24

LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS

I feel heavy, like I’m sinking into the bed. My arms are lead, my chest depressed beneath a metal plate. My legs are massive, like downed trees. I’m staring at the ceiling, sucking wind. Dan rolls over, “How’re you doing?” I tell him I feel like shit. “It’s hard to breathe.” He asks me if I’m sick. I say I wish. “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me.” He rolls back. “There is mass where lives intersect,” he says. “Relationships have weight.”

I have a lot of relationships. And they don’t always work out. Our kids weren’t the first foster kids that were placed with us. Our first match failed. It was our first call from an agency. We were told there were two sisters in an emergency situation, there was a problem with the foster mom and they needed the girls out and placed within three weeks. Normally the matching process takes about six to eight months, but emergencies happen, right? We met with the social worker and child psychiatrist to go over their history, and brought our advocate from the foster parent training class to ask the questions we might forget in our excitement.

Crystel and Yvonne, ages eight and ten, had no health issues, mental or physical. Amazing. Sure, Yvonne was diagnosed with ADHD, but who wasn’t? We met the girls and fell in love. We met twice more and bought matching beds with green and pink covers: our first sleepover was a week later. The foster mom sent new pajamas with them, Yvonne’s meds, teddy bears, and a note with her phone number, “just in case.” I said to Dan, “This does not look like the handiwork of a negligent caregiver.” We went to a sports store for a basketball and Yvonne started screaming and pulling stuff off the shelves, over-stimulated, running and throwing things. I led her outside and tried to calm her. Once home, we had lunch and gave Yvonne her medication.

Within minutes she was drooling, her head nodding forward. I asked Crystel if this was normal. “Yeah, she gets like that after her meds.” As Yvonne’s eyelids lowered to half-mast, Dan researched the medication online. I called my dad who confirmed I had given her the maximum dose of an adult antipsychotic. “She’ll be wiped out for a while. You gave her enough to kill a horse.” We called the foster mom. She confirmed it was the correct dose and was surprised that we didn’t know about the medication. “I think we should meet,” she said, “I’d be very interested to learn what they have told you about these girls.” Against agency policy, we met with the foster mom on the Manhattan side of the South Ferry Terminal.

The foster mom had a degree in childhood education and further training in early intervention. There had been some political turnover in the agency and she’d gotten on the wrong side of the wrong person; that was the emergency. Knowing full well they faced a family history of psychiatric issues, the foster mom had worked with the girls since Yvonne was a baby. The girls had two older brothers with mental health issues who had been placed separately, and were so heavily medicated, they wet themselves. The foster mom had chosen not to adopt the girls, “because one of them has repeatedly accused my fourteen-year-old son of sexual abuse.” Her son was arrested, handcuffed and led from the house. The allegations were proved ungrounded, “but when I heard they were putting the girls in a home with a male, I thought you should know.”

We requested access to the case files and a meeting with the agency as a condition of proceeding with the placement. They put Dan and me in a conference room with a stack of evaluations from teachers, social workers, doctors, and psychiatrists. The words were damning

“. . . cannot be contained in the home . . .”

“. . . strongly recommend placement in a residential treatment center . . .”

“. . . exhibits familial pattern of disruptive behavior and unspecified mental illness . . .”

“. . . multiple calls to 911 leading to the arrest of foster brother, unsubstantiated . . .”

The medication we had given Yvonne was for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

We met with six representatives from the agency and our advocate. Dan used the word “misrepresented,” and the child psychiatrist countered with, “I think you heard what you wanted to hear.” Our advocate said, “I was taking notes at the initial meeting. You said nothing about mental illness and there was no allusion to any disruptive behavior whatsoever.” Voices were rising, fingers were pointing. The psychiatrist came back with, “Serequel is commonly used as an off-label sleeping aid.” Our advocate responded, “If 400 milligrams of Serequel is required to help a child sleep, that should have been disclosed.” The tone was getting defensive. I put my head in my hands and started crying. Dan said, “We’re sorry. We will not be able to proceed with the placement. This meeting is over.”

It was suddenly quiet but for my crying. The psychiatrist said, “It’s not your fault.” Dan helped me up and we left the room. A social worker from the agency followed us out, “Don’t give up. There are more kids out there. I am thinking of a sibling group that might work . . .” A voice boomed from the conference room, authoritative and pissed off, “You’re not at liberty to discuss individual cases with prospective parents.” The social worker rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Don’t give up!” Too late.

Oh, Crystel and Yvonne. What had we done? What did we do to those girls? Our advocate called this “bad case work”; we should not have been matched with them. We can point fingers, assign blame, say we didn’t know. Nothing changes the fact that we met with these girls as pre-adoptive parents, talked with them about our future, promised them a future. It caused so many doubts about who I am and who we are as parents. Many tears about what we’ve done, I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. Oh God.

In foster care they say it is better to be abused than neglected, that it’s better to stay in one home, even if it’s bad, than to be bounced around from home to home. Worst of all is being placed for adoption, and having it not work out.

Mormons believe in a pre-existence where we, as spirits, choose the families we want to be born into on earth. I think it’s great to take responsibility for your life, but really? When your earthly parents have free will and there’s no script? Spirit children, Mormon or not, are of the responsibility of adults. We have the frontal lobe, we know right from wrong, and we can reason and plan ahead.

Mormons believe that humans can become gods and create our own worlds. But as parents, we’re already gods in the eyes of a child. We create their worlds, the worlds they grow up in, are taken from, and adopted into.

Mormons don’t believe in hell. The worst you can get in the afterlife is a place called “outer-darkness,” a realm devoid of love, far away from the presence of God. Outer-darkness is reserved for people who have known love and then betrayed it.