The Lost Boy

by Dave Pelzer

  Gordon stopped off at his home. Soon the phone became glued to his ear as he pleaded, then begged, foster parents on the other end of the line to take me in, if only for a few days. After several hours, he slammed down the phone in frustration. “Damn it!” he said. “There are never enough homes! And all the homes we have are full!” I watched him as he again attacked the phone. Seconds later his tone changed. Even though he turned his back to me, I could still hear him quietly ask, “What’s the count on A-Wing? Yeah? Okay, put a bed on hold for Pelzer. No, no, he’s clean; no charges. I’m just trying to place him, and I’m running out of homes. Okay, thanks. I’ll give you a call before we come in.”

  As Gordon spun around to look at me, he realized I knew what was about to happen. “Sorry, David, I just don’t know what else to do.”

  I was so mentally exhausted, I no longer cared. In a strange way I actually looked forward to the routine at The Hill and seeing counselors like Carl Miguel again. Before I could tell Gordon to drive me to The Hill, he snapped his fingers and grabbed his jacket, streaking out the front door and ordering me to follow him to the car. Inside the Chevy Nova he gave me a sly smile. “I should have thought of this earlier. It’s impossible for some of these parents to say no, once they’ve had a good look at you kids. I know it’s a raw deal, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  I squinted my eyes as I tried to understand what Gordon’s words meant. Before I could ask, my chest jerked forward as he jammed the gear shift into park. “Well,” he proudly announced, “this is it. Put on your best face.” Gordon surged with pride as he rapped his knuckles on the screen door, a split second before he marched in.

  I felt like a burglar as I tiptoed into someone else’s home without permission. A pair of heads popped out from a nearby kitchen. “Just be cool and have a seat.” Gordon gestured to a couch before giving me a wink. He spun on his heels and opened his arms. “Harold! Alice! Good to see ya! How have you been?” He strolled into the kitchen.

  I shook my head and chuckled to myself at Gordon’s chameleon-like personality. I knew if he wanted to, he could charm anyone into anything. He reminded me of those crazy guys on TV who desperately tried to con people into buying cars.

  Before Gordon pulled up a chair at the kitchen table, I knew we were in trouble. The man, Harold, who was wearing a straw hat, shook his head. “Nope, can’t take any more. Gots no room,” he grumbled as he took a drag from a thin cigarette.

  I clutched my already crumpled bag and was about to stand up to leave when the lady, Alice, said, “Now, Leo, settle down. He looks like a good kid.” Alice leaned over and gave me a smile. I raised my eyebrows and smiled back.

  “We’re not licensed for boys. You know that,” Harold stated.

  Gordon butted in. “It’d only be for a few days, just until I can find him another home. I should have a place for him by, let’s say, Monday . . . Wednesday by the latest. You’d really be doing me, and David, a big favor.”

  “And the papers?” Alice asked.

  Gordon raised a finger. “Uhm . . . I don’t have them with me, but . . . I’ll bring them by next week and . . . we’ll just . . . we’ll just backlog the dates. . . . Hey, look at the time! I gotta run! Thanks again. I’ll see you next week,” he said, and fled from the house before Harold and Alice could change their minds.

  I sat glued to the couch, hugging my bag to my chest. I kept my head bent down while Alice and Harold eyed me with caution and crept into the living room. “Well, where’s he going to sleep?” Harold asked in a stern tone. After a small squabble, Alice decided I would share a room with Michelle, a 17-year-old foster child who worked at night. Harold continued to protest, claiming that sharing a room with a young lady was not proper. Trying to make a good first impression, I marched up to him, looked him straight in the eye and shrieked, “Oh, it’s okay! I don’t mind!”

  As the words spilled out, I knew I was in trouble. For the next four nights, I curled up beneath a set of old wool blankets on the living-room couch. I didn’t know why I had made Harold so upset, but at least I had a place to stay. For that, I was thankful.

  The next week, after taking a quick survey of my contents in my grocery bag and waving goodbye to Alice—Mrs. Turnbough—I climbed into Gordon’s car as we set out for another foster home. He assured me that he had discovered the perfect home, even though my new foster parents had never had any foster children before and only received their license yesterday. My head began to swim with emotions. The more Gordon tried to convince me about my new foster parents, the more I knew how desperate he was to place me.

  A half mile later, Gordon parked his car in front of a small brown house. Stepping out of the car, I exhaled and gave the woman who stood on the porch a false smile. Before Gordon could introduce us, the woman flew down the stairs and smothered me against her chest. My arms hung from my side as the woman’s sandpaper-like hands scoured my face. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought the woman mistook me for another child. After an eternity of cheek pinching and another round of bone-crushing hugs, the lady held me at arm’s length. “Oh, just look at you!” the woman cooed, as she shook my shoulders so fast that my head bounced up and down. “Oh, I could just eat you alive! Gordon, he’s sooo cute! David,” the woman shrieked, as she jerked me up the stairs and into the house, “I’ve waited so long for a boy like you!”

  I stumbled into a small living room, fighting hard not to lose my balance. The moment my head cleared, the crazy woman shoved me onto her couch. Gordon tried his best to calm the woman down by forcing her to read endless stacks of papers before assuming custody of me. Finally, he sat her down and explained everything he could about my character, over and over again, emphasizing the fact that if she had any questions, to give him a call. “Oh, not to worry,” the lady said, as she smiled at me and seized my hand. “A little boy like this should be no problem at all.”

  Gordon and I blinked at each other at the same moment. “Well then,” he chuckled, “I’ll be on my way and let you two get to know each other.”

  I walked Gordon to the door. Without the lady knowing, he bent down and whispered, “Now be a good little boy.” I cringed, as he knew I would.

  After Gordon drove away, the woman flopped onto the couch. She batted her eyes and shook her head from side to side for several minutes. I thought she was going to cry. “Well . . . just look at you!”

  I returned her smile, and without thinking, I stuck out my hand. “I’m David Pelzer.”

  The woman covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, how silly of me. I’m Joanne Nulls, and you may call me Mrs. Nulls. How’s that sound?”

  I nodded my head, knowing full well that Joanne thought of me as a kid rather than the 13-year-old teenager that I wanted to be recognized as. “That’s very kind of you . . . Mrs. Nulls,” I replied.

  In a flash, Mrs. Nulls sprang up from the couch and proudly showed me a framed picture of her husband. “This is Michael,” she cooed. “Mr. Nulls. He works at the post office,” she stated, as she cradled the photograph to her chest and patted it as if she were holding a child. But I felt better after finally meeting Mr. Nulls, who insisted that I openly address him as “Michael.” I knew by the look on Joanne’s face that she didn’t like Michael’s easygoing nature or having her rules challenged.

  She would always seem to bite her lip in front of Michael, but the moment he left for work, she would return to treating me as if I were a toy doll. Joanne insisted on washing my hair, prohibited me to ride my bike past the corner of the block and instead of the $2.50 allowance I had received from the Catanzes, she proudly dropped two quarters into the palm of my hand. “Now, don’t spend this all in one place,” she warned.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t,” I assured her, wondering what to do with two measly quarters.

  Because of Joanne’s restrictions, I spent most of my time wandering through her home. The living room was smothered with every item from the Avon catalog. I’d spend hours gazing at the
thousands of articles. By early afternoon I became so bored that I’d plop down in front of the television and watch Speed Racer cartoons. When I could not stand another animated episode, I’d drag myself to my room and kill time by coloring in a coloring book she had given me.

  Just as when I lived with Mother, I seemed to know when something was wrong. Even with my bedroom door closed, I could hear hushed disagreements turn into raging battles. Several times I heard Michael yelling about my presence in his home. I knew that having me as a foster child had been Joanne’s idea because, as she had told me, she was lonely and could not have any children. Whenever Joanne and Michael fought, thoughts of Mother and Father raced through my head. I fully realized I was not in any physical danger, but I stayed huddled against the far corner of my room with a blanket over my head. Once, a few days before school started, their yelling became so extreme that the windows to my bedroom would shake.

  The next morning I tried to talk to Joanne, who seemed to be on the verge of a collapse. I stayed by the side of the couch the entire day, watching her clutch her wedding picture to her chest as she slowly rocked back and forth in the chair. As quietly as I could, I tiptoed to my room and packed my clothes into my weathered brown paper bag. At that moment I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be moving on.

  My problems with the Nullses evaporated my first day at Parkside Junior High School. I sat tall and proud at the big round table in my homeroom class. I smiled at the other boys who openly joked with me. One of them, Stephen, nudged me, claiming that a girl from the other table kept looking at me. “So?” I asked. “What’s the big deal?”

  “If you like a girl, you call ’em a horror,” Stephen explained.

  I tilted my head to one side. While I thought about the word Stephen wanted me to say, the other boys nodded with approval. After extensive coaching from my new friends, I tried to be cool as I bent over to the girl and whispered, “You’re the best-looking horror I’ve ever seen.”

  The entire room, which had been rumbling with noise, suddenly became quiet as a church. Every head swung toward me. The girls at the table clamped their hands to their mouths. I swallowed hard, knowing I had screwed up—again.

  When class ended, the entire room full of kids fought for the door. The moment I stepped outside, the sun seemed to disappear. I gazed straight up and stared into the face of the most gigantic eighth-grader I had ever seen. “What’d you call my sister?” he sneered.

  I swallowed hard again. I tried to think of something clever to say. Instead I told him the truth. “A horror,” I whimpered. A second later warm blood gushed from my nose. The eighth-grader’s fist was so fast that I didn’t see it coming.

  “What did you call her?” he repeated.

  I closed my eyes before giving him the same answer.

  Smash.

  After six blows to my face, I realized I shouldn’t say the word horror because it meant something very bad. I apologized to the gorilla-sized kid, who struck me again and bellowed, “Don’t you ever, ever, call my sister a whore again!”

  That afternoon at Joanne’s home, I stayed in my room as I tried to fix the frames of my bent glasses. I didn’t seem to notice that Joanne stayed inside her room as well. As the days passed, I so desperately wanted to ask her and Michael what a “whore” was, but I knew by the way they acted toward each other that I’d be better off keeping my problems to myself.

  A couple of weeks later, returning from school, I found Joanne with her head buried in her hands. I rushed up to her. She whimpered that she and Michael were getting a divorce. My head began to throb. I sat by her feet as she informed me that Michael had been having an affair with another woman. I nodded as Joanne wept, but I didn’t know what she really meant. I knew better than to ask.

  I held her until she cried herself to sleep. I felt proud. For the first time in my life, I had been there for someone. I turned off the living-room lamp and covered Joanne with a blanket before I checked my belongings in my grocery bag one last time. I lay on my bed, knowing deep in my heart that I had somehow been one of the reasons for the Nullses’ divorce. Two days later I turned my head away from Joanne, who wept from her porch as Gordon eased his Chevy Nova down the street.

  I dug into my pant pocket and pulled out a crumbled piece of paper containing the addresses and phone numbers of all my former foster homes. Borrowing one of Gordon’s pens, I drew a line through Joanne and Michael Nulls. I didn’t feel any remorse. I knew that if I thought about my feelings toward Joanne Nulls, Alice Turnbough or Lilian Catanze, I would break down and cry. I felt I was beyond that. Carefully I folded my address sheet and stuffed the paper back into my pocket.

  I cleared my head of any feelings I had about the Nullses—or anyone else—as I glanced out the car window. My eyes blinked. For a moment I thought Gordon was driving me to Daly City. “Are you going in the right direction?” I asked in a squeaky voice.

  Gordon let out a breath. “David, ah . . . we’ve run out of foster homes. The only one left is a home by your mother’s.”

  I felt a lump creep up my throat. “How close?” I whimpered.

  “Less than a mile,” Gordon replied in a dry voice.

  I nodded my head as Thomas Edison Elementary School came into view. I calculated the distance from my old school to Mother’s house to be under a mile. I could feel my chest begin to tighten. The thought of living so close to Mother made my heart skip a beat. But something seemed out of place. I nearly pressed my face to the side of the window. The school looked radically different. “What happened?” I asked, shaking my head from side to side.

  “Oh it’s a junior high school now. That’s where you’ll be going.”

  I let out a sigh. Doesn’t anything stay the same anymore? I asked myself in a sarcastic voice. A flicker of excitement over seeing my teachers that had rescued me soon vanished. Only when Gordon wheeled his car away from the school, in the opposite direction of Mother’s street, did I breathe a little easier. I felt as if I had stepped into a time warp as the Chevy Nova chugged up streets that were lined with houses of the same style as Mother’s on Crestline Avenue. I couldn’t believe how small they seemed. Strangely, though, I felt secure. I let out a smile as I marveled at the tall palm trees in the front yards of the single-story homes that seemed so tiny now. I couldn’t believe it had been nearly two years since my rescue. I rolled down the window, closed my eyes and breathed in the moist, chilly air.

  Gordon parked his car at the top of a steep hill. I followed him up a set of red-colored stairs to a house that looked identical to Mother’s. When the front door opened, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Gordon leaned over to my side. “You going to be all right? You’re not prejudiced, are you?”

  I shook my head as my mouth hung open. “Prejudiced?” I asked. I had never had black foster parents before. A tall lady shook my hand and introduced herself as Vera. I automatically took my position on the living-room couch as Gordon and Vera talked in the kitchen. My eyes darted in every direction, searching every corner, every beam of Vera’s home. The entire floor plan seemed the same. I remembered that the walls of Mother’s house usually reeked from the thick, choking smell of cigarette smoke and the heavy stench of animal urine. But Vera’s home had an open, clean feeling to it. The more I gazed at Vera’s home, the more I smiled.

  Minutes later Gordon sat down by me on the couch. With his hand on my knee, he warned me that Mother’s house was off limits, with a radius of one mile. I nodded my head, understanding the meaning of Gordon’s order. But I was frightened of Mother finding me. “Are you going to tell her where I’m at?”

  “Well,” Gordon began, as he fought to say the right words, “by law I am only required to inform your mother that you are residing in the city limits. Other than that, I really don’t see a need to tell her anything else. As you can tell, I’m not a big fan of hers.” Then his facial expression changed. “And for God’s sake, you make damn sure you stay the hell away from her! Am I clear on
this?”

  “Like crystal,” I replied, giving him a salute.

  Gordon playfully slapped my knee as he got up from the couch. I walked him to the door and shook his hand. Having Gordon leave me in a strange home was the hardest, but most familiar, part of our relationship. I always felt a little scared. He seemed to always sense it. “You’ll be fine. The Joneses are good people. I’ll check in on you in a few weeks.”

  Vera gently closed the door behind Gordon, then led me down a narrow hallway. “I’m sorry, but we weren’t expecting you,” she explained in a kind voice, as she opened the bedroom door at the end of the hallway. I stepped into a vacant, white-walled room containing a twin-sized mattress on one side of the wall and a box-spring on the other. Vera reluctantly explained that I would be sharing the room with her younger son. I gave Vera a false smile as she left me alone in the room. Very slowly I plucked my rumpled clothes from my grocery bag and stacked them in neat little piles by the head of my box-spring bed. I killed time by rearranging my clothes as if they were in a dresser drawer. Suddenly I closed my eyes and cried inside at the thought of never being with the Catanzes again.

  Later that afternoon I was introduced to the seven other foster teenagers who lived in a makeshift room in the garage. Mattresses were crammed into every corner and any other open space available. A pair of old lamps gave the room a soft glow, and makeshift bookcases were used to store whatever belongings the teenagers possessed. I shrugged off whatever anxiety I had after meeting Jody, Vera’s husband, who chuckled like Santa Claus as he hoisted me so high that my head almost struck the ceiling. I quickly learned that no matter what was going on, whenever Jody came home, everything and everyone came to a halt and competed for his attention. As cramped as things were, there was a genuine family bond. I only hoped I would stay long enough to memorize their phone number.

  My first day at Fernando Riviera Junior High was a huge improvement over the one at Parkside Junior High in San Bruno. I kept my mouth shut and my head down. At recess I desperately tried to find out what happened to my former teachers, only to discover that they had been transferred to other schools across the district. I felt empty and sorry for myself, until one day I made friends with Carlos, a shy Hispanic boy. We shared most of the same classes, and at recess we’d stroll throughout the school. We seemed to have a lot in common, but unlike my “friend” John at Monte Cristo Elementary, Carlos didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Because Carlos could not speak English very well, we did not feel a need to talk to each other that much. In an odd sense Carlos and I had a way of knowing what the other was thinking, just by our expressions. We soon became inseparable. At the end of the school day, we always met by our adjoining lockers so we could walk home together.