Smallwood

I was home from my first foster home, with my sister Linda who had also gotten to come home, and we had two more babies in our family then. But Linda and I didn't stay home the whole time. Linda went to a mental hospital for children first and then I follwed her not long after.

I was fascinated because there I had more friends than I'd ever had at home in school. So I enjoyed the place a lot. Boys liked me for the first time. Back home only one boy had liked me and always winked at me. I was too embarrased to even look at him and my sister was always trying to get me to talk to him when he walked us home from school.

There was a lot of grown ups who were nice to, I was scared of the men though. But the lady teachers and ladies who spent the night in our dorms were very nice to me. I liked it when women were nice to me, it felt good. My mom was always so abusive I couldn't stand her. It felt like she hated me.

I liked one little boy named Mickey, whom I liked to fallow around a lot. He liked to talk and so I didn't have to do any talking. Whenever he played cowboys and Indians with the other boys I was always his squaw. He used to like to plan to escape and I was going to go with him. Sometimes I was scared of this fact, scared of the unknown. I never did disagree with him though. I liked it cause he paid attention to me and was my friend, I didn't wanna loose that.

There were other boys who liked me and told me so all the time. I was always embarrased and couldn't talk to them but I smiled a lot whenever they said words to me I'd never heard before. Little sweet nothings that girls always seem to enjoy hearing boys say to them. Sometimes a boy would wanna kiss me and they would say come here and I would go over to them slowly and let them put their lips on mine.

I loved art there cause the art teacher was very nice and would draw us pictures of our favorite people, mine was the Bionic Woman. I loved getting drawing pictures of her. I also liked the classes and learning was my favorite time. If we did good we got points to use to pay for toys at the end of the week. It was fun to pick out the toys the teacher always had.

If you were good over all throughout the day you would get special privaledges, like going outside, going to the woods and playing there, rideing bikes. Rideing bikes was my favorite. they had a little road going around the building and we got to ride our bikes around the building. The bikes always had pad locks on them so it was nice to see a bike unlocked for me to ride on. We also got to walk around the building for exercise and for leiser whenever we couldn't ride a bike.

I liked playing int he woods whenever I didn't get to ride a bike. I walked very rarely with my sister. We always were fussing though so I liked to go to the woods and play around. Thats how I met Mickey. I was walking one day and I almost picked up this black rope, he grabbed my hand nocking me down and he fell on top of me. It was a snake and it crawled away from us really fast. After that me and Mickey were inseperable.

He wasn't never good so he didn't ever get to ride a bike, I rode a bike alone and would miss him so i stopped rideing the bikes. We would sit and talk about everything behind a tree. I got comfortable with him slowly but eventually. One day he had some matches and he showed them to me and we lit matches, and one spark fell on the grownd and lit up the grass around our tree which caught on fire very quickly.

After that Mickey and I were seperated and we didn't get to play together again. I began going back outside after a while, but didn't see Mickey and so i waited till I could ride the bikes again by walking around with my sister. Then on another day while we were all in a sitting room getting to go to the bathroom 2 at a time, someone set the trash can on fire and they sit me and three other girls in a room till we decided to confess whoever did it. I confessed because I was so tired of sititng in the room with the others who didn't like me.

I was taken off of all privaledges, even going home for the weekends and also from going on holiday trips home. It was on one of these holidays when everyone was gone and it was kinda lonely around there that a dorm mother, Named Linda, told me I could go on a vacation with her. It was really fun with her. I don't even remember where we went but I remember lots of water on a long long bridge and being scared we might fall into the water. I couldn't swim very good and could only doggy peddal. I knew that doggy peddling in that water would be too much for me and I'd drown.

After that trip Linda became my big sister, and signed up at the big brothers and big sisters association so she could take me on special trips and stuff the organization had a lot for its members. I liked going with her out to eat too and to movies and staying with her on the weekends at her appartment or at her parents big big house on Lookout Mountain. It was so much fun at her parents house where i got to play with her real little sister who was my own age. I liked playing in her big brothers drum room the most cause we didn't have to be quiet.

I never saw Mickey again, but only in classes, and he didn't even look at me. So I just walked and rode a bike whenever I could the rest of my time there at that hospital. My mom and dad made them let me and my sister out before it was time for us to graduate from there, as they called it. The one who was graduating from the there was one who had did all that they were supossed to do and had a lot off points and had went through all of the levels of being there. The graduating person would get a party and certificate and other things. My sister and I did get a little party which was nice.