Foster Care

I was asked several months ago if I would speak at an event about my experiences in foster care.  I reluctantly agreed.  I agreed because I know that the person who recruited me cares deeply about the foster care system and social justice and I wanted to give back to my community - this seemed like a way to do it.  I was reluctant because I had no idea what I would say and because I knew, in the back of my mind, that I carry a lot of unresolved trauma around my time in foster care.  I also carry a bit of survivor's guilt, knowing that my experiences in foster care pale in comparison to what others have been subjected to in many cases.  I was deeply relieved when one conflict or another led to a cancelation of my participation.

I actually breathed a sigh of relief.  Bullet dodged!  I don't have to face that!  I don't have to tell anyone about this thing that still hurts.  I don't have to be vulnerable in front of other around the source of my rage.

And then I met a new group of people and all the usual questions were asked and people were surprised - they are always surprised - by the degree of absolute hatred I have for the state in which I grew up.  And I never really talk about why I hate that place so much.  I never really tell the stories that leave me shaking with furious energy when I think of that state.

But, I had this art show opening at my church a little over a week ago.  Husband attended church with me and looked at the art show after - simply because I asked him to.  I asked him to go and support me in this endeavor and he did!  And even though I knew he had a lot of really important pressing things to take care of, he chose to give care to me and to our relationship.  (He really is the best person in the whole wide world).

And then, it started snowing.  I was getting ready for church and I looked out the window and I saw flakes falling.  And we went to church and it was beautiful and lovely and the pastor preached a great sermon and I sat there working hard to pay attention, but I just keep thinking about the snow.  And I felt small and scared and powerless and ten years old again.  And the art show opening was amazing and I set aside all of the smallness, all of the scaredness, all of the powerlessness, all of the ten-years-old-ness, and I shared this thing of which I am most proud in my life with my community.

And afterwards, Husband and I headed home and I told him how proud I was, how incredible the art show had turned out, how it had communicated exactly the things I had wanted and hoped.

But there was snow on the ground and on the crimson maples leaves in our front yard and I kept remembering the crimson snow when I was ten.

*****

I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to explaining the reasons for my experiences in foster care, I'm not the most reliable narrator.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that I was ten years old when the events occurred, and while I am very reliable in my recounting the specific details, the meaning and reasoning for these specific events in this narrative were created by a ten year old kid.  Which means that the reasons and meaning of these specific events are perceived as the fault of that ten year old kid - because when kids aren't given a different narrative, they will create their own in which they are the cause of all of the effects because that's the only way children can make sense of their experiences.

So, of course, my ten year old self is convinced that we ended up in foster care because for the first (and last) time in my life, my father ever saw me, just a little over two months before.  And having seen me, of course he was determined to say or do whatever was necessary to get rid of me.

So, there we were, fourteen, eleven, ten, and eight years old, the youngest three of us having played a game of "ding, dong, ditch" and my father's response to the neighbor's complaint was to call the police and demand that they show up and "teach [us] a lesson."  And when the police showed up and tried to reason with my father about resource allocation and utilizing appropriate parenting skills in a case like this, my father threatened to strangle my sister to death.

Which is how we ended up in foster care.

It seems ridiculous to me that this threat was what actually led the authorities to remove us from our father's care.  I don't write that so as to minimize what my father said.  It's just that in the context of my family of origin, in the context of other moments of gross abuse, in the context of severe neglect, this one threat was the thing?  Like, seriously!?

So, let me back up.  When I was five, my father spent a night in jail for drunk driving.  He was belligerent with the police and disrespectful.  He was a frequent offender and we were frequently in the car with him - though not this time.  But endangering the lives of his children by driving under the influence of alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, crack....  None of those was sufficient.

There was the time that my brother had gotten into a closet storage and was playing with mothballs.  Asthma attack or some other reaction and my parents were on the phone with poison control.  I remember my sister jumping on the bed making a boatload of noise.  My father beat her with a shoe and left such severe bruises that when she reported it to the school nurse the next day, social services were called in.  That wasn't sufficient.

When I was seven my father attempted to kill my mother (I still remember the fingerprint bruises on her throat) and ripped the phone from the wall when my brother attempted to call the police, the wires and jack hanging limply from the plaster.  He took off after destroying the phone.  Around that same time, my brothers found my father's stash of beer and took it and dumped it out.  My father found them and kicked them until they were bloody and scarcely able to breathe, leaving them in the beer soaked dirt, bruised throughout their torso.  "Promise us you won't tell mom," they said.  "We'll tell her we fell off our bikes."  And I promised, but I broke that promise and when I told my mom, she believed my brothers.  None of that sufficient.

And then there was the time my father took his rifle to town and stood in the street, ranting and raving, and threatening passersby and the police.  After de-escalating the situation, the police learned his gun was unloaded.  An attempt at suicide by cop.  And that was not sufficient.

Or that time when I was seven and my parents forgot to pick me up from brownies after school.  And no one could reach my parents because, you know, the phone had been ripped off of the wall and destroyed.  And so I spent the evening at the local sheriff's house, doubled over, holding my stomach, afraid I was going to throw up because apparently I really was so invisible in my parents' house that I didn't actually exist to any of them.  And when the sheriff asked if someone had hurt me that I kept holding my stomach and crying, how could I, as an seven year old, explain to him all of the pain balled up in the horror of not existing?  Would he even be able to hear me?  That was not sufficient.

So, when my father threatened to strangle my sister in front of a police officer - magic bullet!  Golden ticket!  Ding, ding, ding!  A one-way trip to foster care!

Thirty minutes later, we met the family that we stayed with those first nights, who did emergency placement only, who were wonderful.  I would have stayed with them forever.  For the first time in my life I knew what safety felt like.  Three days later, the state had found a family that was willing to take all four of us.  And so, another half hour south we went.

And my siblings started school the next Monday.  And because of my different social support needs, it took them longer to get me started.  But that first day, talking to the guidance counselor, I asked about a talented and gifted program.  My foster mother was quick to assure me that her own biological sons were supremely gifted and the program was incredibly selective - so selective that her kids didn't qualify so there was no way there would be room for me in the program.

Two weeks later, the resources were in place and I was able to start school.  That Monday I was told that they did have room for me in the talented and gifted class.  I could join them immediately.  And I was being placed in advanced math and reading classes.  It was looking like, in spite of this awful family that we were living with, that school might still be pretty okay.  It might actually be the place of salvation that school had always been for me.

The next day was my brother's birthday.  It was a Tuesday.  He was turning nine.  And our foster mother brought home a chocolate cake to surprise him and celebrate his birthday.  And he disappointed because he doesn't like chocolate cake.  Which, you know, seems like a pretty reasonable response from a nine year old kid who's been raised in an abusive home and never mirrored or attended to or cared for properly or had appropriate behavior modeled for him.  And so our foster mother told him that he should be grateful she'd done anything at all and what an ungrateful and horrible child he was not to consider the sacrifices that she and her family were making so that we could have a safe place to stay.

The next day, Wednesday, the social worker showed up and removed my younger brother and me from the care of this foster family.  We were just too much for them to handle.  They couldn't possibly manage the four of us for even one more second.

So, we were taken an hour north, closer to our mother, to another foster family.  I was back in my previous school.  And it seemed like maybe things would be okay.  But this foster mother drank like my father did and made promises and broke them like my father did.  And she would ask what I wanted for a treat and then buy it and then keep it for herself and then mock, ridicule, and laugh at me when I cried.  And I was ten and scared and feeling hopeless, but I was closer to my mother, so maybe the trade-offs would be worth it.

One Sunday we were at church.  And this church was directly across the street from the church my mother attended.  And after church, I saw her.  And I crossed the street without any traffic after looking both ways and proceeding with caution and I hugged my mother and told her I loved her and I missed her and I wanted to come home to her.  And my foster father called me back and yelled at me for walking across the street and hugging my mother without permission.  And I told him it was "bullshit" before I was ushered into the minivan for the ride back to our foster home.

And on the ride back to our foster home, I warbled quietly to myself in the back seat, trying to hold back tears at being ripped away from my mother again.

When we got back to the farm, I was sent to my bedroom until lunch.  Punishment for using profanity.

And because my younger brother was a younger brother, he did what all younger brothers do.  He devised any means to annoy and harass me that he possibly could.  In our specific context this was a lot of time spent drawing pictures of slaughtered pigs because pigs are my favorite animal.  And of course, our foster mother couldn't possibly understand the violent tendencies of this boy who was absolutely terrorizing their farmstead with his threats of stabbing hogs to death.

After lunch, my foster father took me out back behind the house, wearing just my shoes, blue jeans, and a sweatshirt.  There was snow on the ground, that cold Sunday afternoon.  And my foster father handed me a coffee mug full of scalding hot vinegar.  "Drink it," he said.  "This is your punishment for swearing at church."  I knew not to argue with him; I though being sent to my room had been my punishment.  It turns out such isolation was used to keep this punishment a total surprise.

I choked and coughed, my eyes watering, as I sucked down the hot vinegar.  It burned with both heat and acid.  Halfway through the first cup I began vomiting.  My foster father held the cup until I was finished throwing up the whole of my lunch.  Then, he handed it back to me and forced me to finish it.  When the first cup was done, I threw up all of the vinegar, too.  And he left me standing in the snow as he went back into the house to refill the coffee cup.

Another cup of scalding hot vinegar.  "This one," he told me, "is for that noise you were making in the van on the way home from church.  What was that?  Why were making any noise?  Were you looking for attention?  Well, you're getting attention now.  Do you like it?" he asked, handing me the steaming cup of vinegar.  "Drink it!" he commanded.  And I was about halfway through that cup of scalding hot vinegar when I began throwing up again.  This time, the white snow in front of my first pile of vomit was stained crimson with my blood.

He didn't make me finish the second cup of vinegar.  Mercy?

I lay in bed that night listening to my foster mother ask her teenage son where he had learned the hot vinegar trick.  "In science class at school," he told her.  "We were studying physiology and the teacher told us that the human body interprets hot vinegar as a poison and will force a person to vomit as a protective response."  "Well, it sure worked," my foster mother replied.

The next day at school, I told my school counselor what had happened.  She reported it to the social worker handling our case.  The social worker spoke to our foster mother who insisted that she had learned this technique in a parenting class.  The social worker didn't appear to believe me when I told her my foster mother was lying.  But, since the social worker was there, of course my foster mother took the time to share with her just how hard it was to have these terrifyingly dangerous kids in her house; the arrangement simply wasn't working out anymore.  We both had to go.

At the end of that week, my younger brother and I were reunified with our mother.  She had since forced my father to move out.  Divorce paperwork had been filed (another story that never really ended; for another time).  We were just lucky, our mother told us when we finally got home, that the state school for juvenile delinquents had been full, because no one else wanted us and that was the next stop after two foster families.  She had just barely been able to convince the state to let her parent us again - since there was no place left for us to go.

With that, our time in foster care was over.

*****

Driving home from church last Sunday, I chattered my dear husband's ear off about how incredible the art show was and how proud I was of myself and how amazing it had been to do this thing.  I bubbled over with joy and excitement and the high of accomplishment and pride.  And Husband affirmed the rightness of all of my feelings.

And then we went to lunch at the local greasy spoon for juicy lucys and fries and he had a beer and I had a cider.  And then we drove home.

Our back porch was covered in two inches of light fluffy snow.  The crimson maple leaves in our front yard were heavy with the weight of the diamond white powder.

And I was astounded and grateful that my husband didn't force-feed me scalding hot vinegar until the snow on the ground was stained with my vomit and blood.