Finding Katie: The Diary of Anonymous, a Teenager in Foster Care

by Beatrice Sparks

  Happiness is coming out of my ears!

  9:30 P.M.

  Mark called tonight, and it was like all the happiness and contentment in creation were mine. Only two more weeks and we will be together. It’s kind of like a game with us counting each day till…UTOPIA! At first he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t meet him at the mall or something, but when he found out how super strict both Jennifer’s and my folks are, he respected them and us, saying that at his school guys were sometimes vulgar and disrespectful of girls.

  Then he softly said that I was the kind of girlfriend his mother had always talked about him waiting for, and that we had probably learned more about each other on the phone than we would have in person. At least he felt that way about it and I guess maybe I do, too, but maybe not!

  I’d dearly love having him over here playing tennis with me and swimming and doing our homework together and stuff. But in a way it’s true that just talking can bring out things that couldn’t come out any other way. Mama and Daddy practically never talk to each other. Sometimes he talks at her but…I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just know that all four of us, Jennifer, David, Mark, and I, are having a lot of fun with this silly little game we’re playing. I often wonder what makes me think we can ever get together after the dance. But I can’t let myself think about that. We will find a way!

  Saturday, March 6

  Daddy was waiting for me when I woke up and asked me if I’d like to play a little tennis with him. Would I like to? Do birds poop on your patio? I shouldn’t have written that; it’s low class and Daddy can’t stand “low-class things.”

  1:30 P.M.

  Daddy aced me the first few times. Then I knew I had to play my very best to impress him! I just about wore my heart out after that and he began shouting, “Good shot,” until I finally got my confidence up to where I could play a pretty good game. I don’t know when I’ve had more fun in my life, or more lovely feelings!

  Daddy was going to take me to lunch at his club to “show me off,” but some business person called and he said we’d have to do it another day. At first I felt so abandoned that I thought I was crumbling from the inside out. Then I remembered how much my Daddy now cares for me and how much I deeply and completely love and admire him!

  Sunday, March 7

  Yesterday afternoon, Daddy bought me an unbelievable white silk pants suit. When he saw me in it, he smacked his lips and said, “My baby is not a baby anymore.” Then he gave me a big hug and kiss and danced me around the store. All the ladies who worked there were laughing and telling me what a wonderful father I had. I thanked them and blew kisses to them and him!

  4:57 P.M.

  Daddy took Mama and me to the Los Angeles Country Club for a late lunch, and for the first time in my life I created more attention than Mama. She looked beautiful in her soft lilac dress, but Daddy’s male friends, who were buzzing around like bees, paid more attention to me than to her! Who would have believed it?

  11:32 P.M.

  After Mama had gone up to bed, Daddy and I sat out on the patio and talked about his new project. He was thrilled about it and excited that I was interested in his plans. After a while, he choked a little and told me how worried he was about Mama. I had been worried about her for a very, very long time, too, but hadn’t known what to do about it.

  Daddy pulled his chair closer to mine and held my hands. Then he told me we’d have to work together to help Mama. I felt tears running down my face as I assured him I’d do anything. He pulled his chair over closer to mine and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. He explained that for many years, Mama had a problem with alcohol. While he tried to do everything he could, sometimes he simply lost control as he thought about me and how Mama was hurting my mental and physical and spiritual growth. He held me tightly then and asked me to please try to understand and forgive him. I hugged him back and thanked him for confiding in me. Suddenly he stood up and pulled me close, then almost violently pushed me away, saying he had to go somewhere for a couple of hours.

  I wanted to beg him to stay with me and tell me more—about his work, and Mama’s background, and everything else that I didn’t know about. I know practically nothing about either one of them. It is like they had both just beamed down from foreign planets.

  I tried to hug him again as he walked away but he pushed me back. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said in his strange, cold old-Daddy voice.

  I plodded upstairs. All the warmth and brightness that had enveloped my new life with Daddy slowly leaked out of my body and brain. I was again my old lonely, un-belonging, hurting self.

  What had I done to offend him? I would do anything to have him like me! Anything! Anything! Anything!

  Never have I had such a comfortable, loving, belonging, experience in my life as I’ve had with Daddy the past few days. How could I have wrecked it? Will he now go back to being the old scary stranger who sometimes gets completely out of control?

  I’m thoroughly confused. At one point, when Daddy and I were talking, we were so close and relaxed that I almost really did feel like I could ask him anything. Thank goodness I didn’t because maybe…yeah…maybe the world is going to come to an end right here and now! I wish it would; this very second! And it would be over with!

  1:30 A.M.

  I cried in bed for a long time and waited for Daddy to come home so that I could beg his forgiveness for whatever it was that I had done to upset him. Then suddenly I thought about Mark and that maybe I won’t always have to go to a Catholic girls’ school! I certainly don’t want to. Yet here I am.

  Come on Self; think happy, happy, happy, Mark, Mark, Mark, dance, dance, dance! Who knows what wonderful happenings can pop up?

  2:30 A.M.

  Maybe I won’t need Daddy’s closeness. I’ll always have Jennifer! Females are much more dependable than males…but then there is Mama. Is she the one who drives Daddy crazy?

  Forget that! Move on!

  Okay! When I go over to Jennifer’s for our tennis lessons and to do our homework, her Mom is buzzing around like a little bee, and laughing and talking and scolding (but nicely) when we goof off. Her brother sometimes helps us with little things we could improve on in our tennis game, and sometimes Jennifer’s mom and dad even join us in playing doubles. That is really super fun…and funny! It’s like being in another land in another time and space, with another species of Homosapiens!

  I wish my family was like that. But wishing means nothing; it never has! I should know, I’ve been wasting my breath on it all my life.

  Wednesday, March 10

  Today I was walking around the grounds trying to figure out how I was going to get out and back into my castle without a moat, for Mark’s dance, and suddenly a miracle happened! Really! Plain as day I could see the emergency ladder that was under my bed in case of a fire or an earthquake or something. I could sling it over the fence by the pine trees, just like I’m supposed to sling it out of my window in case of a fire or something. Glory, glory hallelujah! I’m like Rapunzel! I can go to the dance! I swear to myself here and now that I will light a hundred candles at church. Well, maybe not a hundred but enough to show my appreciation for that absolute miracle!

  There might be some minor obstacles, like maybe having to take my dress and shoes in a sack and climb over the fence in my underwear, but big deal. Only nine more days!

  Jennifer is going to take the extra kitchen door key that hangs in their hall and sneak down the alley behind her house to the corner where she’ll meet David. Then they’ll come get me two houses to the right of my house.

  When I close my eyes, I’m at the dance already. I wonder what kind of car Mark has? I hope it’s not a convertible because I’m going to spend hours on my hair and make-up. I wish I could call Miss Conders, Mama’s dresser, but of course that’s out of the question!

  Sister Mary got really upset with me today because I couldn’t concentrate, but I can’t! All I can think about is Mark and the dance…and all the oth
er things I’ve never had a chance to experience. Will Mark really like me in person, or will he think I’m a total empty box? Which I probably am!

  Thursday, March 11

  Eight more days!

  Sunday, March 14

  Five days left. I am trying so hard to keep up with my schoolwork that my brain aches. I’ve got to keep up or get ahead, because if Sister Mary puts me in detention, I don’t know what I’ll do…or what Daddy will do. I don’t want him to ever, ever, ever get mad at me or disgusted with me for being a dumb-head or anything else that isn’t worthy of him. And he’s always so busy, I don’t want to upset him.

  Monday, March 15

  Four days left!

  Sister Mary read my health essay to the class. I was a little embarrassed when she mentioned that I was the only student who combined mental health and physical health into the same category. To me, it’s incomprehensible to think of good health in any other way.

  That perked me up some, and now I feel pretty sure that I can make it till Friday—fantastic, fabulous Friday!

  Tuesday, March 16

  Three days!

  I’ve tried on everything in my closet and nothing seems appropriate. Neither Jennifer nor I have the slightest idea what the other girls will be wearing. It’s a private Jewish boys’ school dance, so all the other girls who are invited will know the “rights and wrongs” and “dos and don’ts.” While we will be just a couple of out-of-place dust bunnies.

  4:06 P.M.

  Daddy drove in right after the school van dropped me off. I had my homework spread out on a patio table. I didn’t want to do any work because the weather was so perfect. Both the pool and the tennis court were beckoning for me to please come down to them. I was trying to be strong when Daddy spotted me and ran up with a box of candy in one hand and a pink silk jacket and skirt, practically the identical shade of my pink bathing suit. He gave me the candy, skirt, and jacket then hugged me right off the floor.

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day, baby,” he said in a very serious way, “thinking about the days and weeks and years I’ve wasted trying to make money when I should have been here swimming with you and playing tennis and,” he laughed, “going to Disneyland.”

  I started laughing, too, and he picked me up and started swinging me around.

  After a minute or two he reached over, closed my books, and told me he’d send a note to Sister Mary excusing me from tomorrow’s assignments. Then he swatted me playfully on the bottom and told me to go get my tennis things and bathing suit, he grinned, “The pink one that makes you look like the world’s youngest bathing suit queen.”

  I blushed and he yelled “Last one in the pool is a rotten egg.”

  We swam and played waterball for a little while, then sat on the pool steps. He told me my whole life’s story, from the first time I’d wrapped my teeny tiny baby fingers around his ring finger, till today. He was almost crying as he told me how sorry he was that he had missed so much of my life and begged me to let him catch up on what he’d missed.

  After that we played tennis, and he taught me some of the tricks that his professional buddies had taught him, all the time treating me like a princess! I felt so beautiful and powerful and important that I wasn’t even me anymore.

  After that we drove to Santa Monica in his little black convertible Mercedes, which I’d never been in before. I told him how dreamy it was, and he laughed and said that if I was good to him he’d give me one for my sixteenth birthday.

  He asked me where I wanted to eat and I said, “McDonald’s,” knowing that none of his friends would be there!

  When we got home we sat in the car and Daddy told me he didn’t want to tell me about Mama’s problems, but he felt I should know. He sniffled a few times and wiped his nose on his silk handkerchief, then he grabbed my hands and held them so tightly they hurt.

  After a few silent seconds he whispered, as though it was the hardest thing he ever had to say in his life, “From…from…from the moment you were born, your beautiful mama was so jealous of you…my heart began to break. Nurses and nannies were your mama, while your real mama devoted her life to being beautiful.” He put his hands over his face and dropped his head. I moved over, hugged him, and lovingly stroked his face and arm, whimpering that I didn’t know what a hurtful life he had been living and that now I understood why he had sometimes lost his temper.

  We cried together like two little unloved orphans, and he told me how Mama was drinking even when she was pregnant with me and how it about drove him crazy. He said he did everything he could to get her to stop, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Then a few years later she started using drugs. He put his head in my lap and I ran my fingers through his hair and kissed his face as he sobbed that the two of us would have to make it together.

  “We can,” I sobbed, and my heart thumped with a mixture of joy and sorrow that didn’t make sense. I wanted to ask him what we were going to do about Mama, but of course it wasn’t the time for that.

  At my room Daddy hugged me and kissed my face and ears and hair like he never wanted to let go and I didn’t want him to! We were making up for all the lost years that we had suffered through because of selfish, self-centered Mama!

  Finally I pulled away and he sort of stumbled down the hall like an old beaten man. Poor, poor Daddy. What a sad, sad life he has lived with such a self-indulgent, egotistic wife who never thought of anyone but herself. My heart bled for him, and I hated myself for having thought all my life that he was the bad one.

  I wanted to go into Daddy’s room and comfort him, ask his forgiveness for all the bad thoughts I’ve had about him. He has been kind of like a stranger in my past, but now he is the kind of daddy ever child wanted and needed. I love him so much I can feel the admiring devotion coming out of my pores. I hope he can feel what I am feeling!

  Wednesday, March 17

  6:01 A.M.

  I woke up and sat up in bed like I’d been shocked. I’ve been so busy thinking about Daddy that I had totally forgotten that in two days I will be going to Mark’s dance! Or will I? Maybe now that Daddy and I were becoming so close…I feel absolutely physically torn. Can I possibly have them both? What a time for a situation like this! I can’t wait to get to school so I can talk to Jennifer.

  7:30 A.M.

  I couldn’t believe it when I walked past the dining room. The end of the huge table was set for two, with flowers and as much formality as there could be. I crept toward the kitchen where I always have breakfast, thinking Daddy must be having someone special from his company coming over.

  As I hurried toward the end of the hall, Daddy bounced by. He picked me up and swung me around and around until I was dizzy. Then he formally took me into the dining room, telling me that he and I were going to have breakfast together every morning that he could make it!

  Oh yes, and he wants to do everything in the world he can to make me happy and to make up for every second of our lost time! I am so excited I am about to burst!

  But what if he wants to take me someplace special Friday night? Never have I felt so frustrated! Mark would never speak to me again…and Daddy…Oh, I’m going to miss my ride to school. Bye…everything in my life.

  10:34 A.M.

  Sister Mary thinks I’m writing down the answers to her dumb questions when actually I’m having a euphoric (I’ve always wanted to use that word) experience. Like I’m bubbling inside.

  Today I was more than a little bit scared when I handed Sister Mary the note that Daddy had written, excusing me from my homework. I could feel my whole body shaking as she read it. When she had finished she flashed me a little smile and nodded her head. I about fell off my chair.

  Daddy had told me that he had given my school so much money that no one there would dare not do whatever he asked. That made me feel important and confident. Like maybe, after all, I was somebody!

  Thursday, March 18

  Happy morning!

  Daddy was in the driveway this
morning waiting for me. He waved me into the car and said he would be taking me to and from school every day that he could, from now on. I reached over and spread kisses all over the side of his face. He laughed and said he wondered what Cook would think if she was peeking out the window. We both laughed at that!

  Now the greatest thing in creation—Daddy said that he had to go to San Francisco for the weekend on business, and wives were invited, so he’d have to take Mama and her dresser. They would have to leave this afternoon. My whole insides fluttered. All my problems were answered! I, Cinderella, would get to go to the ball after all! Hurrah! Hurrah!

  Mrs. Jolettea would be staying in our house, in the maid’s room instead of in her apartment over the garage, while Mama and Daddy were gone. I’d tell her I was very tired so I’d go to bed extremely early and sleep in as late as I could. My insides were gleefully dancing even as I was lying! Imagine everything turning out absolutely like the fairy-tale way I always hoped it would. This couldn’t possibly be all bad!

  Friday, March 19—Mark!!!

  I have fixed my hair a dozen different ways and used all of Mama’s lotions and potions. I’ve tried on every dress and pair of shoes I own. Finally I decided on my green dress to go with my green eyes. I may not be anywhere near as beautiful and regal-looking as Mama, but I think I still look pretty good. I hope Mark will think so, too, and that I won’t get all tongue-tied and brain-locked when I see him! I don’t think I’ve ever felt so insecure in my life.