Finding Katie: The Diary of Anonymous, a Teenager in Foster Care Page 6

  1:30 A.M.

  It’s late…or maybe early…but I still can’t go to sleep. I’m much too excited for that! Actually I’m really loving reliving every moment of Mark’s party. How blessed I am to have been there and how easily I managed to get the emergency fire ladder back where it belongs—thank goodness!

  I will never forget Mark’s kiss. He and I were going to get another box of eclairs to put on the table but…in the breezeway he stopped me and we just sort of pulled together like we were magnetized. His kiss was sweet and gentle, and he touched my face and hair like I was something breakable. I thought I’d swoon, like old-fashioned ladies do in the educational movies we see at school.

  I have never been so happy and felt so belonging in the human race.

  Daddy just knocked at my door and told me to slip on some shorts and a shirt, that he wanted to talk to me. He didn’t sound mad…thank goodness…. Is it Mama? I’d better hurry.

  Daddy gave me two big white candies and almost immediately I felt myself evaporating…

  But I wanted more of the strange candies! More and more! And more!

  Light years later???

  I am really on another planet…or…Once upon a time, ages and ages ago, Sister Mary tried to explain hell to us: “Satan’s place of everlasting fire, underworld purgatory, bottomless pit,” etc….

  Now I know! I’m there! I can smell the unimaginable stench and feel the gut-wrenching degradation.

  Possibly I’ve gone crazy! Maybe I’m in the black bottomless pit!

  I just woke up on a hard little bed, surrounded by other ragged, dirty-looking, smelly, nonhuman creatures just like me. Some were snoring, some crying, some others were shaking with fear, having horrendous nightmares or hangovers or…whatever…

  Thank…I was going to write “God,” but I’m not sure anymore that there is a God. Maybe I’m not even thankful that I’m alive anymore.

  How did I get here?

  I must write down every single thing….

  Why? Who cares? No one!

  No one could want to have anything to do with me now…but writing is all I’ve got to keep me together. Do I even want to be kept together?

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no.

  Most of me wants to drop out of this black, scary hellhole at any cost, but one little part of me wants to hang on. The scared, wimpy, used-to-be-trusting, wanting-love-and-attention, idiot part of me.

  When I first came into this flea-and lice-infested flop house for the throw-away creatures who were no longer human beings, I wondered how I could kill myself.

  Now some scared little something inside of me wants to talk to Jason, the young man who found me on the street and took me in.

  When I got here he asked me what I wanted and I said some paper and a pencil. He laughed, patted me on the head like a child, and brought me a notebook, a pencil, and a huge semihard roll that tasted like manna from heaven, if there is a heaven. I’m so in all ways confused! Heaven? Hell? Right? Wrong?

  Life…death…please, somebody help me. Please…please…please…

  A little morning light is beginning to peek in through the cracked glass window on the other side of the room, and people are beginning to stir around me. I’m shivering so much that my whole rickety cot is shaking! What will be the next step for me?

  I want…no, I desperately need to talk to Jason, but he’s busy helping get the breakfast things out.

  What to do?

  The overhead lights are on now, and all the reject people are straggling out to eat. Ugggh…even the thought of food makes me want to throw up.

  How did I ever get from there to here?

  It’s a horrible unbelievable nightmare!

  Maybe I’ll wake up eventually.

  At some time, in another life, I was in my everything-I-ever-wanted room, in my beautiful, clean, good-smelling bed, going over the loveliest time I had ever had with Mark….

  Then Daddy was knocking and telling me to get up, put on some shorts and a shirt, and to hurry quietly downstairs.

  As I came to the bottom landing Daddy put his finger to his mouth and whispered, “Come out to the car and I’ll tell you where we are going.”

  I hopped into the gardener’s old truck with Daddy, wondering why he would ever drive the gardener’s truck instead of his Mercedes or one of his other cars, and why he would ever wear an old cap that looked like it was the gardener’s. He seemed so focused on whatever he was thinking that I squeezed closer to him and patted his arm. Almost automatically his hand flopped up and hit me on the side of the head so hard I was stunned. Then he started calling me a “ho” and a “slut” and every other vile and vulgar thing he could think of, plus lots of words I’d never heard before.

  “No, no Daddy,” I whispered, “I’m none of those things. I’m a virgin and I’ve only been kissed once by a boy.”

  Daddy called me more unspeakable obscene names and hit me again. This time he was so angry and out of control that he almost ran into another car coming in the opposite direction. The man in that car honked his horn and called Daddy bad names. I wanted to jump out of the car but Daddy was driving too fast and I was too scared.

  I tried again to explain but Daddy wouldn’t listen! He was obsessed by the ladder over the fence and me sneaking out. He accused me of the vilest things in the world. I was mentally and morally beaten to shreds, and half the time I didn’t even know what he was talking about.

  Daddy had been driving around in circles but then he slowed down and started heading toward Hollywood Boulevard. How did we get there? I wanted and needed more candies! I really did!

  My heart almost stopped! I didn’t know the strange person who was driving the gardener’s truck and wearing the gardener’s cap! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was sure I was feeling and thinking things that weren’t true…couldn’t be true.

  Daddy turned off Hollywood Boulevard on a dark, dirty little street where he said hookers hang out. I wondered why he would take me to a place like that and tell me about kids, some eleven and twelve years old, who had run away to glamorous Hollywood and were now selling their bodies because they didn’t have anything else to sell.

  I couldn’t understand what was going on in his mind. Was he trying to scare me into being a good girl? I tried to tell him he didn’t have to do that because the nuns had already hammered that stuff into our heads, but he wasn’t listening. It was as if he was deaf.

  When we got close to a girl who looked like a frightened little child, Daddy held out a twenty-dollar bill. At first she looked like she was going to run away, then she grabbed Daddy’s hand with the money in it and got into the truck.

  Quickly he kicked her out and slammed on the gas. He said, “Forget her! I’m going to take you where you belong!”

  What is going to happen to me now? Obviously Daddy doesn’t want me anymore and Mama is a drug addict. Neither of them ever mentioned even one person in either of their families. Where will I go? What will I do?

  As Daddy turned on Wilshire Boulevard, toward downtown Los Angeles, I sat frozen with fear. He told me that he had, at first, meant to leave me on Hollywood Hooker Way with the rest of the blank, blank, blank that I can’t even write. But then he had thought of something better and was going to take me down to Skid Row, in the bowels of Los Angeles, and see how I’d fend for myself there.

  When we got to Skid Row, I couldn’t believe it! It was like a terrible movie set. Drunken men stretched against buildings; black-eyed, bloody, beaten women stumbling out of bars; two men screaming and cursing at the cars that passed by.

  Daddy snickered as he unlocked my side of the car and pushed me out the door.

  Completely out of control I whimpered, “But Daddy, I don’t have any shoes, I’m bare-footed and…”

  He laughed and drove off. I shivered and in some stupid, scared way hoped that he’d come back and pick me up.

  After a forever of forevers, a frighteni
ng old man wobbled up and offered to share his bottle of liquor. Automatically I said, “I have AIDS! I have AIDS!” like people in the bible used to call out, “Leper, leprosy” when strangers came around them. The old man hurried away, looking afraid and repulsed.

  Some days and nights passed, and I hid behind garbage Dumpsters, shivering in the cold night air with only dirty newspapers to cover me. My fingernails were broken off from scavenging Dumpsters for food, my bare feet were cut and bruised, and vermin crawled inside and outside my clothes. Rats and/or mice scurried around. There was nothing to drink! It was pure hell!

  Once a police car came by and I waved and tried to stop it, but I guess the policeman didn’t care about me.

  I stunk so much I could hardly stand myself. And I was so hungry and thirsty I decided the only thing for me to do would be to run out in front of the next big truck that drove by! I didn’t know where I’d been—or what? And I was running out of candy!

  Knowing that I’d have to do some explaining to God before I killed myself, and hoping that He would understand, I kneeled in the shadows to pray. I had hardly started when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I sensed that the hand was gentle and the voice of the young man who was helping me up was comforting. He said he was from the Salvation Army Rescue House and this was his mission, to save people from the wicked streets.

  I started crying uncontrollably and cried all the way to the mission.

  Jason walked close to me down the dark streets and begged me not to kill myself, but I couldn’t see any other way out, and it seemed like I’d seen him before.

  At the shelter Jason got me some clean clothes and led me to a shower. But I can’t stay at the Salvation Army shelter forever. Daddy would say this is where I belong! But at least it’s not like what the kids, both boys and girls, have to go through on Hollywood Hooker Way. That is so sad and horrible that I don’t think I’ll ever stop crying inside, and my candy is all gone! Candy? No! Drugs!

  Jason stopped by to see how I was doing after a while and he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. He cares about the people here; the young and the old, the sturdy and the weak. He’s embarrassed that he looks so different, with strange crinkled red skin all over the right side of his face and on his right hand, but inside he’s like God meant everyone to be.

  Since it was way past dinnertime, Jason brought me a roll and glass of milk, and I’ll love him forever for that.

  I’m kind of skipping back and forth on parts here, but anyway, early in the morning after breakfast, Jason said a lady wanted to talk to me. I was scared out of my skin. Talk to me about what? I hated lying but I could never, through all eternity, tell anyone the unthinkable things that had happened to me. Nor even the good things like Mark, Jennifer, David, the nuns, Mark’s wonderful friends, and even Mrs. Jolettea and Cook. I thought about the running in front of the big truck again, maybe it was the only way out! I certainly didn’t want to be sent back to Daddy.

  I’d read about kids who had been abused by their parents and then had been sent back to them to have even more horrendous experiences.

  Mama wouldn’t, couldn’t help me, and even the thought of Daddy…I felt like I had to throw up.

  I want to die! I really, really, really do!

  When Jason took my hand and led me into the lady’s small office, I felt like I was going to be slaughtered, but she wasn’t at all like that. She was more like Jason; kind and sweet and warm, wanting to keep me out of harm. She asked me how I’d become a “street kid” (not in those words of course) and I lied and told her I had amnesia. (Thank goodness I’d written a paper on that subject only a short time ago.) She believed me when I told her that I had had some kind of brain injury. I said I couldn’t remember how or when I got it, just that I had partial or total loss of memory sometimes. She felt eventually, hopefully very soon, the injury, shock, or repression would heal, and told me I should have faith.

  She asked me to call her Bailia and said she’d have a home for me in a day or two and for me to stay close to the Salvation Army shelter till then. I did that gladly!

  The people in the shelter, including me, look and act like refugees from a starving third-world country…and it is really, really scary! Down to the bottom soles of my feet scary! I’m pretty sure a lot of them are either drunk, stoned, or crazy.

  I am living in a nightmare reality that I will probably never wake up from! Please, please God take me away from all this!

  Day?

  Mrs. Totter’s cot is next to mine. In fact it is so close to mine that I can hear her soft breathing at night. It is almost like a kitten purring and it gives me comfort. She said her husband and two children had been killed in an automobile accident…but beyond that, she didn’t seem to be able to talk about them. Maybe that is why she began to treat me like I was her own child. She told me about growing up in Kansas on a dairy farm with five brothers and two sisters, and how they had to walk almost three miles to school. She also told me about them sitting around the fireplace at night singing songs and telling stories about the interesting or funny things that had happened during the day.

  Sometimes the family made taffy candy or popcorn and played jokes on each other. Everybody loved to play jokes. I envied their family even though they were “dirt poor.”

  I had things but they had love and protection!

  Mrs. Totter’s grammar is bad and she isn’t neat or refined at all, but she hugged me and she wiped away my tears when I cried, and told me over and over again that everything would be all right. I’d never had that kind of true, I-came-first love, and it slightly defrosted my cold, suspicious, frozen heart.

  Friday, I think

  Today two sort of stern-looking ladies drove up to the Salvation Army shelter. Jason hurried me back into a corner and told me they had probably found a home for me. He gave me a good pep talk and I hugged him like the brother I’d never had.

  The ladies took me into Bailia’s dark little office and asked me a million questions. Most of the night before I’d stayed awake trying to figure out what I could possibly say, and I guess I did a pretty good job. They accepted all my lies about my amnesia and that I could only remember being hit on the head and the things that had happened since then, like walking and walking endlessly, and being scared until Jason picked me up and brought me to the shelter.

  I didn’t want to leave Mrs. Totter and Jason, but the ladies said they thought I would be very happy in my new home. I don’t know why I ever told them that I was fourteen, instead of the sixteen I really am. I guess it was because I felt so young and vulnerable. Mrs. Totter hugged me and told me that if she had a place to go to she would take me. I clung to her like a baby until the ladies pulled me away. In the car they told me Mrs. Totter was mentally impaired and they were looking for a nursing home for her.

  Another kick in the gut! Crazy old lady! She probably didn’t even know what she was saying…but she seemed lucid…. Maybe she is and they just think she isn’t! Like lots of times since the…you know thing…I’m almost sure I’ve gone wacky. I believe that can happen from stress and strain! Maybe my whole old life, as I remember it, is a crazy hodge-podge of things I’ve read or seen in movies or on TV.

  All the way to my new home, the ladies were telling me about the rules I would have to live by and, if I didn’t, they might have to put me in a juvenile kind of place that wouldn’t be nearly as nice. They made it sound like a kids’ jail.

  What if I had told them the truth about Daddy being a big, powerful, important mogul, living in our huge locked-in, rock-walled estate? Would I be sent back to him with nobody believing me? Why would anyone in their right mind believe a kid as scatterbrained as I am, and how could they believe what had really happened, really did happen!

  Besides, I know Daddy would go, first thing, to the nuns and they would confirm that he’s right next to Jesus; giving huge grants and gifts, helping people all over, saving the whales, etc.! Nobody in the whole world would not believe him!

>   It’s the middle of the night.

  I’m feeling terrible about Mama. I know she’s addicted to who knows how many things. What is going to happen to her? Maybe I should tell the truth for her sake…but then what would happen to me?

  I’m a wimp and a complete gutless wonder. I don’t even deserve to breathe!

  New Home

  When I first got here I was like an automated person with no thinking abilities and systems of my own. I agreed with everything Mrs. Jackson and her husband said.

  He is as fat and flubbery as she is skinny and precise. There are four other children in the house, all of them, like me, throw-away kids, I guess. Dick, the oldest kid, seems sulky and not real bright. Melba Lacy, who always has to be called “Melba Lacy,” is so quiet and scared that I can relate to her on that level. Frankie, who the kids call “Frog” when the parent figures aren’t around, is maybe eleven, and he does look like a frog with his big squashed-out eyes and huge lips. Donita, a little black girl, I guess about three or four, cries and whines and hides in closets and under beds. Sometimes she stays so still and quiet it is as if she is dead; she has lots of scars and cigarette burns on her body.

  Once, eons ago, I thought I was a lost soul. Now I know I am a lost soul. One that will probably be lost forever!

  I’m so grateful that Jason stuffed a fat notebook into the little sack of things I took from the Salvation Army shelter. I don’t know how I could ever live without being able to write.

  Monday, May 31

  I’ve been here three days and each day Donita wets her crib, then curls up into a hard little knot and whimpers like a cold injured animal. It drives Mrs. Jackson crazy, but she doesn’t understand. Apparently Mrs. Jackson didn’t wet her bed when she was little, or maybe she’s just forgotten. I hate to hear Mrs. Jackson yell at Donita, as though that would make a difference. And Mrs. Jackson doesn’t even change her bed, she just makes her sleep in the cold stinky wetness.