The Bean Trees

'Yes?" she said. Her name tag said Jill. She had white skin and broad pink stripes of rouge in front of her ears.

"I can't answer these questions," I said.

"Are you the parent or guardian?"

"I'm the one responsible for her."

"Then we need the medical history before we can fill out an encounter form."

"But I don't know that much about her past," I said.

"Then you are not the parent or guardian?"

This was getting to be a trip around the fish pond. "Look," I said. "I'm not her real mother, but I'm taking care of her now. She's not with her original family anymore."

"Oh, you're a foster home." Jill was calm again, shuffling through a new stack of papers. She blinked slowly in a knowing way that revealed pink and lavender rainbows of makeup on her eyelids. She handed me a new form with far fewer questions on it. "Did you bring in your DES medical and waiver forms?"

"No," I said.

"Well, remember to bring them next time."

By the time we got in to see Dr. Pelinowsky I felt as though I'd won this man in one of those magazine contests where you answer fifty different questions about American cheese. He was fiftyish and a little tired-looking. His shoulders slumped, leaving empty space inside the starched shoulders of his white coat. He wore black wing-tip shoes, I noticed, and nylon socks with tiny sea horses above the ankle bones.

Turtle became clingy again when I pulled off her T-shirt. She squeezed wads of my shirttail in both fists while Dr. Pelinowsky thumped on her knees and shined his light into her eyes. "Anybody home?" he asked. The only time she perked up at all was when he looked in her ears and said, "Any potatoes in there?" Her mouth made a little O, but then she spaced out again.

"I didn't really think she'd turn out to be sick, or anything like that. She's basically in good shape," I said.

"I wouldn't expect to turn up anything clinically. She appears to be a healthy two-year-old." He looked at his clipboard.

"The reason I brought her in is I'm concerned about some stuff that happened to her awhile ago. She wasn't taken care of very well." Dr. Pelinowsky looked at me, clicking his ballpoint pen.

"I'm a foster parent," I said, and then he raised his eyebrows and nodded. It was a miracle, this new word that satisfied everyone.

"You're saying that she was subjected to deprivation or abuse in the biological parents' home," he said. His main technique seemed to be telling you what you'd just said.

'Yes. I think she was abused, and that she was," I didn't know how to put this. "That she was molested. In a sexual way."

Dr. Pelinowsky took in this information without appearing to notice. He was scribbling something on the so-called encounter form. I waited until he finished, thinking that I was going to have to say it again, but he said, "I'll give her a complete exam, but again I wouldn't expect to turn up anything now. This child has been in your care for five months?"

"More or less," I said. 'Yes."

While he examined her he explained about abrasions and contusions and the healing process. I thought of how I'd handled Jolene Shanks exactly this way, as calm as breakfast toast, while her dead husband lay ten feet away under a sheet. "After this amount of time we might see behavioral evidence," Dr. P. said, "but there is no residual physical damage." He finished scribbling on the form and decided it would be a good idea to do a skeletal survey, and that sometime soon we ought to get her immunizations up to date.

I was curious to see the x-ray room, which was down a hall in another part of the office. Everything was large and clean, and they had a machine that turned out the x-rays instantly like a Polaroid camera. I don't believe Dr. Pelinowsky really understood how lucky he was. I used to spend entire afternoons in a little darkroom developing those things, sopping the stiff plastic sheets through one and another basin of liquid, then hanging them up on a line with tiny green clothespins. I used to tell Mama it was nothing more than glorified laundry.

We had to wait awhile to see him again, while he saw another patient and then read Turtle's x-rays. I hung around asking the technician questions and showing Turtle where the x-rays came out, though machines weren't really her line. She had one of her old wrestling holds on my shoulder.

When we were called back to Dr. Pelinowsky's office again he looked just ever so slightly shaken up. "What is it?" I asked him. All I could think of was brain tumors, I suppose from hanging around Lou Ann, who had learned all she knew about medicine from General Hospital.