Chapter 7: The Green Rug

The county Family Center had a room with a green rug, a bin of toys and a social worker in the corner with a clipboard.

I got there forty minutes early on Saturday.

Roz had lent me a clean blouse, and I had spent my last ten dollars on a pack of colored pencils.

At ten o'clock sharp the door opened.

Cassidy stood in it with her hand on Milo's back.

"Here he is," she said brightly, for the social worker's benefit. "Remember what we talked about, sweetheart. Be polite."

Milo nodded without looking at her.

"I'll be right in the lobby," she told me. "In case he gets upset."

"He won't get upset."

"You'd be surprised," she said, and pulled the door shut.

Milo stood on the rug in his school sneakers.

He was holding his own elbows.

I sat down on the floor, crossed my legs and put the pencils between us.

"I'm not going to grab you," I said. "I want you to know that first."

His eyes flicked to my face.

"You can sit wherever you like. Or you can stand there the whole time. I'll still be glad you came."

He stood for a long while.

The social worker wrote something on her clipboard.

Then Milo sat down on the rug, as far from me as the rug allowed, and pulled the pencils toward him with one finger.

"Those are for you," I said. "They're new."

He took out a yellow one and a gray one.

He drew a house.

It had a crooked roof and a front door in the middle, with a window on each side.

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