Jacqueline || BWWM

Chapter Forty Five

No one left me alone for the rest of my short stay at Medical Lake hospital. Seliah came to visit me often until finally I left. My first home from there was with a couple named the Edversons. They were truly a nice couple and had a kid around my age, Henry I think was his name. Life with them was a privilege I took for granted until they decided fostering wasn't the right path for them a year into my stay.

From there it just got worse.

I spent a few months in a group home until another couple took pity on me. They were the McLaughlins. Only three months into my stay with them, and they were already worn out. Claimed I was too much work. This was actually a real true fact. I constantly had nightmares of fires and high pitched cries. Sometimes they would be my mothers. Other times it would be my brothers. Always they never stopped until I sprang up from my bed, covered in sweat and screaming to no end.

Next came the Kents. I spent a year with them. They were a young couple who had no kids. Their excuse for leaving me was simple: they couldn't handle the responsibility.

Following them was McKinnons. My stay with them last only about three months. Nice people, but too busy to take care of a young child.

After then came the Zellers. I stayed with them for a good two years before they decided to move to someplace in Europe without me.

I was around ten around the time they dropped off at a group home. By that age, I was fully aware that no one seemed to want me, yet still so positive. My reasoning was simple: Seliah said one day she'd find me a family who would adopt me. So I never stopped hoping and praying.

A couple of months later a couple, the Raabs, welcomed me into their home. They were an old couple. I was the granddaughter they'd always wanted until their son and his wife announced their pregnancy. Now everything revolved around their unborn grandchild. Pretty soon I began yesterday's news.

Again, I went back to another group home, this time for longer than any time prior. I got close to this volunteer there and eventually, she filled out the paperwork to allow me to live with her. Life with her was fun and peaceful. She was the cool older sister I never knew I wanted until I had her. But like how all good things have to come to an end, her and I's time did just that two months into my stay. Out of all the reasons everyone who's ever left me gave, I still like and understand her best: her racist parents didn't approve of her raising a black child. She didn't say so in as many words, but thirteen years old me took it that way.

Back to the group home I went.

A little over two months later, and my new foster parents would arrive. The first time they visited the group home, they came in expensive suits and animal coats. Everything about them screamed money, and I was as poor and as dirt. I can't describe how much envy spilled out of my being during the minutes the other children and I starred at them.

The second time they came, they downplayed their clothe and screamed less like money and more like normal people. That time, they had brought their son. He was tall, only around five five at that time, but keep in mind I wasn't much taller than four eleven at that age. His skin had this natural olive tan that I would later learn was because his mom was Filipino. He had curly brown hair and teeth too straight and too white. Everything about him was like that: surreal and so unnatural.

That alone should've hinted at the fact that he was trouble, but I was too stupid to realize it at the time.

So when the Allens picked me as the child they would foster, I didn't think twice before thanking the good Lord. Not only was I going to live with a rich family, but they also had a cute son!