“My God, Dan, you're not going to make her swallow it, are you? What kind of a no-good son of a bitch would do that to their own daughter?”
And he stops because she has given him permission to do so. He is off the hook from being a fucking faggot and he can bear being a no-good son of a bitch because he is a man that knows how to get respect from his children. They will listen to him, goddammit, or else he'll kill them.
IT WAS THE SAME HOLLY HOBBIE CASE-worker who saved me—well, us—the summer of my junior year, when I was sixteen. And it was all by a fluke.
Since I couldn't be a lifeguard, Mom got me a job at the Lancaster Fairfield County Hospital as an assistant nurse aide. I walked the halls for a paycheck, the same halls I'd spent hours waiting in as a patient.
The program was run by the county and set up for high school kids. One of the requirements was to meet with a work counselor each week to make sure the stresses of working with hospital patients hadn't got our carefree childhood selves down.
Mom was still driving the foster kids into town for state-appointed therapy. She set it up so each child had a different counselor that she met with first, before they did. She tells the therapist that this one lies pathologically or that one has been violent, and reminds the kids on the way in that nobody will believe them if they try to act out to get removed.
On the way to counseling, Maria unfolds a piece of notebook paper and warbles out a song from the backseat; lines about how much she loves Mom but that maybe she should leave since she makes Mom so angry, but she'll still love her forever and she'll always be her Mommy. Mom lurches the car over to the gravel berm. She whips around in her seat and flails her fists while Maria tries to shield herself. “You listen here, you little slut, you ain't going nowhere. If you want out, the only place I'm taking you is back to your dad in his wheelchair and his fat beer buddies so he can pull your pants down again. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”
I BROKE DOWN when my work counselor asked me how it was going. Work was great, home was hell. I begged her not to tell. She said there was a law that could put her in jail if she didn't. She called up Holly Hobbie and everything unraveled.
HOLLY HOBBIE, WHOSE real name was Melissa, drove down to the house, drove into the dark tunnel that concealed us from the world, and pulled into the empty drive. Mom was at the back window with the gun in her pocket. The caseworker never came without calling first.
Melissa explained that her surprise visit was to talk to the kids about how they would feel about being adopted. Privately. It was the first time anyone had ever talked to any of us privately. Private was special. Private was scary. Either we were in trouble or they were. Either way, it was a big deal.
Melissa took the kids on a walk down the road and told them I was in town and had spilled it out. With some reassurance, Maria, Lloyd, and Ricky told her enough. When she walked back down the road with them, she beelined them straight into the back of her station wagon and went in to grab some clothes. That's the day Mom and Dad lost their license for foster care. And that's the day the caseworker first stumbled into the other wing where we kept Beck. We lost him, too.
Once back in Lancaster, Melissa found me in the hospital and told me that I could never tell them I did it, no matter how convincing and understanding Mom might seem. She gave me an emergency number for the agency and told me to call her at once if they found out. Melissa was scared for my life.
I FINISHED OUT THE REST OF MY DAY at the hospital, as if nothing had happened. But inside, I was glowing. I had a secret. I had single-handedly saved Maria, which was what I wanted to do all along—get her out—and I was able to save the rest of the kids to boot. I didn't know where they would go—float out into the sea of social service kids, playing the odds of finding a decent foster home—but still, they were out and that's all that mattered.
When I pulled in at the top of the road, I kept saying over and over, Got to stay cool, got to not let my face show it, got to act normal, be upset and surprised. Mom was waiting for me in the drive. “Did you do it? Now you can just tell me, we won't get mad. Did you do this to us,” her voice works loose, “you no-good creeping motherfuckin'…”
My acting skills are polished. I feign shock, bewilderment. I cry with Mom at the kitchen table. She thinks out loud. “Do you think it was Annabelle when I bloodied Penny's nose on that trial ride? I wonder if Jim turned me in for kicking Lloyd in the stomach that time in the 4-H barn at the horse show.” I am sickened. But my face shows nothing.
It only took four days for Mom to be smiling when I walked in.
Perched on the edge of the couch, she waved a tiny sliver of paper. “I found out who did it. Look at this.”
It was a teeny tiny bit of paper with the emergency number I had microscopically encoded onto it, the one I had rolled into a pair of socks in the back of my underwear drawer. Mom had called the number and quietly placed the receiver down when Children's Services answered.
“Dan's on his way home right this second. You're dead meat, girl. He's going to kill you. You hear me? You're dead; you're not going to get through this one. They can lock me up for fucking ever but you are going to pay for what you did. You just wait.” She's writhing with anticipation.
“Now, you get your ass out there and get some work done before your father gets home.”
I STARTED CARRYING OUT paper bags of trash, out past the car in the gravel drive and over to the charred ash pile where I burned them by the road. When I came back in the house for the next load, I emptied the trash into the back of my closet, filled the bag with clothes, and stuffed a few pieces of paper on the top. Then at the last minute, crunching down the gravel drive, I flung each bag in the back of the station wagon. When I had enough clothes, I scooped up my little dog P. J., threw her in the front seat, and peeled out the drive, praying to God I didn't meet Dad barreling down the road. I don't have the emergency number to the agency anymore. I have nowhere to go but to Debbie Miller's son. Mom's had me memorize his number so I know it by heart. Don will be there, waiting, waiting in his Polo-scented condo. He's thrilled I'm coming alone. He's got something he wants to show me. And I know I will have to let him. My mother has trained me well.
THE NEXT DAY, DAD TAKES MY CAR from the parking lot while I'm working. It has all my clothes in it and my little dog, too. I have nothing but the hospital uniform I'm wearing. I have to call Melissa.
She drives me to an emergency group home for teen runaways and delinquents. I've now become a foster kid. Melissa promised me a private home with a nice family but she couldn't find me one in time.
MOST FOSTER KIDS, by the time they reach my age, are hard and mean. They're pregnant. They steal. The concept of Mom and Dad went out with the tooth fairy and Santa. Once a teenage foster kid loops into the system, nobody takes a blow for them. They're beaten as the world watches, and no matter how many times they tell themselves they're a wanted kid, they know if they were, they wouldn't be here in the first place. It's simple logic.
Even if they regain some hope that this home's different, by the time the family sets down all their obsessive ground rules and punishments for a trial run with them, they know there are two sets of laws: one for the real kids, another for them. And foster parents are wary to take on a teen, no matter what the circumstances, because they know an overloaded underpaid caseworker will snake just about any lie down their throat to unload one off on them. Once you take a teen in, it's hard to get the caseworker to come out again and retrieve them. Like scratch-and-dent merchandise, foster kids come with a limited warranty. And Children's Services caseworkers act as time-share sales agents, hawking off sinking lakefront property and freshly painted lemons from the underbelly of America.
But I wasn't a jaded kid, just one whose life was in danger. Melissa tried to tell them I was different, that I wasn't a troublemaker, but the woman who ran the group home had heard it all before. I'd have to follow the curfew and personal checks just like the rest of the juveniles. Juveniles they
called us. I was living with juveniles. Turn your parents in for child abuse, and you're set up with a bunch of delinquent misfits.
All during that summer, I was still working at the hospital. Melissa would drive down from Lancaster in the mornings, pick me up at the group home in Logan, then take me to work and drive me home. She insisted it was the least she could do for me. Sometimes I'd see her crying silently as she drove, the sun reflecting off her wet face. I think it may have had something to do with not believing Penny.
C''MON, SIS, PLEEEASE COME HOME. Please tell them you made it up and to drop the charges. C'mon, I miss you. Siiiissssyyyy!”
Mom and Dad are waiting in the parking lot with the car running. They send Danny in about once a week to trot around the halls of the hospital to find me and beg me to come home. He's only ten.
“I miss you, too, Danny, but I can't. Melissa is counting on me to testify against Mom and Dad. She's counting on me, and if I came home now, they'd kill me.”
“Mom said everything's forgiven, you're not in trouble anymore, Sis, she's not mad at you no more. If you just come home now and forget everything, she'll forgive you.”
“Danny, I want to be with you but I just can't. I have to keep my job here and live in Logan, and Melissa would be really mad at me. I'm gonna see you soon. I promise.”
Danny trudges out of the cafeteria and turns around at the double swing doors, squeezing his hands together in prayer and pleading for me to change my mind. I wipe my tears and put my head down on the lunch table. I hate to see him beg.
Every week Danny weaved his way through the hospital, looking for me, but I couldn't tell a soul. The last place I wanted my little brother to end up was in foster care.
BY THE TIME MY CASE got to the courtroom steps, I was less sure of anything than ever before. I could tell Melissa was getting tired of the extra time she had to spend on me. It was forty minutes each way between Logan and Lancaster and she had to fit it in before and after her regular work at the agency. And then there was the one and only counseling session she'd okayed for me to do. Mom had called Melissa and asked her if I'd do a reconciliation session with them, to try and sort things out. I imagined Mom and Dad sitting in front of a therapist, begging me to come back home. I was prepared to be solemn and humble while their heads hung and they pleaded for my forgiveness.
Instead, Mom and Dad had found a counselor who wasn't part of Children's Services and didn't know anything about why I was in custody.
I sat sandwiched between them in the therapy room while Dad talked about how I'd stolen the family car and how they were worried sick, and Mom chimed in that she'd caught me climbing out the window to meet boys at the top of the road.
Our counselor was a big, lumbering black man, the same kind of black man Dad had pulled a gun on in the McDonald's drive-through not even a year ago when he approached our car window. But here Dad was saying “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and telling him I was in a group home for juveniles and awaiting my court date on the unruly child charges they had filed against me. By the time it was my turn to talk, I'd already interrupted with “but” and “wait” a zillion times.
The therapist turned to me. “Did you take the car, Julie, and run away? Just answer the question, yes or no.”
“Yeah, but I had—”
“Didn't you stop to think about how that might worry your mother and father? Did you not consider their feelings before you stole the family's car? And who did you run to that night? An older man? To spend the night, Julie?”
And it all went downhill from there.
That session, those records from that counseling hour, traveled to court under Dad's armpit like a trump card, while Mom clutched to her chest a manila envelope with big markered letters pointing out for all to see, “Proof of Unruly Charges Against Julie Gregory.” It had just enough official bearing to unnerve me.
MY HEARING WAS AT EIGHT A.M. in the tiny downtown of Logan. Melissa wasn't there yet. I had walked the few blocks from the group home to the county courthouse. Dad sat, watching for me, on the wide winding staircase that led upstairs to the courtroom.
“Sissy, can you come outside with me? I really got to talk to you.”
We sat on the courthouse steps in the summer morning sun. Dad took my hand in his and rested it on his knee. His eyes turned watery and he started to cry. He was crying for me, for what they were going to do to me when I got sent to detention, for how I'd get beaten with rubber hoses so the marks don't show.
Didn't I know why I was in court this morning? Was I a moron or what? It wasn't charges against them, it was charges against me for being unruly.
“Honey, they're only tricking you into coming to court so we can prosecute you for being out of control. Your mother and me have all the proof.
“Think about it, Sis, why do you think she put you in a group home? If you were a good kid, don't you think they'da put you with a regular family? And if she was on your side, why ain't she here now?”
I looked around. Melissa wasn't here. And it was almost time for the hearing. But I had interviewed with a family. Melissa said it takes time; I wasn't in trouble, was I? I thought it was the agency that was taking them to court for child abuse, not Mom and Dad filing charges against me. Why isn't Melissa here? Maybe it is a trick.
“I'm telling you, Julie, the charges have already been turned over to the court. If we had charges on us for being abusers, why aren't the other kids testifying? I'm afraid for you, honey, if you try to come up with some cockamamie child abuse shit on your own, I think they're gonna see right through it. If they take you, Sis, I won't be able to do a damn thing to get you out. They'll keep you till you're twenty-one. I don't want to see this happen to you, Julie.”
My dad can beat me with his laced leather belt, with his fists. He can kick his steel-toed boots in my stomach till I feel like I'm going to die. He can brand me with welts on my face, he can slam my head into the coffee table corner, grab my hair and bolt my face against the dashboard. But there was no way I could let some stranger beat me, not with a rubber hose.
WHEN MELISSA ARRIVED, breathless, in the hallway, Dad casually blocked her entrance to the courtroom. He whispered in her ear and a slow red flush crept up over her face. I could see her from where I sat inside the courtroom, my heart racing. She tore away from Dad when she spotted me.
“Julie, Dan just told me you're not going to testify, that you're not going to tell the court anything. Honey, we need you—I need you—to tell them about the abuse. I need you to do the right thing!”
I sit slack on the hard bench. Hadn't I done the right thing already? I saved the kids. How could I stand there in front of strangers and tell them what Mom and Dad did—with Mom and Dad and Danny sitting right there watching? How did I know the judge would believe me, especially after the black counselor? And Melissa didn't have anywhere else for me to go. There was no reward—no family—waiting for me after I did the right thing. There was only my own.
Melissa stared at me, waiting for my answer. I wanted to cry, I wanted her to reach out and pull me in to the safety of her long arms so I could just cry. If you hold me, Melissa, if you put your arms around me, I'll do the right thing for you.
But she didn't. And I didn't want to go back to a bunk bed in a lonely house with stupid old caretakers, doing it for the money. This way I'd at least get to be with Danny.
Since Melissa couldn't keep me in foster care without the court's backing and the court couldn't back her without proof or testimony of my abuse, they had no choice but to send me home.
I was relieved. It was probably me, I told myself, just having a rough time with adjusting to adolescence. Or, as Mom and the school counselor had decided in tenth grade, just an incredibly fertile imagination.
AND WHEN I RETURNED HOME, it was to a different family. Mom and Dad didn't fight. The guns stayed put. No bedroom doors creaked in the night. When Dad would suck in one of those deep sighs that always came before he exploded, Mom would “u
h, uh” and reach out to slip her hand into his.
We had pot roast dinners and bedtime hugs. We watched TV together. Danny helped with the chores and Dad carried heavy things. It was the most blissful time I'd ever known. We never talked about the terrible thing I did in ratting on Mom and Dad or how I'd made them have to claim bankruptcy by taking away their only income.
We just acted like a normal family. And I wasn't sick anymore. The whole time I was in foster care, I didn't take any heart medications because they all got left behind when I ran away. Instead of seeing doctors, I spent my free hours jumping off the diving board at the public pool and shopping for clothes with my hospital paychecks. It was going on six months since I'd seen a cardiologist, and Mom wasn't even buying me Ensure Plus anymore.
WHEN I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL that fall iV for senior year, just a few weeks after I returned home, I was so excited about my new life. I got an after-school job at Rax Roast Beef and would have my own money for school lunch, a discounted dinner at Rax, and, since I got to take the car to school on work days, I could stop off someplace and get breakfast. This was the year I was going to get good grades, this was the year I was going to have friends, this was the year I was going to be popular, I was thinking, maybe even do track or tennis.
Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood Page 13