To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) Read Online Free Page B

Allen from his biological mother when she skipped out on her own drug treatment program, and Tom didn’t find out about it until several days later. By then, Allen was living with his first foster mother. That woman, the story goes, found Allen too taxing and sent him back to the agency. The next mom wanted to go to Puerto Rico and couldn’t take Allen with her, so back he went again. By the time Allen was placed with the Greens at sixteen months, he had lived with four different “mothers” and his future was still uncertain.
    Tom had followed Allen through all of his placements; he saw his son during supervised visits at the agency. He graduated from rehab and started taking parenting classes. Allen turned two at the Greens’, and then two and a half; he was talking more, smiling a lot, and running, running everywhere. And then a judge upgraded Tom’s status: he could start bringing Allen back to his apartment for weekends.
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    When I asked Allyson how the weekend visits were going, she changed the subject. “The dad’s white,” she said, her face inscrutable. “You’ve seen Allen. He’s darker than me.”
    I tried to push her; was she concerned that if Tom got custody Allen would lose some sense of his heritage? Did she, like many people, resist the notion of white parents raising black children? But I had entered icy waters and Allyson wouldn’t budge.
    â€œThe dad will call here because Allen will be crying,” was all Allyson would venture. She fussed with the snaps on Allen’s brother Anthony’s onesie; the HIV-positive newborn was, after all, allowed to come live with them, and he required much of her attention. “Allen will get on the phone and just say, ‘Mama, Mama.’”
    Sekina, as usual, was more blunt. “The dad doesn’t feed him the right food. He gives him adult food—things he can’t digest. He puts Allen in front of the TV all day. And when Allen comes back here, he’s all upset. Of course—he’s been here for a year. He’s our baby.”
    Still, Allen and the Greens are an example of foster care working exactly as it should: a foster home is meant to be only a temporary holding place while parents get the support they need to get back to being parents again. The foster family should provide the kind of bonding and love that the Greens gave Allen and then, wrenching as it is, let the child go. The biological parents may be imperfect—they may feed the kids inappropriate foods or leave the TV on too long—but as long as there’s no abuse, a child belongs with his blood. It’s not the state’s role to interfere with the way we raise our kids.
    And apparently, a judge thought Tom was doing well enough. As Allen inched toward his third birthday, the courts claimed that Tom could indeed have custody, as soon as he’d accomplished a few more weekend visits. Allyson was stoic about it on the surface, but Bruce unmasked her.
    â€œShe’s gonna cry like a baby when he leaves,” Bruce said. He was eating pot stickers from the Chinese place down the street, shoveling them in quickly before one of the older kids could catch him with the takeout box and demand her share. Allyson shot him a look.
    â€œHe will too; he talks about it every day,” Allyson said. Her prior easy acceptance of a King Solomon deal seemed to be slipping. “I don’t believe that this parent has shown overwhelmingly that he is ready, not overwhelmingly. And this child requires a parent who shows overwhelmingly that he’s ready. Because Allen’s no ordinary child. He has his issues.”
    For instance, despite all his progress, Allen still hit the other children when he got enraged. Allyson doesn’t allow hitting in the home; she had been working steadily with Allen to soothe him and had trained the other kids to react with only words. She wasn’t sure Tom had the