Hansel 4(19)

A New York Times story spelled the ordeal out in sick detail, working it into a larger story about the issues people sometimes deal with when they adopt a child who’s been in the foster system for a long time. At the time, I remembered thinking Aunt Shelly had made a horrible mistake.

Now, as I watch Luke’s chest rise and fall with his shallow breaths, I want to cry.

“I don’t know everything that happened, but I know you didn’t do that, Luke. You didn’t know. I know you didn’t…”

He doesn’t move, just lies there on his side, breathing awful, shallow breaths, and I can’t stay away from him. I climb up on the bed, trying, as I move, to reconcile my sweet Hansel with the juvenile delinquent he’d been just a year or two before.

He’s neither of them now.

I settle behind him, so he can hide his face from me if he’d like privacy. I lower my hand down onto his warm, smooth back and start to stroke him gently, like one might a wounded jungle cat. He flinches underneath my touch, and shifts a little ways away.

“Please…” he rasps.

“Please let me,” I whisper.

He tucks his head and stiffens underneath my hand. I stop stroking as tears fill my eyes.

“I hate that this is your story,” I say. “I’d do anything to change it.”

His muscles stiffen.

“It isn’t true,” I whisper. “What you said about your scar. You said you ‘got tired.’”

“I should have said…” his back shudders, “I killed my mother.”

He sits up without using his hands, and his eyes on mine blaze, even though they’re also wide and damp.

“You looked just like her,” he whispers. “All of you. And I remembered you. I guess I must have talked about you. Years later, Mother wanted to know… She wanted a Gretel. She told me if I helped her…” He shakes his head, his jaw clenching. “But I didn’t. She told me she would let you in my room with me. But I didn’t think…” He shakes his head again. His mouth trembles. “The night she brought you, I was…hungry. I was tired and… I tried to get you from her, Leah. I tried, and I just couldn’t hold onto you.”

Tears slide down my face.

“I never would have talked about you if I knew.” He exhales a shaky breath.

“It’s her fault,” I say. “The way you are…with pain.”

He looks away, then meets my eyes. “She took me to her room, and she put me in her bed, and…she took care of me,” he rasps. “She made me eat and gave me liquor. She would lie beside me. We would both get high off pills and…she would… Sometimes she would feel me up.

“I didn’t care at first,” he tells me now. “I never knew what was going on, and when I did, I wasn’t arguing. But…things went bad. She liked to…hurt. She would get me…almost there. And then…” He shakes his head.

“It started with my arm.” His gaze meets mine before dropping to the bed. “I couldn’t stand to have it touched…and she would squeeze it. She would squeeze it, and she would…suck my dick. It took a long time to heal. knew once she hurt me, I could get off then. The pain was…it meant pleasure was coming.

“We would talk in the bathroom. She would be in the bath, and I would be drunk. Then she found Boy Blue, and she got rid of me. She put me in that room. Before you came. But, she would always…bring me out. She would fuck me in the bathroom. He would be in her bed. And then, back to my room. She didn’t want me.” He laughs, a hoarse, sad sound. “I didn’t either. When she came to me, talking about a Gretel…I had mentioned you before and she had looked you up. I was…desperate.”



*



Lucas



I throw my arms around her. Pull her flush against me. “God, Leah, I’m so fucking sorry.”

I cling to her as I swallow back my sobs. My body starts to shake.

She strokes my neck. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Can I ask you something, Luke?” She pulls away a little, looking up at me with wide eyes.

“Anything.” I bury my mouth against her hair.

“What happened after Shelly died? Where did you go, Luke? How did you come to be at Mother’s house?”

My throat feels tight and full. She doesn’t know this part? If she doesn’t know, how can I tell her? I can’t tell her that about her own mother. Her biological one. So I tell a lie. “I was at juvie,” I say slowly. “I ran away.” I rub her shoulder. “By then, people knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was bad. I went through more than twelve foster homes. They knew I was a bad kid.”