Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (17 page)

Willie was off for Good Friday, so we had a lazy day by the pool and then went to the park. Bernie and I were aware that the end of Danielle’s visit with us was near, and we just wanted to be together as a family and enjoy the last couple of days together.

Since we would have to take her back on Easter Sunday, we decided to try the community Easter egg hunt at the Bay Oaks recreation center on Saturday.

There was no “special needs” category, and she had to go out with her age group, which was like sending a one-year-old out with eight-year-olds. Willie stuck close by her, but she was completely lost and, of course, didn’t pick up a single egg. I was surprised that she held onto her basket. When it was over and Willie had a basket full of eggs, we tried a little tutorial. Willie put some eggs on the ground in front of her, and Bernie would guide her hand to the eggs, then guide her hand to the basket, and drop the eggs in. I opened an egg for her, unwrapped the chocolate candy, and put it in her mouth. Candy. Mmm. Good. Mmm. More. Mmm. Except that she didn’t know how or really care to take the wrapper off the candy but just stuck it in her mouth.

The hunt was staged in a very open space, and as soon we picked the foil off Danielle’s teeth, she took off running. She ran and ran, loving every minute of it. The area was fenced, so we could let her run as free as she wanted, and we didn’t have to worry. I thought that after all of those years of being confined to one room and never allowed outside, she must love to run.

That night, we ate dinner on the deck, walked the dogs, and took her to see Dorothy and Paul and Doris and Bill. Bernie held Danielle up to give Mr. Bunny a kiss good-bye. Everyone was getting sad, but we tried to hide it as best we could. We didn’t want Danielle to pick up on our feelings.

Bernie changed her and put her in her pajamas, I popped some popcorn, and we huddled up on the sofa to watch
Happy Feet.
Danielle fell asleep on Bernie’s lap, and when the movie ended, he carried her into her room, laid her gently on her bed, and tucked her Hello Kitty comforter around her.

Easter morning I woke up with a feeling of dread, and it took me a second to remember why. We were taking Danielle back to Tampa. I knew she had no idea what Easter was, but I felt like she was being cheated out of another holiday. I vowed that when she came back with us, we would celebrate every one as if it were her first. In fact, each would be her first. I wondered if she had ever had a birthday cake, much less a party.

I had hidden the Easter baskets the night before, in case Willie got up before me. He was at that age where he no longer really believed in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, but he wasn’t quite ready to let go of that part of his childhood and was afraid of the finality of saying it out loud.

When Willie did come upstairs, it wasn’t with his usual enthusiasm. We were all feeling the weight of the pending separation. I asked him if the Easter Bunny had come, and he looked at me with the saddest face and told me he didn’t know. “Can I get Danielle up, and we can look together?”

We went back to her room where she was playing on her bed with her Peek-A-Boo toy, and after I changed her, Willie took her by the hand and led her around the house until they found the baskets. The Easter Bunny had left Danielle a pink stuffed bunny in her basket, which she tried to eat, sticking an entire ear in her mouth.

Leave it to Danielle to make us all laugh. I told her the bunny was not for eating but that I had her favorite—waffles—for breakfast. She ate four—including half of one on Willie’s plate that she snatched when he wasn’t looking. I think he appeared distracted on purpose just to give her the opportunity.

I had washed all of the clothes the foster parents had sent and packed them into her bag, but I dressed Danielle in one of the outfits we bought her. I irrationally thought that it would offer her some type of protection as we sent her back into the unknown, or it would be a reminder of us. I asked her to sit on the potty one more time before we got in the car to go for the long drive back. She complied, although she didn’t do anything but sit. She also didn’t pee on the floor when she got up, so that was a plus.

Willie had loaded the backseat with toys again, Bernie carried out Danielle’s little bag, and I made sure she had her pink bunny before we got in the car, drove off the island, and headed north toward Tampa.

The drive back was so different from the one a week earlier when we were bringing her home. We tried our best to stay cheerful and positive, but it was really hard. Who knew what Danielle understood about what was happening? And what difference would it have made? There was nothing any of us could do about it. Maybe it was best if she didn’t understand, but she knew something was up. The farther north we drove, the more anxious she became, rocking more vigorously and moaning more loudly. Willie tried to distract her, but not even Lullaby Gloworm or Peek-A-Boo worked. That made it even harder on us.

We stopped at the McDonald’s in Venice for lunch, and I was careful to monitor her fry intake. I didn’t want the foster family to accuse us of making Danielle sick. It was pretty pitiful to be eating at McDonald’s on Easter Sunday.

We had been told to meet the foster father in a Winn-Dixie parking lot. I wanted to take Danielle back to her home so we could see it and maybe talk to the foster mother, to let her know how Danielle had done. But they insisted on the parking lot. Bernie parked toward the back of the lot, as we had been asked to do, and we all got out of the car to wait. Willie and Danielle pulled on the Slinky, while Bernie and I watched, and I struggled to hold back my tears. Bernie told me later that he just wanted to grab her, get in the car, and drive away as fast as he could.

A few minutes later a black car with tinted windows pulled up beside our car, and the driver’s side window eased down. “Are you the Lierows?” a man asked. “Are you Danielle’s foster father?” we responded. He said he was and got out of the car, though he left it running. He called Danielle’s name, but she did not respond. Bernie walked over, took the Slinky from Willie, and told him to tell Danielle good-bye. Willie gave her a big hug, which she allowed, although she did not reciprocate. I handed the foster father her bag and tried to tell him how well she had done last week, but he was uninterested in chatting. “My wife is holding Easter dinner, we’ve got to go,” he said, making an obvious check of his watch. Bernie and I both kneeled down in front of Danielle. We told her how much we loved having her in our house and as part of our family. We promised her that we would be back for her soon, very soon. Then we kissed her, and they were gone.

We stood in the parking lot for another five minutes, hoping that by some miracle the Mercedes would come back, the foster father would tell us it had all been a terrible mistake, and Danielle would go home with us. That didn’t happen.

The drive back was horrible. Willie played with the Peek-A-Boo toy and cried softly in the backseat before blurting out the classic children’s lament: “It’s not fair!”

No, I said, it isn’t fair. Not a bit of it. Not what her mother had done, not what the DCF had done, not what was happening today.

I couldn’t imagine the contrast between the life she was leaving behind at our house and what she was returning to—solitary confinement in a bedroom stripped of everything but a mattress and sheets. How confusing that must be to her, to be given a beautiful new life with people who loved her, only to have it snatched away.

When we got home, I went to Danielle’s room, sat on the Hello Kitty comforter, hugged Lullaby Gloworm, and wept.

It’s one thing to send your child off to college or her first apartment. It’s a hard but natural transition understood by both parties. This was nothing of the kind. What did Danielle understand? Was she wondering if she had done something wrong? It would break my heart if she thought we were rejecting her, that we didn’t want her. I hoped that somewhere deep inside she knew we were coming back, just as I believed she had somehow known we were coming for her in the first place.

Bernie came in the room, sat down on the bed, and put his arm around me. “I’ll call Garet first thing in the morning to see how soon she can come back. Now let’s get Willie and take the dogs for a walk.” I told him to go on without me. I didn’t think I could bear the questions about her from our neighbors. In such a short amount of time, she had become a member not only of our family, but of our community, and I knew everyone would be curious about how the exchange went in Tampa. Instead, I straightened up her room and put her stuffed animals and toys back in their places to wait for her, just as we would be waiting.

That night while lying in bed, I prayed to God to watch over Danielle until we could bring her home.

Chapter 16

One Step Backward

One of my first thoughts when I open my eyes every morning and reach a level of coherency is “Where are my children?” I do a quick mental check, starting with our oldest, Shawn, and ending with Willie. The morning after we took Danielle back to Tampa, she increased my list from five to six. I didn’t need to carry her for nine months, give birth to her, or share her DNA. She was our daughter, and leaving her with someone we didn’t know felt as unnatural and wrong as if one of our boys had been taken away to be raised by another family.

I nudged Bernie. “When can you call Garet?” He opened one eye to look at the clock on his nightstand. “Diane, it’s 5 a.m. I think we should wait until she gets into the office, don’t you?” When he did call Garet before he left for work, he got voice mail on her cell and office phones. “Call me as soon as you hear!” I hollered after him on his way out the door.

An hour later he called and told me that he had confirmed to Garet that we wanted to adopt Danielle—as if there was a question—but that she said she would have to get back to us on what the next steps were.

The house was so quiet, the day so long without Danielle in it. I avoided her end of the hallway and got weepy all over again when I found one of her sippy cups behind the sofa. Every time I looked at the clock, I thought about what she might be doing at that moment. Was she on the swing, at lunch, listening to a story? Was she having a tantrum? Was she laughing? Was she stealing someone’s sandwich?

I was surprised when Bernie came home for lunch, but he knew I was having a tough time being at home alone. Bernie is so sensitive to my moods and feelings, it never ceases to amaze me or make me grateful that after two strikes on both of our marital histories, we hit a home run when we found each other.

I asked if he thought it would be okay to call Danielle’s school and check in with Mr. O’Keefe or Ms. Perez to see how she was doing. He smiled and told me he had already thought of that. While I was making him a sandwich, he called. He talked to the school secretary for a few minutes, then asked for Mr. O’Keefe but got Ms. Perez, who was in the main office.

As Bernie listened to her, he began to smile. I practically had my ear against his, trying to hear what she was saying, but he pushed me away. Then he gave Ms. Perez a recap of what we had done while Danielle was with us. “Yes, we were very busy,” he laughed. “We had a ball. We’re waiting to hear back from Garet White on what the next step is and when we can pick her up again. . . . Great, that’s very nice of you. Yes, please tell Mr. O’Keefe hello and give Danielle a big hug from us. Thank you.”

“What did she say? What were you smiling at? How is Danielle?” I peppered him with questions the way Willie does to me on a particularly hyper day. Ms. Perez had already been by the classroom twice to see Danielle and talk to Mr. O’Keefe. She said that no one could believe what a good mood Danielle was in. Mr. O’Keefe told Ms. Perez that she was a different child—happy, stimulated, and actively listening. They wanted to know what we had done to her!

All that we had done was love her, hug her, pay attention to her, and include her. All that we had done was what any normal parent would have done every day of her life. If just one week could make that much difference, I said to Bernie, just think what a month or a year might bring.

Knowing Danielle was happy made me feel so much better that I was able to go into her room, straighten it up, and strip the bed to launder everything for the next time she came to stay with us.

On my way to pick up Willie from school, I went to the drugstore to get the photos from her visit. At home, Willie and I went through them, laughing at Danielle in the hot tub with her sumo wrestler bathing suit, sitting on her bed with the stuffed animals, and, especially, kissing the giant inflated Easter bunny. I suggested that Willie draw a big picture about her time with us. I wrote a short note that Mr. O’Keefe could read to her, and put the drawing and the note in an envelope with some of the photos to mail to Danielle the next day.

The happy mood was short-lived. The minute Bernie walked in the door from work, I sensed that something was terribly wrong. It was confirmed by those four awful words everyone hates to hear: “We need to talk.”

We knew that Michelle Crockett had appealed the termination of parental rights as soon as the ruling was made back in September 2006. It had been delayed and extended several times, but it was everyone’s opinion that the TPR would not be overturned, and that there was no way on God’s earth that Danielle would ever be returned to Michelle Crockett.

When we confirmed to Garet that we wanted to adopt, instead of being greeted by the DCF and the state and the legal system with support, help, and maybe even a bit of gratitude for taking one very needy child out of the system and into a family, we instead encountered yet another series of roadblocks, obstacles, and contradictions, all wrapped up tight in red tape.

It was so confusing that Bernie had taken notes, which did not necessarily clear things up because even under the best of circumstances his scribble was barely legible. This was the worst of circumstances, and it was nearly impossible to explain the inexplicable.

HKI’s policy was that if there is an appeal pending on a child, he or she cannot be placed for adoption. Danielle had been allowed to visit with us to confirm our desire to adopt her—even though the appeal was pending—but once we confirmed that yes, we did want to adopt her, then she could not be placed with us as adoptive parents. My temples were starting to throb.

She could be placed with a foster family whose intent was to adopt her, but she could not be “placed for adoption.”

Although we had jumped through every hoop, answered hundreds of questions, been investigated, screened, and interviewed, taken a ten-week series of classes, and paid a good amount of money to have a private agency do our Home Study so that we could be approved as an adoptive home, we were not set up as a foster home. That was an entirely separate license.

As long as Michelle Crockett’s appeal was still pending, the only way that Danielle could come into our home again was for us to go back to our local agency to get our foster care license. We would not have to go through all of the testing that we did to be approved as an adoptive home, but there would be lots of paperwork. And it would take time, as any encounter with a government agency does.

But the worst news was the conflict between the two counties—Lee County, where we live, and Hillsborough County, where Danielle lived and under whose jurisdiction she was. Though it seems ridiculous and counterproductive, protocol and policy vary from county to county in the same state, and Lee and Hillsborough counties were pretty far apart.

Hillsborough County would allow nonrelative placement only if we had a foster license. Lee County would allow us to go to a judge and request an emergency nonrelative placement without a foster license, but Garet told Bernie that because Danielle was in a foster home in Hillsborough County and she was being cared for and there had been no complaints filed, there was no “emergency.”

I was crying tears of frustration and practically sputtering with anger. It was so ridiculous and incomprehensible, especially when everyone kept telling us there was no way Michelle Crockett would ever get Danielle back. But she wouldn’t let Danielle go. It was as if she was lashing out to say that if she couldn’t have Danielle, she would make it as hard as possible for anyone else to have this child. If only she had fought half this hard for her daughter when she had Danielle, our little girl wouldn’t be where she was now.

I asked Bernie if he thought they were trying to get us to give up. “We’re not giving up, Diane. This is a setback, that’s all. We know she will be with us sooner or later. I hate that it looks like it will be later, but she will be back. Why don’t you call the DCF tomorrow and find out what we need to do to get our license? I’ll stay in touch with Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Perez so we can keep up with how Danielle is doing.”

Bernie was right, of course. The only thing we could do was fight for her and have faith. The fighting part was easy. Bernie and I have always been scrappy and stubborn. And we were people of strong faith, but having faith in the DCF to do the right thing was a bit of a challenge. For the first time in my life, I fully understood the term “fighting the system,” and I could see how people would just give up. But giving up was not in Bernie’s or my DNA.

The next day I called the Florida Baptist Children’s Home because it was our licensing agency and the place where we had taken our classes. I explained what we needed from Florida Baptist, and the agent took some information over the phone and said she would send me the paperwork. “How long does it typically take to get the license?” I asked. “We can’t say. We have a lot of applications, and then it has to be routed through this office. It should be faster since you already have a Home Study, but I just can’t say.”

I told her I would come down that afternoon to pick up the forms. I didn’t trust her to put them in the mail that day or even that week, and I didn’t want to waste any more time. Before I picked up Willie from school, I went to Florida Baptist and got the thick envelope.

Bernie and I filled out everything that night, and I returned the paperwork to the agency the next day, making sure that it went directly to the woman I had spoken with. I considered sending a pie or a gift card to Nordstrom’s along with it, but Bernie had given me that look when I mentioned it, so I skipped the bribes and just dropped off the papers. I hoped that the agency worker would see how desperate I was and take it upon herself to expedite our papers.

From there, I turned it over to Bernie Bulldog. If this woman thought I was a pain in the neck, wait until she started getting a call from Bernie every morning. I knew from experience that she would eventually do anything to send him away.

Either the agency worker’s hands were tied, or Bernie’s badgering didn’t bother her. The wait dragged on. Willie said a prayer for Danielle every night at bedtime, and I thought of her during the day every day. Did she think we had forgotten her? Had she forgotten us? Each time Bernie talked to Mr. O’Keefe or Ms. Perez, they asked him what was taking so long, and it was clear that they were worried, too. Mr. O’Keefe was hesitant to speak negatively or say anything that might imply that the foster home was not helping Danielle, but Ms. Perez was forthright. She told Bernie that every week that went by, Danielle was moving backward, regressing to the child she had been when she first came to Sanders. Hearing that was at once heartbreaking and infuriating.

Finally, six weeks after we applied, six weeks after Danielle had been in our home, Bernie was told by Baptist that all of the paperwork for our license had gone through all of the channels, across all of the desks, and gotten all of the bureaucratic signatures required. We were approved. Now all that we needed was the actual paper license. I again offered to pick it up, but the agency worker told us it was in the mail. Bernie called Garet to tell her, and she said she would take it from there.

Almost a week later, we still hadn’t gotten our license. At nearly ten on a Saturday night in late May, Willie was in bed, and Bernie and I were being couch potatoes watching a movie when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number and sat straight up. “Garet? What’s going on? What? Tonight? Hold on.” He held the phone to his chest and told me that Sanders Elementary had made a report the day before of suspicion of neglect due to a distinct downturn in Danielle’s personal hygiene. They said she was coming to school every day smelling strongly of urine, that her clothes were not clean, and her hair was dirty. Danielle was still in diapers, so she had to be showered at least once a day, or she would reek. The school was obligated by law to report any suspicion of neglect or abuse.

Since finding out about the report late in the afternoon the day before, Garet had been working feverishly to complete the paperwork to have Danielle removed from the home. This was taken care of, but there was nowhere to place her in Hillsborough County. Because Garet knew we had been approved for a foster license, and because this would be considered a nonrelative emergency placement, all of the bases were covered. At least, we hoped so.

Garet wanted to know if we could come that night. I pointed out that it would be nearly two in the morning before we could get there. Bernie went back to Garet on the phone. “Do you think she is in immediate danger? If we leave here first thing in the morning, we can be there by ten. Where should we meet him? Okay. Yes, we’ll call you tomorrow. Thank you, Garet.”

We might as well have left the house then, because neither of us could sleep. But I didn’t want to wake up Willie, and we needed time to take care of the dogs if we would be gone a full day. As good a sport as Dorothy was, I couldn’t disturb her in the middle of the night.

We were on the road to Tampa at seven, with Bernie driving like a bat out of hell. Willie had loaded up the backseat with a Hello Kitty pillow, Lullaby Gloworm, the pink Slinky, the Peek-A-Boo toy, and about a half-dozen stuffed animals. There was barely room for him; I didn’t know where we would put Danielle.