Three Little Words (4 page)

A few weeks after Christmas my grandpa was arrested again—this time for nonpayment of child support for his youngest son. Adele bailed him out, and in his attempt to deflect the heat from himself, he told the police that Adele’s heart condition made her unfit to care for us.

“Yes, I had a problem with my heart muscle, but it’s in remission,” Adele explained to Ms. Willis when she came to investigate. “Anyway, caring for the kids isn’t too hard.”

“You’re judging me because of my past,” Grandpa argued. “People have always been against me. Why should the system take my own flesh and blood?”

“I went to bat for you,” the caseworker reminded him. “We wouldn’t have a problem if it hadn’t been for these recent arrests.”

“The last arrest was unfair,” Grandpa scoffed. “Why should I have to pay child support when I gave all my children up for adoption?”

“If you gave them up, then you are no longer Lorraine’s legal father,” the worker responded. “That means you have no legal basis to have your grandchildren.”

“What about me?” Adele said in a timid voice.

“The children were placed with a relative, and you’re no kin to them.”

Grandpa left the room several times. Each time, Adele lowered her guard and cried. “He doesn’t care about the children the way I do. I’m the one who will suffer if they leave.”

Ms. Willis shook her head. “Because Mr. Rhodes assumes no responsibility for his actions, we have no other choice but to send them back to Florida.”

“Like hell she will!” Adele screamed as the caseworker drove away from the house, a trail of dusty fumes in her wake.

I had never seen Adele so furious. She made a series of phone calls ending with one to Ms. Willis. “I’ve spoken to our attorney,” she said. “We will not relinquish the children without a court order.”

Adele had gotten good advice, because the South Carolina Department of Social Services would have to get a Florida court order to force the issue. What she did not know—and I discovered many years later—was that someone in Florida had neglected to get the court’s permission for us to live with our relatives in the first place. Now they had to figure out how to ask for an order recalling us when no judge had approved sending us to South Carolina.

Adele kept the appointment with the psychologist and took me along. I sat in the waiting room coloring, but then the therapist called me inside. After admiring my drawing, she asked, “What do you think of what’s been going on at your house?”

I leaned back in my chair, propped my feet up on the coffee table, and sighed. “These social services people want to send me back to Florida, but I’m not much in the mood to go.”

“What do you think about your mother and Dusty?”

I refused to look directly at her when I replied, “I like them okay, but my mama did bad things, so social services had to take me away for my own good.”

The psychologist gave me some tests and said, “You are doing far better than most children.” Then she showed me some pictures and asked me to make up a story about each one. My replies involved ghosts, witches eating people, and monsters swallowing parents alive. “She’s very bright,” she told Adele, who preened at the news. “Her level of verbal expression and her ability to grasp her total situation are way above her age level.” She then whispered something I could not quite hear about showing signs of being disturbed by all the upheavals in my life.

There was no further talk of moving us, but the legal staff in Florida scurried around trying to figure out how to redo the paperwork so it would look like we had been sent to South Carolina legally. They filed a motion to send us to Grandpa as though we’d never left Florida. The judge signed this document five months after we were already in South Carolina.

We had visits with Dusty in January and March. He brought toys, candy, and clothes to each visit. I loved the pile of pretty dresses, each wrapped in a plastic bag like the kind you get from the dry cleaner. I sat on his lap and sang songs with him, but Luke—who really had no memory of him—would not join in. We went to a scheduled third visit in April; but after waiting more than an hour, Adele, who had little patience with the Grover clan, took us home. I know Dusty showed up eventually because Ms. Willis brought our gifts to us a few days later.

My South Carolina interlude has a dreamlike quality to it. I know it existed because I have more photos from that time than from any other placement in foster care. They depict Luke and me snug in new pajamas, splashing in a bubble bath, and hugging a hound dog whose head is twice as big as my brother’s. There are snapshots of us having a picnic in the park, posing in new outfits, and floating in a plastic kiddie pool. Despite the fact that this interval was doomed not to last, we are always smiling in the pictures and they evoke only warm feelings in me.

That summer Luke stayed home while I went to the beach with Leanne, her boyfriend, and his daughter, Savannah, who was about my age. We built sand castles, ran in the surf, rode a merry-go-round, a miniature train, and bumper cars. Savannah and I slept together in a double bed, wearing T-shirt nighties and hugging matching dolls.

Adele made a big fuss over Luke’s third birthday in July with a homemade cake, balloons, and fancy hats for us and her grandchildren.

“Why didn’t I have a party?” I complained.

“You had just arrived.” Adele did not mention Grandpa’s arrest a few days before I turned five. “But when you are six, you can invite children from your class.”

Sometime later that summer, Ava Willis dropped by. “The report from the mental health center shows that Ashley has bonded with you and is relatively well adjusted.” She paused. “How are things going between you and Sam?”

Adele admitted that Grandpa sometimes spoke to her cruelly. “But don’t you worry, he would never hurt me or those children.”

“It must be hard for you,” the caseworker said sympathetically.

“Yes, sometimes I think about leaving him, but since I’m not kin, I’d lose the children, right?”

“If you got a foster parent license, they could stay with you.”

Luke ran up to Adele. “Mama!” He slipped into her lap. She kissed his forehead. After wiggling around a bit, he slipped down, crawled under the table, and started grunting like a pig.

“How long has he been calling you ‘Mama’?” the caseworker asked.

“Almost right away,” Adele said. “He doesn’t remember anyone else.”

“What about Ashley?”

Adele chuckled. “One time I said something like ‘You mind your mama,’ and she stuck out her tongue and said, ‘You’re
not
my mama!’” She sighed. “I do love them as much as if they were mine.”

“Is she still seeing the therapist?”

Adele nodded.

“Then give her some time.”

“It would be better for all of us if this was permanent. How can we get custody?”

“It might help if you two were married.”

“I’m working on that!” Adele laughed. Then she lowered her voice and said something about wanting to make sure the Grovers were ruled out as placements.

A week later it did not matter who loved us or who wanted us. It did not matter whether Adele and Grandpa were married. It did not matter whom we called “Mama” or “Papa.” It only took a few seconds for everything to blow apart.

Someone had come to see my grandfather about buying a car. He let Luke and me tag along while Adele did the dishes. Almost at once the men started shouting. Grandpa placed his beer bottle on the hood and told us to go back to the house. I heard cussing, and then there was a strange popping, like a car backfiring. Then another. And another. Luke turned and shouted, “Papa fall down!”

Grandpa was facedown in the dirt. He howled more like an animal than a man. Terrified, I took off toward the house. Adele was running in our direction, and I pressed myself into her outstretched arms. She collapsed on the porch steps, crying with her hands clasped over her mouth. The other man had shot Grandpa four times—twice to his head.

“Of course he’s home,” Adele said when Ava Willis called four days after the shooting. “I’m a registered nurse and I can take care of him better right here.” Ava Willis’s voice was so loud, I overheard her shrill questions. “No need for you to come over. Everything is back to normal. Sam always said he came from the strongest stock in this county, and I guess he proved himself right,” Adele said with a forced laugh. After a pause her tone became more challenging. “He’s already agreed to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, what more do you want?” She began to pace, squeezing the coiled phone cord in her hand. “I’ve told you before that I am willing to leave him if that’s what it takes to keep my kids. Sure, I’ll become a foster parent, but I can’t do that until Sam’s better. Besides, he can’t get in any trouble in the shape he’s in!” She slammed down the phone.

It rang again about an hour later. “Lena who?” Adele asked. Apparently, a new Florida caseworker, Lena Jamison, had just taken over Dennis Benson’s job. Adele’s expression went from irate to crestfallen. “You’re coming when?”

She hung up, went to her room, closed the door, and sobbed loudly. I put my head on the hound dog and snuffled into his salty fur.

“I don’t want to go!” I wailed.

“It’s just for a little while,” Adele promised. She told us we would be back in a few days and convinced me to leave behind my dolls and dresses.

She packed only one small green suitcase for the both of us. “We’ll leave your school clothes here ’cause you’ll start kindergarten as soon as you get back.” She hugged me close. “Besides,” she added as an afterthought, “your mama’s in Florida. Won’t it be nice to see her?”

At the airport we met Lena Jamison, a stocky woman with a no-nonsense voice. She shook my hand and then inspected Luke’s speckled arms. “What are those red marks?” she asked accusingly.

He started to cry as though he had done something wrong. “They’re just mosquito bites.” I kneeled next to him. “Don’t worry, Lukie, we’re just going to visit Mama, and then we are coming back when Grandpa is better, right?” I looked up for some confirmation, but the worker avoided my eye.

Fourteen hours later we swayed sleepily in a car that wound down a twisting road back to Seffner, where Ms. Jamison deposited us on Paula and Milton Pace’s doorstep.

From the exterior, the ranch home did not appear large enough for the dozen or so residents, and I quickly learned that it wasn’t. Five of the children, including Luke and a set of fraternal twins, were three years old. In the boys’ room miniature bunk beds were stacked three high, while the girl twin and I shared a room with the biological daughter.

If I counted living with my mother, this was my seventh home in a little more than two years and the worst place I had been—so far. A few years later, when I moved into the Mosses’ home, I would be reminded of the cramped quarters and zooey smells I first encountered here. In a few weeks four more children joined the fray, for a total of eleven foster children between the ages of two and six.

At first I refused to unpack. “I’m going back tomorrow,” I insisted.

After a few days I took out my toiletries but kept the rest of my belongings in the suitcase. I did not want to settle in, and I also did not want the rug rats messing with my few possessions. Mrs. Pace always seemed to be yelling at someone and often it was Luke. I was disgusted by the piles of dirty diapers, the snotty noses, and the screeches of children vying for any sort of attention. As I stared out the picture window that looked across a horse pasture, I wondered where Adele and Grandpa were and why I hadn’t seen my mother yet. Beyond where the waving grass met the sky was South Carolina, but how could I get back there?

“Why are we here so long?” I asked Mrs. Pace when I had worn many times over all the clothes Adele had packed. She mumbled something that made no sense. “When can I see my mama?” I stamped my foot. “Adele said I would visit her, so where is she?” My demands resulted only in timeouts, where I anxiously bit my fingernails.

Luke would not let me out of his sight. “Sissy!” he would shout if I was in another room. He even tried to follow me into the bathroom. “I wanna sleep in Ashley’s room,” he begged at bedtime.

“Boys stay with boys, girls with girls,” Mrs. Pace said, as though that would satisfy him.

Even at that age, I knew what he needed more than the professionals did. I was the one who comforted him when he was scared or lonely. At the Hines’, he came to me for everything and even at Grandpa’s, he ended up in my bed most mornings. When Mrs. Pace told Lena Jamison that she had found him sneaking into my room, the caseworker noted in our files that a psychologist needed to evaluate us for sex abuse. If any worker had bothered to review our case, they would have realized that at the age of three, Luke already had lost his biological mother—whom he had barely known—then Mrs. Hines, and now Adele. Seeing Grandpa shot or our hasty removal might have traumatized him. Now he was in a congested home with strangers. He received no loving, individualized attention from a parent figure. I was his security blanket—nothing more—and none of this had anything to do with sex. However, sex was a hot-button topic and I think caseworkers liked to gossip about it, even if the accusations were ridiculous.

The Paces ran the Perfect Angels daycare center in Plant City, where the younger children went while the older ones attended school. I wished I could wear my angel wings that Adele had made, but of course they had been left behind. In the afternoon the school bus dropped the school-age kids off at the daycare center; and then we all went home when the center closed. We were a needy bunch of baby birds who had fallen out of our original nests and were desperate for any scrap of attention. We each found ways to be noticed. Luke hid under the bed at bath time, threw food on the floor, and bit other children. When Mr. or Mrs. Pace swooped down flapping parental wings, he was getting precisely what he wanted.

In early September, Adele wrote me a long letter saying that she had washed my dolls’ clothes and that my “babies” were doing fine.
I miss you both something awful, but I know you are well and taken care of.
She said her granddaughters were enjoying school, that her grandson had started pre-K, and that Ms. Hurley was holding a spot for me in her class. Adele went on to tell me that Uncle Sammie and his girlfriend, Courtney, had stopped by after visiting with Uncle Perry. When I was there, we had gone to see Uncle Perry in prison as though it were a typical family outing. She closed with,
I love you both so much … always and always. Love, Mama.

The letter made me miss Adele but also wonder what had become of my mother. I convinced myself that she was coming for us, which is why we had to stay in Florida. She was somewhere out there … nearby … I just knew it! 41

It turns out Mama was in the women’s state prison and Dusty was in another jail in Florida. In the meantime, Adele was making good on her promise to become a licensed foster parent. Grandpa had moved out and she was getting the property in shape. Adele wrote that the hen with the feathers on her feet was sitting on seven eggs. I was desperate to be there when the chicks hatched. I could not understand what was taking so long for Adele to get us back. Adele had my dolls, dresses—everything that mattered—so I was confident I would be leaving any day. In a corner of my mind I had realized that my mother was unreliable, but Adele was a loving grandmother who had always done what she said. My mother, my grandfather, and Adele detested the state people, so I did too. If they would stop meddling in our lives, we would be fine.

Lena Jamison came to Perfect Angels for a visit. “I have your inoculation records, so you can go to kindergarten,” she said in a singsong voice. “Won’t you like that?”

“No, I’m supposed to be in Ms. Hurley’s class.”

My first day of kindergarten at Lopez Elementary School should have been a special event, but since it was already October, nobody fussed. The class was busy coloring
P
s for “pumpkin.” Adele had promised to make me a princess costume for Halloween, and I kept hoping I would get back in time—just as we had the year before. Unfortunately, the holiday came and went with only some candy at the daycare center.

On my birthday the school bus dropped me off at Perfect Angels. Ms. Jamison was waiting with a big box from Aunt Leanne. I ran to claim my gifts. The box contained a new doll with matching clothes and a Chutes and Ladders board game. “Where are Lilly and Katie?” I asked.

“Who?”

“My favorite dolls!”

“These are new presents, honey.” The caseworker stroked my red curls and turned to Mrs. Pace. “How’s she settling in at school?”

“She’s a very good student—way ahead, even though she missed the first nine weeks.” She indicated Luke with her chin. “He’s
finally
stopped wandering around the house at night.”

“When am I going home?” I whined.

“Honey, you just go play and enjoy your birthday,” Mrs. Pace said. “Why don’t you show the other kids what you got?”

I repacked the gifts in the box and vowed I would not let anyone else near them because the other kids destroyed everything they touched.

Adele received her South Carolina foster care license on my sixth birthday, but she was told it would take several more months before the interstate paperwork would allow us to travel. She begged the officials to return us in time for Christmas. When it looked like that was not possible, she promised to send us some warm clothes and my dolls.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, the documents were ready in early December, and we shuttled back to South Carolina.

“Look, I lost a tooth!” I crowed when Adele met us at the airport.

Grandpa was no longer there, which made life easier since there were no more raised voices or slammed doors. I felt comfortable in Adele’s loving embrace. On Christmas, I received a pink Barbie radio and a Precious Moments sleeping bag. I liked the way we did everything the same as we had the previous year, including opening one gift on Christmas Eve and the rest before breakfast the next morning. Then we had crisp bacon and biscuits before going to open more presents and have lunch with Adele’s grandchildren.

“I want to do this next year too!” I said to Adele when she tucked us in that night.

“Of course you will,” she assured me. “How else will Santa know where to find you?”

“But what if they come to take me away again?” I asked.

“They tricked me last time, but I’ll never let you go again.”

“Promise?”

She kissed my forehead. “You are here to stay.”

By the time spring came, I had lost both front teeth. Adele made her granddaughters and me Easter outfits in pastel colors, and we celebrated with an Easter egg hunt and picnic in a park.

Fresh flowers popped out of the grass every day like all the new lessons I learned in school. I couldn’t wait to see my teacher’s welcoming smile, open to the next page in a book, or start marking a clean work sheet with a sharpened pencil. I tried to keep these thoughts in mind as I made the scary walk down the long, rutted dirt road all by myself each morning. If it had rained, I had to try to balance on the high part to keep my shoes clean. If it had been dry for a spell, dust swirled around, and I had to breathe through my nose to keep from eating grit. Adele was always busy with Luke, so mostly, I had to plod along on my own. One morning I waited and waited, but the bus never came. I sat on the grassy shoulder and wrote my name in the dirt with a stick. I saw a rabbit scamper into a hole and wished I could follow him like Alice in Wonderland would have. After several hours the man who ran the mom-and-pop shop in town sauntered up to me. “What are you doing out here?”

“Waitin’ for the school bus.”

“Honey, there ain’t no school today. Didn’t Ms. Adele know that?” I shrugged. “Well, it’s a good thing someone told me about a little girl out here. Are you hungry?” I nodded.

He led me to his store and gave me a Coke and a sandwich. While I was eating, his wife called Adele. When she arrived, Adele was flustered. “I told Ashley that I thought this was a holiday, but she insisted.” Adele had trouble catching her breath. “I never did see a child who liked school so much.”

“When are you going to listen?” she shouted when we were in the car. “And you missed lunch.”

“I ate at the store.”

“Did you pay?”

“I didn’t have money.”

She took a few dollars from her purse. “You go back up there, pay the man, thank him, and tell him you’re sorry.”

“By myself?” I asked. Seeing her stern face, I did not complain any further.

I was furious that I had to walk up that hated road and then back again. As I kicked stones along the way, I had no idea that I would be living with her for only another week. I have never been able to find any official reason why we were returned to Florida a second time. Perhaps someone reported my being alone by the side of the road and that is what led to our removal. Maybe the neighbors reported something. Grandpa had started coming around again while we were still there—he did live with Adele again after we left—and maybe the authorities found out. Adele did receive foster care payments from Florida during that time, which is unusual, so money might have been the issue. All I know is that at the end of April, Luke and I were back at the airport. This time I carried Katie wrapped in her pink blanket. Nobody was ever again going to talk me into leaving without my precious dolls. Adele kept wiping away tears as she snapped pictures.