Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (11 page)

There was nothing Bernie or I could do about the past; it was done, as Bernie liked to remind me. But maybe timing could also work in Danielle’s favor. Our timing. I had wanted to adopt forever, but the timing was never right. I had been a single mother for most of the time Paul and Steven were growing up. Then Bernie and I had five boys in the house, and we barely had room, money, or time for the children we had. The timing was wrong.

But as, one by one, they left the nest, the desire to adopt grew in me. During that period of time, Bernie went from being completely opposed to less resistant to vaguely interested to open to it to so onboard you would have thought that adopting was his idea all along.

Maybe timing was everything. And this time, it was finally going to be working for Danielle, rather than against her. Maybe her time was coming.

Chapter 12

Step by Step

I looked at the clock in the kitchen and saw that there wasn’t much time left before Willie would be home from school and Bernie from work, so I quickly read through the rest of the trial transcript, since I already knew the outcome.

I did study the mother’s testimony, thinking she might offer some insight on Danielle that could be helpful, even if she hadn’t intended it to be. I assumed she did what all witnesses are required to do—put her hand on the Bible and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But in response to some questions, she either asserted her right to remain silent or she lied.

The mother claimed Danielle could say “mommy,” “I love you,” “eat,” and “let’s go,” explaining that the reason no one else could hear her was because the child spoke so softly, and one had to really listen. The mother claimed to have taken Danielle to the park but couldn’t name the park. She said Danielle had often slept with her, except when she had a boyfriend, and then Danielle was put on the mattress on the floor that was pushed up beside another mattress where her nineteen-year-old son slept. The mother claimed to have bathed Danielle daily and to have put her on the toilet fifteen to twenty times a day in an attempt to potty-train her.

Unfortunately for the mother, the document stated that the court did not find her to be a credible witness in the case and would not accept her testimony as true.

I skipped ahead to the final section, “Conclusions of Law,” and it got straight to the point: “Based upon the foregoing, the Court finds that the Department has proven by clear and convincing evidence that the mother Michelle Crockett’s parental rights should be terminated as to the child, Danielle Crockett.” And so they were.

I was straightening up all of the papers when Bernie got home, eager to hear what I had found out. Since he already had a pretty good idea from the
Child Study
of the conditions Danielle had been living under and why she was removed from the home, I wanted to share with him what I had learned about neglect and child development and talk about what we might see down the road. Sure, the story about Danielle swiping the chicken leg right off the lady’s plate at Dr. Armstrong’s office was funny when Garet told it, but how funny would it be in a restaurant when some stranger was glaring at us because Danielle had his pork chop in her mouth?

Her constant movement was exhausting to watch, much less monitor. Willie has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and when he gets really hyped up, it’s hard to keep him focused and on task. What would happen with a little Tasmanian devil running around? How would Willie handle it? How would I handle it? He can get on my nerves when he’s all over the place, touching everything, going on and on about something, anything. “I saw a dog today with five toes!” Three hours later, we’re still talking about the five-toed dog.

I pointed out to Bernie that Willie can get on his nerves, too, even though Bernie isn’t the one sitting on top of him to do his homework or nagging him to clean his room. I said, “Don’t you think Danielle would get on your nerves?” He shook his head. No. Simple as that. No.

Bernie and I were not exactly on the same wavelength. He was thinking, “Oh, yeah, we’ll take her.” He wasn’t really thinking it through or considering the possible ramifications.

I reminded him of Danielle’s developmental markers in the
Child Study
, nearly all of which corresponded with those of a child under one year of age. Developmental pediatricians had concluded that her development from a physical level—gross and fine motor skills—as well as her speech and social abilities, were approximately those of a six-month-old.

Bernie wasn’t budging. He, in turn, reminded me that those tests had been taken immediately or soon after she had been taken into state custody. He pointed out that in the car on the way home from Tampa, I had pooh-poohed those assessments. “We saw her,” he said. “You are the one who said that she was already much further along after a year in school. You are the one who wondered if anyone had ever tried to toilet-train her or teach her to drink from a cup or feed herself or if everyone believed there was nothing that could be done.”

Thinking about toilet training was one thing. Doing it was another, especially when the un-potty-trained child was an eight-year-old who couldn’t sit still. I wondered if there was a window of opportunity for toilet training and self-feeding that we had missed as well.

I told him about the key times for child development being in infancy and early childhood. That what we learn in those years affects us for a lifetime. That those windows for learning have an expiration date. That in every aspect of child development that exists, early nurturing is crucial.

I pulled out the TPR trial papers and found Dr. Armstrong’s testimony, all of the discouraging news highlighted in phosphorescent green. I pointed at the sentence “Eighty percent of development happens in the first 5 years of life. She expects the child will not learn to talk.”

Bernie looked at me. “Well, the good news is she won’t chatter us to death like Willie.” I wasn’t in the mood for joking. Or sarcasm. I couldn’t tell which one he was resorting to.

He took the papers from me and skimmed over the highlighted parts, turning the pages quickly until he stopped on one, his fingers clenching the papers tightly. I looked over his shoulder at what he was reading. It was in the final section, “Conclusions of the Law.” “Danielle is non-verbal and due to her profound disabilities, she appears to be unable to demonstrate love for another person. . . . Due to her profound disabilities, the Court is unable to determine whether Danielle is capable of forming any significant relationship with a parental substitute or any other person.”

I knew exactly what Bernie was thinking, because it was what I was thinking. I thought back to the first day we saw her photo at GameWorks when the agency people told us we didn’t want her and that was all it took to steer us onto this path. I remember telling Bernie that she needed us, and he agreed.

Now I was feeling more doubt than he was, but I was also trying to be more practical and realistic. He worked every day; I was the stay-at-home mom. Caring for Danielle would be a 24/7 responsibility, and much of that 24 and most of those 7s would be mine alone.

It was time to meet Willie at the bus stop, and Bernie came along. He took my hand, and we walked silently, both of us lost in our own thoughts. The same words that jumped out at him kept repeating themselves in my mind. “She appears to be unable to demonstrate love for another person.”

How could she demonstrate love? She had never in her entire life been loved by a mother or a father, the very people who first show us what love is. She didn’t have a single clue about what love was. Maybe if she was loved, unconditionally, fiercely loved, she would learn to love back.

When the bus pulled up, I saw Willie’s face through the window, looking anxious at the unusual sight of his dad at the bus stop, too. He clambered down the stairs, asking, “What’s wrong?” I told him nothing was wrong, that Dad had come home early so we could talk about Danielle. All the way home, Willie asked questions. “How old is she? Is she smaller than me? Is she nice? What is her school like? Where does she live?”

We answered him as best and honestly as we could. I told him that when we first talked about adopting, we had hoped to bring a child into our family whom he could play and hang out with. Who would be not only a sibling but a friend and a companion. I told him that the way Danielle was now, she would not be that playmate. She needed lots of care and patience and love, and it wouldn’t be easy. Bernie told Willie that he was a big part of the decision because it was just the three of us in the house now, and his feelings were our priority.

Willie looked very thoughtful. He is a serious boy, sometimes too serious. He was so small for his age that he didn’t roughhouse with the other boys in school, and he struggled with assignments because of his ADHD. On the other hand, he could sit for hours making miniature furniture, a hobby he had picked up a couple of years earlier.

Willie’s heart was the heart of a giant. He had always been that way—compassionate, caring, and empathetic. He loved animals as much as I did and was always kind and helpful to the younger children at church. He was also a little boy, barely nine years old, and I don’t know many children who don’t think the world revolves around them.

He looked from me to Bernie and back to me again, his eyes wide, and asked, “Do I have to make up my mind right now? Can I meet her?” I answered, “No!” at the same time that Bernie said, “Yes!” Poor Willie, he looked so confused. I told him that what we meant was, no, he did not have to make up his mind right then, and yes, he could meet her.

Bernie and I looked at the clock at the same time. It was 4:25—twenty-four hours and twenty minutes since we had signed the
Study of the Child
papers. Twenty minutes past the minimal amount of time we could take to decide whether we wanted a second visit with Danielle.

Bernie pulled Garet’s card out of his pocket and dialed the number, putting it on speaker phone. She must have been waiting for us, because she answered immediately. “This is Garet White.” “Garet, this is Bernie Lierow. Diane and I would like a second visit with Danielle, and we would like to bring our son William along. We hope that’s okay.”

I could hear Garet’s smile through the phone line. “Okay?! That’s fantastic. How’s next Monday?” “Perfect!” I practically shouted. “We’ll see you at the school Monday!”

Chapter 13

Meet the Family

Paul came to visit us over the weekend, picking up some things he hadn’t moved to his apartment yet. He and Steven had expressed support to us, as well as to the interviewer for the Home Study of our desire to adopt. But that was when they thought we’d be bringing home a “normal” little boy or girl. Someone who talked, walked, and could go boogie boarding with them or to see the kids’ movies they were embarrassed to admit they still liked.

But they were both skeptical of bringing someone like Danielle into the family and into our home. Skeptical might be understating Paul’s reaction the night we all watched
Nell
. “Are you two insane? Have you lost your minds?” Paul has always had a dramatic way of expressing himself. Besides, I think these were rhetorical questions because he had already decided we had lost our minds.

Steven didn’t say much, but that was his way. I could tell he was thinking it was not a good idea. He spent most of his time with his girlfriend or at work, so maybe he felt as if he didn’t have a vote.

I told Paul that we were going to see Danielle for a second visit on Monday and were taking Willie with us. He surprised me by asking if he could come along, too. Bernie called Garet to check that it was okay to bring another member of the family, and she actually seemed pleased.

That Monday morning we drove up to Tampa. I tried to tell Paul and Willie what to expect, not just from Danielle, but from the other children in Mr. O’Keefe’s room. I explained to them what
profound needs
meant: that the children couldn’t speak and would probably not even acknowledge our presence, and that most of the kids in that room were in wheelchairs, in large cribs, or on mats.

The closer we got, the quieter Willie became. I asked him if something was wrong or bothering him, and in a quavering voice he confessed, “I’m scared and nervous. What if she doesn’t like me? What if she starts screaming at me? What if she acts so weird I can’t take it?” Paul looked up from his book and told Willie he was scared, too, and gave Willie a reassuring squeeze around his shoulders. I made a mental note to bake him a batch of brownies when we got back home.

The four of us crowded into the tiny reception area of the school where Garet was already talking to Principal Middleton. She was glad to see us and very welcoming to Willie and Paul. Ms. Perez came out of her office and told us she was going that way and would take us there.

Walking across the campus on sidewalks that connected the buildings to each other, we ran into a pair of students who looked like they were about Willie’s age. They stopped to say hello to Ms. Perez, and she introduced us to them. “Boys, this is Mr. and Mrs. Lierow, Paul, and William.” One of them asked Willie if he was coming to the school, and he shook his head no. Ms Perez said, “We are going to Mr. O’Keefe’s room to see Danielle.” The boys smiled. “Are you her family?” one asked eagerly. Awkward pause.

“No,” Bernie said. “We’re just friends, and we’ve come to visit with her for the day.” That satisfied them, and we continued, with Willie looking back over his shoulder as if he wished he was going in their direction and not ours.

Ms. Perez asked us to wait in the hall while she went in to make sure Mr. O’Keefe wasn’t in the middle of something or there wasn’t a crisis in the classroom. Peeking through the window, I could see Danielle wandering about the room and remarked that the T-shirt she was wearing looked awfully small. Garet leaned over my shoulder to look in the window. “No wonder,” she said. “That’s one of the shirts I bought her when she got out of the hospital. She didn’t have any clothes. She’s grown quite a bit in a year.”

Ms. Perez opened the door, and we filed in—me, Bernie, Paul, William, and Garet bringing up the rear. We waved to Mr. O’Keefe, who was engaged with one of his students. Paul’s eyes were scanning the room, his expression somewhere between shock and curiosity. Willie simply stood wide-eyed. Bernie, Garet, and I all said, “Hi, Danielle!” in our brightest, cheeriest voices at the same time, which stopped her in her tracks, although she didn’t look at us. She dropped the ball she was holding on the floor, circled the table on her tippy toes in that odd way she had, and then she saw Willie. As if on a mission, she walked directly to him, grabbed hold of each forearm, and stared into his eyes for a good thirty seconds. Willie was frozen like a statue, holding her stare. Then, as abruptly as she had approached him, she let his arms go and ran off. We were all dumbfounded, except Mr. O’Keefe, who was smiling at Willie. “I think you’ve made a friend,” he said quietly.

It definitely broke the tension. Bernie had brought a pink plastic Slinky with him and went to see if he could use that to entice Danielle to play again. Sure enough, she followed him over to the swing, and he pulled her back and forth with the Slinky. Did she remember doing that with him on our first visit, did she connect him with the swing and the Slinky, or were swings and Slinkys that irresistible to her?

Willie and I sat with Garet watching them—especially Willie, who was just taking it all in. When he saw one of the mobile students struggling with a toy, he went over to help, and they played together. Paul pushed the kids in wheelchairs around the classroom and helped take them outside when it was time for recess.

Mr. O’Keefe asked me if I wanted to change Danielle before lunch, and I was grateful that he gave me another chance. This time, it went off without a hitch, but it was still disconcerting. What would it be like when she hit puberty if she was still in a diaper? Would she move into Depends when she was fully grown?

At lunch, we surrounded her, Willie on one side of her, Paul on the other, and Bernie and I across the table so we could take turns feeding her. After each bite, she would go around the circle of us, patting each of our hands while she chewed. Another bite, another round of pats. Willie, Paul, and Bernie were giggling like little girls. I was afraid of breaking whatever spell we were under, so I kept feeding her but slowed it down to make the magic happening right then at that table last as long as possible. As soon as the food was gone, she jumped up and bolted away. We all looked at one another in disbelief, as if we had just been released from a spell. At the table next to us, Mr. O’Keefe was fairly beaming.

Bernie, despite the magic, wanted to beat the school buses out of Tampa and the rush hour back home. Although the bridge onto Estero Island is four lanes, it funnels onto the two-lane road that runs from the north end to the south end, and from four to six every weekday evening, it is a linear parking lot.

Garet didn’t even need to ask us this time if we wanted to come back for a third visit, although we had to follow procedure and wait twenty-four hours to call and schedule it. We gathered up our things and said good-bye to Mr. O’Keefe. Willie went to find the two students he had been playing with, and Paul made the rounds of the classroom aides. Danielle was wandering around the room again. We kept saying, “Bye, Danielle, bye-bye, Danielle,” but she ignored us. As Garet opened the door for us to go, Danielle ran over to us, just as she had with Willie in the morning, but this time Paul was the target. She wrapped her arms around him in a big bear hug, looked up at him, and then ran off. The look on his face was priceless, and we all laughed.

But in the car, Paul broke down. He had never seen children as disabled as the ones in Mr. O’Keefe’s classroom, with so many needs. He put his head in his hands and sobbed. I felt helpless, and I reached to the backseat and patted one of Paul’s knees while Willie patted the other. Bernie kept his eyes on the road, occasionally glancing at Paul in the rearview mirror. When Paul pulled himself together, he lifted his head up, his eyes red, face wet from tears, and said, “I didn’t know! Compared to the ones who can’t walk or move any part of their body, Danielle is so lucky.”

Out of the mouths of babes, or twenty-one-year-olds. We were all quiet, thinking of what Paul said. Looking at it that way, he was absolutely right. Danielle was lucky.

That night, Bernie and I lay in bed talking about the way Danielle had reacted to Willie and Paul and had patted our hands, one by one, at lunch. Mr. O’Keefe said he had never seen her do anything like that before. What did it mean? I told Bernie maybe God had been watching over her all along. He had shown her in some way that there was a family, and “they’re going to come and get you and take care of you, and your life will be really different. Just hang on.” That’s how, against all odds, Danielle stayed alive. She knew we were coming before we came, and when we did come, she already knew us. Because that was how she reacted when we met, as if she already knew us. Was it that different from my reaction to seeing her photo for the first time, knowing nothing about her except that she needed us? Not some random family, but us, the Lierows—Bernie, Willie, and me.

When the alarm went off at five-thirty the next morning, Bernie was already awake and sitting up in bed. I asked him if something was wrong, and he shook his head. “I had the strangest dream, you know, one of those dreams so real that when you wake up, you’re not sure if it was a dream? I don’t even know where I was, but first I saw Danielle, she was sitting on something. I thought maybe it was a big swing, since she likes to swing so much. Then it was like a movie camera pulling back and the picture got bigger, and I realized she was sitting in a giant pair of hands, cupped hands. Everything around the hands was dark, but the hands were coming forward, holding Danielle. She looked like Tinkerbell perched on those hands. Then I heard a voice, and it said, ‘She was mine, and now she’s yours. Take care of her.’ The hands set her gently down and pulled away. That was it.”

I had chill bumps. God speaks to us in many ways—through prayer, nature, children, in acts of kindness and sacrifice. I’m sure God speaks to us far more than we know and far more than we notice in the hustle bustle of our lives. God chose a time to speak to Bernie when everything was quiet and Bernie would hear. It was a powerful message and one we knew we couldn’t ignore, even if we wanted to at that point.

When Bernie got home from work, he called Garet and we made arrangements for the third visit. HKI policy says there have to be three meetings between the child and the adoptive parents before the child can make a visit to the home. We could have met Danielle at locations other than the school, but the only places she ever went were school and the foster home, and the foster parents did not want us to come there. That made me curious—was there something they were hiding from us, or did they just want to protect their privacy? So, a few days later, Bernie and I drove back to Tampa again to Sanders Memorial for our third meeting.

Danielle seemed to know us this time. She had taken to Bernie very quickly. Everyone who saw them remarked about it. She was slower to come to me. Garet theorized that she might have a problem with “mothers,” per se, after the way she had been treated by her own mother. We had no way of knowing whether during the seven years Danielle lived with her, Michelle Crockett had ever hit her, screamed at her, or threatened her in some way. I didn’t want to push it. I wanted Danielle to feel safe and come to me when she was ready. Still, I have to admit I was a little envious of the comfort level she had with Bernie.

While Bernie was playing with Danielle, Garet and I talked about how the home visit would work. It would be for a weekend, hopefully within the next couple of weeks. Garet would talk to the foster parents to make sure there was no conflict. We would come to the school to pick her up on a Friday afternoon, then bring her back on Sunday to the foster home.

When it was time to go, Bernie gave her a big hug. I squatted in front of her so she could see my face and told her that the next time we saw her, she would be coming home with us. That we would swim in our pool, go to the beach, and play with Willie and our dogs. I don’t know if she had any idea what I was talking about, but she followed Bernie and me to the door, and when we opened it to leave, she tried to come with us. Mr. O’Keefe had to come over and hold onto her so we could get out.

Bernie was so upset, he didn’t want to go at all. I was, too, but I reminded him of the evaluation in the TPR papers that concluded it couldn’t be determined whether Danielle was capable of forming any significant relationship with a parental substitute or any other person. That Danielle tried to come with us showed me that she was already forming a relationship with us. How significant it was, I couldn’t say, but it was a start. That cheered Bernie up a bit.

On the way home, we talked about where Danielle would sleep in the house. In our house, almost everything was on the second level—the living room, the kitchen and the dining room, the master bedroom and bath, a second bedroom and bath, and a huge deck off the back. The first floor had the largest bedroom and bathroom and had been Steven and Paul’s room when we first got the house. The laundry room was down there, along with an area between those rooms and the sliding doors to the outside that we didn’t use as a room, but it had furniture in it. The screened pool and the hot tub were outside the sliding glass doors. Beyond the screened enclosure was the backyard, and beyond that, our small dock.