God Must Have Forgotten About Me

by Jason Lee

  When I first got there, I was a little fucking terror. One summer afternoon I was in the backyard, and I noticed that they had a big fire extinguisher hanging up by the back porch. I snatched it, sprayed it everywhere, and yelled, “Fire!” Thick white smoke took over the backyard. Mrs. Easter thought that I had lit the house on fire, so she screamed and ran to get her husband. It was a prank. I ended up getting a whooping by Pam, one of Mr. and Mrs. Easter’s daughters, and I immediately hated Pam because she brought back all the feelings and reminders of abuse I’d experienced before. Eventually, I worked through them, but I was done with Pam for a long time. She had physically disciplined me, and she knew she wasn't supposed to.

  The Easters introduced me to Christianity and becoming a Pentecostal. My mother was Catholic, and she used to take me to Mass for Ash Wednesday and all that kind of stuff, but I didn't really identify with that. I mean, I went because she wanted me to go to church, but it wasn’t something that I actually connected with. When I was with the Easters, we were in church all the time—like literally every single day: choir practice, usher board meeting, fucking Sunday school, Bible study, prayer, and whatever other random services and revivals that popped up. As much as I complained, I appreciated it because I was learning about the Bible. I was learning the books of the Bible, and more about God. That's when I first started to develop my faith.

  I never had a father figure, but Pastor Easter stepped in not only as a natural father but also as a spiritual father. I was struggling with the relationship with my mom, I had lost the relationship with my sister, and I had no relationship with my dad, but Pastor Easter taught me the importance of having a relationship with God. The way he talked about God was hard for me to understand because I didn't believe God would allow all these negative things to happen to a kid. I thought God must have forgotten about me. Pastor Easter reassured me that God had not forgotten and that it would be only a matter of time before I saw God’s hand in my life even through my tribulations.

  Above all, Pastor Easter was very positive, very active, and very present. I was able to see how, not only his wife honored him, but also how his kids honored him. At first, I was confused because I didn't understand why they would esteem him so highly. My father was the complete opposite of Pastor Easter. While my father acted like I didn’t exist most of the time, Pastor Easter was very caring. He provided for the family. He was that guy who worked and brought home the money.

  Mrs. Elnora Easter was just as wonderful. She was loving, caring, positive, and always praying with or for others. The first time I had ever eaten soul food was with the Easters, and I fell in love with her peach cobbler from then on. One time, I just mentioned in passing how much I was craving peach cobbler, and the next thing I knew, she was gathering ingredients and rolling out dough. Slowly, the scent of cinnamon, brown sugar, and vanilla began to saturate the house.

  “What are you doing?” I questioned her. I just knew she didn’t stop what she was doing just to bake a cobbler for me.

  “What do you think?” she smiled. “We have not because we ask not. You asked, baby.”

  I had never known anyone to regard me in that way, but that’s who she was. She was thoughtful and attentive. She wasn’t just a Christian in word, she lived it every day. She was that kind of person.

  I also appreciated Mrs. Easter because I could always talk to her about my mom. She was very motherly, but she never tried to replace my mother. Even when I told her the most abhorrent things about my mom, she always encouraged me to be positive and to pray for my mother. She never disrespected my mom or judged her for the decisions she had made; she tried to help me understand, the best she could, what my mother was going through. It’s because of Mrs. Easter that I even tried to have a relationship with my mom despite all she had done. I clung to Mrs. Easter’s advice to always honor her and to forgive her—but later in life, that became increasingly harder to do.

  ***

  I loved the Easters. They really instilled faith in God and discipline. They gave me hope that things could get better. They were a lovely couple, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t completely be happy there. I still felt the sting of rejection, and, as crazy as it sounds, I missed my mother. I felt like my place was with her, and despite all the love and care I received from the Easters, I needed to get back to where I belonged. As I started getting closer to them, I started feeling like my relationship with my mom was fading.

  My solution was to find my mom. Every time I went somewhere, I was always trying to run away to get back to her. One time, I was supposed to go to church, but I didn't want to go. I swear, the only form of abuse I experienced with the Easters was being forced to attend all the church services they had. I needed a break. I ended up staying home, and they locked me in the house. I broke out and snuck out to go meet with my mom. When I came to her motel, she was shooting up heroin. I had convinced a buddy to come with me to find my mother, and when I found her, she didn’t even try to hide what she was doing. She shot up right in front of me and my friend.

  “Mom! Why are you doing that?” I cried. She had a glazed-over look in her eyes like she didn’t even know I was there. Maybe she thought that I was just a hallucination. She didn’t seem happy to see me and she didn’t ask anything about my new family. I became angry at her for her disregard. “Look at you! Stop! I pray for you, Mrs. Easter prays for you, and you don’t even care!” Still, nothing.

  She ended up passing out with the needle in her arm. I just sat on the edge of the bed crying. I didn’t want to leave her like that, but I didn’t want to stay because I didn’t know if she was expecting someone who wouldn’t be too happy to see me there. I knew how much trouble I would be in for running away, and so, I resolved to stay until she woke up.

  “Jason, what are you doing here?” she shrieked.

  “Mom, I just want to be with you!” I answered. “I’ll stay and help you get better. Mrs. Easter said that God is working on you.”

  In a real gargly raspy voice she said, “What the fuck does Mrs. Easter know about what God is doing to me?”

  I was speechless. I thought that all my praying was working, but it wasn’t.

  “I’m going to call Mary Grahams and get you and your friend back to where you came from.”

  “No!” I sobbed. “I’m your son; you’re supposed to take care of me!”

  She and my friend both looked at me like I had a finger growing out of my ear.

  “I can’t take care of you,” she proclaimed. As she said, she called the people at Mary Graham’s to pick us up. They came and took us back. I didn't understand. I was so confused about that. Why didn’t she want me?

  I didn’t realize that my mother knew I was with the Easters and that she was actually communicating with them to make sure that I had a safe place to live. She hadn’t completely abandoned me; I guess she was still looking out for me.

  ***

  I had done some other mischievous things while I was with the Easters, but after I had run away, that was the final straw. As much as they loved and cared about me, they realized that I was troubled and would probably fare better in an environment that had the tools to help me manage my issues. I had been with the Easters for about a year and a half before I was sent to a new facility.

  I never kept in touch with anybody from the Mary Graham Children's Shelter or the Chapmans, but I always kept in touch with the Easters. I would still go to their church. Their church was where I was baptized. Their church is where I was saved. Their church is where I was in the choir, and where my friends were. That church was important to me, so I'd always keep going. Even when I went back home with my family and with my mom, I'd still go back to that church. They were still a part of my family. They went out of their way to make me feel loved, and I hadn't felt that in a while. As much as I enjoyed my time with the Easters, I was still very numb about leaving them. I was groomed to pick up the pieces and keep it moving, not to sit and sulk. I missed them, and, of course, I
missed the situation, but I didn't believe that life went in reverse, so I wasn’t going back.

  ***

  I was on the move again, and this time I was sent to a group home called The Children's Home of Stockton. It was like Mary Graham's Children's Shelter but smaller—probably like eight guys on the unit. At Mary Graham’s, we went to school on site, but here we also had the option to go to public school. We had more activities here, and we had chores. We would help cook dinner, and we had counseling.

  School at the Children’s Home was ok. The kids weren't really bad, and we actually had a decent curriculum. There was a lot of focus on arts and technology, and they allowed us to explore our own interests and passions. The class size was small enough so that nobody got left behind. Now that I think about it, it probably was the best educational opportunity I had.

  School was tame, but it was the house that was crazy. Fights would break out all the time, and I could feel my soul grow dimmer by the day. I didn’t belong there. All I wanted to do was go back home.

  ***

  I was pissed at the system. They kept moving me around, and everybody expected me to be perfect when I wasn't. They expected me to behave like a normal kid and they had the nerve to be fucking surprised when I would lash out. I was a kid who ran the streets at seven years old. Instead of talking to family members and mentors, I kicked it with drug dealers. I’d seen people get murdered, and my mother was strung out on drugs and prostituting to make ends meet. I grew up really fast. I was used to coming home at like 9:00 pm. No other seven-year-olds were doing that, and there was no goddamn reason why they should have been. On top of it all, I was a child who experienced sexual trauma. Shit, how was I supposed to act?

  To me, I was grown before I left my mom, and I was grown afterward. I was going into foster care and all these group homes, and I had people constantly telling me what to do. I didn't understand having to go to bed at like 7:00 or 8:00. What are you talking about? When I came to the Children’s Home, that's when I really started losing faith in “the system” because it felt like a system. You act out here, you're going to get kicked out. You can push boundaries at certain levels, and they can't hit you. If you get somewhere you don't like, you can run away. I was institutionalized, and I lost a sense of what family was. No one in my family tried to find me, and no one came to rescue me like I had hoped. I didn't remember much about my dad; he wasn’t around at all during this period of my life. He never came to see me when I was in foster care, even though we were all in the same city.

  ***

  My mom eventually came to see me. She brought Tamica to the children’s home where I was staying at the time. We had a good meeting, and she said she was doing better.

  “Can I leave?” I looked at her square on and tried not to let my desperation to come home overwhelm me during the visit.

  My mom’s eyes shifted, and she said, “No.”

  “Why?” I felt like I was at my wit’s end, and that I couldn’t hold on any longer.

  She told me, "Because I'm not all the way better."

  I took a deep breath and let her have it:

  “Well, I’m confused about how a mother isn't ready to take care of her own fucking kid. At this point, you're already three years in. Why you ain't better after three years? It's a long time. Why you ain't better at this point?”

  She dropped her head and nearly whispered, “I'm doing the best that I can.”

  That conversation was pivotal. I really got angry with her because I didn't understand how a mother could tell her child, “I love this drug, and I’m choosing this lifestyle over you.” At least that’s how I interpreted it. “I'm doing the best that I can,” wasn't enough. Her best was shitty. I thought that was a cop-out. It wasn't until years later that I understood what she was really saying: this was all that she could do. This was her best. But as a ten-year-old boy, I couldn’t understand that, nor did I have the ability to empathize with her addiction. I had animosity toward her because I was hurt. I went from really loving her and valuing her to wanting to completely destroy her emotionally. I was very mean to her, and I really was looking for retribution. She had gone from being my hero, the one who did everything she could to love and nurture me, to being the main villain in my life. She showed me how it felt to be forgotten and abandoned. She taught me hate and hostility.

  Every visitation became repetitive. I knew what was going to happen. She was going to come, she was going to bring me McDonald's, we were going to have a good conversation, and then she was going to leave me there because she wasn’t ready. That happened for a long time. I tore into smaller shreds each time she left. At least she came to visit. She did show up. I’ll give her that credit.

  3 Readjusting

  When I left foster care, I was 14 years old. Living with my mother was the only option I had, so there I was, heading back to the person who had shown me that she had no problem choosing everything else but me.

  The day of my release, my social worker dropped me off at a big beautiful house on Acacia Street. My mother had moved in with a guy named John, an old Chinese man. He had Samurai swords and nice antiques on display from China. Walking around his house was almost like being in a museum; it was clean and it looked like no one really lived in it.

  My mom and I both had our own rooms; mine was in the attic that he used as a library. I don't know the extent of John and my mom’s relationship, and I didn’t ask. I did notice that she was not the same as she was before I went to foster care. I could tell that she had been through a lot and that life had worn her out. Still, I offered her no warmth and no place in my heart. I didn’t know if she desired that from me, but I didn’t care if she did. I became very callous toward my mother and was very difficult to deal with.

  I was in the streets all the time. One of the biggest points of contention between my mother and me was that she wanted me home, but I wanted to be everywhere else but home. I no longer desired her love or her acceptance, and I resented her for giving me away. When she would ask my whereabouts and try to keep tabs on me, I didn’t take her seriously. Did she forget that when I was younger, she left me in the streets? That's what I knew. I went from extreme freedom to an extreme lack of privacy and control, and now I was back home. I wanted my freedom back.

  “You ain’t nothing but a fucking nigger!” she would yell out to me sometimes. “You’re just like your piece of shit father!”

  My mom would cuss me out all the time for disregarding her rules and being so disrespectful to her. I didn’t care though. I still did me. I would go back and forth with her until I would expel all my energy and leave. I later learned that my mom suffered from bipolar disorder on top of her drug addiction, but back then, I didn't understand all of that. I just thought she was fucking nuts.

  ***

  I didn't really get bullied until I came back from the group homes and I reentered the community. In eighth grade, I was getting bullied by everybody, and I really didn't know how to deal with people in the public like that. I had been going to a predominantly white school in Oakdale, and I had never been in a school with predominantly Black or Mexican kids. I struggled with public school. I didn't want to be around people, and I especially hated being around groups of people doing the same shit. I didn’t know how to adjust to being in a public school setting because I was so used to the smaller class sizes and private school feeling I experienced while being in the system. I had to adjust to being around all these fucking kids who had their own issues and their own personalities. Shit was crazy, and it was overwhelming. There was a lot of tension between everybody for whatever reason, but I got a lot of hate early on. I think it was because my mom didn't really have a lot of money, so I didn't have all the coolest clothes.

  I felt like I was cute. I had what was considered “good hair” and all that. I was popular for the most part for that, but when it came to how I dressed or the fact that we were poor, I was bullied. MC Hammer was hot back then, and it seemed like everybody in sc
hool was wearing the same parachute pants that Hammer had on. He was from the Bay and I was from Stockton, so I appreciated him as an artist. Somehow, I convinced my mom to buy me a few pairs of pants, and I came home so excited to wear them to school the next day.

  When I walked into my first class, I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting.

  “Aye, nigga, what the fuck you got on!” someone yelled out. And then it was followed by an eruption of laughter from the rest of my classmates. I didn’t get it; everybody wore these. Why was it such a thing when I had them on? I was taunted throughout the day about my pants, so I resolved that I would go home and burn them all.

  The athletes would also pick on me because I was in music class. Music was something that I enjoyed, but because I wasn't playing football or any other sports, I guess they thought I was soft.

  “I bet this nigga can’t even fight,” I heard one of the boys on the football team say to me while I was putting my things in my locker. I stared at him, but I wasn’t in the mood for anybody to be fucking with me.

  “Hell naw,” another one responded. “The nigga just gone put them pants back on and dance!”

  They both broke out in a robust laugh, and I slammed my locker and headed back to class. I thought this would be enough for them to leave me alone, but they were following me still laughing and joking.

  “Leave me alone,” I warned.

  “Leave me alone!” one of the boys attempted to mimic me. I felt the anger began to brew, and I remembered those times in Mary Grahams when I would have to bust a nigga in his mouth so they knew I wasn’t a punk. I knew what time it was. While he was in mid-giggle, I turned around and punched him in the nose. I was getting ready to handle the other boy, but his eyes widened and he ran to get a teacher. Cool, I thought. Now I ain’t gotta fight both of them. We were exchanging blows back and forth until I felt someone grab me and push me against the wall.