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

by Beatrice Sparks

  Today I asked Mrs. Jackson if I could rinse out Donita’s bedding and put it on the clothes line. She shrugged so I did it. I also cuddled Donita and sang some nursery songs to her. At first she was stiff and still as a board, but then she began to soften up some and I almost felt like her mother. It was a nice feeling. Obviously the little, almost baby kid has never had much good stuff in her life.

  I hope she had a nice feeling about the cuddling and singing like I did. I do deeply hope so, because she always looks like something is about to gobble her up, skin, bones, and all! She’s especially scared of Mr. Jackson and often slightly wets her pants even when he comes near her. Dick and Frog giggle. Melba Lacy and I both feel sad.

  Tuesday, July 13

  It’s mostly horrible living in this dirty house. I don’t think anyone here really knows what “clean” is, or cares! I was told I could call Mrs. Jackson “Mother” or “Mom” but nobody else does.

  Dick bugs the life out of me. He always calls me “diarrhea head” when the adults aren’t around. He says it’s because my hair is the color of diarrhea. That really hurts. I hate even writing the word it’s so gross and low class.

  I hope Melba Lacy and I will be friends soon. She is the Pollyanna of the house but no one appreciates her. In fact, Frog and Dick are sometimes cruel to her, both physically and verbally.

  Monday, September 13

  Today I’m going to a new school. I hope it isn’t going to be like some of the schools I’ve seen in movies, like in ghettos and stuff. I don’t want to go back to a fourteen-year-old status but I can’t think of one single way to change that lie! I’m almost paralyzed with terror! My whole life is a lie, one I will probably never be able to get out of! Stupid, bungling, doing everything wrong me!

  8:00 A.M.

  A rickety bus picked up Dick, Melba Lacy, Frog, and me. Dick and Frog sat in the back row and were loud and crude. They pretended they didn’t know Melba Lacy and me! We pretended we didn’t know them!

  The school, which is a long way away, is as dilapidated as the bus. They both smell of mold and other awful stinky things. The kids were all dressed in cheesy clothes, including me, and I guess I stunk, too. It was humiliating and I wanted like anything to disappear into thin air but…no way.

  Melba Lacy is quite a bit younger than I am, but still she acted like she was my new mother. She took me into the principal’s office and introduced me, then scurried off to her class telling me she would meet me at the bus stop after school, in case our paths didn’t cross before that.

  The principal, Mrs. Pulsifer, hardly looked up at me she was so busy shuffling papers, finally she found the packet the people who had taken me from the Salvation Army had put together from my lies.

  Without even looking up, Mrs. Pulsifer asked me if I was doing better with my “memory retention,” then she explained “retention” as though I was a four-year-old. I wanted to spit in her face. Not really! But I felt so boxed in and at the same time shut out that my mind was whirling around like a blender.

  Seeing how confused I was, Mrs. Pulsifer sat me at a little desk in the corner of her room and gave me a page of questions to answer. They were third-grade questions and I wanted to jump up and run away, but to where…?

  I reminded myself of selfless Melba Lacy and slowly the stress started running out of my pores like water dripping from a hose. Soon, I hoped, I’d find out more about her past. But not mine! I didn’t want anyone to know about mine!

  I finished Mrs. Pulsifer’s question sheet in about two minutes, and she gave me a cold slice of a smile and handed me a sheet with fourth-grade questions.

  I zipped that off and the next two, probably low fifth and sixth grade. Then I got worried. I couldn’t let Mrs. Pulsifer, or anyone else, know that I’d always gone to the best schools money could buy, and had, as far back as I could remember, tutors and specialists in every subject.

  At the seventh-grade level I began to make a number of mistakes on purpose, and chew on my pencil like Melba Lacy did when she was trying to do her lessons at home.

  Mrs. Pulsifer asked me if I remembered my grade and I stammered and said, “No.” The lies were eating me up inside but I couldn’t conceive of any possible way to change the situation I’d created for myself.

  “Would you like to try seventh grade?” Mrs. Pulsifer asked.

  “Could I try eighth or ninth?” I asked, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Hmmm…maybe eighth,” Mrs. Pulsifer said as though she were talking to herself. Then she called someone to pick me up and take me to the eighth-grade class.

  I am completely and eternally beaten both mentally and socially! I can see no way out! I am barely sixteen years old and all educational outlets in my life have been blocked. What am I to do? I cannot go back to the evil creature I once thought of as my daddy. And who would believe me when I can’t even believe myself? Miserable, lying creature that I am! I am but a lying evil shadow of my old self, and probably will be for the rest of my life!

  Thursday, September 16

  Most of the kids in my eighth-grade class are the equivalent of uncaring retards. There is no discipline in the room, and no one seemed to be in the least bit interested in what they are supposed to be learning. Their grammar is terrible and their social skills…they probably don’t even know what “social skills” are, or any of the other niceties in life. In a way, that makes me feel very sorry for them. How can they ever get good jobs or become something of importance, to themselves, or to humanity, in any way, if they haven’t been taught!

  I am really depressed! Really, really depressed! Life is worthless! And Dick is right about my hair!

  Friday, September 17

  Melba Lacy heard me crying in my sleep and climbed down from her top bunk. She shushed me and whispered for me to come sit out on the front porch steps so we could talk.

  When I got there I couldn’t talk. I was so full of lies I’d completely forgotten how to communicate. But that didn’t seem to matter to Melba Lacy at all. She held my hand and told me how she had always wanted to become a painter or a schoolteacher or a writer, and how she had always lived a life of almost complete pretend.

  After her mama ran off with a man who worked in her office, her daddy started drinking all the time, leaving her alone for days in her cold, dark house, sometimes with little or no food. One day she found her little kitty, Whitey, dead on her bed. Screaming in terror, she picked up Whitey and carried her to the neighbors, even though her Daddy had told her they were terrible people and would hurt her a lot if she went there.

  The neighbors were not terrible people; in fact they were the kindest, nicest people she had ever known. After the neighbors had helped her put little Whitey, who had probably died from hunger, in a semi-clean white box, they had a serious funeral for the little kitty and told Melba Lacy that Whitey had gone up to heaven to live with God and the angels.

  Melba Lacy hadn’t known much about God and angels, so I told her a lot, then said I’d tell her more another time.

  We sat and watched the moon and stars for, I suspect, most of the night, because Melba Lacy had so much to tell me. She told me how her parents had screamed and fought as long as she could remember. Her daddy didn’t like her mother’s parents, so they were never allowed to see them or even talk to them on the phone. One day her grandma did call, and her daddy beat up her mama terribly. It wasn’t long after that that her mama just up and left. After “many, many weeks” Melba Lacy’s daddy left, too.

  Melba Lacy’s nice neighbors tried to get in touch with her grandparents but they couldn’t. Melba Lacy wanted to dig up Whitey and take him with her when she went into foster care, but the neighbors convinced her that they would always take good care of Whitey and that they would pray every night for Melba Lacy. Melba Lacy didn’t know much about prayer, so we’ve got to talk about that in the future. Sometimes she reminds me of the old nun Sister Mary at my dear, precious Catholic girls’ school.

  Melba Lacy is always kin
d and concerned about others, also forgiving of bad things! Dick and Frog tease her unmercifully, sometimes even hit her and pull her hair and call her terrible names. She never tattles on them or tries to get them into trouble like I’d like to do. She just simply tries to positively and gently go with the flow of life.

  I’ve been lying in bed thinking about how much better off I’d be if I were more like Melba Lacy. Sometimes I get so frustrated by Dick and Frog that I almost explode. Then I hate myself and everybody else in the world. I cry myself to sleep with a big heavy pile of evil and hurt inside me, while little snippets of memories of Mark and Jennifer and poor addicted Mama and the dear, dear nuns, float around before my eyes.

  Often, at times like tonight, I feel like I really have been sent to purgatory to stay forever and never be allowed to go back into the beautiful, wonderful days before…

  Please stop

  dear tears.

  You’re splashing

  in my ears.

  You’re drowning

  both my heart

  and every other part

  of me,

  or what I want to be.

  I hate it here.

  There’s fear

  and wondering.

  If I cry and cry and cry and cry,

  I’ll die.

  I hope that’s so.

  I want to go.

  This life is hell.

  There is no heaven.

  There is no me!

  I wish that that could be!

  Tuesday, September 21

  One more dreary day stacked upon another!

  I’m in a class of kids who don’t care about anything that is educational in any way. We don’t have enough books to go around, and we don’t have homework. Mrs. Lakin doesn’t seem to care that there is absolutely no discipline in the class.

  With almost a physical pain, I miss dear Sister Mary and the other nuns, who were trying to instruct us how to make something of ourselves. They were seriously encouraging us to respect English, math, music, science, ethics, etc., so that we could someday make the world a better place.

  This school’s library is almost like a closet, it is so small, and what books they have are old and dusty and torn. I wanted to take something home to study, but they don’t even have a full set of encyclopedias or much of anything else. I had thought maybe I could help Melba Lacy with her schoolwork…but how? Maybe I’ll have to find a way. She deserves that! And I am smart! Am I smart, or was I just a privileged student who was carefully and thoroughly and methodically indoctrinated?

  Thursday, September 23

  I was scared silly when I walked into the principal’s office and asked if she could give me her old used paper that had one clean side. At first she seemed shocked, but when I told her about Melba Lacy and how I wanted to be her tutor, she smiled. I’d never seen a real smile on her face before, and as she picked up a pile of papers, she also stuck in a fresh new notebook. I wanted to hug her and she looked like she wanted to hug me. It was a wonderful feeling!

  Tuesday, September 28

  For the first few “eternity weeks” I was here, it seemed like time had stopped. Now it’s flying by on “gossamer wings.” I’m not exactly sure what that phrase means, but to me it means something very, very special. I have a reason for living. Before I felt useless and trashy and empty! Now I’m going to make Melba Lacy into a proper, educated young lady! We’ll have to be careful not to go so far that the kids will tease us or anything. Melba Lacy said we can be like the nuns would want us to be inside, and like the kids in our school and home on the outside. We both laughed at that and it is our private wonderful thing! She’s feeding my ego and I’m feeding hers. It’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life except (maybe) Mark’s party! But I can’t allow myself to think about that…it’s too close to Daddy’s grossness and Mama’s problems.

  Monday, October 4

  I can’t believe how fast Melba Lacy is learning. She no longer says “ain’t” or any of the other unacceptable words that were so much a part of her vocabulary. We go out by the trees at night after everyone else is in bed and I teach Melba Lacy how to walk and stand and pronounce words properly. I feel like I am her guardian angel. I hope that is not sacrilegious! If it is I’ll…what? The Jacksons don’t go to church or pray or anything! I don’t know why I think that’s so bad because Mama and Daddy didn’t go, either. If my dad walked into the church, it would probably explode in one big blast of sulphur.

  Stop self! Stop! You cannot think of him!

  I wonder if even God could save his soul.

  That’s not my problem! My calling in life is to help others!

  I don’t think I can help Dick or Frog, but Melba Lacy is like a sponge. She wants to learn everything, and no matter what she decides to do in her life, it will be a blessing to mankind.

  Now if I can just figure out what I’m going to do with my life….

  Monday, October 11

  I’ve become my teacher’s helper. It isn’t easy, but it’s a powerful boost to my confidence. I now have thoughts that maybe someday I can be somebody…and that Melba Lacy can be an important somebody, too!

  Wednesday, October 13

  Life is not all bad! In fact, I suspect that Melba Lacy is teaching me to look for the good in life, in a way that I could never have done without her help.

  Even in my classroom I’m noticing that nearly every time I say something nice and constructive to a pupil, they stand a little taller and sometimes smile even though it almost breaks their faces.

  Monday, October 18

  Today Mrs. Lakin, our teacher, was sick so we had a substitute. It was really sad, actually pathetic, because I was much more knowledgeable than she. How tragic it is that most…well probably not most…but many kids, like the kids in this school, never have a chance at a good teacher and a good education. That doesn’t seem fair at all! But what can throw-away me do about it? Nothing!

  Wait. That is not true! I can do something!

  I’ve never been so grateful for the nuns teachings in my life. I can “do unto others as I would have them do unto me.” I can know that love and caring and helping are among the greatest commandments given. I can serve others…not that I want to be a nun or something like that…and I can teach: honor, integrity, respect for self and others, the difference between right and wrong, courtesy, etc. I’ll start with Melba Lacy, and then maybe go to Dick and Frog. I won’t throw things into their faces; I’ll just go quietly and lovingly beside them planting seeds. Sadly knowing that not all of the seeds will germinate.

  Dear, precious Sister Mary explained to us once about our responsibility to, throughout our lives, plant seeds of beauty and love. That lecture didn’t seem like much to me then, but now it seems like a holy commandment.

  If I can take out some books from the school library, insignificant as it is, I can prepare Melba Lacy for a higher learning commitment! Maybe I can even encourage the boys, but I wouldn’t bet my life on that.

  Hey, wait a minute! What happened to my confidence and faith concept? I better start working on myself and that!

  Wednesday, October 27

  I can’t believe how smart Melba Lacy is! When I first came here, I thought she was retarded. I really did! She went around being like Silly Suzy Sunshine and like the world was all peaches and cream, while I was mentally blaspheming every moment of my past life. Well, maybe I wasn’t that bad, but I certainly wasn’t doing much to pull myself out of the moral mud.

  Actually I’m pretty proud of myself. Melba Lacy and I study every night for a couple of hours. She’s learned how to pronounce words correctly, and she’s becoming a pretty good reader. We read everything that’s around: old newspapers, junk mail, but nothing from my journal. I don’t want anyone in the whole world to ever know about it ever!

  Dick and Frog are hopeless in the educational field. I hate to say this, but so are Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. We call them Mom and Dad when the Child Protection pe
ople come by, which isn’t often, and we all hate the super-dumb questions they ask us. Like we’d dare tell them the truth…no way.

  Actually the Jacksons aren’t really that bad. I guess they do the best they know how. But truthfully they don’t know much about anything, and don’t care to learn. There are classes on TV that this whole family could learn from, but Mr. and Mrs. Jackson are always watching some idiotic program that just depletes their brains.

  Not that I don’t like television. I love it! It’s just that Melba Lacy and I never get a chance to see anything we want.

  Friday, October 29

  I just noticed that I haven’t written much about four-year-old Donita. I talked to Melba Lacy about Donita and we’re going to start working with her. I really am almost sure that she has some mental deficiencies, but even if she does, we can help her become better than she is now. When I see how Melba Lacy is jumping forward in mathematics, I’m totally amazed. Every new concept to her is like receiving a fantastic present or a new game, and she appreciates it, while I always just took those things for granted. Maybe Donita will, too…. We wish…