THE STAFF AT FAITH FARM SERVED AS SURROGATE PARENTS for me, so when I complained of a nagging toothache, a female staff member took me to the dentist. After an exam, the dentist told the staff member I needed a root canal.
The two of them walked around the corner, and I overheard the staff member tell the dentist that I was living in a group home.
“Oh,” the dentist responded. “He’s one of them?”
“Yes, sir. We don’t have dental insurance for our residents.”
“Then I’ll have to pull the tooth,” the dentist replied. His words ripped through me, not because I was afraid of getting a tooth pulled. The real pain came from the knowledge that he didn’t regard me as a normal kid with a toothache. The Novocain numbed the pain when he pulled my tooth, but it did nothing to numb the pain in my heart.
I RECEIVED A FEW LETTERS FROM MAMA WHILE I WAS AT Faith Farm, but none of them read like the ones she wrote to me when she was in prison. Now her letters were very generic.
Sorry I haven’t been able to send you anything. I’ll try to see you soon.
Love,
Mom
I never asked her for a dime. The group home allowed us to earn a small amount of money for doing our chores—ten cents for vacuuming the downstairs, twenty cents for washing dishes—and occasionally a staff member might even pay me to wash his vehicle. So I didn’t need any money from Mama. I did hope she might come for a visit, but for several weeks, she never did.
I rode an emotional roller coaster at Faith Farm. Some days were great, and I was up; others were terrible, and I was way down. I had always enjoyed drawing, and my sketches often depicted what I felt on the inside—drawing and coloring pictures of flowers and butterflies, with captions like “Love is very sweet,” in my preteen years, to pictures of “Doctor Death” with the caption, “Born to run, bound to die” as a teenager. Many of my drawings before and during my stay at Faith Farm included horrifying monsters and devils. I produced more than one drawing with images of me at the bottom of the page, with slogans such as “In memory of Jimmy” and “Jimmy—gone but not forgotten.”
Many of my drawings depicted demonic characters I imagined or copied from Iron Maiden albums. Yet at the same time I drew several beautiful pieces of Jesus, both as the suffering servant and as the returning Lord. Then I followed those drawings with more images from AC/DC and Iron Maiden.
On February 2, 1987, prior to going to Faith Farm, I wrote poems such as “Doctor Death”:
I am a doctor, I have a cure
That will make you feel well.
That will send you to hell.
I wrote longer poems around that same time, with titles such as “Hell’s Not Cold,” “Fast Death,” and “The Time Is Near.”
While living with Tim and Mama and attending Belmont Junior High, I had begun experimenting with self-harm, and that got worse when I moved to Faith Farm. I sat for long stretches of time, scratching my arm with my fingernails until it bled, which momentarily refocused my interior pain on some exterior point on my body. I also started listening to some really dark music and writing even darker poems. I was close to suicide several times while at Faith Farm. So the pain from self-applying tattoos on my body was merely a precursor to death. I put one tattoo on my leg, using an art kit that had ink I sometimes used in my drawings.
Using this method, I sat in my room one afternoon at Faith Farm with a needle and a jar of ink. I wrapped thread around the tip of the needle and dabbed it into the jar of ink. I began sticking the needle into my chest on my left breast. Dot by dot, I pricked my skin. I wiped the blood and ink off with tissue paper. The initials FTW were now tattooed on my skin, and I meant everything those initials implied.
MOTHER’S DAY WAS APPROACHING, AND THE STAFF AT FAITH Farm told me that Mama wanted me to spend the holiday with her. I was so excited. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since the first day I arrived in the group home, a month earlier. Around the same time, the staff also informed me that the plan was to move me to a long-term facility at Elida, and I would not return home on a permanent basis. That infuriated me, and I threatened to kill myself or our staff person, Kathy, or both of us if I did not get to return home.
One evening shortly before my scheduled visit with Mama, I had a strong disagreement with one of the staff. I dismissed myself from the dinner table, ran upstairs to my room, and found a knife I had hidden, in case Antoine Daniels decided he wanted to sneak into my room while I was in bed.
Antoine had slipped into my room once before in the middle of the night. I was nearly asleep, but I felt him lie down on my bed beside me.
Startled, I yelled, “You better get out of here, now!”
Antoine laughed uproariously, as if he was just joking around, and he ran out of the bedroom.
Maybe so, but I wanted to make sure that the next time he decided to joke around, I’d be prepared. The following day, while I was in the office, I spied a pocketknife in a toolbox. I nonchalantly knelt down, and without drawing attention to myself, I casually wrapped my hand around the knife and shoved it in my pocket. I ran straight back to my room and hid the knife in a place where I could get to it—just in case.
Now, a few days before Mother’s Day, I came running back down the stairs to the dining room, wielding the pocketknife and yelling, “You’re not stopping me from going home!”
The staff and the residents sat frozen at the wooden dining table, not certain of what I planned to do. I wasn’t sure myself, so I ran outside into the front yard, where I stood and yelled some more. Cheryl, one of the lead staff members, followed me outside and attempted to calm me down as I held the knife in front of me.
When Cheryl stepped toward me, I pressed the knife’s point against my stomach, threatening to kill myself. I knew I wasn’t going to stab myself, but she didn’t. Cheryl finally talked me into giving her the knife, and we went back inside the house.
My outburst could have destroyed any opportunity to go home for a visit with Mama, but the staff recognized that I was operating out of deep anger. I’d had numerous sessions with my counselors and the entire group about better ways of handling anger. I apologized to everyone, and the incident, although noted in my records, was not held against me.
On Mother’s Day I could barely contain my excitement when I saw Mama pull up in the driveway. I ran out to her car and hugged her. We were excited to see each other. Once we left the property, Mama asked me if there was anything I needed.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’d like to have a fan for my bedroom.” We went to a store, and she bought me a small fan that clipped onto the headboard of my bed. She also purchased a green apple, a bag of Funyuns, and a Mountain Dew. We then headed to the trailer, where she and Tim now lived.
As soon as he saw me walk in the door, Tim left without even acknowledging me.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Mama.
“Oh, he’s mad. Don’t worry about it. He’s probably jealous that you are here.”
Mama and I spent the entire day together, and that evening she took me back to Faith Farm. I sure hated to see her drive away. I spent the remainder of the night in my room.
The next morning one of the staff members said, “Jimmy, we’re not taking you to school today; you need to go to the hospital.”
“Why? I feel fine,” I said.
“You’ll understand when we get there.”
They wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but I knew instinctively that Tim had done something to hurt Mama. We arrived at the hospital and went to the section used as a battered women’s shelter. When we walked in, I saw Mama sitting in a chair with her head down. At first, I wasn’t even sure it was her. Her face was swollen and marbled in black, purple, and yellow bruises. Her hands were sliced and covered in dried blood, as though she had tried to grab a knife and the blade had slid through her fingers.
I ran to her. “Mama, what happened? Mama, tell me! What happened? Did Tim do this to you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly through her swollen and parched lips. “I was in the bed asleep when Tim came into the bedroom drunk and started hitting me while I was still under the covers,” she said. She tried to fight him off, but Tim had stabbed her in the stomach with a pocketknife that Mama kept on the side of the bed. Mama stumbled out of the house and made it to the neighbors’, who called an ambulance.
I felt furious and helpless at the same time. “Mama, do you need anything?”
“I need something for this headache,” she answered.
I had a few dollars in my pocket, so I told her I’d be back shortly. Although her doctor could have prescribed something to ease Mama’s pain, I felt it was my responsibility to do something. After all, Tim had probably beaten the daylights out of her because of my visit. I ran across the road to the convenience store at the bottom of the hill and purchased a box of BC Headache Powder and took it back to Mama.
Mama told me that this beating was the final straw, that she was going to divorce Tim and she wanted me to come back home to live with her. Before she left the hospital, the DSS began working on the transition, and I began mentally preparing to leave Faith Farm.
I WAS DOING MY BEST TO WALK THE LINE AND STAY OUT OF trouble, so I could go home and look after Mama. That’s why I freaked out when on June 16, 1987, I heard that two new residents, Jack and Dillan, had stolen some money out of the staff’s office and were planning on running away. My first thought was, Oh no, guys! Please don’t do it. We’ll all be sitting in the living room for another two weeks.
I called both of them into my room and told them about the stolen Snickers candy bars. I begged them to put the money back.
Dillan went downstairs, slipped into the office, and placed the money back into the safe. Shortly afterward the staff on duty yelled, “Group!”
I knew what was about to happen. We all filed into the living room, and the staff person said, “Someone has been in the safe, and we want to know who it was. We’ll sit here until someone owns up.”
I wasn’t about to snitch on Jack or Dillan, but I gave them a look that let them know they’d better speak up. The silence in the room was thick. Finally one of them quietly said, “I took the money, but Jimmy talked us into putting it back.”
I hadn’t expected that sort of honesty and was probably more shocked than the staff!
The staff dismissed everyone except Jack and Dillan. They spent the rest of the night in the staff office getting lectured about stealing.
The next day at school I heard my name on the intercom; I was being called to the front office. When I walked into the principal’s office, I was surprised to see one of the staff members from Faith Farm sitting there. She said, “I’m checking you out of school early today, Jimmy, because you and I are going to the mall.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m taking you to the mall, and you can buy anything of your choice for as much as fifty dollars, as a reward for talking Dillan and Jack into returning the money they stole last night.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said, thinking that not having to sit in the living room for two weeks was reward enough for me.
“No, we want to reward your good choice,” she explained. So we went to the mall, where I picked out a pair of cool blue-and-gold Quiksilver swim trunks. I was thrilled because Faith Farm had a beach trip scheduled, and I didn’t own a swimsuit. Now I did.
THE STAFF AT FAITH FARM REQUIRED THAT WE COMPLETE daily evaluations, along with the staff’s daily reviews replete with their comments about our day, reprimands, evaluation of our progress in working toward our goals, and encouragements to do better. As I’d done since sixth grade, I continued to write in my journal as often as possible. My journal entries while at Faith Farm were much more positive than what they used to be. Where I had written before in my journal: “I was abused today” or “I hate living,” my Faith Farm entries now read:
May 1, 1987: I went to my first jr. high prom with Tina Miller at W.C. Friday. Well, it was her prom, and she invited me. [I was so unsophisticated; I called her corsage a croissant. I didn’t know any better.]
May 18, 1987: I wore an EKG machine to monitor my heartbeat. I have an irregular heartbeat, but I think it is cool.
June 6, 1987: I went to the lake with the group. That was so much fun.
July 4, 1987: Kathy made me listen to Jimmy Buffett on the way to Myrtle Beach, SC. The pavilion was one of the greatest places I’ve ever been. But I’m mighty sunburned.
One of the most foolish practices of Faith Farm (or any group home) was bringing teenage girls to live in the same home as teenage boys. Tia, the oldest in our home, was seventeen. A second girl, Somer, was fourteen. The boys and girls had their own facilities, and we were to live as “brothers and sisters;” but many of the boys and girls were already sexually active. Those who weren’t likely would be before they left the home. Once Chris, our live-in staff person, went to bed, we had the run of the house. Did they really think that a fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t be attracted to a fourteen-year-old girl? Or a seventeen-year-old girl wouldn’t have sex with a sixteen-year-old boy just because the rules said not to do that? The co-ed living situation was an irresponsible accident waiting to happen, and many did. Worse yet, there were emotionally fragile, needy, or damaged kids who were sometimes needlessly placed in vulnerable, compromising positions. But as a teenage boy, discovering how wonderfully different girls were from boys, I didn’t complain.
Prior to moving into the group home, I kept all my personal belongings in two cardboard boxes. But at Faith Farm someone on staff gave me an old suitcase with discolored copper latches. That old suitcase became my own personal treasure chest in which I kept my most cherished items. I used the suitcase to store letters from Mama, my early report cards, some of my artwork, and many of my poems. I also kept the receipt from the Trailways bus station and other special receipts.
Overall, living at Faith Farm changed my life for the better. Although it wasn’t an authentic family situation, living at the group home showed me what a normal household could be like. I learned structure and discipline that influence me to this day. I stayed at Faith Farm for almost four months, and they were the best four consecutive months of my childhood.