Walk to Beautiful: The Power of Love and a Homeless Kid Who Found the Way

by Wayne, Jimmy

  ON MARCH 31, 1987, A WHITE VEHICLE, BEARING THE North Carolina state insignia, showed up in front of Kay’s house. An older woman came to the door, talked briefly with Mama, then told me to gather up my belongings and put them in the car. “It’s time to go,” she said. I had no idea where we were going, but I loaded up all my clothes, drawings, and poems and put them in the back of the state car. Mama never said good-bye or “I love you” or “I’ll miss you.” Nothing.

  I walked around to the back of the house to take a last look. I couldn’t help noticing the beat-up, sand-filled plastic soda bottle still hanging on the tree. It looked like I felt inside. I walked back around to the front of the house and got in the car.

  The social worker cranked up the motor, looked over at me, and said, “My name is Kathy Flowers.” I realized that she was merely doing her job, and she appeared to be a nice enough person—but at that point, she could have been Mother Teresa, and I still would have hated her. I grunted something that sounded like hello.

  Ms. Flowers drove me to a place called Faith Farm, a foster system group home operated by Lutheran Family Services and situated off Dallas Stanley Highway. I was surprised when Tim and Mama followed behind us in his car.

  We pulled into the driveway that led to a simple but attractive two-story white farmhouse. I got out of the car and looked around at the scenery with large, lush, green oak trees. It looked like a postcard. It was an old house, but it appeared to be in great condition, with a well-maintained yard and nicely manicured bushes and flower gardens. Wow, I’ve never been in such a rich house as this! I thought. Of course, by most standards, it was a typical Victorian-style old house, but to me, it was a mansion.

  I followed Kathy Flowers around to the front of the house, up onto a wide, gray-painted concrete porch complete with concrete pillars topped by wooden posts. I stepped through the front door, where I was warmly greeted in the living room by the staff. “Hi, Jimmy. Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.”

  I was pleasantly surprised that they knew my name, but then I realized I was alone in the house. The other residents—four boys at the time of my arrival—were in school. Nevertheless, the personal greeting made me feel special, and that was a new experience for me.

  After brief introductions they gave me a tour of the home and then showed me to my bedroom. Downstairs, Mama and Tim put on a show, pretending to be the best parents ever, so grieved to have to leave their son. Upstairs, I unpacked my bag while Mama and Tim watched from the doorway. Neither of them said a word to me the entire time.

  When it came time to say good-bye, I walked over and hugged Mama and even hugged Tim. “I love you,” I said to both of them. The moment the words escaped my lips, I realized how strange they sounded. But if there was one chance left for them to change their minds about leaving me there, this could be it. No such luck. They turned and followed Kathy down the steps. They gave me no indication that I’d ever see them again. No “I’ll miss you” or “I’ll see you next week.” Nothing.

  From my upstairs window I watched Mama and Tim get in their car and drive away, just as they had that night in Pensacola. I didn’t cry as much this time. Not because it didn’t hurt and not simply because I was growing older, but more because I was getting used to Mama’s leaving me.

  I SAT ALONE IN MY ROOM, DOODLING ON SOME PAPER. Drawing pictures had become a ready therapeutic release for me, and when I wasn’t writing poems, I loved sketching, even though some of my drawings were so dark and morbid, they nearly frightened me. I dreaded meeting the other boys who lived at Faith Farm because I’d heard about the kind of boys who lived in these types of places. Will they be like Butch, and will I have to fight them every day? I worried. Will they try to rape me? A thousand fearful thoughts flooded my mind.

  Soon my questions were answered as a group of boys burst through the front door. They were happy, loud, and excited, having just gotten home from school.

  Ben Foster and Tommy Brown immediately ran upstairs to my room and introduced themselves. They were nothing like the boys I had imagined. They were my age and more like nerds, but I didn’t mind that. In fact, it was almost a refreshing change of pace compared to the tough guys I had endured at Belmont Junior High School. Marcus Ray and Antoine Daniels, two African-American boys, were a bit standoffish at first, but they soon warmed up. I was still hurt and angry on the inside, but at least I felt somewhat safe at Faith Farm, and I slowly dropped my guard.

  The residents were all neglected, troubled boys. Some of them had parents who had died; others had been rejected by their parents or had gotten in some sort of trouble, or they were simply unwanted. All of us had done some bad things, but nothing worthy of jail. Nevertheless, we had all been ordered to Faith Farm by the courts.

  The staff was kind but firm, with a no-nonsense approach to the rules. Their emphasis was on helping us put some order into our lives and preventing a free fall into trouble. They didn’t threaten us, but we all understood that if we messed up and got thrown out of Faith Farm, our next stop would include a room with bars on the windows.

  The group home was highly structured. We got up at specific times and went to bed at designated times. We had assigned chores inside the house and outside on the property, and we were paid a few cents for each task completed. The work could not be slipshod; it had to be done correctly. Our rooms had to be clean with our beds made every day. We were required to keep the rest of the house spotlessly clean too.

  As time progressed, we became a close family rather than a disjointed group of fatherless boys. Tommy and I listened to music together. He shared Iron Maiden’s Live After Death album with me for the first time. I loved it so much that Tommy gave me his Iron Maiden T-shirt. I soon began liking heavy metal music.

  Ben was a good listener and a good friend, but I soon learned that getting close to anyone in a group home was unwise. Individuals could get ripped out of your life overnight. I came home from school one afternoon and learned that Ben had been transferred to another facility on the other side of North Carolina, closer to his sister who was deaf. I never saw Ben again. It tore me up that I didn’t even get to say good-bye to my friend, but now I understood why the staff didn’t want us to get too attached to one another.

  Ben was soon replaced by Jett Roster, a cocky kid from Gastonia. “Hey, man! I’m Jett,” he said, striding across the room and grabbing my hand. His handshake was strong, and I could tell Jett was going to be an instant friend. But my experience with Ben reinforced one of the most basic lessons of life in the system: don’t get too close to anybody because he or she may not be here tomorrow.

  THE STAFF DID ITS BEST TO PROVIDE US WITH A WIDE VARIETY of activities meant to simulate those of a normal family. We ate our meals together around a large dining room table. We went somewhere fun every weekend: bowling, skating, swimming at the lake, and even an overnight camping trip to Myrtle Beach. We went to church every Sunday morning, the church of choice of the staff member on duty. Sometimes a staff member might take us to a church of our choice, if we had one. To expand our perspectives and to provide us with a wider worldview, we watched the television program 60 Minutes every Sunday evening. It was not optional.

  A local JC Penney store was wonderfully kind to the residents of Faith Farm, giving us vouchers that could be spent at their store. I spent mine on a can opener for Patricia. I wasn’t the only one who used the vouchers for someone else; almost all the residents did the same. The giving of gifts was not just to be nice; the gifts were our way of subtly crying out, “Will you please accept me?”

  If there was any downside to my being at Faith Farm, it was the ridiculous counseling sessions the state required me to attend with mental health professionals at a hospital. I didn’t mind the counselors’ questions, but I took offense at the silly hand puppets they used in trying to get me to talk. The puppet would ask me questions, and I was supposed to talk to the puppet on the counselor’s hand.

  “I am fourteen, man. I don’t need you tal
king to me with puppets on your hands.”

  “Oh, you are hostile.”

  “No, I don’t talk to puppets.”

  “Oh, you’re getting sassy. That’s your problem. Just put the puppet on your hand and talk through the puppet.”

  “How are you doing, Jimmy?” the puppet across the table said to me.

  “Fine,” I said through my puppet.

  “No, you have to make the mouth move.”

  “I’m not talking to some stupid puppet,” I recoiled. I threw the puppet down on the table and got up, ready to leave. The counselor wrote down on his report: Passive-Aggressive.

  I guess I was.

  ALTHOUGH THE STAFF UNDERSTOOD THAT ALL THE BOYS AT Faith Farm came from backgrounds where we were accustomed to doing whatever it took to survive, stealing of any kind was not tolerated, no matter how petty or seemingly insignificant the theft. One night shortly after my arrival at the home, Tommy Brown noticed the office door was ajar after hours. Tommy had been at the home long enough to know where the staff kept their personal supply of miniature Snickers bars.

  He slipped into the office and grabbed the entire bag. He ran upstairs and handed out candy bars to all the other boys, including me. “Hey, man, do you want some candy?” he asked.

  “Sure do,” I responded. “Thanks, Tommy. Hey, where did you get this candy, anyhow?”

  Tommy told me. Since I was new to Faith Farm’s strict discipline, I didn’t think much about it when he told me where he’d gotten the candy. I figured the staff wouldn’t care since they were only miniature candy bars, the size that is usually given away, anyhow.

  I was wrong, very wrong.

  When we got home from school the following afternoon, a staff member yelled, “Group!” which was the signal to assemble in the living room for a group meeting. We all ran downstairs and plopped down on the couch and chairs.

  The entire staff stood in the center of the room, and Vanessa, a senior female staffer, said, “While you were at school, we inspected each of your rooms and found these.” She held up a couple of candy bar wrappers. “Someone has gone into our office and taken a bag of candy bars from our safe. We checked everyone’s room and found wrappers in all your trash cans, so therefore you’re all guilty.”

  Vanessa walked over to me and stood in front of me. “Did you enjoy those candy bars, Jimmy?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied spritely. “They were great!”

  “Good, I’m glad you enjoyed them,” she replied sarcastically. She turned back to the other four boys.

  “You’re going to have a lot of time to think about what you have done. Since we can’t trust you, you’re going to spend the next two weeks in this living room under close observation. In the evenings you’ll be escorted upstairs to get your mattresses, and you will bring them down to the living room, where you will all sleep in the same room.

  “You’ll then take your mattresses back to your rooms in the morning and make your beds before school. And since we can’t trust you to walk alone through the house, you’ll even be escorted to the bathroom to take your showers and brush your teeth.

  “Oh, one more thing: for two solid weeks, you will not be permitted to talk to one another. Period. No talking for the entire two weeks. If you need to talk to a staff person, you will raise your hand and wait for one of us to give you permission to ask your questions.”

  At first I thought they were joking, but I soon found out that the staff was dead serious. For two weeks we maintained absolute silence in the house. Saturdays and Sundays were the worst since we had no school and were home all day. We had to get up early, carry our mattresses one by one up the stairs, make our beds, and immediately come back down to the living room, where we sat the entire day on the couch without saying a word. Imagine five fourteen-year-olds going out of their minds in silence. If we fudged or flubbed up or purposely violated the silence, the staff added an extra day. Those were the longest days of my life.

  After two weeks the staff allowed us to bring a workout bench into the living room and lift weights to occupy our time. But one of the guys got impatient and tried to jump in line. “Hey, it’s my turn!” one of the boys protested.

  “Put it up!” a staff member called out. “You’re done.” The workout bench was removed, and we were back to boring silence and inactivity.

  Little by little, the staff reinstituted our privileges until we were allowed to have full access to the entire house again. But I never wanted to see another Snickers bar in my life.

  Twenty-one

  DOCTOR DEATH

  THE STAFF AT FAITH FARM SERVED AS SURROGATE PARENTS for me, so when I complained of a nagging toothache, a female staff member took me to the dentist. After an exam, the dentist told the staff member I needed a root canal.

  The two of them walked around the corner, and I overheard the staff member tell the dentist that I was living in a group home.

  “Oh,” the dentist responded. “He’s one of them?”

  “Yes, sir. We don’t have dental insurance for our residents.”

  “Then I’ll have to pull the tooth,” the dentist replied. His words ripped through me, not because I was afraid of getting a tooth pulled. The real pain came from the knowledge that he didn’t regard me as a normal kid with a toothache. The Novocain numbed the pain when he pulled my tooth, but it did nothing to numb the pain in my heart.

  I RECEIVED A FEW LETTERS FROM MAMA WHILE I WAS AT Faith Farm, but none of them read like the ones she wrote to me when she was in prison. Now her letters were very generic.

  Jimmy,

  Sorry I haven’t been able to send you anything. I’ll try to see you soon.

  Love,

  Mom

  I never asked her for a dime. The group home allowed us to earn a small amount of money for doing our chores—ten cents for vacuuming the downstairs, twenty cents for washing dishes—and occasionally a staff member might even pay me to wash his vehicle. So I didn’t need any money from Mama. I did hope she might come for a visit, but for several weeks, she never did.

  I rode an emotional roller coaster at Faith Farm. Some days were great, and I was up; others were terrible, and I was way down. I had always enjoyed drawing, and my sketches often depicted what I felt on the inside—drawing and coloring pictures of flowers and butterflies, with captions like “Love is very sweet,” in my preteen years, to pictures of “Doctor Death” with the caption, “Born to run, bound to die” as a teenager. Many of my drawings before and during my stay at Faith Farm included horrifying monsters and devils. I produced more than one drawing with images of me at the bottom of the page, with slogans such as “In memory of Jimmy” and “Jimmy—gone but not forgotten.”

  Many of my drawings depicted demonic characters I imagined or copied from Iron Maiden albums. Yet at the same time I drew several beautiful pieces of Jesus, both as the suffering servant and as the returning Lord. Then I followed those drawings with more images from AC/DC and Iron Maiden.

  On February 2, 1987, prior to going to Faith Farm, I wrote poems such as “Doctor Death”:

  I am a doctor, I have a cure

  That will make you feel well.

  I am a doctor, I have a cure,

  That will send you to hell.

  I wrote longer poems around that same time, with titles such as “Hell’s Not Cold,” “Fast Death,” and “The Time Is Near.”

  While living with Tim and Mama and attending Belmont Junior High, I had begun experimenting with self-harm, and that got worse when I moved to Faith Farm. I sat for long stretches of time, scratching my arm with my fingernails until it bled, which momentarily refocused my interior pain on some exterior point on my body. I also started listening to some really dark music and writing even darker poems. I was close to suicide several times while at Faith Farm. So the pain from self-applying tattoos on my body was merely a precursor to death. I put one tattoo on my leg, using an art kit that had ink I sometimes used in my drawings.

  Using this method
, I sat in my room one afternoon at Faith Farm with a needle and a jar of ink. I wrapped thread around the tip of the needle and dabbed it into the jar of ink. I began sticking the needle into my chest on my left breast. Dot by dot, I pricked my skin. I wiped the blood and ink off with tissue paper. The initials FTW were now tattooed on my skin, and I meant everything those initials implied.

  MOTHER’S DAY WAS APPROACHING, AND THE STAFF AT FAITH Farm told me that Mama wanted me to spend the holiday with her. I was so excited. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since the first day I arrived in the group home, a month earlier. Around the same time, the staff also informed me that the plan was to move me to a long-term facility at Elida, and I would not return home on a permanent basis. That infuriated me, and I threatened to kill myself or our staff person, Kathy, or both of us if I did not get to return home.

  One evening shortly before my scheduled visit with Mama, I had a strong disagreement with one of the staff. I dismissed myself from the dinner table, ran upstairs to my room, and found a knife I had hidden, in case Antoine Daniels decided he wanted to sneak into my room while I was in bed.

  Antoine had slipped into my room once before in the middle of the night. I was nearly asleep, but I felt him lie down on my bed beside me.

  Startled, I yelled, “You better get out of here, now!”

  Antoine laughed uproariously, as if he was just joking around, and he ran out of the bedroom.

  Maybe so, but I wanted to make sure that the next time he decided to joke around, I’d be prepared. The following day, while I was in the office, I spied a pocketknife in a toolbox. I nonchalantly knelt down, and without drawing attention to myself, I casually wrapped my hand around the knife and shoved it in my pocket. I ran straight back to my room and hid the knife in a place where I could get to it—just in case.