Angelina

Sometimes the truth I see is hard and painful. I wouldn't change seeing it, though I sometimes wonder how I've come to be doing this work that has found me somehow, wrapped itself around my intentions these days, and keeps a hold on me that I can't say I mind at all. I'm honored, actually. And I hope you don't mind sharing some of the hard and painful too. I think it's worth it....
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These are the tales of an urban warrior. Not the kind who suits up with armor or compass, but one among many who drives the blighted streets and looks for openings. Looks to bandage wounds that shouldn’t matter—shouldn’t even exist, but there they are: cuts from neglect and abuse and opportunities that never come. These are the tales of children who learn to wait forever, and finally stop waiting because no one comes through. They stop waiting but not longing, sometimes knowing and sometimes not that they are getting a raw deal. They go to bed at night without a tuck and they get up each morning in crammed apartments where somebody they’ve just met commits to their safety, assures their cereal and clean clothes, but can’t offer the hearty hugs and hungry hearts that feed and clothe them in different ways.
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These are the tales of children in foster care, and I can tell you now, without ambiguity, the tales suck.
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She’s four years old, this little girl named Angelina. She has a mother and a father and two small brothers, an uncle Teddy and an aunt ZZ. But one day, now ten months ago, the police brought her back from North Carolina, arrested Teddy and ZZ for kidnapping her, for molesting her at least once and maybe dozen of times, perhaps over days and perhaps over months.

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“They touched my pee pee and my behind,” she told me, finally, months after she could not answer the district attorney, months after the charges against Teddy were dropped, months after her sexually transmitted disease was treated, she looking at me with caution, not fear, not anything in that moment, until she added that her foster mother told her only the doctor or a mommy should touch her there, and she asked me if I was happy she told me and when I responded I felt sad , she stared straight through me for maybe ten seconds before she began to cry, before couldn’t catch her breath, when she crawled into in my lap, this child four years old, sobbing, we two with nothing more either of us could say.
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She’s too young to have a context for any of this. It’s been months since she and her mother and her brothers huddled on the front porch of the green house while the sheriff supervised the angry removal of all their possessions to the front lawn, months since the state social worker took her brothers to one foster home, she to another, months since the last time she saw her mother, who no longer visits, who is pregnant again, who’s newborn will be taken from her the same day the hospital notifies the state she has delivered.
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Angelina. She is a beautiful child. She runs to me with a huge smile and her arms in the air as soon as she sees me at the day care door. We hold hands and walk to the little teacher’s lounge, where we sit on a small grey couch, we color, I show her how to use my camera, we play hide and seek. Most weeks she tells me she is still peeing on her clothes and I ask her what she thinks about that. We sing twinkle twinkle little star, the song we’ve chosen for the moments she is alone and she feels afraid, and I remind her she can tell a grown up if she wants to talk to me if she’d rather do that than pee on herself. Most weeks she wants to kiss me on the lips and I tell her, no, let’s kiss on our cheeks, and she throws her head back and says, “I like your shoes.” When I got new glasses, she was the first to notice, she laughed and told me, “Oh you changed your circles” and I cannot help but tell her she is a wonderful little girl and I ask her how is she doing and most time her huge brown twinkle eyes just look straight at me, no words, just those eyes saying she is hopeful and alone and goddammit, doing her best.
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She and her brothers will go into the adoption program this month. The court is terminating her mother’s parental rights and her father, who sees his children once a month at the local state office in a room with folding chairs and a few old board games, is an illegal alien who cannot care for or have status to influence what will happen to his children. He is trying to find a godmother or a family friend who will take his children, but that will not happen and you can see the sadness in his eyes.
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Myself, I love her and I am good for her and she trusts me and I am an anchor but I am not enough. I cannot fill what she should not lack. I find myself looking at the faces I see every day, women and men and families like me and mine, and I wonder, “Can you? Can you take this child? Please,” I think, “It would matter so fucking much.”

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please pray for Angelina, and with all your heart for Renee and her family.