Maria just shook her head and went back to filling the tiny bottles. There was an air of bitterness and defeat around her that I didn’t understand at the time, though unfortunately I was to learn the source of her attitude later.
Minh took me back downstairs and I carefully sorted the whites and the colors and put in a load of laundry. Then I went out to the living room and gathered up my discarded clothes in a big messy armful. The suitcases were gone—either Nancy Spaulding had decided they were nice enough for her to keep or she thought they were dirty and they’d been thrown out in the trash, with my other things.
Either way, they were gone. So I gathered my clothes and took them down to the basement and then out through the little brown door that led to the back yard area and the barn.
It still seemed unbelievable to me that we actually had to stay in the barn. I had asked Minh, during our tour, if we never got to sleep in the main house at all.
“Maria gets to sometimes. But trust me—you don’t really want to,” was her oblique reply and then she wouldn’t say anything else about it.
I carried my armful of possessions out to the barn and put them carefully into the old trunk that had been left in one corner of my stall. I found the broken remains of an old mirror in there and pushed them carefully to one side. Clearly I wasn’t the first “foster” to use this trunk.
My clothes all fit with some room to spare and when I finished putting them away, I looked at my “bed” again. The two grimy sheets and the single ragged blanket looked filthy and I had a sudden thought—why not throw them in with the next load of laundry? Nancy Spaulding would never be the wiser, I was sure. And there was no way I was going to sleep on something so dirty and disgusting.
I gathered the sheets and blankets into as small a bundle as I could manage and was about to head to the basement again, when I saw what looked like a couple of trash bins several yards behind the barn. Sitting beside the bins was a familiar looking cardboard box.
My things!
Heart in my throat, I hurriedly put the bundled blanket and sheets back down and hurried to the far end of the barn.
Behind the barn was a long stretch of mown green lawn and then the bins and the box. I started out at a brisk pace, hoping no on was watching from the windows of the big white house. I was just in sight of the box and I could see my favorite book—The Beginning Place by Ursula K. LeGuin—and an old pink teddy bear my father had given me when I was little, sticking out the top of it.
But just as I was reaching for these familiar treasures, a loud snarling sound made me jerk my head up.
Rushing towards me were two huge, angry dogs. One was a Doberman and one was a Pitbull, but I didn’t notice their breeds at the time. All I saw were their savage white teeth as they rushed at me, barking loudly.
With a gasp, I turned and dashed madly for the barn. My heart was thudding crazily in my chest and my breath was tearing in my throat. I was sure at any moment I would feel those sharp white teeth closing around my ankle, dragging me down so the dogs could maul me.
Just as I reached the barn, I heard a sharp, by-now familiar voice calling,
“Sugar! Honey! Stand down!”
Looking up, I saw that Nancy Spaulding was there, striding across the green lawn between the house and the barn. When she reached the barn, she saw me standing there with wide eyes.
“So you’re who set the dogs off!” she snapped. “What were you doing out where when you’re supposed to be on laundry duty?”
“I…I was just out here putting away my clothes!” I protested, trying to look innocent.
Nancy slapped me.
“I told you not to lie to me, you little ingrate! Sugar and Honey wouldn’t have come after you if you hadn’t left the vicinity of the barn. What were you doing out there, anyway?
That was three times she’d slapped me now and I hadn’t even been in her house an hour. I was angry and hurt and I wanted to cry and scream but the vicious dogs were still standing in the barn’s back door growling at me and they clearly obeyed Nancy’s every word.
“I was just trying to get my books,” I said sullenly. “I have room in my trunk for them and they’re just sitting there in the box.”
Nancy glared at me.
“You’re an extremely defiant girl, aren’t you? I can see I’ll have to keep my eye on you every minute. Those things in the box are no longer yours—they’re trash. Now get back in the house this instant.”