The Bad Guys

The Bad Guys

 

The girls still have weekly visits with their birth mother at the Child Protective Services building.  Sometimes the girls come home from this visit with a bunch of toys.  Sometimes they come home with new fake nails on their hands.  Sometimes they come home all hopped up on sugar.  The physical things they come home with vary, but they always come home conflicted and act a little strangely for a bit.  I don’t blame them.  They’re confused about the situation.  They’re smart kids.  They know this isn’t a normal.  I think they try not to think about it, but when they actually see this woman, it brings it all home.  Mo seems to be a little more matter-of-fact about things.  Shay, on the other hand, feels things a little more deeply than her sister and struggles with, for lack of a better term, allegiances.  We always harp on the fact that there is enough room for two mothers and that she doesn’t have to choose one.  While she knows this rationally, I still think she sometimes feels bad about having love for Amy, as if she’s betraying her birth mom.  Regardless, this is one of the joys of fostering.  Their birth mom spends an hour with them, buys them a bunch of crap they don’t need, then sends them home to us where we get to be the bad guys for making them obey rules and schedules.  One afternoon Mo had had a class-9 meltdown regarding these stupid press-on nails the birth mom got them.  The girls couldn’t do anything, they just walked around with her fingers straight out, trying to keep them from touching anything.  Mo wouldn’t eat her dinner because she can barely work a fork as it is, and it became impossible with these nails.  So, we told her it was time to take them off. 

 

Bad move. 

 

I get it.  Her “mom” had given them to her, and here we were, making her take them off.  It was rough.  Finally she just took them off herself when she got hungry and it was all okay again.  That night Amy and I were talking and feeling kind of bummed about this part of our situation.  Would we ever get to be the good guys? 

 

Their birthday came around (yes, I’m still on this time frame, but I promise I’ll move on soon, just trying to catch up), and the girls were, of course, stoked.  Every kid is.  But their birthday also meant a very special visit with their birth mom.  On the last visit, she had sent a note home with the girls asking if we would please put them in dresses, as she was planning a big deal the following week for their birthdays.  So we got them all dressed up, and the girls were hooting and hollering all over the house that morning, talking about the big party their “real mom” (which isn’t a term they use very often, they know even without us saying anything that it is hurtful.  One time I heard Mo quietly scolding Shay when she had said something about her “real Mom”, telling her that it would hurt Amy’s feelings) was going to have for them at the glamorous CPS visiting room, with a cake and decorations and presents and yada yada yada.  They went off to school about to burst.  They were going to have a party with Mom.  Their real Mom. 

 

But Amy and I were nervous.  You see, real mom only shows up about half the time.  All she has to do is get her act together for one hour a week, and she can’t even do that.  I would feel bad for her if I wasn’t the one who had tell the girls that I’m sure their mother had a “good reason” for not bothering to even call, and that I’m sure she “still loves them very much.”  How many times does this shit have to happen before we’re the ones who look like liars?  But we toe the line.  We can never, ever, say anything bad about their birth mom.  It would shatter them.  So we bite our tongues and just hold them when they cry because of her. 

 

Well, it isn’t hard to guess what happened next.  The girls had been bragging to their friends all day about all the fun they were going to have and all the presents they were going to receive.  So they’re at their afterschool daycare, watching the clock, waiting for the social worker to come and get them to take them to the CPS building.  The time comes…and goes…and goes… 

Because of the birth mother’s, let’s say, inconsistent nature, CPS always lets Amy know if the woman has bothered to show up.  Around four o’clock Amy got the text message: “Mom is a no-show…”  So Amy has to drive up the twenty minutes from the University to the girl’s school, knowing the mess she has inherited, and that she is about to have spend all evening trying to pull the girls up out of the throes of deep, bitter  disappointment. 

 

Needless to say, when she gets there, the girls are inconsolable.  “But she pinky promised!  Pinky promised!  Why did she lie to us?  Again?”  and “why doesn’t she love us?” and “what do you think we did wrong?”  So Amy’s trying not to cry as she’s trying to tell the girls, yet again, that she was sure there was a good reason, and that they didn’t do anything wrong, whatever. 

 

And I’m just PISSED.  At least, for a while.

 

Because I realize there is an answer to our question before.  When do we get to be the good guys?  That day we did.  And the girls knew it too.  I think Amy and my relationship with the girls changed some that day.  I think they trust us not to hurt them and know, on some level, that we would rather get kicked in the nuts (literally for me, obviously figuratively for Amy) than disappoint them.  Because I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knew I caused them the kind of hurt I saw them experience that day.  So it was a good day to be the good guy.