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"How was school, honey?"
She tries to make the kids' favorite meals on their first day of school, but when she asked Iomedae's favorite meal the girl first stared at her blankly and then after some extended clarifications proposed that they could roast a pig, and she can't actually roast a pig, so dinner is pork chops, and potatoes, and salad from the farmer's market. Iomedae is not a picky eater.
(The girl is in fact clinically obese. The doctor suggested they talk with her about cutting back on junk food, but the social worker said that was a bad idea, with a kid new to care - don't restrict her food access at all, just get her more exercise. So Jenny signed her up for swim lessons at the YMCA and for track and field at school. Iomedae balked at the swimming lessons on the grounds that swimsuits were immodest, and they do actually make hijabi wetsuit things but apparently not in her size. Hopefully track and field she'll actually enjoy.)
Iomedae peers at it curiously. It does not look like her history homework or her math homework or her science homework or her English homework or her Spanish homework or her PE homework. "I don't know where I get this."
"I do not know. School is - so many school." By the end of it all of her is aching and not in a good way.
"If anyone gives you a note like this, you can show it to a teacher. That's not a nice thing to do."
"It says that - never mind. I think whoever wrote it was trying to get you to act differently at school, but that's none of their business and they should not have asked it of you."
Iomedae has not spent much of her life contemplating slavery. Scripture says that slavery is among the many things civilization will outgrow eventually though apparently not yet at America's technology level. It says that mistreating slaves is evil. No one has mistreated Iomedae. They point at her, they whisper about her, they laugh at her, they are quick to anger when she does not understand their commands, they sometimes touch her unexpectedly; but none of this is mistreatment. It is a bad habit, to be easily injured by the conduct of others; she aspires to be indifferent to it where it does not threaten her or endanger the innocent.
"I do not know to say, ma'am."
"No one should be bringing up you being in foster care. That is none of their business. If they're bullying you we can complain to the administration."
"We can say, that is not okay, they need to do better, and tell them to teach the bullies not to be bullies."
"I have no seen any thing, except Martin, that I think is not okay."
"Kids being mean to you isn't okay, Iomedae. Kids telling you not to talk about your life or your - religion - I mean you shouldn't talk during class unless you're called on but outside class, you should feel free to be yourself."
"Iomedae, you know that you're not in foster care because you did anything wrong, right? You did nothing wrong. The police said you handled the whole situation really well. You're in foster care because you're only fifteen, and that's not old enough to - skip school and work all day with grown men, it's a dangerous situation, things like what happened with Martin will happen again. It's not a punishment. It doesn't mean you're not free to be yourself."
