No tears shed. You would think at seven months old I would have screamed and cried for hours. Guess I have always been a soldier. From what I was told later about the incident, my face was bubbled. It probably looked like hamburger meat—I never quite understood the story of why I was taken away from my biological mom. There were so many questions. Like where were my parents when this incident happened? Who in their right mind would leave a baby unattended? Was this the only time something bad had happened?
Someone told me I fell off the bed and hit my face on the heater. If that's what happened why did I get taken away? It was just an accident right? It just doesn't make any sense. I don't remember any of this. I only go by what I was told. Still the confusion and pain is there.
After this incident, I was put into the Department of Children and Family Services ( DCFS ). I was in a couple of homes until I was placed with my cousin—I don't remember much about her. I know my two other sisters and I used to be punished a lot. These punishments consisted of standing on one foot and holding some type of books in our hands, standing in the corner with our nose touching the wall, and if we were really bad, according to her standards, we had to stand on our heads.
My siblings and I stayed with with her until I was about 7 years old. She even adopted us. The last thing I can recall her saying to me was "take care of your sisters," but I didn't understand what she meant by that. She had been taking care of us all this time, so why was she asking me now? She didn't give us any explanation about why we couldn't stay with her anymore. To this day I still don't know.
After we left our cousin's, my siblings and I went to stay with a nice interracial couple. The woman owned a cleaning service and the man was in the army. During the first year they were so nice to us. We had everything a kid can possibly want. They asked us if we wanted to stay with them forever. "Please can we really?" is what I said. A couple of months later my siblings and I were in a courtroom getting adopted again.
I don't know what caused our new mom and dad to turn on us. Maybe it was the alcohol, too many children in the house, or Satan. Whatever the reason, there is no excuse to turn your kids into human punching bags. We were abused for years. I remember one night we had just gotten a whooping for not doing the dishes right or something. My oldest sister told us she was tired of this and flipped out. She got a knife and went after our mother. There was a lot of screaming involved. The police were called and my sister was taken to a mental institution. They should have locked our mom and dad up. If they didn't beat on us maybe my sister wouldn't have tried to kill our mom.
After that day we didn't get into much trouble. My sister was not allowed back into the house and a couple months later the rest of us got kicked out as well. I was about 11 or 12 when this happened. It was one of the happiest days of my life. We were free from the wicked witch and jackal. Little did I know the worst was yet to come. But that's a different story.
Breezi C. is a homeless youth activist who helped coordinate the recent Windy City Times' LGBTQ Homeless Youth Summit. This is the first of a series of columns Breezi will be be contributing to Windy City Times.
