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pajamas. She headed toward Myrtle Avenue a few blocks away, carefully scanning the streets. A few lone cars drove past her as she made her way, her breath turned white. She was glad it was freezing, unlikely anyone would be hanging outside.
    She had stayed too long at this foster family’s apartment. She knew it from her placement there exactly four weeks ago. The caseworker from the Administration for Children’s Services had taken her in a carwith another worker. It had been her twelfth foster care placement, almost one a year since she was born in Kings County Hospital sixteen years earlier. They had arrived in the late morning and a middle-aged woman opened the door, smiled, and welcomed them inside. Tanisha had dropped her guard slightly when the woman, Letitia, spoke with a Spanish accent. It had brought her back momentarily to the one foster placement that had been a home to her several years earlier.
    The warmth of the apartment—the radiators that had no controls—and the steamed windows made it seem almost friendly. The caseworkers had stayed for over an hour, talking with Letitia, introducing Tanisha, and helping unpack the small backpack of what remained of her worldly items. She had a few changes of clothes and a small zipped bag for her toothbrush and hairbrush. The senior caseworker Anna had given
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Letitia two plastic pillboxes and gone over the instructions for the timing of the medications and possible side effects. There was a sheaf of papers she had in a plastic binder. She gave Letitia a copy of some documents and asked her to sign and date a form. The workers turned to Tanisha, who was sitting quietly at the dining room table, came over to give her a hug, and told her she would be fine here and they would be by to visit in a few days.
    The problem started that night. In the late afternoon, Letitia’s daughter had come home with her boyfriend. They put on the television and ate pizza while talking and ignored Tanisha after a perfunctory introduction by Letitia, who promptly left to do some errands. The boy was around twenty and lived upstairs and didn’t appear to notice that Tanisha was even in the room.
    It was after midnight when Tanisha was in bed. She had left the window open a few inches since the only way to control the temperature was to let in some cold air. She heard the window scraping against the frame and saw a sneaker and leg enter the room, followed by the young man from the afternoon. The light from the street made it clear who he was even in the shadows. He slid the window down, looked over at her, and took out a switchblade.
    This wasn’t the first time Tanisha had been raped, violated, or abused in foster care, but she had decided it would be the last time.She said nothing to the family the next morning after they banged on the door to the bathroom as she showered under near-boiling water for fifteen minutes to cleanse her mind and body. The window didn’t have a lock. She jammed it shut that morning and rigged a wooden bar so that it could not be opened. She also took a knife from the kitchen and kept it at the side of the bed. She heard rattling at the window a few nights later, again after midnight. The young man came over several days a week, and one night she noticed that the piece of broomstick keeping the window secure was gone. It was time to get out.
    When she got to Myrtle Avenue, she turned right under the elevated train. She had gotten directions on the walk to Manhattan from a friendly counterperson at the White Castle all-night diner. “You go to Myrtle,” he’d said, pointing out the window, “and make a right turn. It is another fifteen minutes until you hit Broadway. There is another elevated train there and you make another right turn. You just walk the length of Broadway and stay under the elevated train. It runs right into the Williamsburg Bridge. You can’t miss it. You are practically in the East River. It is another world there. You are