Three More Words

  Martin Sosa gave two different addresses in two counties. His lawyer tried to sort out the confusion by explaining that one was an old address and one was his brother’s.

  “Are you living with your brother?” the judge asked. Albert’s father shook his head. “Does anyone else live with you?”

  “A guy named Rocky and another . . .” He hesitated. “I think it’s”—he scratched his head— “Johnny.”

  The judge wanted their last names and their places of employment. Martin was stumped, but his lawyer said he would provide the court with the information.

  The child welfare agency’s lawyer said they were in favor of a reunification with a safety plan. He added that Albert would be sleeping in the father’s room. The judge asked the guardian’s opinion. “We don’t have anything else, Your Honor.”

  “Your Honor,” the father’s lawyer chimed back in, “Mr. Sosa was busy fulfilling probation requirements, he worked around the clock, and he got lost trying to find the parenting classes.”

  When he finished, I stood up from my seat in the audience.

  The attorney for the Department of Children and Families waved her hand at me. “Please sit down.”

  “With all due respect, Your Honor, foster parents have a duty to report issues to the court.”

  “You may continue,” the judge said.

  “First, there was a period of more than six months where this father did not visit at all, nor has he shown the ability to find stable housing. He’s moved four times since his child came into care.”

  “That’s the past, and we are focusing on the future,” the father’s attorney said.

  “Anything else?” the judge asked, as though he were about to shut me down.

  I looked to the caseworker’s table, waiting for her to stand and say something about what we had discovered online. She refused to meet my gaze. “Yes, we’ve found recent photos on various websites of the father and his brother partying, looking intoxicated, and using drugs in the home in question. Some of these pictures were taken on dates the child was visiting.”

  “A picture could have been posted on a date but taken months earlier,” the father’s lawyer chimed in.

  “Mr. Sosa is in the process of moving anyway,” Juanita added, proving she was the department’s mouthpiece and not looking out for Albert’s welfare.

  My stomach squirmed, and a wave of heat rushed through me. I sat down and hugged my purse to keep from getting sick. Nobody in this room cared one whit for Albert. Nobody had seen the sunshine in his eyes or the rhythm in his step or been led by his tiny hand to a puzzle he wanted taken down from the shelf. Nobody else had wiped his chin—or his bottom—or soothed him when he cried out at night. They didn’t know what it was like to put your lips on his forehead to see if his fever had gone down or to spoon him strawberry yogurt when he was too weak to feed himself. They hadn’t seen him grow from being terrified of dogs to teaching them tricks. Nor did they witness how loving he could be to his foster brothers. He used silly faces to coax a smile out of Tyson and made animal sounds to Lance to make him laugh.

  None of this mattered. Albert was a liability on the state’s balance sheet. They needed to take him off the books and claim yet another success story—a family rehabilitated by their program and reunited to live happily ever after.

  11.

  safety last

  Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  Albert disintegrated. We watched, helpless, as he unwound after spending more and more time with his father. At school he had so many wetting accidents they put him back in Pull-Ups. He pinched other students and kicked a teacher when she asked him to pick up a pencil he had thrown. When he returned from unsupervised visits, he ran coughing to his nebulizer, put on his mask, and waited for us to turn it on.

  He started pitching from side to side during sleep again and sometimes called out in the night. After school one day he ran into the house and was greeted by Loki. “Bad!” he yelled at his favorite dog, then hit him with his fist between the eyes. Loki put his tail between his legs and left the room.

  Albert glared at me, almost defying me to react. “We will always love you, sweet boy,” I said to him.

  The permanent transfer from our care to his father’s was to take place in a park halfway between our homes. As I packed all his possessions, I felt physically ill. He had celebrated two Christmases and a birthday with us; had two sets of doting grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and various foster care and guardian groups that made sure he had clothing, shoes, hats, books, toys, a bike, and—his favorite—a box of tiny cars. I lay down on his bed and sniffed his pillow. I had to close my eyes to quell a surge of dizziness. Everyone said that giving up a foster child could be emotionally brutal. Even though Erick and I had been preparing for this day, it was like surgery—you knew it would hurt, you just couldn’t imagine how much.

  “If only we believed he was going to a safe situation,” Erick said, “I could accept it. Even if someone else was going to adopt him or he was moving in with a stable relative. But not only hasn’t this guy made any real progress, he’s been enabled by bureaucrats who don’t give a damn about Albert.” I was helping Erick squeeze everything into our SUV. “Wait!” I ran back inside for Albert’s pillow, because I remembered that I had hated leaving mine behind. “I love you,” I told him as I buckled him into his car seat. I ruffled his hair and closed the door before he could see me break into sobs.

  On the way home, Erick would pick up Lance from day care. Was he too young to understand why his “big brother” suddenly disappeared? I summoned the energy to strip Albert’s bed and start a load of laundry before heading to the bathroom to take something for my pounding headache. I opened the medicine cabinet and noticed an old pregnancy test that I had bought when I had a very late period just after we got married. I now stood in the bathroom counting backward, and something didn’t add up. I checked the expiration date on the test—it showed only a few months were left, so I decided to use it.

  Ten minutes later, I texted Erick: HEY, WE NEED TO TALK WHEN YOU GET HOME.

  I felt so drained by losing Albert and yet so buoyed by the idea that the two of us had created a baby. A baby who wouldn’t have a caseworker or court dates. A baby who wouldn’t be taken from us. There was also an ironic solace in finding out that I was pregnant the same day that Albert left.

  Soon I was experiencing all-day—and night—“morning” sickness. When I was in class online, I kept some barf bags by my desk, so I could just bend over and do what I needed to. My computer’s camera only showed my torso so when my jeans became tight, I wore comfy pajama bottoms paired with a pretty blouse. One time I was in such a hurry to deal with my nausea that I knocked the camera over, showing the entire class my mismatched outfit.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to the polite laughter. “The thing is—I’m expecting a baby.” The class applauded. After that, if I disappeared briefly, everyone understood.

  We hadn’t heard a word from Albert’s father—and never would.

  Albert’s bed had barely aired out when Jenny from placement called. “I have two of the most adorable brothers,” she said. She went on to explain that they wanted to keep the boys together. We could sympathize after seeing how difficult it was for Tyson and Diamond to be apart. Diamond had finally been reunited with Tyson and was settling in at their grandmother’s house. Before Tyson left, we had sent along a letter describing his schedule, the foods he had learned to like, his preference for smooth textures, and the importance of avoiding bottles and sugary drinks. I felt reassured by the grandmother’s calls to ask how we handled certain behaviors. We were heartened by her determination to do right by them.

  “Marcus is three and just the sweetest thing,” Jenny continued. “His half brother Manuel is five.”

  I knew she had a tough job selling foster parents on ta
king children they had never met, and often on the spur of the moment. Humor and arm-twisting were two of her job’s qualifications—as well as downright lying.

  “Where are they now?”

  “In an inappropriate home with teens.” She sighed. “They’re being bullied.” I paused too long. “We’ll have them there by four,” she said, and hung up before I could argue further.

  There was nothing adorable about Manuel or Marcus. They looked—and behaved—like mini gangsters. “How old is Manuel again?” I asked the case manager.

  “Five?” She checked the paperwork. “I know, he looks ten.”

  At three Marcus weighed twice as much as Albert, who had been about the same age. While Erick was still carrying in their belongings, they began to irk each other by trying to stomp on each other’s feet. “Little” Marcus was the dominant personality, who constantly provoked his brother for attention—and the attention he got was in the form of elbow jabs and a barrage of F-bombs.

  “Whoa, buddy,” Erick said. “You can’t use that word in this house.”

  “Why the hell can’t he?” Manuel asked.

  “Because . . . ,” Erick said slowly, “it’s not polite or good for the baby, who is just learning to speak.”

  “Oh,” Manuel replied, accepting that answer.

  Over the next few days they begged for television. With Albert we limited viewing to a few educational programs a week, but I relented with these two because I needed to write a paper.

  “We want something with guns,” Manuel said.

  “Yeah! Bang-bang,” his brother replied.

  “Sorry, not here,” I said.

  Marcus pointed to the Nintendo Wii. “Grand Theft Auto!”

  “Don’t have it.” I changed to a children’s program on PBS and took the remote with me.

  I understood foster children’s preoccupation with violent movies. Luke had been obsessed with them, and I remember bragging to one foster home that I had seen Children of the Corn. In order to deal with foster care chaos, and with dysfunctional pasts, children like us flattened our feelings. Scary movies awakened senses, if temporarily. I remember both the thrills—as well as the bad dreams. When I had awoken, though, my reality was sometimes even more frightening.

  “Who told you this was temporary?” the new boys’ case manager said. She had come early for a visit and was waiting for Erick to bring the brothers home from school. “We have not been able to locate any suitable family members who could pass a home study, so this is being considered a cold case.”

  “I don’t know how long we can keep them; they’re way too rough with Lance, and I’m worried about them hurting me while I’m pregnant.”

  “But you’re amazing parents.” She beamed at me.

  The front door flew open and Marcus rushed into the room, heading directly to the bookshelf. He pulled out his new favorite book—Pinocchio. We were weaning them from TV to books and imaginative toys like trucks and Legos. He hurried over to Erick, who was walking inside. I had to admit that it was encouraging to see these boys beginning to enjoy calmer, more age-appropriate activities in such a short time.

  “Just a minute, buddy,” Erick said to Marcus, then turned to the caseworker. “I have interesting news. When I went to pick up the boys from school, a girl came running over to me. She told me that the brothers are her cousins and that they share a grandmother named something like Heidi or Hedda.”

  “Did you get the grandmother’s number?”

  “Of course!”

  The caseworker had an odd smirk on her face. “We should hire you to do our diligent searches.”

  We didn’t trust anyone else to make the first contact, and so we called the grandmother ourselves. She already had custody of another set of related children whose parents were in jail on drug charges.

  We passed on the news to the caseworker. “If the grandmother is agreeable, you can place them immediately,” I said. “Her home study is only two months old.”

  The boys moved in with their grandmother after only a few weeks with us. Our going-away gift to them was a new set of children’s fairy-tale books.

  As for Lance, his aunt’s home study was still “in progress.” It had been completed, but then his aunt had moved to a bigger house to accommodate him, which required paperwork on the new residence. We suggested that she Skype with us so Lance would get to know her face and voice. She loved these sessions, and when he blew her kisses, she started to cry.

  Before long, our placement counselor Jenny called late on a Friday afternoon. When the agency number showed up on the caller ID, we never knew if it was a worker or a placement, but it was almost always something that would alter our plans—if not our lives.

  “We have the most adorable baby boy—an infant really, just five months old and simply gorgeous.”

  “You don’t have to sell me. I’m pregnant and am a big softie this week. What’s his story?”

  “The usual. Drug affected when he was born, slightly premature, developmental delays.”

  “His brother is in another foster home, but they didn’t feel like they were ready to take on the baby.” Jenny paused. “Can we bring him over in the morning?”

  Erick’s mother Sharon was there when little Dakota arrived. She took the bundle of baby while I signed the paperwork. I asked the caseworker to stay while I went through the medical file to be certain we could handle his care.

  “Isn’t he awfully small for five months?” I asked my mother-in-law.

  She was examining him with the expert eye of the mother of four children. “He can’t even hold his head up.” He gave a little mewing cry that sounded more like a kitten than a baby. “That’s strange too.”

  “Of course you’ll take him to your local pediatrician in the next few days,” the worker said. “He can answer your questions. Here’s his formula and a few diapers to get you started.”

  Dakota terrified me. He wasn’t normal, and nobody could tell us why. Seeing him so fragile and frail increased my fears about the baby growing inside me. His navy-blue eyes bulged slightly, making them seem otherworldly.

  “It might just be sensory deprivation from being in an incubator so long,” Sharon suggested, all the while rocking Dakota and gently rubbing his back. “The only cure for this sweetheart is to keep him close so he knows he is loved.”

  Dakota was lethargic, ate poorly, and had a bluish cast to his skin. The pediatrician thought he might have shaken baby syndrome, a traumatic brain injury that is the result of being handled violently. We had to make the rounds of specialists who looked for bleeding in his retina and brain, damage to his spinal cord or neck, and scanned for other fractures.

  I began to dread the waiting rooms. The limp baby in my arms had the complexion of a freshly peeled almond, and the fuzz on his head was wiry. He drooled a lot and didn’t respond to my attempts to get him to smile. Other parents, technicians, and personnel gave me disapproving stares, figuring I was the mother who had harmed him—and to make matters worse, my own pregnancy was now showing, so who knows what they were calculating. Even though we tried not to use the “foster” word in relation to any of our children, Erick and I started emphasizing it with Dakota’s medical visits to avoid an overzealous health-care worker calling the abuse hotline.

  After one appointment, Erick and I only had Dakota with us, and we went to stock up on diapers at the store. I was carrying the baby in a harness on my chest while Erick pushed our purchases in a cart. When Dakota fussed, I replaced the pacifier he had spit out. A woman with silver hair glanced from my bulging tummy to our biracial baby to Erick, trying to figure the relationships.

  Erick gave the lady a winsome grin. “I forgave her.”

  The woman reeled back and moved to a different aisle. When we got outside, we both cracked up. “Did you see her doubletake?”

  But the truth was, I felt like I was always being scrutinized, and I hated the stares and comments we would get when we used subsidies for our foster kids. All f
oster children under five qualify for WIC—the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children. If I shopped with my foster kids in tow, clerks would look at the kids and my pregnant belly and roll their eyes.

  “Nice purse,” a woman behind me in line once said, meaning: Maybe you should be spending money on your kids and not handbags and a smartphone.

  Erick wasn’t spared the rude remarks. Once, when he was buying formula, he gave the cashier his WIC card. Thinking he was pulling a fast one, she called her manager. “We don’t see a lot of men,” she said later as an apology.

  Assumptions are everywhere. Another time I was sorting my grocery items on the belt because the WIC items were checked out separately at this store. In front of me was a tall African-American woman teetering on brightly colored leather high heels. She had paid for her order and had started to move her cart. “Wait till I ring up your welfare items,” the clerk said to her.

  “Those are not mine!” the high-heeled woman spat back.

  I had come from a meeting and was wearing business attire. The cashier hadn’t considered that the items could belong to me.

  Family friends were fostering three siblings under age three. “I’ve been called ‘white trash,’ ” the wife said, because she bought formula with the subsidy. “Another time someone said, ‘If you can’t afford your kids, stop sleeping around and go to work.’ ” She had been too shocked to answer, but I wished she had been able to point out that her husband is a pilot with a major airline and she is a physical therapist. One of the children in her care had her leg snapped by the mother’s boyfriend, and she helped the baby through an arduous recovery.

  Fortunately, many of the people in our community have come to know our family and respect what we do. “And what’s this fellow’s name?” one of our favorite cashiers asks when we bring a new child to the market. I like to think that for every intolerant bigot, there is a bighearted person who would also foster if they were able.