Will You Love Me? (35 page)

‘Lucy, love,’ I said, ‘I already look upon you as my daughter, and I couldn’t love you more. While I would be very happy to adopt you, it wouldn’t be my decision.’

‘I know,’ Lucy said. ‘I understand.’

‘I’ll speak to Lily tomorrow and see what she says. You still have some contact with your mother and her views will be taken into account. It may be that she won’t want you to be adopted. I can ask, but if it doesn’t happen we don’t need a piece of paper to say we’re mother and daughter, do we?’

Lucy smiled sadly. ‘I guess not, but it would make me very happy.’

‘I know, love, I understand. I’ll try my best.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Special Love

The following morning, as soon as I returned home from taking Paula to school, I telephoned Lily and told her of the discussion Lucy and I had had in respect of me adopting her. Lily said she would need to consult her team manager, but she thought that if Lucy and I wanted adoption, then the department would support my application. However, as I expected, she added a note of caution: she would need to speak to Bonnie to ascertain her view. We both knew that most parents of children in care, while agreeing to a long-term foster placement for their child, would strongly oppose adoption, as it took away all their legal status as parents. Even the birth certificate of an adopted child can be changed to show the adopted parents’ names, replacing those of the child’s birth parents.

That evening I told Lucy that Lily was looking into our request, but that it might take some time before we knew anything for definite.

It was three months before Lily was able to contact Bonnie, and Lily told me that to begin with Bonnie had reservations about me adopting Lucy, as she thought she wouldn’t be able to see Lucy again. Once Lily had reassured her that I was happy to continue with the present contact arrangements, Bonnie said she wouldn’t oppose the adoption, as she wanted whatever Lucy wanted. Not only was Bonnie’s attitude completely selfless, it was also very unusual. Needless to say, Lucy was overjoyed, and I began the application process.

A year later, when Lucy had been with me for two years, the adoption order was granted and Lucy officially became my daughter. At Lucy’s request, we changed her surname to our family name, and I applied for a savings account and passport in her new name. An added bonus for Lucy that came with being adopted was that there was no more social services involvement – no more reviews or visits from social workers – as she was no longer in care.

We celebrated Lucy’s adoption with a party at home, where my parents, my brother and his family, Lily, Jill, Josette and Vicky (now another good friend of Lucy’s) all came for the evening and I made a buffet tea. Lucy had told Josette and Vicky about her adoption, but, apart from her teacher, no one else at school knew.

Although the social services’ involvement had finished with the granting of the adoption order, Lily offered to continue to arrange and supervise contact if I wished. As I had a good working relationship with Bonnie, I felt there was no need for supervised contact, so it was left to Bonnie and me to organize between us. This arrangement worked well and Bonnie continued to see Lucy twice a year and phoned occasionally – usually on birthdays and at Christmas. Sometimes Lucy saw Bonnie at my house, and on those occasions she met Adrian and Paula. Other times, Bonnie and Lucy went out, and I always gave Lucy extra money so they could have some lunch and do something fun – go to the cinema, for example – as Bonnie was permanently broke. I often wished Bonnie would change her lifestyle and get off whatever she was on, but I didn’t say anything to her or Lucy. Bonnie clearly struggled with life, and telling her she needed to change wouldn’t have helped. I was sure she would change if she could, and hoped that one day she would.

Lucy was always slightly pensive and quiet when she returned from seeing her mother. Often she didn’t want any dinner or just picked at her meal. While her eating had improved drastically, if she was upset or worried it showed in a loss of appetite. I was still keeping an eye on Lucy’s eating, but I didn’t have the same concerns as I’d had when she’d first arrived. She’d put on some weight and was within the normal weight range for her age and height, but she’s naturally petite and slim, so she’ll never be very big. Lucy was offered counselling just before the adoption, but she refused. Entering counselling or therapy is a personal choice and the time has to be right. She knows she can go into it when she feels ready. Very touchingly, when it was mentioned she said, ‘Having my own family is my best therapy.’ Which made me tear up.

One day, when Lucy was sixteen and had been out with Bonnie, she returned home and went straight to her room. I gave her some time and then went up after her. I knocked on the door and went in. She was sitting on her bed cuddling Mr Bunny, a sure sign she had something on her mind.

‘Are you all right, love?’ I asked, going further into the room.

‘Sort of,’ she said quietly, glancing up at me.

‘Sort of isn’t good enough,’ I said, sitting on the bed. ‘I need to know you’re completely all right. Please tell me what’s wrong.’

She threw me a small sad smile and then, looking down, concentrated on Mr Bunny. ‘It’s difficult,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I’m not sure you’d understand.’

‘Try me,’ I said, touching her arm reassuringly.

She paused again and then said, ‘When I’m out with Bonnie I feel guilty that I can’t love her more. She’s my birth mother, but I don’t feel for her what I feel for you. I can’t love her as I love you, and that makes me feel guilty and unhappy sometimes.’

‘Oh love, I do understand,’ I said. ‘Perfectly. Let me try and explain something. We are not born loving our parents. We bond with those who look after us, and loving someone is part of that bond. I love you and you love me because of the time we’ve spent together and all the things we’ve done and been through together. I’ve been a mother to you and you’ve been a daughter to me, so we love each other as mother and daughter. Sadly, Bonnie was never able to give you that special mother–daughter relationship, so it’s natural that you feel differently towards her, although I know she loves you.’

‘But I feel like I’ve always been your daughter,’ Lucy said, as she’d said before. ‘Like you had me.’

‘I know. I feel the same. I couldn’t love you more if I had given birth to you. That’s how strong our bond is. But in your heart, even though you might not know it, there is a special place for Bonnie, separate from the love you feel for me. It will be different, but it will be there, so there’s no need for you to feel guilty. Bonnie understands and just wants you to be happy. That’s a very selfless love.’

Lucy was silent for a moment, and then looked at me, her expression brightening. ‘Yes, that helps. I understand,’ she said, and kissed my cheek. ‘I’ve got two mothers and it’s OK to love them differently. Thanks, Mum. I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

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Chapter 1

The article in the newspaper was tiny, considering the crime. It told of a six-year-old girl who had lured a local toddler from his yard, taken him to a nearby woodland, tied him to a tree and set fire to him. The boy, badly burned, was in hospital. All that was said in what amounted to no more than a space filler below the comic strips on page six. I read it and, repulsed, I turned the page and went on.

Six weeks later, Ed, the special education director, phoned me. It was early January, the day we were returning from our Christmas break. “There’s going to be a new girl in your class. Remember that little girl who set fire to the kid in November …?”

I taught what was affectionately referred to in our district as the “garbage class.” It was the last year before congressional law would introduce “mainstreaming,” the requirement that all special needs children be educated in the least restrictive environment; and thus, our district still had the myriad of small special education classrooms, each catering to a different disability. There were classes for physically handicapped, for mentally handicapped, for behaviorally disordered, for visually impaired … you name it, we had it. My eight were the kids left over, the ones who defied classification. All of them suffered emotional disorders, but most also had mental or physical disabilities as well. Out of the three girls and five boys in the group, three could not talk, one could but refused and another spoke only in echoes of other people’s words. Three of them were still in diapers and two more had regular accidents. As I had the full number of children allowed by state law for a class of severely handicapped children, I was given an aide at the start of the year; but mine hadn’t turned out to be one of the bright, hardworking aides already employed by the school, as I had expected. Mine was a Mexican-American migrant worker named Anton, who had been trawled from the local welfare list. He’d never graduated from high school, never even stayed north all winter before, and certainly had never changed diapers on a seven-year-old. My only other help came from Whitney, a fourteen-year-old junior high student, who gave up her study halls to volunteer in our class.

By all accounts we didn’t appear a very promising group, and in the beginning, chaos was the byword; however, as the months passed, we metamorphosed. Anton proved to be sensitive and hardworking, his dedication to the children becoming apparent within the first weeks. The kids, in return, responded well to having a man in the classroom and they built on one another’s strengths. Whitney’s youth occasionally made her more like one of the children than one of the staff, but her enthusiasm was contagious, making it easier for all of us to view events as adventures rather than the disasters they often were. The kids grew and changed, and by Christmas we had become a cohesive little group. Now Ed was sending me a six-year-old stick of dynamite.

Her name was Sheila. The next Monday she arrived, being dragged into my classroom by Ed, as my principal worriedly brought up the rear, his hands flapping behind her as if to fan her into the classroom. She was absolutely tiny, with fierce eyes, long, matted blond hair and a very bad smell. I was shocked to find she was so small. Given her notoriety, I had expected something considerably more Herculean. As it was, she couldn’t have been much bigger than the three-year-old she had abducted.

Abducted? I regarded her carefully.

Bureaucracy being what it is in school districts, Sheila’s school files didn’t arrive before she did; so when she went off to lunch on that first day, Anton and I took the opportunity to go down to the office for a quick look. The file made bleak reading, even by the standards of my class.

Our town, Marysville, was in proximity to a large mental hospital and a state penitentiary, and this, in addition to the migrants, had created a disproportionate underclass, many of whom lived in appalling poverty. The buildings in the migrant camp had been built as temporary summer housing and many were literally nothing but wood and tar paper that lacked even the most basic amenities, but they became crowded in the winter by those who could afford nothing better. It was here that Sheila lived with her father.

A drug addict with alcohol problems, her father had spent most of Sheila’s early years in and out of prison. He had no job. Currently on parole, he was attending an alcohol abuse program, but doing little else.

Sheila’s mother had been only fourteen when, as a runaway, she took up with Sheila’s father and became pregnant. Sheila was born two days before her mother’s fifteenth birthday. A second child, a son, was born nineteen months later. There wasn’t much else relating to the mother in the file, although it was not hard to read drugs, alcohol and domestic violence between the lines. Whatever, she must have finally had enough, because when Sheila was four, she left the family. From the brief notes, it appeared that she had intended to take both children with her, but Sheila was later found abandoned on an open stretch of freeway about thirty miles south of town. Sheila’s mother and her brother, Jimmie, were never heard from again.

The bulk of the file detailed Sheila’s behavior. At home the father appeared to have no control over her at all. She had been repeatedly found wandering around the migrant camp late at night. She had a history of fire setting and had been cited for criminal damage three times by the local police, quite an accomplishment for a six-year-old. At school, Sheila often refused to speak, and as a consequence, virtually nothing was contained in the file to tell me what or how much she might have learned. She had been in kindergarten and then first grade in an elementary school near the migrant camp until the incident with the little boy had occurred, but there were no assessment notes. In place of the usual test results and learning summaries was a catalog of horror stories detailing Sheila’s destructive, often violent, behavior.

At the end of the file was a brief summary of the incident with the toddler. The judge concluded that Sheila was out of parental control and would be best placed in a secure unit, where her needs could be better met. In this instance, he meant the children’s unit at the state mental hospital. Unfortunately, the unit was at capacity at the time of the hearing, and thus, Sheila would need to await an opening. A recently dated memo was appended detailing the need to provide some form of education, given her age and the law, but no one bothered to mince words. Her placement was custodial. This meant she had to be kept in school for the time being, because of the specifics of the law, but I need not feel under any obligation to teach her. With Sheila’s arrival, my room had become a holding pen.

Youth was my greatest asset at that point in my career. Still fired with idealism, I felt strongly that there were no problem kids, only a problem society. Although initially reluctant to take Sheila, it had been because my room was crowded and my resources overstretched already, not because of the child herself. Thus, once I had her, I regarded her as mine and
my
class was no holding pen! My belief in human integrity and the inalienable right of each and every one of my children to possess it was trenchant.