By Marilo Nuñez

Roger doesn’t want to go to see his sister. He clenches his jaw and continues hitting the ball into the hockey net. He is outside playing ball hockey by himself. It is cold out and the leaves are beginning to turn. The weather has cooled dramatically from one day to the next. Only yesterday he was wearing a t-shirt while out with his friends. Fall is fickle that way. This November wind could freeze your fingers if you aren’t dressed for the weather. His blue jacket is thin, but the physical exercise keeps him warm. He focuses on the ball.

His foster mom yells out to him from the living room window. She is leaning against the ugly brown couch that blocks all of the light coming into the house. She shouts through the window screen, her words muted by the wind blowing in his ears. Roger, it’s time to go and see your sister, she is saying, it’s time to go say goodbye. He ignores her and continues to hit the bright orange ball into the empty hockey net. He is comforted by the sound of the wooden stick scraping its edge against the concrete road beneath him. Methodical sounds have always soothed him.

She’s family, he thinks as he slams the hockey stick into the ball once again. Why is he dreading this so much? The knot in his stomach is tightening, telling him that it doesn’t matter, so what if she is family? HIs breath comes in short gasps now. He’s so angry, he can’t breathe. He sees, in his mind’s eye, his foster mom, sitting there, having tea and cookies with the social worker. As if this is just another regular day. Their laughter rings out from the window. They are waiting for the hour to take him to see his sister so that he can say goodbye to her, forever. His anger makes him tremble and he hits that ball so hard he tips the net over.

He’s leaning down onto his thighs, now, to catch his breath. And he’s thinking about what he has to do. How is he going to say goodbye? This makes him angrier even than the time they took him away from Molly when he was eight.

His foster dad is standing on the sidewalk facing the road where the boy is slamming his anger out onto that tiny ball. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, not saying a word. He’s supposed to come out here and tell him it’s time to go, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He knows how hard it will be on the boy and he’d rather just give him a few more minutes.

The boy picks up the fallen net and begins slamming that ball into it again. Let him get it out of his system, the foster dad thinks. Roger stops suddenly and looks to his dad. He is breathing hard as he turns back and stares at the empty net. He drops the stick and grabs the ball, puts it into his jacket pocket and turns towards their car without saying a word. They both walk in silence towards the car.

“I’ll find you, Francis. I swear I will.” Those are the words he is saying to himself as the car pulls onto the open field. The sky is grey, and he sees his sister standing there, looking so small and lost in her green rubber boots, her brown tights and her blue dress. He’s forgotten how small she is, because five years have passed. She must be nine now. She is wearing a faded yellow sweatshirt that is one size too big for her, with the words Beach Bum across the front. She looks unwanted. He tightens his mouth and looks away.

Francis’ pin straight brown hair is in her eyes as she leans her head forward towards her chest. Roger can’t tell if she’s crying or not, but he suddenly feels like telling her to run as fast as she can. A small noise comes alive in his throat, but then dies and sits there, in silence.

They are both being adopted out to new homes. The news came just a few days ago. Adoption, when you have been in the system for a long time, is like winning the lottery. But he doesn’t feel like celebrating. He feels like someone has punched him in the stomach. He wants to be happy with the news of the adoption. Because he hopes that the new home will make him feel less afraid, less unsure of everything. More wanted. He needs the stability of a home, a place for him to feel safe, to feel like himself again.

Since he was a kid, he’s always felt like a loner. Molly, just a kid herself when she had him, pushed him into being the man of the house because she just couldn’t cope. So, he was responsible for taking care of the six of them, the six siblings. He doesn’t even want to think about the other four, the younger ones who were sent to other foster homes. He doesn’t even know where they are. But he and Francis, they were sent out into the system together. And they kept in touch. And now, his sister standing here in this field, she’s being sent away. Really far away.

Francis’ brown eyes still can’t find his. Her head is down as she fiddles with her sweatshirt’s zipper. He kneads the ball inside his jacket pocket, it’s helping him to stay calm and not cry. The social worker is saying something to his foster dad as they lean against her brown station wagon. Why are they in this field? There are farmhouses and barns all along the ridge line but nothing else really, for miles and miles. It’s a strange place to say goodbye.

“Come on you two, we don’t have all day. Go on, hug her. Hug your sister Roger. Tell her goodbye.”

He moves towards Francis with what feels like lead inside his legs and she looks up. He knows those eyes like he knows that the sun will come up tomorrow morning. They remind him of their mother, of Molly, when she would look straight into his eyes and tell him he was her little man. This was before she started drinking and before she would go out for hours at a time and leave them alone to fend for themselves. Before the police were called and social services decided all the kids were better off in other homes.

Francis looks like a scared rabbit and again he has the urge to tell her to run. She pushes her bangs away from her eyes and smiles shyly at him, smiling with pride at her older brother. He nods to her that it’s okay and she runs towards him. She clings to him, letting out an exasperated sob, the kind that keeps inside of you like a clenched fist. He knows that her throat must feel like a raw wound because he’s been there. The desperation of loss clinging to your throat like a sickness. She’s crying uncontrollably now. He hugs her to him, tight.

“I’ll come and find you Francis. I swear it.”

A little lie he tells her to try to make her feel better. Or maybe to make himself feel better. He can feel her hot face pressing against his stomach as she holds onto him for dear life. She is sobbing now, and he can’t make out what she is saying. The social worker is trying to pry her away from him and he is standing like a statue, frozen in place. The social worker finally disentangles her and pushes her towards the car. Francis doesn’t turn back to face him, and he can see that her shoulders have fallen all the way down by her knees.

Roger is silent on the walk back to the car. He gets in first and stares out across the field as the station wagon with Francis inside, drives away. The silence in the car is deafening as his foster dad traverses the front to get into the driver’s seat.  

“I got to pee. Can we stop here?”

Roger says this while the car is driving past a forest of trees on both sides of the road. He stands amongst the trees and tries hard to pee but can’t. Suddenly, up ahead he sees a deer, caught in the headlight of his vision. The two share a moment of recognition, of understanding. About how life is not fair and that sometimes someone has to die in order for things to be better. He zips his pants back up and takes out the orange ball from his pocket. He whips it across, and it slams into the neck of the deer. He jumps back in surprise, at his strength? At his precision? At his audacity? The deer jumps up and twists its head in mangled shock and bolts towards the highway. A car coming fast in the opposite direction is suddenly overtaken by the deer that is running frantically for its life. There is the screech of tires and a loud blast of a horn and the car is suddenly on its side in the ditch between the road and the forest.

Roger watches his foster dad running across to road to the overturned car. It is the brown station wagon that faced them in the field. His foster dad is calling for him, but he can’t hear a word, he just sees the man’s mouth moving and everything is in slow motion.

A lone green rubber boot lies against the asphalt as the medics and the firemen try to pry the car doors open. There is nothing but the sound of an incessant horn blaring into the dusk’s embrace. Nothing but the sound of a silent scream bellowing into the never-ending night.

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Marilo Nuñez is a Chilean Canadian playwright, director, and writer. She was the founding Artistic Director of Alameda Theatre Company, a company dedicated to developing the new work of Latinx Canadian playwrights. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre & Performance Studies at York University. Her work has been published in The New Quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review, and Playwrights Canada Press. Her short story “We All Want to Change the World” has been turned into a podcast @Line720. Follow her on Twitter @marilonunez99.