Free Children in the Morning by Anne Emery

us.”
    “Jenny and Laurence are very keen on your after-school music program, Father Burke. They love it!”
    “And we love having them. They’re very talented children, particularly Jenny. She’s progressing so fast on the piano that I’m thinking of taking her up to the church organ, and letting her have a go at it.”
    “Oh, wouldn’t she love that!”
    “I have to confess I don’t play the organ myself, apart from a few chords and the notes for the choir. But I know somebody who does play.” He looked at me. My son’s girlfriend, Lexie, is who he meant.
    “Maybe she’d be willing to come in once in a while and help Jenny out.”
    “She’d be happy to,” I told him. And I knew she would. I made a mental note to ask her.
    “How are the children doing, Sheila? First their mother’s death, then the charges against their father. From what you said earlier, it sounds as if some of them had a lot to deal with even before this.”
    “Little Danny . . . I don’t know if you noticed his right arm?” We shook our heads. “He probably had his sleeve pulled way down. His forearm is crooked. That’s from a fracture he suffered at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend when he was eighteen months old. The mother was drunk and had a pillow over her head, hollering at Danny to stop that fucking screaming. A neighbour kicked the door in, and took Danny to the hospital. He was in bad, bad shape when he came to live with Peggy and Beau as a foster child. He was really coming around before Peggy’s death. Sarah and Jenny try to outdo each other to mother him now! Ruthie came from bad news too; well, several of them did. Laurence and Kristin were adopted as infants; they’re fine. Peggy gave birth to Sarah and Connor. They’re fine, too. Well, Connor went through a bit of a wild period, but nothing nasty. He eventually settled down. Anyway, about Ruthie.
    Her mother started writing to some sex offender in a Montreal 42

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    prison; when he got parole, she ran away to meet him and never came back. After being left alone in her apartment at the age of ten, Ruthie wound up with her grandparents. Her grandfather took a great interest in her, especially when she reached puberty. When it was time for her first bra, the grandfather took her to buy it! He kept picking up all these lacy things, red and black, and making lewd remarks, to the point where the woman in the lingerie department called the store security. I guess nothing every came of that interven-tion, because Ruthie went home with him. Stayed with the grandparents for another two years. Two years of sexual innuendo, the old goat sticking his tongue in and out whenever she went by, and giving her scanty outfits for birthday presents. She was treated as nothing but a sexual object. The grandfather referred to her as a chick and a babe, and the grandmother called her a slut. You can see Ruthie is overweight. You don’t have to be Dr. Freud to know why she deliberately overeats, trying to make herself unattractive. Nothing subtle about it. But she has done wonderfully well since coming here. The children have been thriving. I hope to God they continue to thrive, once Beau has been cleared and comes home for good.”
    We heard giggles coming from the living room, then shouts of laughter from Beau.
    “And they have lots of fun with their dad!” Sheila said.
    “If worse comes to worse — and I don’t think it will, Sheila — is there anyone who can take in all ten children?”
    She shook her head. “Impossible. As much as people would want to, there’s nobody in the family who can take them all in. They’d have to be split up. How would any of us decide which children to take, and which ones would be dumped back into the system, into foster care?”
    I didn’t want to picture the scene: children with bundles of belongings being torn from their home and their brothers and sisters.
    And their dad. When Beau