The following is a brief excerpt from a work in progress I never planned to write and I'm not particularly sure I'm going to finish. Lynn Bloom, English Professor at the University of Connecticut, prolific editor and biographer for, among other people, Dr. Spock, stumbled upon me two years ago and has been pushing this endeavor ever since.

Canterbury Run, shade trees bare the brunt of a hot, noonday sun, and I kneel, black brush streaking the birch fence. I’m Tom Sawyer. Not whitewashing anything, but I’m in trouble. I couldn’t tell you why.

I am 17 and the latest acquisition to a line of progenies. Adopted, temporarily, my best friend’s stepmother and father keeping me through my last high school year (my sister-in-law having had it and my mother not having had enough – of anything). Only a signature, you know, a formality really, incase of emergencies, you know, so there won’t be problems, you understand. Looming bold black letters staring down my mother. Shaming her. Proclaiming an incessant inner refrain. Years later she would glare unkindly at my best friend’s biological mother, mistaking her identity, and we would all apologize, smile weakly, and commiserate with rolling cattle-brown eyes. She’d had to sign. My best friend’s father was a lawyer.

Lugging my things up the stairs, I was informed of ghosts said to wander the plantation. Civil war soldiers, you know, a hospital in the attic. But don’t be afraid. A few weeks later, as my attempts to fit into my adopted home did not adequately measure up, I moved my things back down.

The add-on was a space half-finished, in half-decay, half-connected to the otherwise well-renovated home. Hidden behind the bathroom, the add-on was the house’s sole shame, a place for the stepmother’s old clothing and other out-of-fashion things. One wall draped in blue tarp. It’ll be like camping, you know. In this cold half-tent with one wall crinkling and billowing. Sitting on the marmalade shag carpet by the door, I waited for showers taken, personal hygiene performed, before approaching the outside world, passing through the precursory shit and perfumed shampoos of these people.

The latest progeny somehow couldn’t keep up. They would suddenly, spontaneously laugh. Quickly, I would titter, too. They would all leave for Chinese. I would run to the window, watching them go. Just me and the ghosts. I would wander into the add-on, thinking of ways to repent, obtain graces for my mistakes, being late. I’d worn one of Dawn’s dresses again – supposing that one permission in a room of forgotten things might extend to two. It didn’t. Always too late, the things I knew. So on with the overalls to get out of the shame. Out to the paint shed to earn my keep. By the time they’ll be home, I’ll have rows and rows done. They’ll love me. Maybe late, but I can still be a progeny. Surely, they’ll love me.

My prom dress revealed my saddlebag thighs. It was alright, though. Dawn knew exercises. I could change. She said so. Breakfast, like all meals, was a fend-for-self affair, and she would bounce through, radiant in the morning and praising the efforts of thirty years of bra-worn nights. Her breasts were impeccable. She said so. Her first husband was an Arabian prince, you know. And then her lazy left eye would roll slightly north – seeking, desiring something. This lolling eye like some strained punch line. Laugh? Yes! Laugh now! My progeny status slipping, failure showing, I try to paint over it in black fence paint. The ghosts stare down at me.

The plantation is twenty miles from everything. I miss my mother. I am learning things here, though. I will be tough and strong. I will need no one. I know that one need not be happy to laugh and that irritating little tears, if flicked quickly from the face before streaks form, disappear, traceless, into the paint.

My best friend and I aren’t best friends anymore. She’s not telling me why, but there’s no need. It is beyond explanation, the way I have fallen out of favor. And, even if it weren’t, I couldn’t ask. The mornings passed through the bathroom have choked my voice. It melts into post-shower steam, slips on the soaked floor, collides into a sink dripping fluoride saliva, and never makes it out the door. I come through shaking and silent on the other side to impeccable breasts and perfumed, shampooed hair.

There’s supposed to be a white lady in the attic. She’s the one who’s supposed to be staring at my back now, shuddering the skin of my black-paint-flecked scalp. I think to escape her eyes under the eaves but better to get the fence finished. They pull in. I’m not done. I will be unloved. I run to put away the paint. Hide. Dawn’s voice carries through to the add-on, “Perryn. You know. Come out here now.”

Oh god.

I stumble through the steam and shit. She’s waiting on the porch, reeking of Chinese.

You know we’ve done our part to provide a good home for you. We’ve. . .
I’m staring at her eye, which isn’t moving. The tire swing, far behind her head, by the fence is swaying softly. She’s saying something. I’m not even breathing “on January St.,” she’s saying. She’s saying I can live in the ghetto. She means it. “A cab once a week that comes” the wind is breathing for me “food stamps” the air gently fingers my hair, my face “no one can stand to live with you. That’s why you’ve moved so much.” I am seventeen and I am trash. I am being thrown away.

Black phone before me, the breeze pushes my fingers over the buttons. Seven half-forgotten digits, my things dragged through the bathroom door. I am waiting for my mother to right this, to pick me up. I am leaving, the white lady the only one watching me go.