Did she doubt my story, or was she giving me a way to extricate myself emotionally? Her gentle words allowed me to recall the incident as a possibility instead of a probability.
Darling little Lance had been with us for more than four months and was walking. Albert coaxed him and helped him up when he stumbled. We were amazed that he showed no jealousy of the smaller child. Nobody had said anything about moving Lance when we heard that both parents had signed over their parental rights to the state and we were told they were looking for an adoptive home. Erick and I started conversations about being his family.
After three more months, we had not heard anything from the agency and settled into a “normal family” routine. One afternoon we got a call from a new case manager.
“Hi, I’m Georgina Roy from the adoption division. I’ll be handling Lance’s case from now on.”
“Oh, thanks for calling,” I said. “We haven’t heard from Mike Bigelow for several months and didn’t know what was happening with the case.” I took a deep breath. “Since Lance has been with us over six months—half his life, really—we have considered the possibility of adopting him.”
“What do you mean? This child is slated to go to Maryland.”
“Maryland?”
“He has an aunt there who’s willing to adopt.”
“Then why did Mr. Bigelow tell us he was free for adoption and that there was no family?” My pitch verged on the hysterical.
“Apparently the mother named this relative just before she signed surrenders. The interstate paperwork got lost on Mike’s desk and even so, he got promoted, so I have to start the ICPC process again.”
I was infuriated that the incompetent Mr. Bigelow was now in a higher position. My mind was spinning with the implications of this new development. ICPC, or Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, is a long, tedious process that can take months—even years. In the meantime the aunt would have to take Maryland’s adoption classes and undergo a home study and an extensive background check. It was likely that Lance would be well over two years old by the time all this was sorted out. How would it affect this little boy to be moved after being with us for almost his whole life?
I spent the afternoon e-mailing and copying everyone connected to Lance, from his case manager to his Guardian ad Litem to the guardian’s supervisor. Each professed to be shocked and would “get right on it.” It was useless to contact Mr. Bigelow’s boss, because he was now that boss.
Lance woke from his nap with a sloppy grin on his face. His arms reached out for me to lift him out of the crib. I pulled him close and sniffled. We adored Lance, but if his aunt was going to get custody, she needed to be the one seeing him walk and hearing him talk for the first time. The older he was, the harder the transition would be on him—all because someone had carelessly misplaced his paperwork. We had feelings too. If we had known that Lance had other prospects, we might have been slightly more distant emotionally. This little cherub had enchanted us with his smiley spell, and we were as bonded to him as he was to us.
The following week while I was flying to Seattle to give a speech, Jenny, the placement counselor, called Erick to ask us to take another foster son. “Tyson is two—and he should fit in nicely between Albert and Lance,” she said. “We are exploring a grandmother as possible placement as well.”
“I need to discuss it with my wife,” Erick said, “but I can’t reach her until after six our time.”
“It should only be for about a week,” she said.
My flight was delayed, and I didn’t return Erick’s text—which didn’t sound urgent—until he was already in bed. He called me right back. “We can talk about it when I get home on Friday,” I said.
“Actually, Tyson is here now.”
“What!”
“Last night he stayed in a shelter—and his sister Diamond was just transferred to a girls’ group home. They needed to move him today.”
“Don’t you think three kids is a little much to be taking on?”
“He needs us.” Erick is very economical with words. I could not refute him.
“Okay,” I said from the other side of the country. “Something tells me that we are going to have to take the lead to get them to do the grandmother’s home study promptly.”
Two days later when I walked in the door, Tyson was sitting in the corner, partially hidden by draperies. Erick was on the floor, trying to coax him out with a bowl of dry Cheerios. “He won’t eat anything! I’ve made him smoothies, tried formula. Nothing. Not even a bottle!”
Erick was exhausted and worried. “When they found him, he had been eating his own feces.”
I joined him on the floor. There was a sippy cup with milk. I passed it to the child and spoke to him in a singsong voice. “Hey, Tyson, my name is Ashley. Peekaboo!”
Tyson kicked his feet and threw his head back, crashing into the window. Oddly, he didn’t cry.
“They had been abandoned in a trailer, and his teen sister has practically raised him.” Erick’s voice was a combination of disbelief and anger. “They didn’t have a home for both kids, so Diamond went to a group home for kids aging out of foster care. She’s been in the system several times before. His mother never reported Tyson’s birth, so he doesn’t have a birth certificate. We can’t even take him to a doctor yet.”
“Is he sick?”
“He’s got a wicked cough, his nose is running green slime, and—” He reached under the curtain and drew Tyson out, murmuring gently, “Come on, baby . . . come see Ashley.”
I took a deep breath. Tyson had a mullet of long blond hair that had grown past his shoulders and blue eyes the size of marbles. He looked like a Botticelli angel. But his teeth! They were brown nubs, rotting away before they even fully emerged. When I reached for him, he shook his arms in front of him.
I called his case manager. “I need to talk to his sister about food he likes,” I explained. She mumbled something about confidentiality. “We are supposed to have access to siblings for visits and to maintain contact,” I said. “And in this case we need information to help Tyson that only she might have.”
She relented.
“He only eats Cheez-Its and Fig Newtons,” his sister Diamond told me.
“He won’t drink milk from a cup or a bottle,” I said.
“He gets red Gatorade or Coke in his bottle.”
“Really? No other food?”
There was a long silence, and then she whispered, “Can I please see him? He used to sleep next to me every night, and he must be scared.”
“I’ll work it out.”
I found an oral rehydration solution that looked like Gatorade. Then we slowly introduced yogurt, peanut butter on crackers, and slices of banana.
As expected, Erick and I had to be the ones to initiate contact between the brother and sister. The group home staff wasn’t always helpful or easy to deal with, but we knew what the policies and regulations were, and we weren’t afraid to quote them or offer to contact those in charge.
Erick and I tried to be low-key foster parents and separated that role from our public advocacy. But in a case like this, we needed to do whatever it took to be Tyson’s champions. We had been told that Diamond was a runner and a very troubled teen. Since I’d had so many labels put on me, I couldn’t help but give her the benefit of the doubt. Over the next few months, she opened up to me. Her group home was designed as an independent living facility with a policy of leaving teens to “make their own decisions” in preparation for “the real world.” Needless to say, she wasn’t getting much guidance or structure from them.
“Have you thought about getting a job?” I asked. She looked at me as if I had asked if she had a bar of gold. “How are you doing in school?”
“I don’t really know.”
“The group home should have programs to help you with finishing high school and getting into a college or trade school. You can even get help finding an apartment. You will also qualify for some subsidies.�
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“Really?”
When I was a Guardian ad Litem, I had helped my teen girls with these and other issues—like getting a driver’s license and going to prom. So many foster teens miss out on these important milestones and experiences because there is no one who helps them or cares. I knew how to steer her to the right services in our area, but she had a grandmother who was willing to take both kids, so there was no point initiating anything until she was settled in her new town.
When the placement was officially approved, Erick and I talked to the grandmother.
“I’m not worried about taking on the girl,” the grandmother said, “but a baby! I don’t even know how to work those paper diapers.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “Diamond will be a big help, and we’re only a phone call away.”
On moving day a transporter arrived without Diamond.
“They’re supposed to go together,” Erick said.
“Diamond wasn’t at the home. She went out the night before to say good-bye to some friends, and she never showed back up.”
“Does anyone know where she is or how to reach her?” I asked.
“That’s not any of my business. I’ve gotta take this one to the grandmother anyway and don’t have time to wait around.”
Two hours later their case manager called me back. “Just wanted you to know we found Diamond. She’s in the hospital in critical condition. The weekend worker on call is with her.”
“What’s wrong?” I imagined everything from a hit-and-run to a violent rape to a suicide attempt.
“We’re not sure yet.”
I dialed the weekend on-call number and spoke to the worker. “Actually, I am sitting next to the young lady right now,” she said, “but this is a confidential case, and you have no right to be involved. Only family is allowed. Her mother is on her way.”
Her mother? This was a woman who had yet to have a single visit with the children and had abandoned them in the first place. Erick and I had been the only stable, reliable adults in this girl’s life during this time, and yet we were being treated like the enemy.
Luckily, we had developed a solid relationship with the grandmother, who kept us in the loop. She explained that Diamond had an ectopic pregnancy that had ruptured.
When we finally got to talk to Diamond, she was more frantic and angry than in pain. She was on the verge of tears because of the access the case manager had given her mother.
“My mom took my best clothes just before she dumped us in that trailer, and now everything I had when I came in the hospital is gone too! She even stole my jewelry while I was in surgery and was gone by the time I woke up.”
What a piece of trash! I thought. I called the regular case manager right away and told her what had happened. All she could say was, “The mother has the right of access to her child. And they needed her to sign off on the surgery.”
“We’re willing to take in Diamond when she’s discharged,” I said, hoping to protect her from a woman who would steal her child’s possessions and not stay long enough to see if she was recovering.
“You’ll have to take that up with placement, but it’s easier for her to stay at the group home until she’s medically cleared to travel.”
Albert had enjoyed having more children in the house. He and Lance were growing up together like brothers. Unlike brothers, however, it was preordained that they each would suffer an inevitable separation. Although many of Albert’s skills were delayed, he had a precocious emotional awareness. He also had a knack for making every adult in his life feel important. The first words he learned were everyone’s names, including all our extended family and his teachers. We were Mommy and Daddy. Workers, however, would call his birth father Daddy, which just confused Albert. During the rare visits, when someone would say, “there’s Daddy” or “go to Daddy,” Albert would search for Erick.
After Albert’s father missed more weekly visits, Erick brought up the big question with a simple declaration. “I love Albert. I don’t want him to ever leave.”
How was it that Erick found it so easy to love? Erick had loved me years before I could admit I felt the same way about him. Albert didn’t have years. I was the designated mother; so I was the one who had to find a way to feel that fondness and commit to him first. That would be the signal for him to bond to me. Later, if we were separated by official decree, he could carry that emotional memory through other relationships.
“The law says his father should have only had twelve months to complete his case plan,” Erick continued, getting more irate. “He rarely visits, even though he was granted all that extra unsupervised time. Isn’t he at the put-up-or-shut-up stage?”
“Judges can make as many extensions and exceptions as they wish if they feel parents have made some kind of effort or face other hardships,” I responded.
“Yes, but that’s not what’s happening here. He keeps telling the court that Albert’s ‘his seed’!”
That evening when I tucked Albert in, I kissed his soft cheek. I remembered being twelve and telling Gay that she could kiss me good night, but that I would never, ever reciprocate. Why had I been so rigid? This darling little boy was overflowing with love for us and almost everyone he met. I could not fail Albert like his parents had, or I might be dooming him to a lifelong attachment disorder.
“Albert, I love you very, very much,” I whispered into his ear. As I said these words my heart swelled; it overflowed with the reality that they weren’t just spoken, but were true. Maybe it was easier to love than I thought. In parenting him, I realized that I had been parenting myself. By wholeheartedly loving him, I was loving who I had become.
Albert had been living with us over a year when the judge extended the case plan to give his father more time. A few days later, we received a call to bring Albert to a visit for the first time in months. His father shot me what I felt was a hostile stare, as if daring me to hold his son back. Albert went to him easily—however, he did the same with the mailman or the grocery cashier. Yet in this case, someone would write a report saying that he was “bonded” with his father. While his father fed him a fast-food sandwich in a playroom, I met with Juanita, his caseworker, and her supervisor.
“Time is of the essence,” the supervisor began. “So we’re stepping up the reunification process. Mr. Sosa’s car hasn’t been reliable, which is why he has missed so many visits. Now Juanita will be arranging for unsupervised visits twice a week.”
I was shocked by their change of direction.
Why were they lapping up Albert’s father’s lame excuses and offering to walk him through his tasks well after the one-year mark?
“We can’t transport Albert four hours round trip twice a week,” I said. I shot a glance at Erick. Other foster parents had warned us that child protection policies had recently shifted to fast-track reunification as a budget-saving measure, but now the rumors were impacting Albert. The following week his father was granted unsupervised weekends, even though he had seen his son only a handful of times the entire case plan—even after he had been granted unsupervised day visits.
“Where will his father take him?” Erick asked, deeply distressed. “Does he even have a safe place to live, or is he crashing with the same druggies?”
That night I jumped on the computer to do some of my own research. We took out Albert’s file and made a list of mentioned names and addresses, and we searched for relatives or roommates his father might have brought up in court or during visits. The social media profiles for Mr. Sosa and his friends were revealing, unflattering—and uncensored.
“Bingo!” I called out, showing Erick what I had found.
“Wow. Now that we have proof of Dad’s lifestyle,” Erick said, “maybe someone will step in to protect Albert. Be sure to send those to the caseworker.”
“I just did,” I said, “with copies to her supervisor and to the Guardian ad Litem office.”
For months we had been taking Albert to doctors for a cough t
hat seemed to worsen every evening. A specialist finally determined that Albert had asthma and prescribed inhaler therapy. A few weeks later, we found out we were being investigated for medical neglect. We were eventually cleared, since three doctors had seen Albert, we were following all recommendations, and we’d kept meticulous records of visits and prescriptions. We never learned who’d made the bogus claim, although Mr. Sosa could have made it himself out of spite—especially if Juanita showed him the compromising photos and he suspected we were the ones who’d found them. There were so many possibilities. We were upset—not only at the false allegations, but also by getting a blemish on our foster care record that could never be erased.
We made sure to attend the next court date. I introduced myself to Nell Grasso, Albert’s court-appointed guardian, in the hall outside the courtroom. A courtesy Guardian ad Litem had visited Albert at our home earlier that month and passed her notes on to Mrs. Grasso, who had never met the child herself. “Before we were foster parents, my husband and I were both guardians,” I told Nell. The woman, who looked about Erick’s grandmother’s age, sniffed as if smelling me for the truth.
“Albert has severe asthma and is getting inhaler treatments three times a day,” I said. “Maybe you can bring this up, since both his father and his roommate smoke.”
“Tobacco is a legal substance,” she said.
“So is a car, but a child needs to wear a seat belt.” Nell didn’t get the metaphor. I tried another tack. “Do you think Mr. Sosa has the ability to care for Albert on his own?”
“He loves his little boy.”
“We’re willing to offer him an open adoption.”
“Then your motives are obviously clouded.”
“Everyone for Sosa,” the bailiff called, and we entered the courtroom.
Juanita reported that visits were going “exceptionally well.” She painted a picture of a father and son who were very bonded and aching to be reunited.
“Where do you live?” the judge asked Mr. Sosa.
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