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"I'll always take care of you, Rose," he said. "You're my responsibility now and I'm glad of it. I want you to have everything, Rose, and I'll see to it that you do. I don't know what's wrong with those people that they don't love you. I love you."
Rose went to live in Florida with Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge in a beautiful house blocks from the sea. The sand on the beach was as white and fine as sugar. Rose had her own room with flowered wallpaper and a canopy bed, and dolls and books that Uncle Lestan sent to her. Uncle Lestan wrote her letters in the most beautiful handwriting and black ink on pink paper.
Aunt Marge drove Rose to a private school called the Country Lane Academy. The school was a wonderland of games to play and projects to do, and computers on which to write words, and bright-faced eager teachers. There were only fifty students in the whole school and Rose was reading Dr. Seuss in no time. On Tuesdays, the whole school spoke Spanish and only Spanish. And they went on trips to museums and zoos and Rose loved all this.
At home Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie helped Rose with her homework, and they baked cakes and cookies, and when the weather was cool, they cooked barbecue outdoors and drank lemonade mixed with iced tea with lots of sugar. Rose loved swimming in the gulf. For her sixth birthday, Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie gave a party and invited the whole school to come, even the older kids, and it was the best picnic ever.
By the time Rose was ten, she understood that Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge were paid to take care of her. Uncle Lestan was her legal guardian. But she never doubted that her aunts loved her, and she loved them. They were retired schoolteachers, Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge, and they talked all the time about how good Uncle Lestan was to all of them. And they were all happy together when Uncle Lestan came to visit.
It was always late in the evening when he arrived, and he brought presents for everyone--books, clothes, laptop computers, and wonderful gadgets. Sometimes he came in a big black car. Other times he just appeared, and Rose laughed to herself when she saw how mussed his hair was, because she knew he'd been flying, flying like that first time, when the little island had sunk into the sea and he had carried her up into the Heavens.
But Rose never told anyone about that, and as she got older she came to think that it just couldn't have happened.
She'd gone from the Country Lane Academy to the Willmont School some fifty miles farther away, and there she was really getting into the most fascinating subjects. She loved literature and history best of all, and after that music, and art appreciation and French. But she did all right in science and math because she felt she had to. Everybody would be so disappointed if she did not do well. But what she really wanted was to read all the time, and her happiest times at school were in the library.
When Uncle Lestan called, she told him all about it, and they talked of books he loved and that she loved, and he reminded her: "Rose, when you grow up, remember, you can be anything you want. You can be a writer, a poet, a singer, a dancer, a teacher, anything."
When Rose turned thirteen, she and her aunts went on a tour of Europe. Uncle Lestan wasn't with them but he had paid for everything. This was the greatest time of Rose's life. They spent three whole months traveling together, and went to all the great cities of the world in what Uncle Lestan called "the Grand Tour." And they visited Russia too, spending five days in Saint Petersburg and five days in Moscow.
For Rose it was all about the most beautiful old buildings, palaces, castles, cathedrals, ancient towns, and the museums filled with the paintings she'd read about and saw now with her own eyes. Above all else, Rose loved Rome, Florence, and Venice. But everywhere she turned, Rose was enchanted by new discoveries.
Uncle Lestan surprised her when they were in Amsterdam. He had a secret key to the Rijksmuseum because he was a patron and he took Rose
through it in the evening hours so they could be alone and linger as long as they wanted before the great Rembrandt paintings.
He arranged after-hours showings like that for them in many cities. But Amsterdam had a place in Rose's heart, because there, Uncle Lestan had been with her.
When Rose was fifteen, she got into trouble. She took the family car without permission. She didn't have a driver's license yet, and it was her plan to get the car back before either Aunt Julie or Aunt Marge woke up. She'd only wanted to drive for a few hours with her new friends, Betty and Charlotte, and none of them thought anything bad would happen. But they got into a fender bender on the highway, and Rose ended up in juvenile court.
Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge sent word to Uncle Lestan, but he was traveling and no one could find him. Rose was glad. She was so shamed, so miserable, so afraid that he would be disappointed in her.
The judge who heard the case shocked everyone. He let off Betty and Charlotte because they had not stolen the car, but he sentenced Rose to Amazing Grace Home for Girls for the period of one year due to her criminal behavior. He gave a dire warning to Rose that if she did not behave well at Amazing Grace, he would extend her stay till she was eighteen and possibly even longer. He said Rose had been in danger of becoming an addict with her antisocial behavior and possibly even a street person.
Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie were frantic, begging the judge not to do this. Again and again, they argued, as did the lawyers, that they were not pressing charges against Rose for stealing the car, that this had been a prank and nothing more, that the child's uncle must be contacted.
It did no good. Rose was handcuffed and taken as a prisoner to the Amazing Grace Home for Girls somewhere in southern Florida.
All the way there, she sat quiet, numb with fear, while the men and women in the car talked of a "good Christian environment" where Rose would learn the Bible, and learn how to be "a good girl" and come back to her aunts "an obedient Christian child."
The "home" exceeded Rose's worst fears.
She was met by the minister Dr. Hays and his wife, Mrs. Hays, both of whom were well dressed and smiling and gracious.
But as soon as the police were gone and they were alone with Rose, they told her that she must admit all the bad things she'd done or Amazing Grace wasn't going to be able to help her. "You know the things you've done with boys," Mrs. Hays said. "You know what drugs you've used, the kind of music you've been listening to."
Rose was frantic. She'd never done anything bad with boys, and her favorite music was classical. Sure she did listen to rock music but--. Mrs. Hays shook her head. Denying who and what she had done was bad, said Mrs. Hays. She did not want to see Rose again until Rose had had a change of attitude.
Rose was given ugly shapeless clothes to wear, and escorted everywhere around the grim sterile buildings by two older students who stood guard over her even when she had to use the bathroom. They would not give her a minute of privacy. They watched her when she performed the most delicate of bodily functions.
The food was unbearable, and lessons were reading and copying Bible verses. Rose was slapped for making eye contact with other girls, or with teachers, or for trying to "talk," or for asking questions, and made to scrub the dining room on her hands and knees for failing to show a "good attitude."
When Rose demanded to call home, to talk to her aunts about where she was, she was taken to "a time-out room," a small closet with one high window, and there she was beaten with a leather belt by an older woman who told her that she had better show a change of attitude now, and that if she didn't she'd never be allowed a phone call to her "family."
"Do you want to be a bad girl?" asked the woman sorrowfully. "Don't you understand what your parents are trying to do for you here? Your parents don't want you now. You rebelled, you disappointed them."
Rose lay on the floor of that room for two days, crying. There was a bucket and a pallet there and nothing else. The floor smelled of chemical cleaners and urine. Twice people came in with food for her. An older girl crouched down and whispered, "Just go along with it. You can't win against these people. And please, eat. If you don't eat, they'll keep giving you the same plate over and over until you do eat the food, even if it's rotting."
Rose was furious. Where were Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge? Where was Uncle Lestan? What if Uncle Lestan knew what had happened and he was angry and disgusted with her? She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe he'd turn his back on her like that, not without talking to her. But she was consumed with shame for what she'd done. And she was ashamed of herself now in the shapeless clothes, her body unwashed, her hair unwashed, her skin itching and feverish.
