Returning home
Half way through my four grade year I was told my mother gained custody of us girls once more. Jamie didn't come home because she was already adopted out by our first foster parents. Our first foster parents didn't like me and the rest of my sisters as she was a former beauty queen as she had a table full of beauty trophies she was never to be touched. She had three daughters she adopted already and took in four more girls .
The first night the dad gave me a bath as I always thought it was odd he was giving little girls baths and not the mom. Sometimes being placed in the system messes up the child more than being at home . Preditors are everywhere even in the people that flew under the radar of the system as their own people. His wife didn't like me and his youngest daughter Dannie was my age and they adopted her as a baby. They had another daughter Angie they adopted as a toddler and she was always in trouble or in the corner for some reason.
Angie and Paula shared a room as Paula started showing signs of permiscuities at the age of eight years old. I shared a room with Dannie and Jamie shared a room upstairs with their oldest daughter jessi who loved new kids on the block . The mom bought us only three outfits when we lived there and we stayed they less than a year. One of those sweats sets with the Christmas theme on the front and a pair of panties and one pair of shoes and one pair of socks.
The mom never had socks and she would fish them out of baskets and we had to wear those sweats all year long even when it was hot. Mia was the first to be sent away as she tried to fight the dad for trying to bath her at age ten and then the mom would provoke fights between us girls who wasn't adopted and the adopted. Dannie always wanted to play doctor with me and they accused me of messing with their daughter and being a bad influence on her when I was only six years old.
Then Dannie took the dress I arrived in that my mother had hand made me and the only thing I had from home and said it was her dress knowing it wasn't her dress. These were the type of fights we endured . One Christmas we went to their parents house and I got a barbie RV and dolls for Christmas as when we got home Dannie said it was her toy as it clearly was given to me. The mom told me I was wrong and gave it to Dannie and told me only real daughters of hers deserved Christmas gifts not temporary daughters.
When Dannie got mono unknown how since that was the kissing sickness as she was only seven years old she went in the bathroom and used my toothbrush and dropped it in the toilet. These were the small tribulations I had with my first foster home.when the dad and mom would leave us to be watched by the older girls we would get along fine. We would sneak in the parents room and watch dirty dancing the movie and go go dancers that Dannie knew where it was.
This was the type of exposure I was introduced to by other kids in the system . When the dad payed to much attention to me in particular I had to go and because me and Paula was a package deal we went together.
My sister mia ,Paula ,and me where told we could go home with our mom and I didn't know how I felt about that. I have been in the system since age five and now I was almost ten. I had been moved to six homes by this time and had been made a medical experiment for the A D H D trial run medications studies. I had head lice and had my hair all chopped off as a result. I had been harmed in the system and ostriched for my past.
John and I had simmered down to friends the Fourth grade year and he was always a friend but one day he action got the nerve to ask me why I was actually in the system? At the time I didn't know the power of the ugly truth . I didn't know some things you keep to yourself. Some things people didn't need to let people know. I had been in therapy for years now and my phycitrist only got out of me a few feelings off of their smiley face emotions poster they had on there closet door .
Other than that I just colored and finished up my homework and waited for the sessions to end so my house parent can pick me up and they can check off their little box that I was there for mandated therapy. Maybe I should have spoken about what all had happened to me,maybe I would have spared myself some pain if I did.
When I told John the truth of why I was there why I wasn't with my real parents and what really happened to me .he looked at me like I was a disgusting human being. Like I was damaged goods. Like I wasn't even normal. That look he gave me every time he saw me it was a constant reminder that I wasn't normal that I had trauma. This was when my trust issue began . When my walls went up when I would always be seen as a victim never a survivor.
When my mom came to get me I was made to pack everything I owned and accumulated between the three years I was there and we took it to the all purpose building and took it into a room as I was returning all of my personal effects and only leaving with what I came with. Which was not very much other than a trash bag full of personal items.
I went to say goodbye to Angel as me and her became close after Scarlett left me alone. Me and Angel use to spend hours just walking bareback and me petting her and talking to her about things I never told anyone. My mom promised me we would come back to get her and I knew just like my chest full of things I accumulated that I put in the all purpose building my horse was also something I had to leave behind as she couldn't come with me down my new path.
My hunter had been missing for days now and all the times I went to see him he wasn't there. I didn't feel his presence and when I left Zack the preacher son the one who came to every birthday I had he didn't get to say goodbye to me. I didn't get to say goodbye to Adam as him and his parents had to leave because someone felt they were showing favoritism to me and made them leave because he wanted to be my friend.
I made my mind it wasn't worth making friends with a girl like me. That broken people didn't deserve to be understood . They were just meant to know things and see things for what they were. When my mom brought me home to the house we had moved to only weeks before I was taken away from my family. My mom had just bought a new house in a suburb for the schools that I only went to for one month.
I came back to the same school that remembered me being taken away in a cop car four years ago and I knew what they didn't know. I knew what it felt like on the inside . I knew they would remember me and the things that happened to me and they would all look at me like the way John looked at me. The way they all looked at me.
I took a deep breath and walked through those familiar school doors with the five colored lines on the pavement. Last time I was here I followed the yellow line this time I followed the green line. I had returned.