Beth suggested that location because she could walk to it from her office and got only an hour for lunches. The first time I walked into the bakery, the large sign on the back wall caught my attention: “Families are like fudge—mostly sweet with a few nuts.”
She laughed when I pointed out the sign to her. “I never thought of that being portentous. I like their salads.”
Beth reiterated that she was participating in the interviews because of Dale’s desire to recruit foster parents. She thought it important to get out the word that foster kids may be eligible for a modest-to-significant stipend through a legitimate state agency, something the general public doesn’t always grasp. Not only do prospective fosters and adopters not pay service fees in state adoptions, they might also receive financial help for the child’s care. The amount depends on the child’s age and needs. The needs classification that Beth worked with most often was “therapeutic.” This means the child has special needs, usually based on medical fragility, developmental delays, or the behavioral health effects of long-term bouncing through the system. Therapeutic designations can raise monthly support to as much as three times what a child without one would receive; for teenagers, the monthly therapeutic stipend would be $1,800, as compared to $671 for teens not considered to have the same needs.
It’s one of those ideas that looks good on paper, Beth added, but a discerning reader can see quickly where inappropriate attraction might occur. The stipends pay more for people to keep “undesirable” kids who are considered less adoptable, in hopes that the foster parents will fall in love with that troublesome young’un as time goes by. People fostering because they can’t have children of their own want babies, or at least kids under six, but they also want to love someone. Sometimes they do fall in love with an older kid while waiting for a younger one to become available.
That’s what happened with Abby and her husband, John, people Beth suggested I talk to. Abby agreed to meet me at my bookstore in Great Rock and tell her story.
She and John married at age eighteen for her, nineteen for him, in a little wooden mountain church with a steeple, full of friends and flowers. Let’s call their sprawled-out hamlet of eight hundred residents Valleyfield, since it climbs the slope of one of the prettiest valleys in Coalton. Excited at the prospect of a family Abby fully intended would bloom with a new child every other year, she miscarried twins thirteen months later. Her family doctor told her after a barrage of tests that she would be lucky ever to carry a baby full-term.
A haze of confusion and questions followed. Devout Christians, Abby and John wondered if her condition were a test from God of their faith, and if they just needed to believe He would send them a child after all. Or could something be done medically? The undercurrents of Abby’s physician’s warning tugged at their plans: it wasn’t impossible for her to conceive; it was dangerous. And if she could give birth, the infant would probably have significant health issues.
The young couple went numb. Abby heard the voices of family and friends, the prayers of her community, and her own frantic thoughts as a long tunnel of words and sounds, far removed yet claustrophobic, encasing her in noise. From this miasma a few voices emerged with clarity, those of friends at church who told them about foster care.
Those friends probably said several things then, but John and Abby heard one specific and succinct message: fostering would be the quickest way to adoption. That began to feel like a combination of their last hope and Divine Guidance.
Abby and John moved from tiny Valleyfield to Walker City (population 3,500) where John’s career prospects improved. They didn’t it know yet, but that relocation probably also increased their chances of fostering. Valleyfield’s ancient water and sewage systems contained lead pipes, straight pipes, and suspect wells. Other would-be foster families in towns similar to Valleyfield had seen their foster home applications rejected over water quality.
The requirements for fostering include far more than good sewage systems. Abby and John underwent a psychological profile and answered personal questions about their finances, marriage, and mental-health backgrounds. They submitted to a criminal background check. They had blood tests (to rule out tuberculosis and HIV). And they attended night classes in CPR, blood-borne pathogens, and parenting. Another home visit ensured they knew how to work their fire extinguisher and didn’t have any porn magazines lying around, among other things. The inspectors measured the crib-slat widths because the couple had asked about getting an infant, and the bedrooms’ dimensions because they’d agreed to take more than one child at a time.
“It was invasive. We didn’t have anything to hide, but it still felt like getting turned inside out,” Abby recalls. “We knew it was important, and it wasn’t personal; but some stranger sits asking you questions about your husband, you’re going to get antsy.”
Eventually, all those tests turned into the piece of paper they coveted: a license to be foster parents. Abby left her job to stay home and wait, and soon the phone rang. They took in boys and girls, babies and ten-year-olds in rapid succession, most being what is called “temporary placement” kids—that is, children who need a safe place for a time but aren’t available for adoption. The few who were available didn’t seem to fit John and Abby’s home style.
“We weren’t being picky, but you know what you know. We believed in God’s guidance.”
About two years after they’d begun fostering, the call that would change their lives came. Standing in her kitchen, Abby listened to a disembodied voice on the other end of the line describe half sisters, one seven, one nine, victims of parental drug abuse and neglect. They had been at an emergency foster home for a few days because Birth Mom’s rights were going to be terminated by court order. It had taken a little longer than anticipated, so the girls needed a foster home prepared to house them for a month or two. After that they would be up for adoption.
Looking back, Abby says, “We had calls asking us to take kids all the time, some short-term, some long-term. All I can say is this one had electricity running through it. Like it was meant.”
But it started in the same way the others did. As in previous cases, the social worker needed an immediate response regarding the home’s availability. “You do all this careful planning, all your praying, mounds of paperwork, and then none of that matters. When it really happens and they need you, there isn’t even time to think. There wasn’t time to call my husband, just say yes or no on the phone, and that was it.”
While she was driving to pick up the girls, Abby’s thoughts were consumed by the fact that this would be the sisters’ second move within the week. The product of a loving, stable extended family, Abby longed to give all her foster kids that same experience she had had, but for some reason, this pair had gone straight to her heart.
“I think I was in love with them before I even saw them,” she says in hindsight. “I’d fostered before, but this felt different.”
Different though it may have felt, the two redheaded girls who waited, clutching black trash bags—the luggage of choice for foster kids—looked scared, just like the others. All eyes and legs and cautious stares, they wore shorts, ill-fitting tank tops, and flip-flops in late October. Shy, Abby thought. Why wouldn’t they be? Two homes in one week?
What Abby didn’t learn for months, until the sisters began to open up and tell their stories, was that she and John were their ninth foster home within three years. At that moment, she swore to God that those frightened little girls would receive the stability they’d been lacking. Guidance, care, and safety would blossom into love.
Which it did. Abby and John told the girls they’d be adopting them and started the process—until Bio Mom appeared suddenly with a court order saying that the girls had to be returned to her. Again. She had stopped their adoptions before, getting clean and taking the children home, only to lose them within the year. That was why the girls had bounced so much over