The Day Dumb Luck Struck

Part 1 I was sitting on the passenger side of the Jeep Wrangler staring out of my window as we passed golden fields with cattle and the occasional double wide trailer. Some were surrounded with colorfully painted decks made of wood. The owners built them to dress up the exterior of their homes. One family would do it, and the next month, a neighbor would be starting a project on their home. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone in town who could afford to make their homes look better by adding to their exterior. Everyone competed with one another. I would hear my foster mom on the phone gossiping with someone else in town about how so and so copied her by planning a vegetable garden but a bigger one. The conversation would continue by bad mouthing her 'friend' for two hours. I don't remember hearing her ever say, " Good for them. They deserve to finally get one." Any friend or family member who was doing better, materialistically speaking, became an automatic passive enemy of sorts. Fake. I remembered thinking that their trailer homes looked so nice the first time I came to this town. I didn't know what a trailer was then. I was only nine then and didn't know better yet. I assumed everyone in the country was rich because they went without the convenience city life offered. They also appeared to work a lot harder for what they had, which I found to be commendable and humbling. I had a few foster homes I had lived in that were a lot like these trailers. The pretty painted facades were just like cheap makeup used to make you think it was expensive and made of good quality on the inside instead of cheap and gaudy materials. The foster parents I had lived with up to this point all wore fake smiles in front of my caseworkers. They would pull out their nice dishes for them and dress us in our school best attire instead of the usual rags we wore. They would speak to us with this fake voice that was overly polite and pleasant. Something about those facades creeped me out. I think it was the first time I realized that the people who are supposed to be "good guys" couldn't be trusted. The idea that the adults responsible for our wellbeing could be so manipulative and so much like a wolf in sheep's clothing was scary to me. I hadn't figured out how to separate the genuine people who care from the fake ones yet. Those facades never lasted long. They were like a bandaid solution. You could always find a hole where the real problem leaked from if you looked for it. My old foster parents would let their mask slip someday exposing the same neglected deterioration as these trailers one day that showed their true colors, from years of wear and tear from the elements exposed to, withering away. The paint was chipped and faded, each showing different stages of disrepair. Then, there were the homeowners' started projects that needed finishing. Despite the built homes that were made of good quality, the owners always got excited about improvement and then lost interest. They began to add a gazebo or a fire pit, leaving the abandoned project to look like a bleached skeleton from years of exposure to the sun and neglect. People seem to lose interest in any improvements they start in their life. They never care to pick up the messes they leave behind. A project is started, bragged about, and then given up on when the maintainability begins to feel like it was a burden. Kinda like my life. I thought. The sun was burning brightly. June weather in the rural town of El Rito, located in the northern mountains of New Mexico, was usually not as hot as Albuquerque, which was two hours drive South and much hotter. My caseworker was busy chatting away about the new family we were heading to. My new home was also getting a newborn baby boy from the city of Espanola's hospital. He was premature due to his mother's drug abuse and was abandoned when his mom left shortly after giving birth and naming him. "Hey Faye, -" I finally spoke, shaking away the thoughts when I realized how close I was going to be from my old foster home. "Can we talk before we get there, " I asked, looking at Faye. Faye was so pretty. She was only twenty-two and had a pixie short light blonde haircut that almost looked white. She had a fair, heart-shaped, porcelain face with a cute tiny nose. Her smile was contagious, and she was a great listener and speaker. She reminded me of the pretty sorority girls in movies but with a much better personality. Maybe more like a nice Tinkerbell. She was way too cool to be a social worker. "Of course! Hang on." She turned the radio off and pulled over to the side of the road into a dirt path that turned to someone's gravel driveway. The homes on this side of town were much farther from the road. some about a quarter mile or more away. Faye turned off the engine and turned to look at me. I watched her beaming smile fade as she looked at me with concern instead. I cleared my throat and stared at my chewed nails. " What's wrong with me? Am I really a bad kid? I know it seems like I'm a troublemaker, but I promise I'm not. I don't understand how they could get rid of me so easily. I've been in their family for six years, at least, I thought that was my, 'home'." I was kicked out. It was all over something so stupid. When I tried to apologize to Reigh, my foster mom, she wouldn't let me speak. She started grabbing my things and throwing them into the yard. My photo album, she tried to tear it apart and threw it at me with the cordless phone. I looked back at Faye, waiting for her to speak. After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat and gently grabbed my hand, I felt her index finger under my chin as she lifted my face up and gestured to face her. "I can't pretend to understand even a small fraction of all you have been through. You've been there for your siblings for so long, and they've been there for you. For the first time ever, you'll be without each other, and as painful as that might feel, as lonely as you might think you are, you have to trust that there are people looking out for you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're human. We all make mistakes. Sometimes, we make the same mistakes over and over until we figure out how to change them. Parents are supposed to teach their children to figure these things out. You didn't fail your foster parents. They failed you. You weren't there to do their chores, watch your siblings, or make them happy. They offered to stand in as parents and teach you what they can so you learn to prepare for life one day. Coping skills, manners, communicating, responsibility, getting along with others, following directions, this are all skills you'll need someday. Adults forget that children learn by watching the actions of the adults and peers in the house hold-" "But I was doing everything I needed to. I always helped my sisters and my brothers with homework. I did more chores than anyone else. The night my appendix ruptured, they left out of town for the evening to go gambling near Albuquerque while I was sick in bed and my sisters and brothers were terrified because they weren't allowed to touch the phone even for emergencies. They got back after midnight. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, and my sinuses were stinging. I turned my head back to the window in time to hide my tears just as a large one splashed onto my shirt. I hated crying. I felt so weak letting them accomplish what they set out to do, which was hurting me. While living at the home of Reigh and her husband Tony, they were a married couple in their late fifties or early sixties, I learned to be submissive and step myself of any identity or worth. They had seven children who had all grown and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Their youngest was the only exception. Her name was Donna. She was nineteen years old when I first went to live with their family. After my biological mother lost her parental rights of us (she was given the opportunity to choose three of us only, and she, understandably, couldn't) Brenda moved next door to her mother's and became a foster mom so she could take in two of my siblings. I know you're probably thinking, "-how sweet of those foster parents to do that so you could all to be together; they must be a wonderful family." Yes, it was a wonderful thing for my brothers and sisters and myself. The fact that we were together was great. No matter the reasons for doing it, we were all happy to be together. Looking back, as an adult in my thirties, if I'd understood what it meant for our future to just allow ourselves to stay silent so we weren't separated then, I think I'd maybe have wanted my sisters and brothers to have families that cared for them and supported them and loved them so they'd have stable adult lives. The irreparable damage the families caused my sisters and brothers, and to an extent on a lesser scale, myself, is catastrophic. The sad thing is, they adopted three of the six of us. The second my siblings became adults, they released them to the world, knowing nothing. When my siblings returned to the only home they ever remember living in, too, the only family they ever had memories with, they were turned away. They were told that that was no longer their home. There was no place in their family for them. With no friends, no extended family, or coping and life skills of their own, they would each brace themselves as best they could as they began their new lives in the stinging brutal cold adult world that blew against them. Leaving them with the worst odds to succeed and the perfect recipes for failure and disaster. If you lost everyone and everything you had ever known as home or comfort to you in this world, and were forced to fend for yourself without a penny to your name, or transportation, or home? Just the clothes on your back and the pain in your heart to carry. Given enough time without feeling kindness, a comfortable home, a welcoming meal, a caring heart- you too would eventually drop the heavy weights that emotions and caring can burden out shoulders with. You'd let your heart turn to stone and hollow so you could make each step you're forced to take a little lighter. When all else fails. And you're beyond desperation. The day someone offers you drugs to soothe your tormented spirit feels like the biggest and nicest gesture anyone could give you- a few moments of relief from a cruel life and maybe a new purpose to keep getting up in the morning, or if you're ready and it's time, the luck of an unknowing sedated death. When someone offers you temporary happiness in the form of a drug you need to buy when you're broke, the reality is that you're in for so much worse. That person doesn't care about you. They are turning you into a slave. You'll never be the same without it.