My Mom walked into our room. She was white, but triumphant. “Pack your bags!” She crowed, “You’re going to foster care!”

I pulled a suitcase out while Xander sat on my bed, staring at her, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Why?” He asked, then followed her into her room, begging her to change her mind.

Earlier, Xander and I had argued, then we had failed to clean something. My Mother had proclaimed the usual statement of “You’re killing me!” and had bolted. Later she returned with the phonebook and made a show of looking up foster care programs and shelters. 

As I packed, I was sure she was bluffing. I had heard the statements so many times to “Pack your bags!” So many times I had pulled out a bag and stuffed what was important in it. She never followed through.

I was slightly surprised when, instead of retreating to her room, she loaded us and our suitcases into the car, and we were driven to The Childrens Shelter.

She said good-bye, left us with the woman at the front desk, and left, Xander grabbed my hand and cried. I glared at the door, then allowed myself to be lead to my new room.

If I told you that TCS was terrible, that the staff was cruel, the children awful, and that I was homesick, i’d be lying. We were a bunch of kids thrown together. We all had different backgrounds, but we all united in the fact that we were alone.

The staff was very friendly to us. They took us Ice Skating, roller blading. They drove us to doctors appointments and combed our hair. Xander and I listened to the staff talk about school, and where we would go. 

On our ninth birthday, they threw a big party. We got toys, and books. We had cake and ice cream in the kitchen area. Then our case worker came and took us to a seperate room, where our mother was waiting for us.

We hugged her and sat down at this huge table, where she had laid out slices of chocolate cake for us. We picked at the cake and talked to her about how we were doing, but the entire time I remember wondering why she was there, after all, she had told us that once we were in foster care, we would never see her again.

The next morning our Case worker told us that we were going home in a few days. We were there for respite, not foster care. I stared at her, angry and shocked. We were supposed to be there until we graduated! They couldn’t send us back!

Suddenly I was unsure. Angry, again.

My mother came late at night to pick us up. Smiling at her, we tried to hide how disappointed we were to be going home. Xander pointed out that we still loved her, so it wouldn’t do any good to anger her before we even stepped in the door.

We curled up in the back seat, the quilts the shelter had given us wrapped around our shoulders, and we cried. We had been happy. We had been safe. Neither of us had been called stupid, or bastard, or white-trash. We hadn’t been kicked out, we hadn’t watched our mother have a seizure, we hadn’t accompanied her to the hospital to wait forever in those hard chairs. We had been promised foster care, and when it wasn’t miserable like she promised, she had taken it away. It wasn’t fair!

 While my mother talked cheerfully about how she had missed us, and had cleaned the apartment so we better not mess it up, I stared out the window at the stars, wiped my eyes and thought:  “Why?”