My Name Is River Blue (2 page)

CHAPTER
TWO

Until I was six years
old, I lived in Minnows Home for Children, a state-run foster home for infants
and pre-school children, located on the east side of Harper Springs. At Minnows,
the staff members were female, and my favorite was Sadie, an African-American
woman with a big smile and a kind disposition. I have always thought that the other
women didn't like me as much as Sadie did, but if I was ever mistreated there, I
didn't understand it as such. As well as I can remember, Minnows was a decent group
home.

I have a few
good memories of two white playmates, Ricky and Cindy, and I know I cried when
we parted. Ricky left when he was adopted, and a short time later, Cindy and I
both turned six, which was the age at which we had to leave Minnows. I never
saw Ricky again, but I saw Cindy when we both started first grade at Harper
Springs Elementary. At some point during first grade, Cindy was also adopted
and transferred to another school. Since I wanted what other kids had, I wanted
a nice family to adopt me too. I didn't want to be the only orphan in my first
grade class.

I was terrified
the day that Mrs. Glover, my caseworker, drove me the five miles across town to
the Bergeron County Junior Boys Home where the boys' ages ranged from six to
fourteen. I had heard rumors that the older boys beat up the younger ones, and
I was scared to be the youngest kid there. Mrs. Glover attempted to appeal to
my ego when she said that big boys like me were supposed to live with other big
boys. She even tried to fill my head with scenes of kind, older boys teaching
me to play catch, but she fell far short of soothing my nerves. I had already
learned that adults would lie to gain my quiet cooperation.

None of the boys
at the junior home ever beat me up, but many of them and the staff verbally
abused me and discriminated against me. Within a couple of months, I discovered
that there was a reason why most people in the home disliked me, and why
families adopted Ricky and Cindy but not me.

I can easily
remember the day that marked the end of my ignorant bliss, the early period of
my childhood when I never gave a thought to being better or worse than other
kids were. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the BC Junior Boys Home was hosting
an open house so that visiting adults could interact with the boys to see if
there was mutual interest. I didn't know much about how people were supposed to
act during an open house, but it bothered me that the adult visitors didn't
smile at me or speak to me as they did some of the other boys.

Once during the
afternoon, I saw Mr. Bonner, the boys home director, point me out to a
well-dressed white woman who shook her head and walked away from me to talk to Timmy,
a blond-haired kid. Later, I saw the same woman nod her head towards me before telling
another visitor that she resented "trashy whites mixing with illegals and burdening
hard-working Christian taxpayers with supporting their little bastards."

I'm not making
it up. She really said those words close enough for me to hear her. At the
time, I wasn't sure what the woman's words meant, but I was smart enough to
know that she didn't like me.

I was clean and wore
my best clothes, a blue dress shirt with khaki pants. Still, I knew that there
had to be something wrong with my looks. After carefully observing the white
visitors, I saw that they gravitated to white boys with fair skin, and if one
of the boys had blond hair and blue eyes, they paid him even more attention. With
my jet-black hair, dark chocolate eyes, and brown skin, I obviously didn't look
like the kind of boy the visitors favored. I wondered if the home would ever
have visitors who were more like me.

I knew that
leaving the boys home to live with a foster family or an adoptive family had to
be a good thing, or the older boys wouldn't want it so much. During open house,
even the regular troublemakers behaved like angels in hopes of impressing our
visitors. I decided that I had to know how to make people like me so that I had
a chance to be part of a real family. Since Mr. Bonner yelled at us for asking
him questions that required more than a one-word answer, I had to talk to Sean.

Mr. Bonner was a
tall, thin white man with leathery skin that resembled the parched and cracked
ground of a severe drought. He looked ancient to me and moved very slowly as if
every step hurt. He needed all the help he could get and that inspired him to
start a program that would make running the boys home easier until he could
afford to retire.

Mr. Bonner appointed
an older boy as a "big brother" to each new, young kid, and Sean Kelley
was mine. Any big brother who took good care of his little brother and
lightened the load of Mr. Bonner and his small staff accumulated weekly credits
that awarded the older boy special privileges such as trips to the arcade, the park,
or the movies. One of the most popular uses of credits was to earn an entire
Saturday's visit with a school friend, usually a girl. The boy could have a girl
come to the boys home, or one of the staff would provide transportation to and
from some other approved location such as the girl's home as long as it was
chaperoned time approved by her parents.

At the time, Sean
was twelve years old and had previously rejected the responsibility of
"looking out for a little brat," but that was before his hormones suddenly
woke up, and he suffered his first crush on the "hottest babe" in
junior high. All the younger kids were already matched with an older boy, so within
half an hour of my arrival at the boys home, Sean literally snatched me from
Mr. Bonner while promising the old man that he would be the best big brother
ever. Sean held me in his arms as he would a football that he was afraid to
fumble until Mr. Bonner gave his approval.

In the
beginning, I was afraid of Sean because he was always promising me some kind of
painful punishment if I made him look bad. With time, I learned that he wasn't
mean, just desperate to spend time with his girlfriend. He was usually nice to
me, especially when no one was watching.

When I told Sean
what the woman visitor said about me and asked him how I could be better, he first
called me an idiot and then bluntly told me that I could not make most white
adults like me. I hung my head and stared at the floor of the small room we
shared. It hurt when Sean called me names.

"Oh, come
on, River." Sean raised my chin, but I turned my head away from him. "Get
your little butt up here with me." Sean sat on his bed, lifted me onto his
lap, and gave me a hug. "I'm sorry, buddy. Sometimes I forget that you're
just a little guy. Forgive me?"

"Yeah,
okay." He always forgot I was little, and I always forgave him. At the
time, he was all I had in the world.

"Listen up.
In this town, most foster parents are white and so are the people who adopt.
Both of them want white kids who look like them, and you're not purebred white.
A white family might take you in if they were desperate for the state check, but
don't ever plan on a white family adopting you."

"You're
white, Sean. Why don't white people want you?"

He snorted and
sprayed me. "Cause I got red hair and freckles, and some white folks think
I'm ugly, but I still got a better chance than you do. My parents were drug
addicts, but they were married and Americans, so I'm American too."

"Ain't I
American? My teacher says that if you're born here, you're American."

"Yeah, but
you look like you're at least half Mexican and to some of the retarded rednecks
in this town, you won't never be American."

Sean helped me
understand the whispered remarks among the visitors and the reason the staff
treated some of the boys better than they did me. It all made sense. It was the
same reason that purebred dogs cost more than stray mutts did. I wasn't a
purebred white boy, so people didn't treat me as well them.

Sean explained
"prejudice" and told me that to some snotty white people, I was a
mixed-race bastard who wasn't as good as a white orphan whose parents had simply
passed away and left him with no living relatives to care for him. He explained
that the mothers of most throwaway kids were unmarried and didn't want or
couldn't afford a baby. To the white majority in our county, my parents were
sinners because they mixed races and had a child outside of marriage. Even
worse, the same conservative "Christians" were outraged that their
tax dollars were used to support me after my mother abandoned me to state care.

Sean told me
that Bergeron County was one of the most backwards, racist counties in South
Carolina, one of the most conservative Southern states. Harper Springs had a
population of only twenty-two thousand people, but it was the biggest town in
the county, and it was also the county seat. He said that when I grew older, I would
understand how boring Harper Springs was, and why people had plenty of time to
gossip and cause trouble.

"It's like
this, River. In our county, white people control everything. Most of them are Protestants
and Republicans, and if you ain't one of them, you don't get any respect. The
only exception I ever see is a black kid who can help the high school team win
football games. In his case, the bigots will tolerate him and even treat him
like a hero until he graduates from high school. If he's lucky, he'll get a
free ride to play college football, and if he's smart, he'll learn enough in
college so that he never has to come back to Harper Springs."

"What about
Mexicans?" I asked.

"Some whites
here hate black people, but they hate Mexicans more because they think most of
them are illegal. They don't want them taking up jobs or getting any government
money because they don't pay taxes. It don't matter really, because they hate
the Mexicans that were born here too. You don't hear many people in this town
calling them 'Mexican-Americans' even when they were born here with the same
rights as any other American."

"I don't ever
feel white or Mexican. I just feel like me." Sean made me wonder, and I
had to ask. "Sean, do you hate me cause I'm part Mexican?"

"You think
I'd let you sit on my lap if I hated you? Don't I help wash your hair in the
showers to keep the soap out of your eyes? Don't I let you sleep in my bed when
there's a thunderstorm? Don't I give you hugs when you have bad dreams?"

"I thought
you had to take care of me, so you could see Sylvia."

"Yeah, at
first, but now it just feels right to be your big bro. I don't mind it so much."

"Even if I ain't
as good as you?"

Sean grinned. "Even
when you're a pain in the butt, you're the only little bro I want."

I wrapped my
arms around Sean's neck and hugged him. I liked him better when he wasn't yelling
at me and swatting my butt.

"Thanks, Sean.
I'm glad you don't hate me."

"River, none
of that shit matters to me, and it shouldn't matter to anyone, but that's how
things have always been around here. When I was your age, other kids made fun
of me just because I was a redheaded orphan. My teacher told me that in small
towns like ours that sometimes all you have to do is be different for people to
pick on you. She told me it was wrong and not to let it get me down when people
act stupid. She said if I studied hard in school and did the right things, one
day I could be someone they had to respect."

After my talk
with Sean, I began to see the boys home and my life there in a different light.
The majority of the kids were white, as was most of the population of Bergeron
County. I noticed that the white kids had the best rooms, bigger portions of
desserts, first choice of any donated clothes, more help with schoolwork, and
the easiest chores. The African-American, Mexican-American, and mixed-race kids
received what was less desirable to the white boys.

Even though many
of the white kids broke more house rules than the rest of us, the staff punished
them less often, and the punishment was less severe. If a white kid my age
broke the same rule as I did, Mr. Bonner would usually give him a time out in
his room, but for my punishment, he would spank me. His spankings didn't hurt
much physically, but they hurt me emotionally. While I was still bawling, he
would give me a time out in the recreation room. I would have to stand in a
corner and lean forward with only my nose pressing against the wall while the other
boys in the room laughed at me. I remember how my nose would go numb, and I had
to breathe through my mouth with snot running into it.

Henry, a boy my
age, who was a mix of white and black, became my only friend in the home besides
Sean. To most of the boys, Henry and I were social zeros. Even the black kids
and Latino kids looked down on us for being half-white, a race that they grew
to despise because of the preferential treatment given the white boys by the
all-white staff. Henry and I had other marks against us. Everyone knew we were
foundlings and tagged us as bastards because they assumed that married couples would
not anonymously throw away their children like bags of garbage.

The other foster
boys never let us forget that they were better than we were, but they were too
afraid to hurt us physically. Jonas was Henry's "big brother" just as
Sean was mine. They were two of the toughest boys in the house, and the rest of
the guys didn't want any part of having to fight our "bigs."