Free Shattered by Kia DuPree Page A

microwave. A beat-up gray couch was on one end of the trailer facing a little TV. Behind me was the bathroom and a short hallway that led to a room with one bed the size of the one me and Dizzle slept on back at the motel. We already tried sleeping three in a bed that big, and it was too tight.
    “Where we all gonna sleep?” I asked. And just like that Dizzle slapped me across my mouth. He did it so fast that I had to blink away the hurt. I heard Nausy suck in air cuz she was shocked, too.
    “Shut the fuck up! I ain’t bring you all the way out here for you to think you can start disrespecting me. I don’t see you paying for shit.”
    I sucked my lips, hoping the sting of his words and my mouth would stop hurting. A tear rolled down my cheek.
    “Get in there and lay the fuck down until I tell you to come out,” he said, like he was trying to calm hisself down. “I’m so fucking pissed off at you right now. Questioning me and shit.”
    More tears fell from my eyes. I couldn’t believe he hit me. Him and Nausy both walked out of the trailer, the weak door snatching shut behind them. I heard the car start up outside, so I jumped up to peek out the window where I saw Dizzle backing out of the parking space. Where was they going? Tears kept coming, so many I couldn’t even see his car when it turned off the road.

7
    W here was I? I waited in the quiet tin house by myself wondering if Dizzle left me out here for making a stupid mistake. In next to no time, the trailer got dark as the sun went down. I was scared. Way too scared to leave the room. Even when I had to use the bathroom, I stayed on the bed. I could hear the crunchy sound of cars driving over rocks on the road, but none of them stopped at the house. What was I gonna do if he left me out here for good? I ain’t even know where I was. I could still hear Dizzle telling me to “shut the fuck up” in my head. Soon I fell asleep waiting for him and Nausy to come back.
    The next morning when I woke up, nobody was in here with me. I ain’t even have my bag cuz it was still in Dizzle’s car. I felt the tears coming again. What was I gonna do? Why did I get smart with him? Nausy ain’t even stand up for me. I shouldn’t have never run away in the first place. I cried and cried until my throat felt raw. I ain’t care if somebody heard me. I laid on the bed and thought about all the stuff that happened over the past two months. I started thinking about all my old foster homes, the Moodys and the Garys and all the bad stuff that happened to me there. I thought about my mother and how she used to make my brother Ryan or my sister Toya read to me and Yodi. How Mommy taught us some sign language with books she got from the library. I missed her. I missed the funny way she used to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to Yodi. It was the same way she used to sing it to me. I was six when I found out the real way she was supposed to sing it, but cuz she was deaf she had been mispronouncing most of the words.
    The fourth birthday without my family was coming up, and I was gonna be twelve. Yodi had to be the same age I was when we split up, eight. I wondered what she looked like now. Ryan was fourteen, and Toya was about to be sixteen soon. I thought about them all the time. I wondered where they could be and if they had been going from one foster care house to another like I had. Did Toya ever do what I did with Dizzle or Nausy with somebody? Did she know about that feeling?
    I stared at the ceiling for a while, and then I practiced signing the lyrics to “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star,” and then I signed all the letters of the alphabet and all the words I could remember. I signed what I would say to Mommy if I ever saw her again—that I loved her and I missed her and that I wanted to come home.
    I was wiping away tears when I finally heard the door unlock. I sat up. Nausynika walked in with a white carton of food and both of our stuff from Dizzle’s car. I could