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blessing.” Alicia Bernstein continues to talk. “You will come in every day for a week,” she says, and now she is standing. “See,” she says, and I can’t help but look.
    I look even though I don’t want to.
    She is pointing at the pantry door like a teacher pointing at the chalkboard. She is pointing at the calendar hanging from a nail on the white door. It’s just like Gran to own a calendar without any pictures. June is nothing more than a series of squares with numbers typed into the bottom right-hand corners. Alicia Bernstein sweeps her bony pointer finger over the squares for next week—Monday through Friday. In shaky cursive, Gran has written the word TEST inside every block.
    â€œSee,” Alicia Bernstein says again, and her smiling is no longer forced, it is real this time. “Everything is all set in stone.” And I have no choice in the matter.
    *  *  *  *
    The following week is a blur of buzzing fluorescent lights, strangers, and weird pictures. Every morning, Gran wakes me up early and feeds me breakfast. I drink  Tang and eat sugar cereal—both of which I’m not allowed to eat at home—and my stomach hurts. Then we get into her Buick and drive to the ugly brick building where the doors are guarded by two flags: America and Kansas.
    While Gran sits in the waiting room working her crossword puzzles, I’m taken into different rooms by different people who play relay with the manila folder Alicia Bernstein had. On the third day, a woman named Wendy places a stack of black-and-white pictures on the table. They are large and square. And they are upsetting. I’m supposed to tell a story about what I see. “I see a little girl sitting on the steps,” I say, and Wendy smiles a disappointed smile.
    She holds the picture higher, and she says, “Tell me everything you can about the little girl. What’s her name? Why is she alone? Is this where she lives? Are there people we can’t see?”
    And I try. I try to tell the stories in the black-and-white pictures, but I get distracted. The kids on the posters and in the pamphlets all around are also telling stories, and I want to help them run away from the stories they are trying to tell. “A story is made from three parts,” Wendy explains. “It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You need to include all three, okay, Fig ?”
    Wendy says, “No more happily ever after, okay?” but the ending is the hardest part to tell.
    On Friday, when I finish, Alicia Bernstein steers me back to the waiting room, where Gran is sitting surrounded by more brochures: Overcoming Depression. Teen Pregnancy. Anxiety Disorder.
    â€œIt was so nice to meet you,” Alicia Bernstein says, and reaches out to shake my hand while her other arm clutches the manila folder. The children in the posters all warned me about Alicia Bernstein. “She’s a social worker,” they explained. “Her job is to take kids away from their parents.”
    I let the social worker shake my hand, but I’m careful to also hold my breath and cross my fingers; I cross the fingers on both my hands, the ones behind my back and the ones inside her fist. I hold my breath and cross my fingers because I never want to see Alicia Bernstein ever again.
    *  *  *  *
    September 1982
    Summer ends and the new school year begins, second grade with Mrs. Olson. Most school nights, I stay at home, and just being in my house makes me less worried about Alicia Bernstein coming to take me away. Mama is still in the hospital. Daddy says she needs a place to rest. “A little break,” he says. “A time out.”
    I ride the bus back and forth—home to school, school to home, and on the weekends I go stay with Gran. She stops at a gas station along the way and buys me a Wizard of Oz suitcase because it’s the only kind they carry. “I don’t