This essay just blew me away....

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - It's a normal conversation, really. It's the first day of 11th grade. I've just met my biology-lab partner. He mentions his brother. Then he asks me The Question.

It isn't earth-shattering. It isn't even unusual. The Question is: how many brothers and sisters do you have?

After 10 seconds of silence I say, "I can't remember." I really can't. Does he mean how many siblings I have at this moment? Or does he mean every sibling I've ever had in my life?

When I left home this morning, I had three siblings. When I come home tonight, I could still have three. Or I could have only two. Or four. And as for all the siblings I've ever had, the tally is nearing 250. Foster care is so hard to explain.

Every time someone asks The Question, it ends up becoming a conversation. I could say "two" and have that be the end of it, because I do have two sons-of-my-parents brothers, but that answer is incomplete. I could say, "More than 200," but that leads to witticisms such as "What do you do, run a sweatshop?" I could just say, "We do foster care," and lead right into the inevitable conversation. Any way I truthfully answer The Question sparks scores more.

How long have we been doing this? Eight years. Yes, sometimes it's hard to give them up. No, I don't usually mind them?-I like kids. No, I'm not a foster kid myself. No, I don't know your cousin Rosie who got put in foster care last year. I couldn't tell you even if I did know her. Why? Against the law. No, I can't tell you stories.

That last thing was a lie. I could tell you stories if I wanted to, if I left off the names of the kids. But you wouldn't want to hear.

There's the 3-year-old girl who was stripped, doused with cold water and force-fed. In her front yard. In January.

There's the developmentally delayed teenage mother who doesn't know who her daughter's father is. The young woman's stepfather swears up and down that it can't be him because he's had a vasectomy. Not because he's never had sex with his stepdaughter.

There's the 6-month-old boy, eyes goggling almost sightlessly, hooked up to God-knows-what machine, whimpering. He's been sent to us because he was shaken at a previous foster home, shaken hard, shaken fast, shaken violently until his eyes popped out, whereupon his shaker pushed them back in with his thumbs. His vision will never exceed 20/100.

There's the 3-year-old boy with eyes swollen shut by a huge double shiner. His two bottom left ribs were broken. He had fist-size bruises on his chin and cheeks. He complained only once, when he was eating. He said his mouth hurt. My mom looked. His teeth were rotted through.

There's the baby we had for just a day or two. Not long after she went home, her father flew into a temper and killed her. She was less than a year old, I do remember that.

Are you covering your ears? Are you screaming at me to stop? Good. That'll teach you to ask me to tell you stories.

I remember being 14 and at a sleepover. Everyone was talking animatedly about a TV show. "Fill me in, guys," I said, "I've never heard of this show."

A girl I didn't know well stared at me. "Never?"

I shook my head. "I don't really have time to watch TV..."

"You're pretty naive, aren't you?" she interrupted. "Pretty sheltered."

I stared at her. "Naive?"

"I can just tell," she said, "you are."

I wanted to scream at her, tell her stories that made her cringe and cry and beg me to stop. Instead, I said firmly, "You've never seen a newborn addicted to cocaine. I am not naive."

I'm not.

I think about them all. Pictures come, nonsequential pictures that tell no stories and give no names. My mother, sleeping in a rocker with our first foster baby. My father, checking the sprinklers in the yard with a toddler clutching his hand. A pair of sad, too-old eyes. A tiny hand curled around my finger.

Sounds come. Cries mainly, terrified, or resigned, or painful, or hungry, or angry. Laughs, sometimes. The sighs of a sleeping newborn. Computerized toddler toys.

Smells come. Formula. Lysol. Clean hair. Spit-up. Diapers. Lotion. Detergent. Dryer sheets. Lemony air freshener.

And names come. Nique. Typani. Zanna. Devonte. Isaiah. Kevin. Leticia. Rosa. Angel. Sometimes the name brings a picture, usually not. I am not naive.

I stopped being naive the day after I turned 9 years old, the day our first baby arrived. I will never be naive again.

See what one question will do?

Kraus placed first in the NEWSWEEK-Kaplan MY TURN essay competition. She lives in Wichita, Kans.