Three Little Words (2 page)

When they ripped me from my family, nobody told me anything. I completely expected that I was going to end up wherever my mother and Luke were. I might have been too young for an explanation, but years would pass without anyone answering any of my questions. I went to live with complete strangers. I was shuffled like a hand-me-down toy for the next nine years. The first anguished hours away from my mother are clearer than the next few years.

Speed bumps slowed the car. I glimpsed a tree with blue blossoms as big as teacups. “Here we are!” the driver said, as though I should be delighted with the destination.

The front door opened, and a woman bent over and patted my head. “Hello there. I’m Mrs. O’Connor and I’m going to take care of you.”

“Mama?”

“She can’t come tonight,” Mrs. O’Connor said. Two toddlers clung to her legs.

She put me to bed in a room where other small children were sleeping in a crib, playpen, and bunk beds. It was crowded, but I felt utterly alone. I sobbed for my mother. When nobody soothed me, I started to whimper “You Are My Sunshine” until I fell asleep.

In the morning I asked, “Is my mama here yet?”

“No, but you’re going to be with your brother,” Mrs. O’Connor replied.

That afternoon another worker moved me to the home of Benedict and Annabelle Hines in Seffner. Luke was there, which made me happy, but they kept him downstairs with another baby while I had to sleep upstairs in a room with a slanted ceiling that frightened me.

If I couldn’t be in the same room with my brother, like in the South Carolina trailer, I wanted to be with my mother and Dusty. I did not care that this was the nicest house I had ever seen. There was a tire swing, a mini-trampoline, and a wading pool. But instead of waiting my turn to use any of these toys, I took my frustrations out on a younger girl who was also named Ashlee.

“You’re my little pumpkin,” Mr. Hines said to make me feel special, but I knew they preferred the younger children. They especially fussed over Luke, who was so tiny, they could not believe he was almost a year old. Mrs. Hines cooked special food for him and claimed he was growing so fast because of her pureed beets.

I kept asking for my mother, but nobody ever explained why she did not come for me. Once, I handed Mrs. Hines the phone. “Call my mama and tell her to pick me up!” I demanded.

“I don’t have her number.” She sighed. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

A few days later they dressed Luke and me in our best clothes and Mr. Hines took us to the Department of Children and Families building.

My mother hugged me, then examined my arms and legs. “How did you get all those red spots?” she asked with an accusing tone.

“Bug bites.”

“What do they do, leave you out in the woods?” My mother directed her question to the worker who was standing in the doorway.

“I don’t like it there! Take me home with you.”

“Sunshine, not today, but soon.”

“When, Mama, when?”

She looked to the waiting worker and back to me. “As soon as I have a better apartment and a job.”

When we went for the next visit, we waited for a long time; but my mother never arrived.

“Where is she?” I asked every few minutes, getting whinier each time.

“Doesn’t look like the M-O-M is going to show,” the worker said.

“How can she do this to her children?” Mr. Hines fumed. Switching to a cheerful voice, he said, “Time to go.”

“But Mama—”

“We can’t wait any longer. Mrs. Hines will wonder what happened to us.”

“Please!” I begged. “She’s coming! She’s coming!”

He pushed Luke and me into the corridor. “I’m not putting these children through this again,” Mr. Hines said to the worker.

I wanted to tell them that they were making a mistake, that they had the time wrong, because my mother would never miss a chance to see us. I pulled away from Mr. Hines and rushed back into the visitation room.

“Let’s go,” Mr. Hines said in exasperation.

I ducked under a worker’s desk to stall the departure. My mother could be running late—she sometimes had problems with her car or not finding her way. Mr. Hines let go of Luke and lunged toward me. “Ashley! Enough of this nonsense. We aren’t waiting any longer.” He reached under the desk, but I kicked his arm away.
They
had the time wrong;
they
weren’t patient enough;
they
weren’t giving her a chance. Eventually, they dragged me out flailing and crying and took me back to what they called “home.”

They couldn’t keep me from thinking about my mother all the time—her smiles, her songs in the shower, the way she painted her eyes and lips with colors. I would say, “Mama, you look so beautiful,” and then she would kiss my cheek to blot her lipstick. I loved the mark it left. I was jealous that she had so many hugs and kisses for Dusty, and I often spied on them when I was supposed to be asleep in a motel room or the small space of one of our trailers.

I was playing with two teddy bears from the Hineses’ toy chest. “Want to see all the ways my mommy and daddy have fun?” I asked the other girls. I pressed the bears’ fronts together. They squealed with laughter. “And they can do it this way, too.” I had one hump the other’s back. Their giggles encouraged me, so I put one’s head between the other’s legs. I added the grunting noises I had heard in the dark.

“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Hines chided when she checked on us.

The other children dispersed, but I gave Mrs. Hines the same demonstration. “Why don’t you put the bears back and go out to play?” she said in a voice that left no room to disagree.

I stormed outside, slamming the screen door behind me. “It’s my turn!” I shouted to Ashlee, who ignored me and pedaled off on the tricycle. Enraged, I caught up, reached around her neck, and choked her. Luke came over to join the fray. He grasped my leg and tried to pull me down. To shake him off, I kicked him. When he screeched, Mrs. Hines came running. She gripped my arm, steered me in the house, and gave me a stern time-out on a stool.

A while later I heard her complaining about me on the phone. “I do believe this child is hyper. She breaks all her toys, is really mean to the little ones—even her brother—and isn’t still for a minute.” Her voice changed to a whisper as she recounted how I had played with the bears. When she mentioned that I had started wetting the bed, I went to where the others were watching TV and started to mimic what was on the screen.

One of the older children shooed me away, but I did not listen. “Hey, Ashley, we can’t see through you,” he said.

If my mother had been there, she would have applauded my antics; but here, I was nobody’s special Sunshine.

Then, after only four months, Mrs. Hines announced that Luke and I were going to live with my grandfather. “Won’t that be nice?” she said as she packed my clothes.

I went around the house piling up Luke’s toys and bottles, but they kept ending up back in their original places. I was oblivious to the fact that Mrs. Hines was packing only my possessions.

When the worker arrived, Luke was napping. I was bundled into the car. “What about my brother?”

“He has to take his nap,” the worker said. “You’ll see him later.”

It took several days before I realized Luke was not coming to my new foster home, which was nowhere near my grandfather’s house. I wondered what was so horrible about me and why I had been rejected again. Then there was my perpetual question: What had I done that was so terrible that I had to be taken from my mother? I had no idea why she hadn’t been able to get me back. You would think someone would have explained it in words a child could understand. Yet nobody did. I believed they were keeping secrets from me—but supposedly, they thought they were protecting me.

Now I know that—in the beginning at least—my mother never did anything seriously wrong. She never hurt us. She loved us and I adored her. Originally, the police had arrested my mother for writing a bad check; but Dusty admitted he had stolen the checks, and she was released six days later. When my mother returned home, she found our duplex padlocked. Three weeks after Dusty was let out of jail, they arrested him again for attempting to steal cigarettes from a food store. My mother moved to a new apartment but had lost most of our possessions. Although she submitted applications for food stamps and aid for dependent children, the welfare officials told her that she was ineligible because her children were no longer living with her. When she tried to get us back, the caseworker said she had to be able to provide food for us.

Two months after we were placed in temporary shelter care, Judge Vincent E. Giglio officially ordered us into foster care. We were now state property. Our legal guardian was the executive branch of the Florida government, an entity that would rather pay strangers to care for us than offer any economic help to my mother to care for her own children.

My fourth mother was Yolanda Schott. Other than running around in some orange groves, I have no memory of my time with her. I would still like to know why the Schotts took me in—and why they let me go after such a short time. Maybe it was a temporary placement until the state could find something better; or maybe the Schotts did not like me either. The blankness bothers me, as does the fact that there is not a single person who can fill in that part of my story.

Next, I moved to the home of Julio and Rosa Ortiz and stayed with them for thirteen months. They lived in a Tampa neighborhood where the houses were only a few feet apart. Their small backyard included an aboveground pool as well as a chicken coop. The Ortizes had three teenage birth daughters and four adopted children, plus a constant stream of foster children. Some were there for only a few days; some came before me and stayed longer. At least twenty children cycled in and out of the home while I was with them. There were so many of us that we ate in shifts. It was hard to feel alone, but still I missed Luke.

“Can you go get my brother?” I asked Mrs. Ortiz, who looked like a Hispanic Mrs. Claus, one day during dinner.

“Okay,” she said to hush me.

“When?” I demanded, and kicked the table leg.

“Ashley, go to your room until you can calm down,” she said.

I turned my back to her and stormed down the hallway to the bedrooms. As I got closer to the babies’ room, I smelled something putrid. Peering in, I could see that a toddler had smeared poop all over the wall. I slammed the door to the room, which caused the baby to wail.

Hearing the baby’s piercing screams, Mrs. Ortiz came rushing. “Ashley, what did you do to the baby?”

“I shut the door because he stinks.”

Mrs. Ortiz opened it and rushed to comfort the child. Her shoe slipped on something soft, and she wheeled around and gave me an accusing look. “Ashley, how could you do something so disgusting?”

“I didn’t do anything!” I screamed, which only got me a longer time-out in my room.

Since I had been blamed for the mess, a few of the other children came to check on me as if I were a sideshow. I stuck my middle finger up—the way Dusty did when he was mad at someone. Some of the others copied me and went around the house showing everyone what I had just taught them.

Mrs. Ortiz barreled into my room. “Why are you teaching the little ones to shoot birds?”

“I did not!” I retorted.

“Ashley, you are going to have to stop your lying,” she said, and marched off. I had never seen her so furious and did not understand why I was blamed for hurting birds when there had not been any in the house.

I soon realized that if Mrs. Ortiz yelled at me, I could stare just above her head and she would still think that I was looking directly at her, hanging on her every word. I would purposely let my mind wander to take me far away from the current confrontation.

“Chicken pox!” I overheard Mrs. Ortiz on the phone. “Yeah, three of them—two of them foster.” I wished I could tell my mother that I had a chicken disease that made me itch all over.

Mrs. Ortiz put me in a bathtub with her daughter Trina and a blond foster girl. The spots bloomed on each of us.

“Don’t scratch,” Mrs. Ortiz said. “This special soap will help you feel better.”

She pushed my hand away from a cluster of pox. “If you don’t stop, you’ll have ugly marks forever.”

I sulked. “I don’t want ugly marks!”

“Of course not—you’re too pretty for that,” Mrs. Ortiz said kindly.

Her older daughters took turns picking out outfits for me that looked good with my red hair. I loved my aqua shorts and matching socks with lace trim and a yellow dress with a flounced skirt. I came out and twirled around to show it off.

“Here comes my prissy girl,” Mrs. Ortiz complimented.

Every day when the older children went off to school, I asked to go as well.

“You have to be five,” Mr. Ortiz said in his slight Cuban accent.

“I
am
five!” I insisted, although I was just about to turn four.

Mrs. Ortiz tilted her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Ask my
real
mother!”

“Ashley is smart enough to go to kindergarten,” Mr. Ortiz admitted.

“It would do her good to be in school,” Mrs. Ortiz agreed. “She’s the brainiest kid I ever had.”