over. I told them that I was fine, and they held Sister Mary carefully as I got up. Putting my hands in my pockets, I stood quietly beside Chris as they checked Sister Mary’s leg. I couldn’t believe that I was holding a set of keys to this place. The keys in my hand felt as if they had wings. I held them tightly. Don’t fly away yet, I thought.

  Sister Mary’s face was pulled into a very old shape, full of pain. “I’ll get a car and we’ll take you to the hospital,” said another nun, bending over her.

  “No,” snapped Sister Mary angrily. She meant what she’d said. I couldn’t believe it — her leg was starting to turn color and swell up.

  “Mary, this is no time for being a hero. You have to go,” the other nun told her.

  “I’m not seeing a doctor,” said Sister Mary. “Just help me up to my room. No one’s going to touch this leg.”

  One of the nuns sent everyone back to class. I walked beside Chris down the hall, holding the secret keys in my pocket. Finally I had my chance to get out of this place. All I had to do was find a time when nobody was watching me. It wouldn’t work while I was at the school. There were too many people all over the place.

  “Do you think it was our fault?” Chris looked worried. “They won’t think we did it on purpose, will they?”

  “No,” I shrugged. It was just Sister Mary’s leg, not her heart, and I had more important things to think about. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “See you later.”

  As I walked away from Chris, I had to work to keep the smile off my face. This bird was going to fly the coop, really soon.

  Chapter Eight

  I’d decided to hide the keys in the heating vent in my room, but then I got a better idea. After school, I taped the most important key inside the folded part of the poster. Then I dropped the rest into the garbage pail in the girls’ washroom. When I came out, I noticed Jim talking to Chris in the office. She kept shaking her head. I guessed that Sister Mary had finally noticed that her keys were missing. Jim called me into the office and asked if I’d seen them. I just kept saying no. It was pretty obvious that he didn’t believe me, but he couldn’t force me to say anything.

  The staff did a room search. I had to watch from my doorway as Jim went through all my stuff a second time. He looked in the heating vent, under my bed and through my closet. But he didn’t think of checking behind the poster. So when he walked out of my room, I still had the key.

  After an hour or so the staff stopped searching the other girls’ rooms. I wondered if they’d found the keys I’d thrown into the wash-room garbage, but they didn’t say anything. If they had found them, they would have noticed that the master key was gone. Maybe that was why they kept their eyes on me like spotlights. I don’t know why, but they just seemed to know that Chris hadn’t taken the keys. With the staff watching me like that, there wasn’t a single chance to make a break for it. Every time I moved off on my own, a staff would call out, “Kelly, come watch this TV show.” Or someone would say, “Kelly, come play pool with us.”

  That night they brought in extra staff. After lights out I lay awake for hours, waiting for a chance to slip out. But every time I checked, I could see a woman sitting in the middle of the unit. She wasn’t watching TV the way the night staff usually did. Her eyes kept moving from one bedroom door to the next, waiting for someone to come out. And she didn’t look as if she’d go for the “I have to use the washroom” excuse. Several times she actually came over to my room and shone a flashlight on me. I did my best to fake sleep. At one point she even sat outside my door for awhile. It was creepy, and I didn’t fall asleep until she moved back to the middle of the unit.

  The next morning the key was still hidden inside the poster. It was Saturday, and after breakfast Chris decided to teach me how to bake bannock. As we got out the flour and eggs, I kept thinking about the key. Saturday was usually a quiet day — maybe I’d get my chance to take off. So far I’d only noticed one extra staff working.

  But as we finished mixing up the bannock, we saw Jim walk Pit Bull across the unit to her room. My jaw dropped. I’d thought for sure she would made it. Pit Bull was tough, and she’d said she had friends out there. What had happened to them? And what had happened to her? She looked as if she’d been sleeping in the dump, and her clothes were torn. When she came out of her room with a towel, I saw her black eye. As she walked past us, she didn’t look up. I glanced at Chris to see what she thought, and she just shrugged.

  “Terri’s always going on the run,” she said coolly. “She usually comes back looking like a wreck.”

  Pit Bull stayed in the tub room for a long time. When she got out, the staff didn’t let her go back to her room. Instead she had to stay in the back room, a small locked room behind the office. All that room had in it was a bed and a window with wires running through it. After a while, Pit Bull started to kick and punch the walls. The sounds reminded me of my dad when he got angry. I went stiff, and my hands started to shake.

  “Pit Bull’s flipping out,” I whispered.

  Chris shrugged again. “So what else is new? She always ends up in the back room, kicking in another wall. She thinks she’s a big shot, but she’s never going to change. Terri will be in here forever. I’m going to get my life straight so I can get out of here for good.”

  After we finished the bannock, I played gin rummy with some girls but I couldn’t sit still. I kept walking around the unit, looking out the windows. Every time I looked at the office, I could see Jim watching me. Pit Bull’s banging got louder and louder, but I figured a staff must be in the back room with her. It sounded as if there might be a restraint. Everyone hates it when a girl loses it and has to be restrained. The staff hold her down until she stops fighting.

  Suddenly we heard a beautiful voice singing its way up the stairs, along with some loud thumping. “Sister Mary!” someone called. The rest of the girls crowded into the hall beside the office, but I hung back. What if Sister Mary figured out that I’d taken her keys? Would she think I’d jiggled the ladder so that she would fall off and I could steal them? I kept thinking of her looking up at me and saying, “Don’t think you can use me as an armrest.” She was such a cool old lady, she probably knew. When she turned into the unit, I almost ran for my room. Her leg was all bandaged up and she was on crutches.

  “Hello, ladies!” She looked past the rest of the girls and smiled at me. “Thanks for trying to catch me when I
fell, Kelly,” she said.

  “Yeah, sure,” I muttered. My eyes looked everywhere but at her face.

  “Did you go to the doctor?” Chris asked.

  “No,” said Sister Mary, “but I did drag myself to the nurse. She says I’ll live. Now, ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I have to have a word with Terri.”

  Slowly Sister Mary turned herself on her crutches and hobbled into the back room. I couldn’t believe she was going in there. Pit Bull was rabid.

  “What’s she going to do if Pit Bull goes for her?” I asked Chris nervously.

  All the girls stood around stiff, listening. Everyone liked Sister Mary, with her old big band songs and jokes. We could hear her in the back room, talking to Pit Bull, her voice calm and steady. Everything seemed okay, but if that nun cried out, there were eight girls waiting to save her. I stood with the others, my arms and legs tense and ready to move. I knew how angry a girl could get. When I got really mad, I didn’t think. Sometimes I lost it, and then I thought anyone near me was my dad coming to get me again. I would fight to save myself, and when I was like that I could hurt anyone around me.

  None of the girls said anything, but I figured everyone was thinking pretty much the same thing. The funny thing was that after a while, Pit Bull got quieter. She stopped banging and yelling, and we heard her start talking to Sister Mary. Then she started to cry. I don’t know why, but when I heard Pit Bull crying, tears stung my own eyes. I guess I’d never thought of her as someone who could cry. She sounded like a little kid, like my sister Jolyn.

  Jim came out of the office and smiled at us. “Are any of you mother hens interested in going out to the yard?”

  Chris and I went down the back stairs with him and waited as he unlocked the door at the bottom. For the first time in weeks, I stepped outside. It had gotten colder, and I was glad that Chris had made me wear a jacket. We sat on a bench, smoking and looking around. Jim sat nearby. I kept taking quick glances at the fence. It wasn’t far off, and it looked easy to climb. I was just waiting for Jim to take his eyes off me. No one said much. In my head I could still hear Sister Mary’s voice, talking quietly to Pit Bull.

  “Why is Sister Mary afraid to see a doctor?” I asked Chris. “She won’t see a doctor, but she’ll walk into a back room with Pit Bull flipping out? I wouldn’t go in there for anything.”

  “Why won’t you talk to Jim?” Chris asked.

  I glared at her. Chris looked right back, though her eyes looked a little scared. She knew I wanted to punch her out for asking me that. People from Churchill have a lot of guts.

  “Jim won’t hurt you,” Chris said. “Social workers are here to help, y’know. I talk to him lots.”

  Suddenly all I could see was the wall in Jim’s office turning into my dad’s face. “Never,” I snapped. Jumping up, I took off for the fence. It was just a chain-link fence, easy to climb. I could see the street through it, the dead leaves blowing past. It would take no more than a second to climb, less than a second. My fingers grabbed for the fence, and I got one foot into the mesh, ready to swing myself up. But then a hand grabbed my arm, and Jim shoved me against the fence. I wanted to scream and push him off, but I stayed quiet. My whole body was like a hand, hanging onto that fence.

  “Let’s go back in, Kelly,” Jim said. “It’s time to go in.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I didn’t look at him or Chris. “Anything you say. Anything at all.”

  Chapter Nine

  I had to stay in my room all afternoon, and a staff checked me every ten minutes. I think I would have been put in the back room, but Pit Bull was already there. So I sat staring at the white bird on my poster and thinking my thoughts. At three o’clock, Fran came on shift. She didn’t say much, just looked in on me every ten minutes. The afternoon felt as heavy as the gray sky outside my window. Dead leaf after dead leaf blew past.

  I joined the group for supper, then was sent back to my room. I could hear the rest of the girls sitting down to watch a video. Then Fran knocked on my door.

  “Chris and I are going downstairs to play pool,” she said. “Want to come?”

  Chris didn’t turn out to be the world’s best pool player. Sometimes she would cross her eyes, then take her shot. Fran seemed to be aiming at the ceiling or, better yet, the window. When I played pool, even with good friends, I played to win. But it was hard with Chris laughing and Fran whooping every time she shot a ball onto the floor. I rolled my eyes and went to get a ball that Fran had knocked behind the sofa.

  “So, Chris, tomorrow’s the big day, eh?” Fran said.

  “What’s that?” I fished the pool ball out of some dust and stood up.

  “I get my outings,” Chris told me. “I get to go for a walk outside by myself — a whole twenty minutes without staff around to bug me.” Chris shot Fran a grin. “Jim said that if I handle these walks by myself, I’ll be able to move to a group home.”

  I listened for the lie in her voice, but Chris didn’t sound as if she planned to run. “On top of all that, I’m quitting smoking,” she added grandly. “For the third time this month. Of course, I quit every time I finish a pack.” She sighed. “I want to save up and buy a horse.”

  “Where are you going to keep it?” I asked. “Can’t keep a horse in a group home.”

  “I dunno,” Chris giggled. “I’ve always wanted to get a horse and call it Truck.”

  Fran chuckled. “Giddyap, Truck! Whoa, Truck!”

  I thought they were both very weird. I was trying to show Chris how to get her next shot right when the phone rang. Fran picked it up and listened. Right away she ditched her smile.

  “Okay. We’ll be right up.” She hung up the phone. “Sorry, ladies, but we have to head back upstairs. Maybe we can finish this heavy-duty game later, eh?”

  At the top of the stairs we saw another staff waiting for us. Next to her stood Pit Bull, one arm wrapped in a tea towel and pressed against her stomach. Blood had soaked through the towel onto her shirt. She stared at her feet and ignored us.

  “See you later,” Fran said as we passed them.

  They must be going to the hospital, I thought.

  When we got back to the unit, Chris and I went into my room. I flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. Chris sat on the floor, her back against the wall. I couldn’t believe that Pit Bull had slashed her arm. Even if she’d surprised me by crying, I still couldn’t believe she would slash her arm. If there was anyone in this unit who had everything under control, it was Pit Bull. She controlled everything and everyone within breathing distance. But slashing meant you’d lost it — you were out of control. Believe me, I knew that. It was only a few days now until my stitches were supposed to come out.

  “I can’t believe she did that,” I said.

  “Why not?” asked Chris.

  “She’s always so tough,” I said. “She laughed when she saw my arm.” I looked at Chris. “You ever slash?” I asked her.

  Chris rubbed her forehead. “I thought about it a couple of times. But I guess Fran changed my mind.”

  “How’d she do that?” I asked.

  “Well, she knows about what my father did to me.” Chris’s face got very pale and twisted around when she said this. “He ... sexually abused me. I don’t really like to talk about it. I still get nightmares sometimes. I did a lot of dumb junk to forget.”

  “The usual?” I asked. I knew what that meant — drugs, drinking, AWOLs, hooking.

  Chris kept twisting her hands. “Some-times ... well, I still can’t forget and I get hyper.” I thought she might start to cry, but she swallowed and went on. “They put me in a group home because I kept running away. As long as I saw an open door, I was out and gone. I know my dad wasn’t hurting me anymore. All that ... sexual abuse ... was over, but I kept thinking about it. I’d think about it every time I had to stay in one place. I had to keep moving. I just looked for an open door and took off.”

  I was watching her face closely. It was like hearing my own story, except that
my dad died in a car crash a few years ago. I thought I’d be rid of him then, but he was still here, hanging around inside my head.

  Chris sighed. “I kept taking off until they put me in here. Then I couldn’t run anymore.” She started scratching the back of her hand — not deep, just nervous. I knew what that meant — not scared enough to slash, but thinking about it. “Y’know how when you run,” Chris said, “you feel like you’re getting out ... I dunno ... of the mess inside you?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s why I always ran,” she said. “But with these walls, there’s no place to go. I did a lot of kicking and yelling when I first got here. Then Fran told me that it was really my dad who was doing the kicking and yelling. He wanted to hurt me, and I was still letting him do that to me.”

  She must say that to everyone, I thought.

  “Well, I thought about it and I figured she was right,” Chris said. “Why should I wreck my life? If I worked it all out and did okay, he’d be more surprised than anybody.”

  “So what did you do?” I asked. “You seem okay now.”

  “Well, this sounds stupid,” Chris said, “but I just talked about it. I talked to Fran and then to Jim. A lot of kids talk to them. Jim’s heard a lot of that stuff. He listens and asks questions. Someday I’m going to be a social worker like Jim, but up in Churchill.”

  Slowly I pulled up my sleeve and looked at the stitches on my arm. “I thought this would be the end of it all, y’know?” I said.

  “Guess you’re stuck with being alive longer than you thought,” Chris said softly.

  “I guess,” I muttered. I thought about Pit Bull, her arm wrapped in a tea towel, not looking at us. I didn’t want to turn out like her. But the idea of talking to Jim scared me. What if talking about my dad made him show up in my head again?