Daria from the TV Show Daria
One of the first girls I taught at The Agency looked like Daria from the TV show Daria, if Daria developed an eating disorder and occasionally hit her head against the wall.
Her name was Penelope and she smelled like toothpicks and gum disease. Inside or outside, in the middle of crowds or alone with a bathroom pass, she always walked in a straight line, one foot in front of the other, never side by side. It impressed me, the practice and effort it must’ve taken to live in such exacts. It seemed like she was attempting to find grace. I hoped she’d eventually find it.
Penelope was never not alone. She never had a visitor during weekly visitation, but that never stopped her from showing up and watching the side hugs or full hugs, the transference of pain from one of the girls to a grandmother or aunt. Occasionally, on those Wednesday afternoons, when it was my turn to supervise during visitation hours, I’d catch Penelope in a corner of the courtyard, next to a fake tree, perched on one leg like a flamingo.
Months would go by without an in-person visit from her DCS caseworker. Not that this was a surprise. There was never a point in learning any of the DCS staff’s names—they rarely stayed in the job for more than a year, and often their stints were much shorter. I found myself surprised if one or two of them would scrape through a season. Doe eyed, straight out of undergrad, middle class and ready to save the world, the majority of the DCS caseworkers just weren’t cut out for it. They expected to be a walk-on on a TV show. Instead, they were starring in real life, with real pain and real actions that led to real consequences. I wish someone had warned them, said, Hey, no, let’s maybe not—have you considered teaching elementary school or writing grants for nonprofits? Or, if someone did warn them and they still wanted to do it, that they’d try harder. I didn’t blame them for leaving, but it didn’t stop me from hating them. They were just one more adult who failed the girls. One more adult that abandoned them. One more adult that covered them in dust. Though Penelope never complained.
Through winter and then fall and into spring, Penelope’s anorexia stiffened. She was at The Agency for no other reason than because of space, or lack of it, and maybe she thought if she let herself shrink, if she didn’t need more room, then a home would open for her, and she’d just squeeze through the front door and share a house with people who wanted to pretend to try to be a family.
The psychologist at The Agency tried to bribe Penelope with powdered doughnuts, Yoo-hoo in the glass bottle, which tastes better than Yoo-hoo from the paper juice box, though it did little to persuade her. Penelope would take a bite of a doughnut and with powder on her lips, say, Thank you, as she got up, leaving the Yoo-hoo on the desk, unopened.
Penelope was smart. She finished her courses and earned her high school diploma less than six months after arriving at The Agency. Because she was part of the foster system, Penelope was offered free tuition, along with room and board, to the local community college. She would also receive a small monthly stipend. When her new DCS caseworker told her, she said thank you the same way she did when handed a bottle of Yoo-hoo, and then walked in a straight line to the bathroom. She didn’t come out for an hour.
One day, I asked Penelope what she wanted to do when she grew up. She looked at me like it was the dumbest thing anyone ever asked her, as if it were the dumbest thing anyone in the world had ever asked anyone.
I want to pet animals, she said.
Penelope spent eighteen months at The Agency, before turning eighteen and aging out of the system. I don’t know what happens when the girls leave. I don’t know if Penelope ever went to college. I don’t know if she shrank and shrank until she disappeared, but I like to imagine her petting animals as she walks in a straight line, up and down a hall.