Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (21 page)

Chapter 20

Dani

Summer vacation was more than halfway over when Garet called with the news we had been waiting to hear: the Court of Appeals had affirmed the Termination of Parental Rights. The appellate court saw no grounds for the TPR to be overturned, and it was upheld. Finally, someone and something was making sense. Almost exactly two years to the day since Danielle was rescued from her mother’s house, she was officially and legally available for adoption.

We had hoped so much that the adoption would go through before her ninth birthday on September 21, but, ironically, there was one more thing standing in the way—the missing birth certificate.

An adoption could not be completed without one. Once again, it was Michelle Crockett acting as a human road block. She told the DCF that she had no birth certificate for Danielle, that maybe it had been lost in the fire, and she never got another one. She told the DCF she couldn’t remember exactly where in Nevada Danielle had been born, maybe Las Vegas. Bernie and I were sure she was lying. Even if she couldn’t remember the name of the hospital, she could surely remember the town, especially if it was Las Vegas, as she had previously said many times. But she played ignorant, and the DCF was forced to send out dozens of birth certificate requests to Nevada.

Another month—and Danielle’s ninth birthday—passed, and our frustration mounted again. Every time I got a note from school or something in the mail referencing Danielle Crockett, I became irritated. She was Crockett in name only; in every other way, she was a Lierow. We knew that in our hearts. We saw it in her every day as she eased into our family and was becoming the person she had never had the freedom or security to be.

Danielle playing with the Easy Bake oven that she got for her birthday.

 

Finally, in mid-October, Garet received the birth certificate for Danielle Ann Crockett and faxed us a copy. As it turned out, Danielle had been born at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, at 5:27 p.m. on September 21, 1998. The attending physician was Dr. Richard Litt; the mother, Michelle Sara Crockett. The space for the father’s name was blank.

Garet told us that a court date for the adoption hearing had been set for October 29, a Monday, and asked whether that was okay with us. If the hearing had been set for Christmas Day, it would have been okay for us, but as it turned out, there was no school that day so we would all be able to go. The hearing would take place in Tampa, because that was where Danielle had been taken into custody. All that we had to do was show up.

I wanted to make a good impression on the judge, so we all dressed in our Sunday clothes. It was hard for me to let go of that flutter of nerves knowing that at any moment Danielle could be taken from us or someone might change his or her mind, and we’d be back in limbo again or worse.

We were set to appear at 2:45 p.m. before Judge Katherine Essrig in the George R. Edgecomb Courthouse. Garet said she would meet us in the building’s lobby and suggested we get there about thirty minutes early.

We were all so glad to see Garet, who had been in the hospital for brain surgery between the time we last saw her and that day. I told Bernie it was probably his fault, as much as he had called her during the last year, and I was only half-kidding. Garet was not required to be at the hearing, but as close as we had all become, as much as she had advocated for Danielle, and as personal as this case was for her, she said she wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Garet had brought Danielle a little goodie bag with crayons, coloring books, and little things to occupy her in the very small room where we had to wait, and it worked for a while. But when Danielle got up from the cushioned chair she had been sitting in, she had wet through her pull-ups. I took her to the restroom to put on another pair of pull-ups and dry her clothes as best I could with paper towels and the hand-blower on the wall. I was relieved no one else came in while we were there, and hoped that this one would last at least through the court proceedings.

Danielle with Garet White.

 

When we got back, Willie was nearly bouncing off the walls from the two cans of soda he had consumed while we were waiting, Danielle was edging toward a hissy fit, Bernie was cranky because he was hungry, and I had a raging headache and terrible cramps. Not exactly the happy, feel-good moment I had dreamed about.

Mercifully, the lawyer assigned to our case found us, introduced herself, and led us to the courtroom. Despite my best intentions that morning, I’m sure we looked like a motley crew.

We stood before the judge, and she announced that all of the papers were in order and asked us if we wanted to be the parents of Danielle Ann Crockett. We said yes. Then, in most cases, the judge asks the child, “Do you want Diane and Bernie Lierow to be your parents?” It’s kind of like that moment in a wedding ceremony when the preacher says, “If anyone has just cause for this ceremony not to take place, speak now or forever hold your peace.” I can’t imagine that anyone has ever taken a preacher up on that invitation, although I briefly wondered whether a child about to be adopted had ever had a last-minute change of mind and said, “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t want these people to be my parents.”

Danielle couldn’t speak for herself, so Garet spoke for her. “Yes, the Lierows are wonderful people. They have bonded with Danielle since the moment they met. We want very much for them to be her parents.”

The judge then said, “I’m granting the adoption. Danielle Ann Lierow is now your daughter.” There was probably a lot more legal language than that, but “Danielle Ann Lierow is now your daughter” was the only sentence Bernie and I heard. The words we had been waiting for almost since the first day we met Danielle.

After all that we had been through, after all that Danielle had been through, it took all of five minutes for Danielle Ann Crockett to become Danielle Ann Lierow. When we left the courtroom, we took photos with Garet and with complete strangers who had heard about the case and wanted their pictures made with our family. It was a little bit weird to be treated as if we were celebrities just because we did something we were called to do.

As soon as we got the Final Judgment of Adoption signed by the judge and sealed by the State of Florida, we were done. They would send a copy to Nevada to have a new birth certificate issued, and it would be mailed to our house. We would not have to go back to court. We walked with Garet to the garage, hugged one another all around, and got in the car. We just wanted to be out of there and to put Tampa in our rearview mirror, hopefully for good.

After we stopped and ate at the Venice McDonald’s, Danielle and Willie both fell asleep in the backseat, slumped toward the middle, their heads resting on the pile of stuffed animals we kept in the car for Danielle. Back on Tarpon Road, we carried the kids into the house, sent Willie to brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, and took Danielle to change her diaper and put her nightgown on. I didn’t have the energy to pull out the trundle, so Bernie just laid Danielle on the upper mattress and covered her with the Hello Kitty comforter. He turned out the light, switched on the nightlight, kissed the top of Danielle’s head, and pulled the door partly shut.

We crawled into bed, utterly exhausted from the ordeal of that long day. Bernie asked me how I felt. “I have a pounding headache and brutal cramps. You?” He laughed. “I meant do you feel any different?” “No, not really. You?” “Nope.”

When I went to Danielle’s bedroom to wake her the next morning, I was relieved to see that she had not rocked herself off and fallen to the floor but was still on the bed. Other than that, the first morning that Danielle woke up as a Lierow was just like every other day—she got out of the pull-up, sat on the toilet, ate, dressed, threw a tantrum while her hair was brushed, got in the car, and went to school.

After school and a snack, Willie always did his homework in the kitchen so I could make sure he stayed focused and could give him help if he needed it. Danielle didn’t have “homework” like Willie’s, but if I knew she was working on the letter
c
or the number 3, we did activities to reinforce her lessons. Cup, cookie, cracker. One cup, two cookies, three crackers. Pretty rudimentary stuff, and how responsive she was depended on her mood or the carrot I dangled in front of her. “Danielle, if you show me two cookies, you can eat one cookie. “Willie reached out his hand to grab the other cookie.

“William Christian Lierow, you’ve already had your cookie allotment. You don’t need any more sugar. Now put that cookie back, and put your eyes back on that spelling list. Your sister doesn’t need your help right now.”

“Mom, why do you call me by my full name when you’re mad at me?”

“Because it gets your attention. You know I mean business when I say, ‘William Christian Lierow,’ right?”

“I guess. How long have you and Dad been calling me Willie?”

“Pretty much since you were born. Your given name is William, but when you were a baby, you looked like a Willie. We could have called you Bill or Billy, but you’ve always been a Willie. Your dad’s given name in Bernd, which is the German form of Bernard. But he’s always been Bernie.”

“What is your full name?”

“Diane Lee Lierow. My maiden name was Spenser, so when Grandma wanted to get my attention, she would say, ‘Diane Lee Spenser!’ And I knew to snap to.”

“What is Danielle’s full name?”

“Danielle Ann Lierow.”

“Why doesn’t she have a shorter name?” Willie was on one of his question binges and was looking for any reason not to do his spelling, but it was an interesting train of thought. Danielle was eyeing the second cookie, trying to figure out if she could get it without my noticing. Fat chance of that. I am the queen of 360-degree vision.

“I mean, if her given name is Danielle and you always call her Danielle, how will she know when you mean business?”

I had to admit, he had a point. I hadn’t really thought about it. As much as Bernie and I would have liked to wipe the slate clean, erase every single thing from her life with Michelle Crockett, we just couldn’t change her name. She didn’t know her father, she didn’t know where she was born, she probably had never really known where she lived because she had been kept in one room all her life, but she did know her name. Still, a revision might not be a bad thing. It could be something we gave her. If Bernie and I were giving her “Lierow,” maybe this could be Willie’s contribution to her becoming a fully invested member of our patchwork family.

“Well, what would you suggest, William Christian Lierow?” He looked at me warily, not sure if I was getting annoyed at him or kidding with him. I smiled and waited. I could almost see the little wheels in his head turning.

“Does Danny sound too much like a boy’s name?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Danny is a boy’s name, but Danielle is the feminine version of Daniel, so I guess it’s one of those names that can go both ways. Like Samuel and Samantha can be Sam or Sammy. Or Jack and Jacqueline; she can be Jack or Jackie. So I guess Danielle could be a Danny. How would you spell it?”