Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (18 page)

Garet told Bernie that Mr. Morgan would meet us with Danielle at 10 a.m. in the Winn-Dixie parking lot. We got there about 9:45. By 10:30, he still wasn’t there. We called the foster home and the foster mother’s cell phone and got voice mail at each. Garet had told us that they were members of a church close to the Winn-Dixie, where they supposedly took Danielle every Sunday. We went to two churches before we found it. Service was over, but we found the pastor and asked about the foster parents. He confirmed that they were members but said they hadn’t been to church in more than a year. He called the numbers he had and left messages as well.

We went back to the parking lot, thinking that maybe the foster father had shown up, but he wasn’t there and no one had called us back. Bernie remembered that the man ran a towing company, so while I stayed in the parking lot with Willie, Bernie went off to find a service station that might know of him. Sure enough, the workers there did, and Bernie asked them to call him, knowing that he would answer a call for a job. When the foster father answered, the attendant handed the phone to Bernie. Bernie was mad, but he was more fearful for Danielle, so he didn’t want to cause any trouble. Danielle’s foster father told Bernie that they’d had a hard time getting Danielle up that morning, but that as soon as his wife packed up all of her things, Mr. Morgan would be at the Winn-Dixie.

The three of us were standing beside our car when he pulled up beside us an hour later. He got out of his Mercedes, barely said hello, then opened the rear door.

I could not stop myself from gasping out loud. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. Willie looked confused, and Bernie was just plain angry. Danielle was sitting alone. She didn’t try to get out of the car but sat passively, staring straight ahead. Drooling, her tongue out one side of her mouth, she was so lethargic I was sure that her drug dosage had been increased. When she finally turned her head to look at us, I gasped again. The left side of her face was covered with scratches, one of them still bleeding slightly. Bernie pushed past the foster father to unbuckle Danielle and lift her up in his arms, which is when I saw more scratches on both arms.

I asked the foster father what had happened, how did she get the scratches? First, he told us she must have fallen on the playground because she came home from school that way on Friday. When I pointed out that one scratch was still bleeding, he said that she was playing outside that morning and fell again.

Neither scenario was likely. If she had fallen in school and gotten scratched that badly, the office would have called the foster mother and not simply sent Danielle home like that. And Garet would have mentioned it when she called and told us about the report the school had made. All that she had told us about was the personal hygiene problem. The scratches were sideways, from Danielle’s ear across her cheek to her nose. They didn’t look like they had come from a fall but from a person or an animal.

The foster father handed me a duffle bag with “her stuff,” as he put it. All that Danielle had accumulated in almost nine years of life was in a canvas bag two feet long and a foot around. We had more of her things in the backseat of our car than what she had left her mother’s home with—a soaking diaper—or what the foster family cleared out of her bedroom. The foster father did not attempt to touch Danielle or tell her good-bye but got in his car and drove away. He didn’t look back.

Bernie buckled Danielle into the backseat of our car. I told Willie to get up front. I wanted to sit with her for awhile. I got an antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit we keep in the car and gently wiped her cheek and then her arms, telling her over and over how sorry we were that she got hurt, how sorry we were that it took so long to get her back, how much we missed her, and how happy we were to see her. She did not acknowledge me in any way, not even when I pushed the button to make her favorite toy say Peek-A-Boo.

We stopped at the McDonald’s in Venice, and just like the first time when we brought her home, she had soaked through her diaper and clothes and onto the backseat. I dug through the duffle bag for dry clothes and found the outfit I had dressed her in on Easter Sunday. I also found the pink bunny that was in her Easter basket and handed it to her. Danielle didn’t react, but she did hold onto it. After changing her in the restroom, I put the too-big shorts and the stained shirt in the trash. She wouldn’t need them anymore.

The boys were waiting eagerly at the table for us. Willie had spread her fries on a tray and had already cut her burger into bite-size pieces. “Look, Danielle, your favorite! French fries!” He held one up and waved it before her. She didn’t take it, and Willie looked like he was going to cry. “What’s wrong? Doesn’t she remember us?”

Bernie explained that it might take a while for her to be comfortable with us again. “Is she mad at us?” Maybe not mad, but definitely confused and hurt. No matter what the truth was or the reason why, we had let her down, and we would have to earn her trust all over again.

When we crossed the bridge onto Estero Island, Bernie made the first left he could for beach access parking. He picked Danielle up out of the backseat and carried her across the sand, then took off her sandals—the pink ones we had bought her—and set her gently down. Willie came to her side, clasped her hand in his, and led her to the water. She didn’t resist. They waded into the sunset over the gulf, waves breaking at their knees, two small hand-in-hand silhouettes against the sinking sun in a brilliant red sky, ablaze with the promise of a glorious tomorrow. I had never seen anything more beautiful.

Bernie put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed tight. “It’s going to be all right, Diane.” I knew in my heart he was right. Danielle was home now, where she belonged, and we would never let her go again.

Chapter 17

Two Steps Ahead

The first night that Danielle was back with us, she was so restless and rocked so violently that I stayed in her room with her until she fell into a fitful sleep. She got up three times during the night, and Bernie and I took turns redirecting her back to bed. It reminded me of when Willie was an infant.

We awoke at 5 a.m. to loud moaning from her room, where we found her up and pacing. She would not respond to my verbal requests to change her soaked diaper, so Bernie picked her up and carried her like a baby into the bathroom, where I struggled to get her into the shower. We had all been too tired to shower the night before, and she was definitely in need of some “personal hygiene.” Brushing her hair was out of the question. I wondered how Mrs. Morgan had done it. Did someone hold Danielle’s hands and let her scream while another person pulled out the tangles and the knots?

Bernie took the morning off to give me a hand and make calls to Garet and Mr. O’Keefe. I drove Willie to school to give Bernie some time with Danielle, and when I came back, she was sitting on his lap at the kitchen table, letting him feed her pieces of banana. That was a start. He told me her medication was low, so he asked me to call the pharmacy for refills, and he would pick it up on the way home from work.

He called Sanders Elementary first to let them know we had Danielle and that because there was less than a week of school left, she would likely not be back. The office put him through to Mr. O’Keefe, and Bernie told him that we had picked Danielle up yesterday from the foster father and asked him about the scratches. Mr. O’Keefe had no idea what Bernie was talking about and said that it had to have happened after Danielle left the school on Friday, which was exactly what we suspected.

They chatted about Danielle’s progress in the last year, and Mr. O’Keefe said that the school year evaluations would be in the office by the end of the week. He told Bernie to feel free to call him with any questions. It was probably a mistake to leave a door open like that for Bernie; he would be calling Mr. O’Keefe once a week.

Bernie thanked Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Perez for caring so compassionately for Danielle and providing her with a safe place to be. “Garet said that the school and your classroom were her sanctuary, the one place she felt safe and loved. We are so grateful to you and Ms. Perez.” Before Bernie hung up, he promised to let Mr. O’Keefe know how the adoption was proceeding.

Bernie called Garet next and filled her in on yesterday’s adventure with Mr. Morgan, on Danielle’s state of mind, and on her withdrawal from us. “Physically, she seems fine except for the scratches. . . . The ones on her face and arms. . . . We don’t know, we thought you might know. . . . Mr. Morgan told us two versions, that it happened at school and that it happened playing outside at home when she fell. I just talked to Mr. O’Keefe, and he said she was fine when she left Friday, no scratches. It looks to us like someone did it to her. . . . Okay. . . . We will. . . . Okay. . . . When will that come? We’ll do that right away. We also need to get her medication refilled, it’s almost gone. . . . Alright, we’ll talk tomorrow. Thanks, Garet.”

Garet told Bernie that we needed to take pictures of Danielle and the scratches and fax them to her so that she could include them in the report about why Danielle was removed from the foster home and put in an emergency placement. At the same time, Garet was faxing us a letter from HKI naming us as caregivers “authorized to consent to the child’s ordinary and routine medical and educational needs.” We had to take her to a doctor to get a physical within twenty-four hours of her coming to our home so that the doctor could attest to her condition in case anything ever came up later.

That didn’t leave us much time. First, we needed to take photos of Danielle’s face and arms, so I sat with her squirming on my lap on the floor of her room while Bernie got some close-ups. Garet was faxing the authorization letter to the business office of the contractor Bernie was working with that week, so I thought we would run and pick that up, drop the film at a one-hour photo place, take Danielle to a walk-in clinic for a checkup, pick up the photos, and fax copies to Garet from the office, all before we had to pick up Willie from school.

The doctor’s office was crowded, and the wait seemed interminable, especially for an eight-year-old girl who did not want to be there and the adults who were trying to calm her. Danielle threw one heck of a tantrum. Though she had never been to a doctor during the first seven years of her life, she’d had plenty of experience with them in the last two. Her histrionics caused all of the other moms in the waiting room to pull their children close to them, as if Danielle would hurt them. Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Perez had both told us that Danielle had never once been aggressive with another child. She had never hit, struck out, or bitten any of her schoolmates, even when she had been on the receiving end of the same. Mr. O’Keefe said Danielle had always been very sweet-natured. At the moment, though, she was acting more like the little girl in
The Exorcist
than the one in
Nell.
When the nurse came out to call back a child who had been there before us, her mother gave us her spot. It was very kind of her, and I’m sure all of the other people in the waiting room thanked her profusely once we left them in peace.

The tantrum worsened in the even smaller examining room. Bernie picked Danielle up and walked her back and forth, just as he had when Willie was an infant and inconsolable. Finally, the doctor knocked rather tentatively on the door and came in with a nurse. “What have we here?”

I wouldn’t have known where to begin to answer that question, although we gave the doctor a brief synopsis and told him why she needed the check-up. He was very kind and soothing, and Danielle settled down a bit. He let her look at his stethoscope before he listened to her heart, and she immediately put that part in her mouth. Same with the light that shines in the ear and the rubber hammer that tests for reflexes. The one thing that was supposed to go in her mouth—the thermometer—she kept pushing out with her tongue. Finally, the doctor put his palm to her forehead and proclaimed, “98.6! Perfectly normal!” Bernie and I couldn’t help it, we both started laughing. There Danielle was, her uncombed hair sticking out every which way, wearing a diaper, rocking and moaning and reaching for the doctor’s stethoscope to put the microphone end in her mouth.
Normal
was not exactly the first word that came to mind. The doctor and the nurse joined in, and seeing us all laughing brought a tiny smile to Danielle’s face.

The doctor reached out as if to pat her head, and Bernie and I shouted simultaneously, “Don’t touch her head!” The doctor jerked his hand back as if he had touched a hot stove, and we starting laughing again. Overall, he pronounced her in good health, noting no marks except for the scratches.

We barely had time to get the photos and fax them and the doctor’s report to Garet before school dismissed and we had to pick up Willie. It was the last full week before summer vacation. All of the year-end testing was done, so the kids were just playing and having parties, which meant there was no homework, a relief to Willie and me. It also meant that Willie was a bit more hyper than usual, thanks to all of the sugar at the parties. At home, I put Danielle in her bathing suit and life jacket, and while she, Bernie, and Willie played in the pool, I made dinner.

I had decided that we weren’t going to do anything special or different until Danielle was settled back into our routine and felt safe and secure. I was still worried about all of the paperwork and the legalities, and I couldn’t feel confident that Michelle Crockett wasn’t somehow going to get Danielle back. It seemed safest and wisest to stick close to home.

We had grilled chicken for dinner—two legs for Danielle, baked potatoes, and salad—then went on the evening dog walk. People out on the streets and in their yards made a big fuss over Danielle. She seemed wary but not frightened. We found Dorothy, who gave Danielle a big hug, got her to pet Amber, and invited us to dinner the next night. When we came to Doris and Bill’s corner, Danielle stopped at the edge of their yard, looking at the place where the bunny had been. Bernie nudged me in the ribs. “Look, she remembers the bunny. She’s looking for him. That’s good!” He was right, it was good. Danielle had made connections while she was with us, and she remembered something, even if it was a blow-up bunny.

At home, after Danielle was showered and in her pajamas, I took out the photos from her visit with us at Easter and sat at the kitchen table with her in my lap. We ate blueberries and looked at the pictures, one by one—the beach, the pool, her room, and the dogs. Each one I named, hoping she might repeat a word back to me. Danielle was silent, but when I showed her the photo of Bernie holding her up to the inflatable bunny so she could kiss its cheek, she reached out her hand and patted the bunny. I kissed her on the cheek and squeezed her tight. She didn’t pull away.

When it was time for bed, I realized I had forgotten to call in for the refill for Danielle’s medication. There was only enough left for tomorrow morning. I put a Post-it note on the coffee maker to remind myself to call the pharmacy in the morning, then went with Danielle into her bedroom to stay with her until she fell asleep.

Twice during the night I found her standing in the freezer, which was oddly reassuring, though not good for her feet. At breakfast, she attacked her waffles so greedily that Bernie practically needed a vacuum to suck out the one she had stuffed in her mouth without chewing or swallowing. I told him that we all needed to practice our Heimlich maneuver technique.

After we walked the dogs and checked on the manatees, I turned on
Sesame Street
so that I could call the pharmacy, anticipating that there might be issues. What I didn’t anticipate was the pharmacist telling me the prescription had already been refilled a few days earlier at the store in Lutz, where the foster home was, and that because it was a controlled substance, I could not get it refilled a second time within one month of the first refill. I told the pharmacist there had to be a mistake, but she checked again and said no, it had been picked up on Friday.

I hung up, told Bernie what the pharmacist had said, and asked him to call Garet. A minute later, Garet called and told me that the foster home might have been using the medication for other children. Other children? I thought Danielle was supposed to be the only one there. Garet said that their investigation was showing that while Danielle was supposed to be in the foster family’s personal home, she quite possibly had been moved after her visit with us to a group home next door that the agency also supervised. Garet believed that the children there might have scratched Danielle. I was nearly shaking. If they had scratched her, what else might they have done to her? She had no way of telling people if anyone did something to her. Maybe that was why she seemed so withdrawn and distant from us. Garet told me she would look into the procedure for getting more medication. She said that she had gotten the photos of the scratches and had made a report to the agency in our county, so that it would be on record that the scratches had occurred before we picked Danielle up and not with us. I hadn’t thought of that, but I was glad Garet did.

Or I was glad until that afternoon. We had a quiet morning in Danielle’s room. She played with her Slinky, while I went through the clothes in the duffle bag the foster family had sent. It didn’t take long. When I was done, I had a bag with clothes for the trash—they weren’t even suitable for Goodwill—topped by the Michelin man bathing apparatus. Danielle was definitely going to need new clothes, but I thought that rather than subjecting all of us to shopping trauma, I would go by myself after dinner, and Danielle could swim in the pool with Bernie and Willie.

We had lunch on the deck, then I put
The Little Mermaid
on for her to watch from the sofa, while I caught up on some of Bernie’s paperwork from his jobs. I was so engrossed, I didn’t know how long the knocking on the side door had been going on, but it sounded pretty urgent by the time I did hear it. People in the neighborhood knew to come up the exterior stairs to the deck, so I expected that it wasn’t anyone we knew. I opened the door onto the deck and shouted down, “Hello? Are you looking for someone?”

A policewoman came around the corner but stood outside the fence. She said she was looking for Danielle Crockett. I told her Danielle was inside and asked how I could help her. She told me the police had received a report of abuse from the DCF in our county and that she was there to investigate and confirm it. I assumed she was talking about the scratches, so I told her to come up the stairs and that Danielle was in the living room.

I offered the policewoman a glass of water, but she declined. She was not being very friendly, but I thought maybe that was just the way she had to be in her line of work. Danielle had barely looked up from the movie and her fascination with Ariel, so the police officer walked over to the sofa and sat down beside her. Danielle scooted away to the far end of the sofa, so I came over to make sure she didn’t start a tantrum and pointed out the scratches on her face and arms. “Is this what you’re investigating?” I asked.