Page 16 of Outside the Lines
I picked up coffee for everyone in the practice on the way in. I always stopped there anyway as part of my morning routine, and I'd started doing it for them as well. They might need the caffeine to get through listening to their teenagers talk about not getting onto the football team. Maybe, to those kids, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to them, but listening to what the other counselors said about their kids made me wish mine only had problems like that.
My little bulldog was the first person I was going to be seeing that morning. Sally Mae Fairchild. She was seven, a smart ass, an absolute terror when she wanted to be, and she'd been through four foster homes already after her extended biological family couldn't tolerate her behavior anymore.
"Hey you," I said as soon as her social worker, Matilda, brought her into my private counseling room.
"Everyone's being a bitch to me today. Don't you do it, too," Sally warned me.
Matilda gave me a look like she'd already had enough of Sally to last her a lifetime just driving her from her foster home to my office. I nodded and that got her to go away. "What's going on?" I asked Sally as soon as we were alone. She was dressed in new clothes that were completely free of holes and her hair was freshly washed. That someone would make her pay attention to her own personal hygiene was probably part of her bad mood.
"They hate me."
"Who does?"
"Everyone." She sat back with a pout and crossed her arms over her chest.
Okay. It was time to go back. "Who's being a bitch to you today?"
"You're not allowed to use bad words."
I smirked. She'd played this game with me before. "Actually, I can use whatever words you do in order to reflect your emotions and experiences back on you in an effort to get you to open up and stop being so upset at the world this morning. So if you want me to not to say bad words, you don't get to either."
She lowered her arms down to her sides. "Why do you do that?"
I twirled the pen in my hands. "Do what?"
"Talk to me like I'm not stupid."
I fought back my laugh. "Because you're not. You're capable of understanding what I'm saying, and we don't need to play mind games with each other. Let's talk about this morning and why you're upset."
Sally got off the chair she'd been slouching in and moved to my couch where she stretched out on her stomach. "They made me get a bath. They didn't ask me. They told me I smelled bad and they made me. I hate them."
I made a quick note on the paper in my hand. "I'm writing down that we need to do some retraining with them to have Mr. and Mrs. Johnson understand why that's traumatizing for you. Do you want to have a group session with them to express your feelings?"
"I'd rather not be with them at all."
I was sure that she didn't. Sally got like this. As soon as someone crossed the line with her and made her do something, usually something that involved her being naked, she suddenly hated them and wanted nothing more to do with them.
"Can't I just come live with you?"
It wasn't the first time she'd ever asked me that. Most of my kids asked me if they could stay with me at one point or another. "I don't have a spare bedroom," I told her, again.
She pouted and her eyes got big. "Please? I won't take up much space. I'll even take the couch."
Some kids could manipulate extremely well. She wasn't one of them. I knew that her begging was genuine. I put my pad of paper and pen aside and walked across the room to sit near her. "Hey. Is this too close?"
She shook her head.
"If we do a group session with the Johnsons and they understand more why you need to be clean in a different way than what they're used to, and that they can't help at all with that and they can't decide when that happens for you, would you want to stay with them?"
Sally shook her head.
"They scared you that much?"
She nodded, and I frowned. She was such a good kid. She could be absolutely perfect with a family who had the patience to deal with sexual trauma. But once a family pushed her a too far, she gave up on them completely and there was never any going back from that. "Okay. I'll talk to your social worker, and we'll see what we can do. Do you feel safe going back there today?"
"No." She sniffled and I was so tempted to go over and hug her, but I knew that would end in disaster.
"We'll get your stuff picked up then and you'll spend tonight at a group home." She'd been in them as a transition place before, but I instantly thought about Alex and Trinity House, and how he was good with kids like her. He had the patience and the understanding, and as long as we had been safe, he'd let us heal and deal with things in our own time. I pursed my lips as I thought about it. "Sally, I need to talk to your social worker really fast. Do you want me to talk to her in here, or do you want to wait here and I'll talk to her in another room?"
