Looking back, I figure out what I told Judge Miller that day at court was the truth, but not the entire truth, to be honest. It took me around three weeks, from the day the social worker called me up to the actual hearing to figuring out what was really going on. At the time, it felt like I was detached from reality.
When the state attorney finally stopped speaking, Judge Miller gave me the look. You know what look I’m talking about. The one judges give to people when they want to make it clear they’ve seen every phony trick in the book.
My name’s Carter, and at the time this journey of mine started, I was twenty-nine and working as an electrician. I was paying mortgage and didn’t have much money on the side, except for the twenty-two grand I was saving to buy a piece of land some day. It wasn’t that I was struggling to make ends meet, but things did get rough every now and then. And then I saw the photo on the county’s emergency placement site.
It was a photo of five children seated on a bench. The oldest one was about seven, and there was also a baby under two years old.
Because of some reason, that photo stuck in my mind the entire night. I couldn’t sleep thinking of the children who were desperately clinging to one another.
That morning, I looked at the photo once again and tried to shake it off. But I couldn’t, so I called the agency to pull the case file.
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These were the children: Marcus (7), Amara (5), Joel (4), Destiny (2), and the youngest, Nina (18 months), and this was their life story. Their mom passed away of a stroke. Marcus was the one who alerted emergency services. By evening, all five of them were rushed to the hospital. However, there was no father in the picture and no relative of theirs was willing to take five children in. The agency was planning on separating them into different foster homes because no foster home had space for the whole group.
When I phoned the agency, the social worker, Debra, informed me that the placement order was scheduled for just nine days away.
That same afternoon, I headed straight to the hardware store and bought lumber. I didn’t have any noble epiphany; I simply grabbed a pen and started doing the math. My usual budget wouldn’t cover feeding, clothing, and caring for five children. But if I took on additional part-time jobs, converted my detached workshop into extra bedrooms, and spent every penny of the $22,000 in my savings account, it could work. The plot of land would have to wait. Those children certainly couldn’t.
