Finding Katie: The Diary of Anonymous, a Teenager in Foster Care

by Beatrice Sparks

  Thursday, February 16

  Today Miss McNamarra asked me to stay after school for a few minutes. I said I would but I’m not looking forward to Mrs. Williams handing down extra chores for coming home late. Nor am I looking forward to walking…maybe running…the three miles home if I miss my bus. That sounds mean and self-centered and childish! Actually, Mrs. Williams isn’t mean. I think maybe we foster kids are taking our pain out on her and her husband just because we miss Bob and Marie Goster so much!

  I’m so ashamed! We all should sit down with the Williamses and apologize for being so self-centered; then maybe we can have a great relationship with them, too.

  By the time school was out I’d chewed my fingernails on my right hand down to the skin, in fact on my pinky finger a little blood was oozing through some cracked skin. Miss McNamarra saw it and immediately got me a Band-aid. Then she told me she had been deeply worried about me for the past few weeks since the Gosters left, and she wondered if there was something she could do to help.

  She put her arm around me and I felt like summer and sunshine and lilacs and love had come back into my life. Next to Marie and Bob, I loved Miss McNamarra most of all. She treated me like I was “almost a somebody” and trusted me to prepare and pass papers and run errands for her. She also had me help kids who were having trouble with their schoolwork.

  When she told me I was her favorite student, I fell completely apart. I hadn’t had anyone tell me I was their favorite anything in so long that I could hardly believe it.

  Tears fell and I blew my nose and sniffed and gagged and choked and started chewing on the fingernails again.

  Miss McNamarra put my hands in hers and told me she was going to drive me home. On the way we could talk about what was hurting me inside. She said she could feel my pain. It seemed so dark and dangerous that she knew I needed help and felt that she, maybe, was the one who could find help for me.

  My heart started cautiously singing, as she parked under a big shade tree by Miller’s Stream. “Feel like talking?” she asked quietly.

  I didn’t think I wanted to, or dared to, but before I knew it I was telling Miss McNamarra about Daddy beating Mama. I didn’t want to tell her but the words sloshed out and her tears joined mine as I went through the rest of my sordid life. Especially the Hollywood Hades, and the Los Angeles Skid Row nightmare. Those ever-lasting experiences will, every minute of every day for the rest of my life, be with me, part of me, making me, in all ways, unworthy to ever even touch another person. They were so dreadful, filthy, evil, diabolic and satanic, that I will never feel clean again for the rest of my life.

  Miss McNamarra hugged me so tightly I thought something would break, but it felt good too and maybe she was squashing some of the ugliness and filth out! At least I hoped so!

  Suddenly we were both crying like broken faucets. Miss McNamarra’s voice was so waterlogged that I could hardly understand her. She was trying to tell me that, sad and dehumanizing as it was, there were thousands, probably millions of innocent children who were being so abominably and detestably used.

  I felt like she had been one of us! She didn’t say so in words, but the way she shivered and the way her voice broke without her actually mentioning a single detail almost assured me she was.

  On the rest of the ride to the Williamses, Miss McNamarra told me that it was good to vent and she promised that she would find some help for me. When she said that, I broke down again and told her how I’d said I was fourteen, when I first went to the Salvation Army, because I thought if they knew I had just turned sixteen, they might think I was old enough to be on the streets by myself. Then I told her how I’d hated, detested, abhorred myself for being such a stupid liar.

  She giggled a little at that and told me that she had, right away, known that I was bright…no, brilliant, and that she had admired me, I can’t even remember all the wondrous things she poured out upon me. Then she looked me straight in the eyes and said that God could forgive me for the lie…but for those who had abused me…she shook her head mournfully.

  We stopped to get ice cream before Miss McNamarra took me to the Williamses. She said we were both so messed up and tear-streaked that we’d scare all the kids in the house if we didn’t get straightened out before we got there.

  Mrs. Williams was nice as pie to Miss McNamarra. She even thanked her for letting me be her aide. She also told Miss McNamarra how much she loved us kids and how they hoped to soon be using the rules Bob and Marie used. Does she really mean that?

  Friday, February 17

  Today Miss McNamarra and I went for a little walk during lunch period. She told me about the good in the Williamses. She said they worked in a different kind of way than the Gosters, but in a way that made them one of the most respected foster homes in the group.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Robots usually make good slaves.”

  Miss McNamarra laughed and said that while I might not like the strictness I would, later on in my life, respect the discipline, which most kids in foster care desperately needed.

  Before I could say, “Not me,” she said it for me and we giggled like Jennifer and I used to! It made me feel better than I had in a long time.

  Friday, March 3

  Two weeks have passed and I am almost eighteen, pretending to be almost fifteen. I’m small-boned and thin so no one has called me on it but…I hate lying…I hate pretending…I hate having Miss McNamarra knowing that I’m every minute of every day living a lie. I hate being in the ninth grade, when I should be in the eleventh grade. I hate having to be doing material two grades below where I should be. I hate everything! Nobody relates to me anymore, nor I to them!

  Miss McNamarra had promised me, well…maybe not promised me…but told me that she was almost sure she could find a place where I would belong. I guess she forgot about it…and me!

  All I can do is cry and cry and cry…and want to die! Die! Die!

  Why not? What is left for me? My life is no life! My dad is the evilest of child molesters. My mother is a drug addict.

  Jennifer, Donita, Lacy, and every other creep I’ve tried to help have abandoned me, even Miss “ho” McNamarra and stuck-up Joanne!

  I wish I had enough money to become an addict like my mother. She was always in a soft white floating cloud of drugs or alcohol. But no! No! No! I don’t!

  2:30 A.M.

  I just woke out of a horrendous nightmare of people hating me and picking on me, putting me back into a vile trailer family.

  Life isn’t worth the air it takes to breathe!

  We’re not even human beings here. We’re zombies, with no minds of our own.

  I’m getting out of here!

  Tomorrow night I’m going to sneak out and go on the streets. Anything is better than this!

  I know Jackie Cramer is a pusher at school and on the street. I’ll hook up with him. He’s cute and he’s smart and his dad is a doctor at the hospital. That will make me a somebody, a bad somebody…but that’s better than being a nobody nothing!

  I know I’ll have to “give something” to “get something.” But after a while I’ll have my own little ring, and who cares what I do with my hopeless, sordid, worthless life? What life?

  Wednesday, March 8

  I’ve been looking for Jackie Cramer for two days but I can’t find him. Everything in the universe is against me.

  Miss McNamarra has been trying to cozy up to me, but anything she’s got I don’t want! She’s hurt me too much in the past, by making me feel…maybe…then dropping me…like I was about as important as dog poo.

  I still do her idiotic little passing out junk and picking up stuff and running errands to the supply office, etc. But not for much longer!

  Friday, March 10

  Today Miss McNamarra asked me to come back to her room after my last class. That filled me with so much anger and pain and hate, and everything else bad, that by the time I got to her room I was about to detonate.

  She was kind of laughing an
d crying at the same time. That made me want to reach out and hit her, until she handed me a letter from a Mrs. Mary Matthews, who lived in Westwood, really close to UCLA. She was a professor at UCLA and she wanted to meet me! Me? Why?

  Miss McNamarra is going to take me there tomorrow but she doesn’t want to give me a lot of details. It’s almost like it’s a birthday secret or something.

  I must not get my hopes up too high, though. Please, please God, let it be something at least a little bit nice.

  I am so regretful and feel wretched about my feelings for Miss McNamarra the last few days. How could I ever have thought such vile, evil things about her? Probably because I was trying to dump my insecurities and aloneness and excruciating torment off myself and onto her.

  Saturday, March 11

  1:33 A.M.

  I woke up like someone had hit me on the head with a hammer. What if Mrs. Williams wouldn’t let me go spend the day with Miss McNamarra and Mrs. Mary Matthews?

  Her name put a warm, protective glow around my body. I had to meet her!

  Would she be like dear, sweet, Sister Mary at the Catholic girls’ school? My whole body pulsed with the warm, protective love that had been showered upon us there.

  4:20 A.M.

  For the past few hours, I’ve been kneeling beside my bed, asking for forgiveness regarding the terrible things I have been thinking for a pretty long time now. I am so ashamed! Can I ever be forgiven?

  5:15 A.M.

  I woke up still kneeling at the side of my bed…but…I wasn’t feeling angry or hateful or hurtful to anyone, or anything, in God’s whole universe. Love and appreciation seemed to be wrapping me gently toward them. I wanted it to be a forever and ever and ever feeling!

  6:00 A.M.

  Mrs. Williams woke me up early so that I could get my Saturday chores done before Miss McNamarra picked me up at 7:30 A.M. My heart was beating like a drum in a parade. Mrs. Williams hadn’t even mentioned why I was going. Maybe she really didn’t care.

  Saturday night

  I can’t believe I’m not dreaming! Miss McNamarra picked me up and we had breakfast at Uncle John’s Pancake House. We laughed and teased, and I begged for some little hint about what was going to happen, but Miss McNamarra just pretended she was zipping up her mouth and we went on to something else nice. It was a beautiful day! Even the smog seemed beautiful!

  When we drove down Wilshire Boulevard, just a dozen or so blocks south of my old house, I cried a few tears. Miss McNamarra told me that was all right and in a few minutes I was again bubbling inside.

  When Mary Matthews met us at her door I almost fell down. She looked so much like I had hoped she would look. And when she took both of my dry dish-pan hands and held them in her soft fragrant ones, I wanted to pull away I was so embarrassed.

  We went out into her lovely little garden behind her lovely little house and talked for a long time about UCLA, and then she told me her life story: how her mother and father had been killed in an automobile accident when she was eight and how she had been raised by her father’s mother in Venice. They were very poor and had lived in a dangerous neighborhood. Never before she was fourteen had she been allowed to go out after it got dark.

  After her grandma Zelkaleke, died she was placed in a group home for girls, where she was considered the house nerd because books were her only friends. She was picked on constantly, and what little confidence she ever had soon faded away.

  When she was seventeen, she met Robert Lynn Matthews in a history class, and when she was eighteen and a half, she married him. They were enchanted by books and history and music and every other educational thing. Eventually they both became happy, excited Ph.D.s. But…they were never been able to have children.

  About a year ago Robert died of heart failure. Mary felt her life had gone with him until she met Miss McNamarra who said Mary needed me as much as I needed her and that we were so much alike in our desire to help others that we would be exactly like mother and daughter.

  I broke down in tears when I heard that, and when Mary asked me if I would like to be her daughter, my heart leaped around in my breast like a wild thing.

  I’ll still be living with Mr. and Mrs. Williams for the next few weeks, until all the papers are signed and stuff. Until then I will try to undo some of the selfish, mean thoughts I’ve had about the Williamses, especially Mrs. Williams! I’m sorry to the deepest part of me that I allowed myself to think she was like an army major, cracking the whip at us at every chance. That isn’t how it was at all. She was just trying to help us, teach us discipline and respect for things and people. Maybe she was a little extreme, but she meant well, and our house is the highest-rated house in the group. I am so, so, so sorry I was so negative!

  Sacred Sunday, April 9

  I am living with my dear mother Mary now, and my cup runneth over. Mom took me to see Sister Mary at my old Catholic school, and my cup ran over again. I am blessed!

  Mom tutors me every night so I can catch up and climb higher on my educational mountain. Soon I’ll be going back into the class I belong in. I didn’t realize until now how humiliating and self-confidence-depleting it was being with kids almost three years younger than I!

  Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Mother Mary of Jesus! I promise I will never again in my life let any of you down…. Well, I’ll try my best not to. And I am going to live the rest of my life helping others: teaching or counseling or working with “throw-away kids” who hopefully will wind up as lucky and blessed as I am.

  I HAVE FOUND MYSELF!

  I AM

  KATHRYN MATTHEWS

  DAUGHTER OF ROBERT LYNN AND

  MARY MATTHEWS.

  I’m hoping someday Mom will help me find Lacy and Donita. Also I want to have a long, long talk with Sister Mary and ask her if God can forgive me and make me completely clean and worthy again. I feel guilty not wanting to talk to a priest…but since the Daddy thing…no way! At least not for now!

  Wednesday, April 12

  Mom is on a number of important boards and she just called and said that when she talked about how many throw-away kids there were in the system, including the foster homes, the other members were dumb-founded. All of them, without exception, wanted to do some work in that area. I’m sure Miss McNamarra told Mom much more than I would have liked…but maybe not…because she certainly couldn’t have gotten much out of me.

  My heart is beating so fast it’s almost trying to jump out of my body. Could it possibly be that every throw-away kid in the system could be as lucky as I?

  Tears are thundering down my face because I know that is not possible. But I can pray for it!

  Dearest Mom knows some people in high political offices, and she and I are going to work together regarding throw-away kids in foster homes. I can’t believe that I am somebody who can make a difference! But I am! I am somebody! For eternity!

  Statistics

  Not all foster homes are bad, but enough of them are that they should be carefully monitored.

  Half a million children live in foster homes in the United States.

  Thousands of children around the world are sold as sex slaves.

  Source

  Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Crime Information Center.

  The FBI estimates that 85–90% of missing persons are juveniles. Thus, children are involved in approximately 750,000 cases (2,100 per day).

  “Endangered”—120.726 cases.

  Throw-aways

  Broad Scope Throw-aways: 127,100 children

  the child was told to leave the household

  the child was away from home and a parent/guardian refused to allow the child back

  the child ran away but the parent/guardian made no effort to recover the child or did not care whether or not the child returned

  the child was abandoned or deserted

  Nonfamily Abductions

  Children aged four to eleven experienced most of the attempts. Most involved attempts to lure ch
ildren into cars rather than attempts to take or detain. Almost half of the victims were children age twelve and older. Seventy-four percent were girls. Sixty-two percent of the perpetrators were strangers and nineteen percent were acquaintances. Most were removed from the street (fifty-two percent) and taken to a vehicle. Force was used against eighty-seven percent of the victims; it involved a weapon in seventy-five percent of the cases. Ransom was requested in eight percent of the cases.

  HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE SEXUALLY APPROACHED AND/OR SOLICITED ONLINE?

  According to highlights of the Youth Internet Safety Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice “one in five children (ages ten to seventeen) receive unwanted sexual solicitations online.” So be careful!

  Questions, Answers, and Crisis Lines

  Once while talking to a large group of young people about the book I was working on, I sensed trepidation in some of them. It made shivers go up and down my spine, and I gently suggested that they might want to write to me regarding situations they know about or predicaments that have come their way. I was totally amazed, totally depressed, and totally angered by the number of heartbroken letters I received! How can kids at any age be treated so shamefully? Twenty young people wrote about being beaten often!