My heart hurt as I watched my mother, a mother of strength, look so powerless as my brother and I rode off into the night with the BCW workers at our side. My mind drifted off as I watched the neighborhood schoolchildren run inside my favorite candy store, the only one on the whole block that sold Now & Laters with three in a pack for a nickel.

It was funny how we were in pain, but the world never stopped for us, it still moved on. I guess you could say it’s just like the moon and the stars — you want them to shine on forever, but then they disappear and you’re left hoping for tomorrow.

“Wunika, how are you, girl? You doing good in school? How’s your brother David? I want you to know that we love you. And never worry about anything because we’re family, and family sticks together. ”

I remember my aunts saying that last sentence a lot, so much that I believed them, but cradling my brother in my arms and looking into his eyes as he watched the unfamiliar faces around him in the car, I had to wonder if all the things my aunts said were true.

My brother and I ended up in a foster home together. Life wasn’t that bad living there. I had hope in my heart and mind, hope that I’d pretty soon be back with my mother or aunts (whoever came first). I just knew it would be soon, and I had the weekly visits to my aunt’s house to prove it. I imagined myself actually moving back with my family and saying to my foster mom: “I’m moving, bye-bye, I promise to keep in touch, love ya.”

Baam! My visits to my aunt were stopped, my dreams were shattered. There seemed to be some sort of problem between my mother and my aunt. My mother felt threatened by my aunt’s responsibility for my brother and me. All I was allowed were visits at the agency, and the only one who visited me was my mother. And when she did come, she came with a little bit of hope, but I guess it wasn’t much because pretty soon she stopped visiting, too. After my real family disappeared, all I had was my foster family and the Lord knew that if it wasn’t real, I didn’t want it.

My foster mother used to say: “Beggars can’t be choosers.” I didn’t considered myself a beggar, so I knew I could be choosy, even if it meant denying the only family I now had.

As year after year passed, I lost all touch with my real family. Guess I sorta kinda got used to my foster family. It was good having people care for me. But I still had a pinch of hope hidden somewhere in me to be with my real family, and I was still searching for it.

I should have known not to let my foster family get to know me. I should’ve kept my guard up as planned, ’cause they weren’t my family.

Yeah, one day it was time to go, the old lady was kicking me out after five years over some differences of opinion. It hurt to be put out again. First I was taken away from my mother, and now I was kicked out by a lady who I called mother because that was the role she took on. I could only assume I was the one with the problem. But I sure wished the hope that was hidden inside me would show its face, because I surely needed it.

I was thirteen when I arrived in my second foster home, and boy, was I something! As I look back, I can only laugh. I walked around that lady’s home as if I owned it.
I never said “good morning,” and back at my first foster mama’s house that was enough to get a ‘whuppin’. Sooo what! I could care less. She wasn’t no blood of mine, just another lady tryin’ to play mother, a mother I didn’t want ’cause she wasn’t real, she wasn’t blood. I still had that hope, and I just knew I would find it soon, I just knew it.

But everything seemed to go wrong. I wasn’t at my new foster home for a month before they talked about my brother getting adopted by parents who didn’t even know him. That hurt, because where would that leave me? I didn’t want him to have parents who had to pay fees to get custody of him. Shoot, he wasn’t nobody’s property. He was a person, and he, WE, were supposed to get back to our family.

After my brother was adopted (you’d think they would have listened to me after all the tears and protesting), I could say I was truly alone. I had no family whatsoever, only jive turkeys playing a role they were paid to act. Shoot! If CWA knew what I knew, they’d hire better actors!

The years flew by and I still hadn’t found my family or vice versa, and my brother was in a sealed adoption. I hadn’t seen him since he was taken away, and if you ask me, that was the way my agency liked it — less paperwork, less confusion. I’m sure their hearts were content.

I just went on living in my world of hope. I tried to accept life as it was: my real family was gone. It was hard to swallow. My mind accepted it, but my heart knew something different. I gradually adjusted to my second foster mother. I had no choice. I began to hate the blood relatives I had once yearned for. I blamed them for my situation. I blamed my mother also, but not as much as my relatives. I knew that the hopes my mother whispered in my ear when she used to come to the agency were nothing but hopes. I had spent my early years with my mother, so I knew what she was able and not able to do.

But thinking back to the family visits I had years ago, when my relatives would whisper those same dreams, I remembered how my mind filled with belief, how my heart beat with anticipation. I felt my hopes would come true, because I didn’t know what my relatives were incapable of. They gave me more hope, so I had more anger for them when those hopes didn’t come true.

Going on with my life, I noticed that writing was something I enjoyed, so that’s exactly what I did. I wrote poetry, short stories about my relationships with guys, and personal stories about my life. Well, wouldn’t you know that after ten years in foster care, my real family found me through my writing! I was interviewed by New York Newsday for a story about Foster Care Youth United. They interviewed me because of a story I had written about my adopted brother.

Newsday’s story hit the stands two days later. And guess what? Exactly two days after that, my relatives found me after seeing my photo in the paper. My uncle called me up at my writing job and asked for his niece. Honey, ya shoulda been there to see the Kool-Aid smile on my face. Chile, my hopes had finally been found! My hopes were them — my blood family.

Well, I’m sure you can imagine what went on the days after my discovery. Yeah, I saw my relatives, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my mother. My mother was living good now, married, and had an income. She was living in Texas, but ran up to New York when my relatives told her I’d been found. When she saw me for the first time in ten years, she held my face in her hands and said: “Look at you, you’ve grown up, I thought of you all the time. I hope you forgive me, I was just going through so much.”

I told her basically the same things. I just wished that none of this had happened to us. My mother was real hurt when I told her my brother was adopted. “Where is he? Who has him?” she asked me in so much pain that I wished I could’ve given her some answers.

Yup, that was surely a day I’ll never forget — all those hugs and kisses, those “I love you’s” and “I missed you’s.” It was around then that I started smellin’ my behind. Chile, now that I had contact with my real family, I put my foster mama through a lot. I ran away to my blood mother in Texas for a week and a half. I went there to find a mother with a new life, someone I didn’t know. She wasn’t as wild as she was in the past. Instead, she was soft-spoken and sweet. It was a lot to get used to, and there was a lot of time to make up.

Just my luck — them people from BCW were on my AWOL trail, so I had to come back home to my old foster mom. But I didn’t care about her ’cause I wanted my family, and now I thought I finally had them.

Shoot, they were buying me clothes, handing me food, and giving me their undivided attention. I thought I had it made, and who wouldn’t? If you did that for a homeless person, he’d think the same exact things I thought. But as I look back, I ask myself: Who pays you to think?

Well, like I said before, I wasn’t no beggar, so I could be choosy — and I chose my blood over them other ones. It’s funny how the past repeats itself, and if you’re reading my story closely enough, you know exactly what I’m tryin’ to say...

Yup! It was time for me to pack those bags again. I had to move to a group home ’cause my foster mother and I had a difference of opinion. I was almost eighteen, too old to be movin’ from place to place. I started to feel that ole hope — yup, sure enough, he was knockin’ at my damn door again. As I look back, I sure wished he’d have left me alone, but he didn’t.

My mama always said, “A man will only do what you let him.” Well, my family is all I thought of as I packed my little bags with my foster mammy lookin’ on. I even told her I didn’t care about her, I only cared about “my family.” Lordy, Lordy, I shoulda known. I went straight into a group home, me and Mr. Hope. I called my relatives all the time. When I got lucky, they even called me back.

My mother wanted me to come back home with her to stay, but I wouldn’t go. After all those years of physical abuse from her, it was really scary to take the chance of living with her again. Even though she seemed to have changed for the better, I still wondered if she was really a new person or just acting. Even though she had a house and a car, I wanted them other jive turkeys — my aunts, my uncles, and my cousins, because I felt they were much safer than my mother.

Well, to make a long story short, I’ve been in this group home for six months. Mosta them were spent with you know who ... Mr. Hope. We were waiting for my relatives to take us home, but none of them suckers made a move. And boy, did I cry for them to take me home! Mr. Hope, he was still with me by my side durin’ it all, cheerin’ me on, whisperin’ sweet nothings in my ear, and makin’ me look like the fool I was. Till this day, I question why I didn’t look at things for what they were. Why did I have to play it up to be something else? Why couldn’t have I realized earlier that my relatives had a life of their own without me? That the family I once had was no longer there? And most importantly, why did I put such emphasis on “blood family?”

I just thought I’d let ya’ll know that I’ve taken a vacation from Mr. Hope. A lot of people thought I was getting too serious with him, and they said that I should wake up and start dating this new guy, Mr. Reality (he was always tryin’ to talk to me).
So I gave him a try and would you believe I’m in love with him? Chile, chile, chile, Mr. Reality saved my life and the Lord only knows how thankful I am. Mr. Hope, yeah, he still be trying to get into my life, and at times I’m tempted to go back, but I got Reality, so I don’t need him no more.

I hurt a lot of people messin’ around with old Hope. Shoot, don’t get me wrong — Hope is good, but it shouldn’t be forever. There must be a time that you wake up to you know who... (Reality’s my man, but there’s enough ta go around. I was never the jealous type anyway.)

The past does have a tendency to repeat itself, but you can change it if you
try. I’ve decided to leave the group home and go back to my foster mother. I made a mistake getting kicked out of my first home, and I’m sorry to say I’ll never be able to go back. My first foster mother passed away, God bless her soul. I wish I could’ve been able to acknowledge my faults while she was still alive, but I’m glad I’ve gotten this far. I can’t make the same mistake twice, ’cause you never know when my second foster mother may go off the face of the earth, too.

But at least when she does go, she’ll know what I’m about. Chile, not everyone gets to know what I’m about. Even the ones who do, don’t know all — they just like to think they do. I guess I butter ’em up like that to make them feel good. Shoot, you can’t have people feelin’ like they dumb all the time!

I remember the sayin’ “Blood is thicker than water.” In my case, that’s not true. Don’t get me wrong — I will always love my biological family. They just can’t supply me with the security that I want. But both of my foster homes treated me well, and I thank them with all my heart. They were and are my family. I’m glad I’ve finally realized that.

Wunika Hicks was sixteen when she wrote this essay. Born in Brooklyn, Wunika entered foster care at age 8 and spent the next ten years in the system, mostly with foster families. Writing about her experiences “opened up a lot of doors, because I had locked my feelings inside.”
 

This feature: Hicks, W. (1996). A Vacation from Mr. Hope. Reaching Today's Youth, 1, 1. pp. 6-8.