It was a few days before Christmas when we heard him pull up. The tall, dark-skinned man stepped out of his Jaguar onto the muddy ground. I’m sure the place looked like a dump to him; he’s the kind of rich man who always looks like he just stepped out of the most prestigious design magazine. To the naked eye, the Silver Bullet trailer my family and I were residing in might have looked hopeless.
Inside, however, it was just the opposite. I was nine years old at the time, and since it was morning, I was doing what nine-year-olds do the best: eating cereal and watching cartoons. Scooby-Doo was on that morning, and I couldn’t have been happier. Nothing disturbed me until Nicholas, our caseworker, banged on the door. My mother, who suddenly looked like she had seen a ghost, ran to the back of the trailer. She returned momentarily with two bears in her hands. She handed me the one that was in dire need of re-stuffing and gave my sister the one that looked like it had just been plucked off the shelf. My mother proceeded to open the door and ask the high society man what the meaning of his visit so close to Christmas was.
It didn’t take long for my mother to figure out that he was coming to take us away from her. You see, this man was a social worker for the Department of Family and Child Services (DFCS). He removed children from unsafe homes and placed them into foster or group homes. Try as she might, my mother’s attempts at stopping this from happening failed, and my sister and I were shoved into the back of the man’s Jaguar with only our teddy bears in tow. It seemed as though my life had been ripped into pieces before my eyes without me even realizing it.
The drive to our unfamiliar destination was a hard one. We were confused, me more so than my older and wiser sister. Why were we suddenly stolen from our mother and grandmother? Where were we going? Who was this man? It seemed as if these answers couldn’t come fast enough. We felt as though we were being kidnapped and could do nothing about it.
Though it was hard to calm us, Nicholas managed to stop us from crying long enough to introduce himself. When we asked why he had taken us, he simply said it was because we were in an unsafe situation (whatever that means, right?). The conversation finally came to an end, as we had arrived at our destination. It was a private group home located in Rome, Ga. The buildings were all white; they looked as though they were scrubbed by mysterious cleaning fairies every night.
Nicholas led us through the parking lot up to a back door. The lady who opened the door seemed to be expecting us, because she greeted him by name and lead us inside at once. My sister and I were told to take a seat on the fancy furniture that had been delicately placed throughout the room. Nicholas talked with the lady for a while, and my sister and I cried for just as long. The cries were more like sobs now with heaves and coughs thrown in every now and then. It seemed that the nightmare we were in was only getting worse.
When their discussion finally ended, Nicholas approached my sister and me to inform us that this was our new home and that he was leaving. I was terrified. Not only had I just been told that the home I had just been removed from wasn’t the one I would be staying in anymore, but the only man that seemed remotely familiar to me was leaving. I had grown attached to this man in the few hours we had been together, and now, he too was being taken from me. Despite my fit, Nicholas proceeded to leave, and my sister and I were stuck in this alien place.
The following weeks consisted of us getting to know the girls we were living with. Luckily, my sister and I were placed in a room together. We spent our days going to school and our nights trying to stay out of trouble. It seemed our house parents had it out for me. I guess I could’ve behaved a little better, but they could’ve stuck their noses in their own business. The worst time I had was when I decided to put pictures and drawings on my wall using my gum. Apparently this was a crime worthy of sending a child to Hell. At least it seemed that way. My house parents woke me up early in the morning (or late at night, depending on how you want to look at it. Either way, I wasn’t happy) to make me scrape and scrub the gum off my wall, and I was no longer allowed to have gum.
Inconveniently, I began to wet the bed. It happened several nights in a row. Eventually I annoyed my house parents enough to where they made me wear diapers. I was grateful, though, because I no longer had to embarrassingly carry my soiled sheets across the complex to the laundry room.
This group home would serve as my home for several months. My sister and I were allowed to go back home once during our stay there. My mom did well enough on her case study, so she got us back, but this didn’t even last for a month. My mother was a drug and sex addict, and couldn’t stay away from either in the short time we were back with her. This became apparent to our case worker during his visit to our house, and we were immediately taken back. The second time being taken into custody was 10 times worse than the first. I was given false hope of being forever reunited with my family, and now it was all taken away from me. Again.
This time, we were not taken to the group home in Rome. Instead, we were driven to Dalton, Ga. to the Georgia Sheriff’s Cherokee Estate. During my time as a ward of the state, this place was the only place I felt at home. I was in Morrison Cottage, which is the oldest house on the campus. I adored my house parents. They are the only house parents I ever had that truly made me feel loved and accepted. They saw the girls that lived there at Cherokee Estates, both in their house and in different houses, as their own daughters.
Cherokee Estates had a lot of things to offer me. I went on my first vacation ever. We went to Gulf Shores, Ala. It was my first time seeing the ocean, I had real money to spend in souvenir shops, and I got to go to a sit-down restaurant for the first time. That trip was also my first time back-flopping. I was swimming in the indoor pool and jumped in backward. I thought I landed on my back, but I actually landed on my bottom. So, thinking that a back-flop didn’t hurt me, I proceeded to do it again. This time, I actually landed on my back. I don’t think I ever cried so hard in my life.
Another thing that Cherokee Estates had to offer was a lot of memories. The ones that come to mind every time I think of the Estate is first that I learned to ride and take care of horses. We had a stable on the campus with several horses. I would go down two or three times a week to help clean the stalls and groom the horses. Afterward, we would be allowed to ride them, and that was one of the most relaxing activities at the Estate. Holidays always come to mind as well. For Halloween, we had a party and the Boys Ranch was invited. It was the most festive Halloween party I’ve ever been to. There was more pizza than anyone could ever want, bountiful treats, and the most glorious decorations.
Christmas time was, and still is, my favorite time of the year. We decorated our houses on the inside and outside, had multiple Christmas parties, and ate Christmas goodies until our hearts were content. We had different house parents sometimes when our main house parents needed a break. The ones I had during one weekend of the holiday season brought their sons with them. The oldest one caught every girl’s eyes, because he was extremely cute. I was pretty pleased with myself when he chose to chase me around the dining room table at night instead of the other girls.
That weekend was the best. The dad went to the store and came back with blueberry candy canes and Dr. Pepper for me. Then he took me, my roommate, and his two sons to the woods to go swing on trees.
During my Christmas there, I learned the importance of gratitude. We had several groups that got together and gave us gifts. On my list, one of the things I put down was a curling iron and hair straightener. I got that gift, but I saw all of the other girls getting Barbies. I got jealous, and when the couple who bought the gift for me came over to say hello, I wasn’t happy. They asked me if I liked my gift, and I said no, that I wanted a Barbie. The President of the Estate found out and told me to come to her office. She proceeded to give me a pep talk on how and why to be grateful for the gifts I was given. She also took my gifts away since I had claimed to not want them (little did she know that I actually began to like my gift, and despised her for taking yet another thing from me). Needless to say, I have been grateful for my gifts no matter when I receive them or what they are since that day.
A final thing that Cherokee Estates had to offer me was a family. I mean this in the immediate and literal senses. Immediately, I was placed in a home with house parents who were my parents for the time being. I had a lot of temporary sisters who were in my house, and a real sister who was in the house just up the hill from mine. After being at the Estate for a year and a half, I met the couple that are my parents now. They took my sister and me to their house for weekends, showed up to the banquets that we had, and loved us from the beginning.
My biological family wasn’t reliable. They barely came to see me, and they didn’t try to turn their lives around in order to get my sister and me back. Clay and Beth Fears came into my life in 2008 and have been present beings since then. In December of 2008, they adopted my sister and me. The last visit with my biological family was hard. I knew the whole time that it was the last visit. I tried not to cry, but I failed. Looking back on that visit, I am grateful that it happened, I am grateful that my mother’s rights were terminated, I am grateful for the new mom and dad I have, and I am grateful that I had my sister by my side the whole way through.
It is my wish to not know anything that my biological family is up to now. However, my sister has found herself in a similar situation to my biological mother’s and visits with our biological family. She has told me many things about them. To sum it up, all that she has told me is that they are all in the same situations they were in when we were in foster care and group homes. My whole family still does drugs, my uncle is still in prison, and my aunts are still having kids even though they have all been taken from them. The summer before my junior year of high school, I found out that my mother died in a car accident. So, she is the only one who changed her situation.
I hated my biological family for the longest time. They didn’t treat me with the love and respect I wanted so, I felt that I was entitled to some hate. I found over time that it was something that was only hurting me. I let go of all the anger, and I focused all of my energy on loving my new, real family. The biggest blessings in my life have been losing one family and gaining another.
