In the Care of Strangers: The Autobiography of a Foster Child

By D. Alexander Holiday

In three previous books, through a selection of prose poems, the author shared bits and pieces of a life, one comprised of complete abandonment by a mother and the disconnected roles played by extended family members, a life that eventually led to being placed in foster care. Now, for the first time, with In the Care of Strangers, he tells the entire story of what such a life was actually like. In this five-part memoir, dependent on the seven deadly sins, the author tries to reconstruct a painful journey of coming of age under the literal care of strangers and the individuals that made up the foster homes and hospitals that would help to shape a young man’s life, certainly a difficult life, riddled with abuse from the start (Malice) and ending with greed and envy in a fourth and final home. He finds and develops pride in himself while recuperating from a paralysis. How this young man attempts to survive the experiences of foster care while also having to contend with a disability, and still managing to try to simply achieve graduation from high school, with a goal toward college, is a testament to a human spirit beyond measure. This riveting story, told through an innocent, almost childlike voice of a boy shocked into care, then as an older man who has come to terms with his situation (The Unclaimed), and finally through the poetry, should be taken as an inspiration for many.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450058766

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Copyright © 2010 by D. Alexander Holiday.

Author photo by Kat

Cover design by author and Xlibris

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Rev. date: 02/18/2022

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART I. MALICE

PART II. HYPOCRISY

PART III. PRIDE

PART IV. HATRED AND MURDER

PART V. GREED AND ENVY

EPILOGUE

THE UNCLAIMED

THE FOSTER CHILD POEMS

For the children

No one should be motherless and fatherless.

Motherless and fatherless you are vulnerable

to manipulation, to influences—you are rootless

and you are vulnerable to everything.

Philip Roth

The Plot Against America

PROLOGUE

On January 12, 1961, a black male child was born at Metropolitan Hospital to a small, petite caramel-colored black woman. The woman already had a reputation at this and other area hospitals in the New York City and neighboring boroughs because this new infant born to her was the fifth recorded and recognized child birthed to her. And as with her previous children, a girl and three boys before him, this woman would show indifference and a complete apathetic attitude to her new and latest child, this innocent and fragile baby. The woman’s indifference and total apathy toward her children was fully documented by child protective and welfare agencies stationed and operating in the city and neighboring boroughs of the area at the time and right up to and including her arrival into the cold and bitter world in 1961 and beyond. As she had done with her previous boys, opting only to keep the girl child close to her, the mother of these boys would abandon each of them in one manner after another, leaving one with strangers, another with her own godparents, the third abandoned to adoption by some acquaintances of the mother in another city altogether. The girl child did not fair too well either. She would be left to extended family and strangers to be reared, but she at least had access to the mother, if only sporadically, throughout the years. This latest boy would be removed from the hospital, presumably by the mother, and attended to for his first eight months of a young life. Then as befell the others, he was abandoned to a stranger who abused and neglected him, seen very infrequently by his mother, rescued by a city detective and turned over to a city facility, placed into foster care after a period of stay with this facility—and this is where the actual story of what became of the innocent black male child born to this troubled pretty petite caramel-colored woman begins.

MALICE

-1-

He was being chased.

He could hear their footsteps getting closer. He could hear their voices. You go that way, and you go that way. We’ll go upstairs, and if we find him, we’ll holler for you, they were saying. He made it to the top of the stairs after what seemed like an extremely long climb. He quickly ducked into one of the bedrooms and tried to catch his breath. His heart was racing, but he knew he had to keep running; he didn’t want them to catch him. He had to hide, but where? They were getting closer. He quickly ran into one of the closets and climbed onto a top shelf, pushing some old boxes aside and crawling in behind them. He got the boxes back in place in time as he heard the door crash open, and he heard someone yell, I just know he’s in here. Quick, go check the other room. I’ll look around in here. He lay still, panting softly.

He could hear someone out there slamming things around as he frantically searched for him, swearing as he did so. Whoever was out there was now just outside the closet door, and his heart started racing again. Then it seemed that just as the closet door was pulled open, the wall that he was pressed up against opened up onto a brightly lit staircase. He quickly crawled out and started running down the stairs. The steps didn’t seem to lead anywhere but down, down into the belly of the house. After what seemed an eternity, he reached the bottom and stood in front of a huge metal door. He stood there for a moment, paralyzed. He feared going in there, that darkness, but their approaching footsteps gave him the strength he needed to pull the door open on its squeaky hinge and dart into the darkness. The moment he was in, he knew where he was, in the boiler room. The low hum from the big steel furnace, along with the light he could see through the paneled door, reassured him. He crouched down in a corner, waiting for them to come and find him. He was trapped once again. He remained in the corner, his heart pounding loudly against his chest. He thought it would burst, when suddenly the door swung open, a bright light went on, and he heard, "There he is, grab . . . "

He woke up, startled, his heart pounding rapidly against his chest. His head hurt. He was in a cold sweat. He lay back down, pulled the covers up over his chest and shoulders, and breathed softly. He tried to take in his surroundings. The sun was beginning to make its way into this room. His room. He could make out the door at the foot of his bed, the toy chest on the far wall opposite his bed, the staircase, and with some straining of both his neck and eyes, he could make out the other door that led into his room from the front of the house. Along the wall at the head of his bed was the boiler room. He couldn’t understand, or remember why, but he was very afraid of the boiler room. Even now, as he lay back listening to the low hum coming from the big machine, he was frightened. He lay there for some time, staring out of the window that was above his bed. He stared out at the bright sky and listened to the sound of a tree branch brushing up against the side of the house. Somewhere in the distance, he could make out the sounds of small voices at play. He wanted to get up and see whom the voices belonged to and to see their faces. But he could not move or stand up in the bed well enough to look out the window, not with the rope tied around his leg and fastened to the bed. So he just lay there listening to the sounds coming from outside, and he waited for someone to come and get him. They always came.

-2-

After a few moments, he was startled by a loud thump that came from some distant corner of the house and was followed by someone’s yelling out. Another thump, this time closer, and someone was still yelling. The door at the top of the stairs was flung open, a light went on, and then the hurried sound of feet running down the stairs.

Get up, you little bitch, he heard the woman shout over the little girl’s crying.

You wanna keep pissin’ and shittin’ in your bed, you can stand here all day with the sheets over your head. The little girl whimpered as she was shoved into the corner and was made to stand with the sheet over her head.

Stop that damn noise before I give you something to really cry about. The woman turned her attention away from the little girl and proceeded to go down into the cellar. He heard the flip-flop sound that her slippers made against the wooden stairs, followed by the shuffling of footsteps getting closer to where he lay hunched up against the wall.

The covers were ripped away with force, and he stared up into the familiar black face. She avoided his stare and focused her attention on his leg and hurriedly untied his leg from the bed.

Get up, she said.

He crawled to the edge of the bed, timidly, and stood at its side. She felt around the bed. It was dry.

Get upstairs, she said.

He hesitated a moment. She shouted, Get moving, slapping the back of his head, which sent him stumbling toward the stairs. He climbed the stairs with a little difficulty, his short legs trying to take the widely spaced wooden steps while trying to hold on to the wooden railing, making his way toward the figure clad in the dirty white sheet. As the odor of urine and excrement reached his nose, it made him retch.

Move it! The woman was shouting this at him as she shoved him up the remaining few steps and out into the kitchen. He was shoved into a corner and made to stand for some time with his hands on his head while the woman went off to some other part of the house. She returned shortly after with two smaller boys, who were hurried into the dining area and placed into those chairs that had their own tables attached to them, and the lady locked the boys into them. They couldn’t get out until she let them. The two boys sat there quietly for a few minutes until one of them started making a fuss and started to cry. This drew a slap across the face and the woman yelling at him to stop crying.

Get over here and sit down at this table, he heard her saying. He did not know that she was speaking to him at first, so he just stood there staring at the pattern on the wall and rocking slowly side to side. He was lost in his own world until she pounced on him and he felt the strap smacking down on his hands and the top of his head. Then just as quickly, he felt another sting of the belt across his lower legs; and before he knew it, he had fallen down onto the floor and was squirming into the corner, raising his hands up to fend off another blow from the belt. This time she seemed to be using the leather end of the belt, but he clearly remembered that there were those times when she had generously used the buckled end. She was reaching down to him and pulling at his arm, yanking on him and pushing him toward a chair. Get your butt up in that damn chair, boy, she was saying. She directed him to a chair that he had to climb up onto. He sat there taking in the faces of the other two boys. One seemed to be occupied with a spoon, unaware of the others in the room with him. The other one gazed around the room, not focusing on any object for any length of time. They were both smaller than he was, one lighter than the other.

The woman had returned and was placing bowls in front of each of them. It was that cold lumpy oatmeal again, and he already knew what that meant. He would have to sit here and eat every mouthful, lumps and all, before being allowed to leave the table. Each mouthful would be filled with lumpy, hard-to-chew pieces of meal and sugar. To help swallow it down there was often a glass of milk that was equally comprised of scabs and a sour taste or odor. This was almost a daily routine, and he knew it as well as he knew how to walk. There were those days when they were fed regular bowls of cereal, but even then, the scab-ridden milk was still used. He had quickly come to learn about breakfast and what the ritual entailed. It was often begun with any one of the four, these three boys and the one girl, receiving some brand of punishment before being allowed to sit down to eat something uneatable.

Today, as he spooned into the oatmeal, he knew immediately that it was not hot, but it was in fact quite lumpy. The thick concoction also had a familiar odor about it, like burnt paper. He sat there for some time, taking in the aroma and the confusion around him. He approached the oatmeal slowly, attempting to eat around the lumps while at the same time trying to ignore the smell. The woman sat to his left, feeding the smaller of the two boys, who was obviously being subjected to the same mixture. He watched as the smaller boy squirmed and twisted, trying to avoid the heaping spoonfuls of the thick mush, most of it winding up on his chest and in his lap, with remnants of this meal on his face and mouth.

The woman seemed to become more and more frustrated by the small child’s antics, and so she grabbed his head with one hand, drawing it back, shouted for him to open his mouth while she forced the oatmeal into his mouth.

Chew it! she yelled. The boy had some difficulty doing this. Now swallow, the woman demanded, her voice rising. He tried to obey but choked on something, and this caused him to spit everything out. She quickly responded by slapping him across the face. While he screamed and wailed, she wiped up the mess.

You can cry all you wanna, see if I care. You don’t eat now, you don’t get nothing to eat, she said. She turned her attention back to the other two. The slightly bigger and darker of the two was still staring at the crying boy. Stop looking at him and eat that food before it gets cold, she said with an agitated voice. The boy pried his eyes away from the boy, and the woman and quickly returned to eating.

He took all of this in while trying to finish the oatmeal. When she turned to him, he was almost done, the remainder being lumps that he chose to spit out, them being too big for him to chew or swallow. He did swallow several smaller ones, even a large one or two, recalling the punishment for not doing so.

Once the three had finished, they were taken upstairs. He was given some clothing that he held on to. He stood around while the other two were dressed. He remembered this part of the house. He had once stayed up here. He had slept in these rooms. It was all so confusing for him now. He tried to remember. He recalled sleeping in the room he was standing in. It was on a rainy night, and he was up on the top bed watching for the lightning. He remembered the game they were playing, and someone said, Watch, it’s taking my picture.

He remembered also having to sneak downstairs the next morning and steal some pieces of bread for himself and the others. He was careful not to make any noise so that he would not get caught. He had made the trip with ease, handing out the bread upon his return. The two boys seemed pleased with his success and dared him to attempt the feat again. He had refused. In the other room, at the end of the hall, across from the bathroom, he remembered sleeping there. He remembered the bugs.

He awoke from sleeping and lay in the bed for some time. Suddenly he imagined that the bed was filled with bugs. He could hear them crawling along the headboard, trying to get at his face and into his hair. He thought he could see their eyes, staring up at him.

He sat up, yelling out, Don’t let them get me!

This brought the woman and the man in, and after a few moments, they both had assured him that there were no bugs in the bed. He awoke the next morning searching the bed for the bugs. There were none.

His thoughts also recalled the large black teddy bear that he slept with while in this room. He remembered how he held the bear, rubbing it, and how this caused a certain stirring in his body. The bear had developed a rip in its ear, and the stuffing had begun falling out. The bear was taken away, and he was removed to the lower part of the house. A sharp push brought him back to the present.

Get in there, she said. Take those clothes off and get in that tub.

He quickly undressed. Embarrassed by his nakedness, he stepped into the tub quickly, only to be startled by the coldness of the water.

Ooh, it’s cold, he said.

What’s the problem now? she asked, her voice agitated.

It’s cold, he said softly.

What! she shouted. Speak up!

The water’s cold, he said, this time a little louder.

Sit down, she said as she turned on the faucet to its fullest, the water rushing out and spraying everywhere. He knew it was hot and pulled back to the far end of the bathtub, inching away from the hot water. She only let it run for a few quick seconds. The water didn’t get any warmer, and so he succumbed to the cold.

Now wipe down your face and arms.

She stood there, towering over him, studying his progress, taking in his every move. He glanced up into her face and saw her strained, impatient glare. Their eyes held each other, as if with measured familiarity, yet there was a degree of distance. Her eyes reflected a certain dislike for him as his reflected fear of her.

He wiped himself down as best he knew how and awaited further instructions from her. She moved from room to room, preparing the other two while keeping an eye on him. She returned and told him to get out of the tub and dry himself off. He did so and was given his clothes back to put on.

The three boys were ushered downstairs and passed through the kitchen and out the back door into the yard. They had to climb down steep stone steps before reaching the yard. One of the smaller boys was carried while the other was made to hold on to the woman’s hand and pulled along down the steps. The three were then left alone to play with some trucks, cars, soldiers, and pails. They weren’t out there long before the screams coming from inside the house pulled their attention away from playing with the toys. The girl’s screams seemed to fill the whole yard, reaching into each of its corners, becoming a single presence. One of the smaller boys, his attention drawn to the sounds in the house, said, She’s crying. He made this announcement two or three more times after coming away from the steps and joining the other two again.

The girl’s cries held him, dominating his thoughts, pulling him away from the toys and holding his thoughts on her voice and her pleas for release from this relentless punishment. Her crying saddened him more because of its innocence and frailty. He felt a force rushing up inside him, a force that shook him with sadness, but also one that seemed to be calling him to do something, to stand up and shout, Stop it, don’t hurt her! Someone help her, please!

But he knew that would not do any good, that his pleas for help would fall on deaf ears, as if this house and all its occupants were the only people in the world. It seemed to him that the other houses, trees, birds, and distant voices were not real, that they did not exist. He also thought that if he could hear this little girl’s screams, then surely her cries fell on another’s ears. But since no one came to her rescue, then there was only the house and the people in it.

The girl’s cries subsided as quickly as they had begun, and the boys went on with their playing. After some time, the girl was escorted from the house by the woman. The woman stood at the top of the steps as the girl attempted to make her way down the steps to join the others.

She was a frail little girl with thin bony arms and legs. Her hair was black and cascaded down her back in tangled masses. Her long narrow face seemed to dominate, almost overpower, her entire body. She looked as if at any moment she would shatter and wither away. Her eyes were dark and cold. She retreated to a corner of the yard and cowered there for some time. The woman left them and went back into the house, finished with them for the time being.

-3-

The day came to an end slowly and calmly, the sun setting softly behind the trees in the distance. A sudden peace settled over the neighborhood like a blanket thrown over a bed. Families slowly retreated indoors, finished with the frustrations of the day. Fathers reappeared from distant unknown places, drawing their women and children to them as if they were livestock being corralled. Like the other homes, this house was experiencing its own metamorphosis as it became more crowded with the return of other members of the household. There was an older daughter and an older son, each scattering off to a separate area of the house, refusing to interact with the younger children, as if one had no immediate connection to the other despite their being confined to the same dwelling. Even during periods when both groups shared the living room for purposes of watching television, it appeared that the adults were distant. The smaller children were made to sit down in front while the others made use of chairs and couches for their comfort. The boy remembered that there were even rules that had to be followed while watching certain programs. At certain times while watching a show, with an announcement from the woman, all the smaller children had to shut their eyes and wait to be told that it was all right to open them again. The punishment for disobeying was often a hard slap across the face; but most frequently, the rule breaker had to stand at the top of the stairs facing the wall with their hands on the top of their head, sometimes for long periods. This time spent together was not a common pastime in this household, as might be found in other homes, and it often consisted of one or two of the smaller children standing in a corner.

-4-

The coming of age for a boy consists of several different stages unlike those for a girl. At a very early age, around six or seven, a boy becomes interested in a collection of elements in his environment. After he has overcome the challenge of walking and talking, he becomes interested in the facet of running, and this can become such a fascination for him that everyone he encounters must be challenged to outrun him. If he can surpass his opponent, he is master. If he is outdistanced, he learns disappointment. Later, if he is exposed to one, riding a bike will become a new challenge, with the simple ability to ride and keep balance becoming the lesser concern overriding with no hands and, then, the ability to ride fast and turn corners the fastest without falling off. These challenges occur along with the physical changes that are taking place.

For some boys, the sound of one’s own voice becomes a preoccupation, one in which he practices for hours just to hear himself say certain words. Later, once he encounters the mirror, the boy will become concerned over his physical attributes, concerned with whether he is good-looking or ugly, fat or skinny, if his head is too big, and whether his lips are in fact too big for his face. These concerns with one’s appearance are enhanced as a result of the criticism he receives from family members and his peers. If one or both of these groups are kind to him, he may later go on to develop an arrogant state of mind, vanity, and conceit molding his personality. If they are cruel, he learns shame, shyness, or self-doubt.

The boy received criticism at home through periodic unprovoked beatings and punishments. He did not understand the reasoning behind the beatings. They came unexpectedly and with fervor. Nor did he comprehend the long periods of having to stand in corners at the top of the stairs with his hands on his head until he was so exhausted that he either rested his elbows against the wall or dozed off, which often resulted in his being startled awake by a belt or strap or a slap across the side of the face. Then with the induction into school, amidst the excitement of new books and pencils and the wearing of the Catholic school uniform, the boy, along with the others who were now of school age, before leaving the house, had to hold out the palm of his hand to receive several lashings with either a belt strap, a ruler, or a flat piece of wood. These lashings continued until the palm was swollen, and it was almost impossible to carry a satchel of books. On some mornings, he was given the choice of which hand he was going to offer up. He quickly learned that his right hand could endure more pain than his left. The woman was not as giving in regard to his pleas to have the beatings stop. He went to school in pain; found temporary asylum behind the skirts of the nuns, only to return to the woman’s cruelty; and was often sent off to bed in pain. This world of pain became for the boy his only method of understanding, his only sense of reality. And the pain intensified with each day and with each arrival of a new letter to learn; it was present as his ability to count to a higher level was reached, and it showed itself as his reading progressed.

He remembered one night sitting with the man reading from one of his first books and getting confused over one particular word. The man had helped him with other words in the book, and he progressed slowly, savoring each new word, proud of himself and his ability to turn each page, excited over finding more words to master. He had been reading for a while when he reached a word that was alien to him. He could not recall ever seeing such a word before in any earlier parts of the book. He sat staring at the word for a few moments. He started at the beginning of the sentence again.

The m-man was g-go-ing to . . . t-take the b-boy to an . . . , he read aloud, coming to a halt at this new word. He waited for the man’s assistance, which was delayed for some reason. The man was engaged in a conversation with the woman who was out in the kitchen area, and although they were using raised voices, it was not yet an argument. The woman entered, wiping her hands with a dishrag.

Then you go up and talk to her, you know she won’t talk to me, she was saying. She won’t listen to anything I say. She was standing in front of them both now.

All right, all right, the man said. You sit here with him. He got up and went up the stairs. He knocked on the door to the girl’s room. Open this door, I want to talk to you, the man said. The door was opened, and the man went in.

The boy and the woman sat for a few seconds, staring at the open book.

Start at the beginning, right here, the woman said. The boy read out loud, as clearly and confidently as possible. When he reached the difficult word, he fumbled with it.

What’s that word? the woman shouted.

Uh, a . . . , was all the boy could muster.

Sound it out, she said, irritation in her voice.

He attempted this with no success. He sensed the nervousness beginning to build in his stomach and the tears starting to weld up in his eyes. This only got the woman angry, and she retaliated by slapping him across the mouth and nose with the back of her hand. This sent him reeling back on the couch, crying.

Sit up here, the woman yelled, pulling at his arm and yanking him back up into a sitting position. He sat there sniffling and attempting to hold back the tears. He also rubbed at his now-aching face.

Stop that damn whining, the woman yelled. Sit up straight and read. Start here again, she said.

Before he could begin again, the voices from upstairs had begun to be heard from behind the closed door as the man and the girl began shouting at each other. The woman became quickly interested in what was going on up there, and the boy became a secondary concern. She raised herself off the couch and proceeded to go up the stairs, saying over her shoulder as she did so, Get downstairs. The boy quickly left the room, going down into the cellar, down into his room. First, he sat on one of the lower steps, listening for the voices upstairs. Then he made his way over to his bed and sat down.

He sat for some time in the total darkness of the room, with only the cascading moonlight hovering over the head of the bed. The noises from upstairs came and went. There were sounds of heavy furniture being moved around. Then came the occasional raised voice of the man, then the woman, and finally the girl’s high-pitched voice. He could not make out what anyone was saying, but he did understand the occasional dirty words being flung around the room. The words were familiar to his ears. He felt the nervousness begin to fill his chest and the wetness start to cover his hands. He rubbed them on the blanket to dry them. Then he heard the quietness of the house. It had appeared to him as if the house itself had been alive, breathing, pulsating with activity, like a child at play. Then just as quickly, the house was no longer alive, it was a still, dead beast.

He breathed heavily for a few minutes. His attention turned to the sounds both inside and outside of the house. The quietness in the house was more frightening to him than those from outside. The sound of the branch scratching the side of the house gave him solace, peace from the fear building in his chest. It was not too long before he was able to lay back and fall asleep.

It wasn’t until the woman was fully upon him that he awoke startled. As she yanked him from the bed and dragged him toward the stairs, he rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus on what was taking place. The dimly lit bulb at the top of the steps helped to inform him that it was still night, and as they entered the kitchen area, the darkness that filled the rest of the house confirmed his guess. The house was dark and quiet as the woman first pulled then pushed at him to climb the stairs, and then he was lead off to some distant part of the house. A door was opened and then quickly shut. Then a voice in the pitch-dark folds of the room awakened him further. It was the woman’s.

Hold ’em, she said to some other being present but unseen.

Someone grabbed at his arms and pulled him down onto the bed. He sensed it had to be the man, since the grip was so firm and rough. His clothing was pulled away; first, his shirt and then his pants were drawn down around his knees. He had fallen asleep in the clothes he had worn the entire day.

The first blow sent pain cascading throughout his body, beginning at his backside, where the belt tore into his flesh, stinging him and then spreading down his legs. As he cried out, his screams were muffled by the blankets as his head was pressed down onto the bed. The blows that followed were equally sharp, and his body responded by tensing, as if on its own, the body was preparing itself against further damage, and this enabled him to accept the stinging welts from the belt. When he was finally released, he cowered down onto the floor, shaking with pain and cold from the room. He tried to recall whether he had heard the man say, All right, that’s enough, and then he was let go of, or the woman had simply ceased, as if a switch had first been turned on and then off, or was it because she had simply tired of her rage? He could not remember also how he had returned to his bed—was he carried or made to walk? He awoke in his own bed, hovering down under the safety of his blanket, and he knew this safety was only temporary, a brief escape from unwarranted pain.

-5-

The boy grew as most children grow, with a certain drive for adventure and with a passion to satisfy curiosity. In school he engaged in all the activities that requested physical energy. The running games fascinated him the most since they demanded of him an uncontrollable burst of excitement. He enjoyed racing against others his own age, and he was often pleased with himself when he fared well. He learned disappointment when he sometimes came in behind the others, but even at such an early age, he showed a drive to succeed, as he tried over and over again. After school he would sometimes challenge another boy who had outdistanced him in the playground to a race to the corner. Whatever the result, he would recapture his breath while waiting for the crossing guard to give her consent to cross over, whereby the race would resume or one of the two would feign exhaustion and they would walk on in silence before going their separate ways.

In private he became acquainted with vanity, conceit, bashfulness, and shame. Each of these virtues became a friend and ally to him early in his development. These virtues were bestowed upon him once he encountered the mirror. Once left behind the bathroom door, after having overcome the potty and graduating to the toilet seat, he was silently and without encouragement coaxed into exploring and experimenting with his body. His early involvement in the bathroom was simply confined to taking in every facet of the room itself. He was curious about every object in the room, and he wanted to learn about all the workings of those objects. The primary focus was on the bathtub, since it was the largest object there, but also because it stood as a promotion from the downstairs kitchen sink. He was curious as to how the woman had made the water come out of the wall and flow through the metal nose on the wall. He had seen her turn those two other things on the wall, first the one that made the cold water come out and then the other one that made the scalding hot water come out. He approached the knobs with severe caution, remembering his fright when the water would come cascading out and splashing into the tub, and if he was already in the tub, he would press himself into the back end of the porcelain basin, his skin chilled by the coldness of the ceramic; but he would bear that coldness over the coldness of the water or the hot splashing and spraying water that reached his skin and caused him to whimper a little, and which often resulted in the woman either smacking his arm, or behind or on his back or pushing him down into the water. So he approached the knobs with caution and tried to turn first the one and then the other, both being too difficult to produce the desired result of making the water appear. With further trips to this room, the focus of curiosity shifted to the tiles on the walls, the toilet paper holder, and the sink, with its insistent drippy faucet. It was from his future return visits to this room that he learned how the water was made to appear in both the sink or the tub, and that it had something to do with the direction that the knobs were turned, still with some degree of force, and he learned which one created hot water and which one created cold.

Having mastered the mechanisms of the room, and having become bored with following patterns on the floor and walls, or listening to the rhythmic tapping of water hitting the porcelain basin, his attention would be turned toward the workings of his body. He explored the regions of his body with the fervor of curiosity granted to a boy of such a tender age. This quest started with looking. He was at first fascinated with simply looking at this strange object that did nothing but dangle from the lower part of his belly. He would stare at it for a long time, enthralled by its workings, especially when it would spit out a liquid that rushed through his body as he sat there. Then the desire to touch it overpowered him. He would gently touch it so as not to hurt it. He was surprised upon learning that a simple touch did not injure it in any way. Several visits later, he discovered that this peculiar object actually lived inside the folds of his skin; it was stored away and hidden inside somewhere inside of some skin. The first time he pushed, or actually pulled, away this extra skin, he was frightened by the new shape that the object had taken on. The tip of the object, new in this appearance, had a pink color to it. It was also split at the end. His fear, that he was somehow responsible for this disfigurement, had caused him to panic; but he had to repair the damage. Hurriedly, he forced the skin back over the skin and into place. He would then quickly leave the room in fear.

Alone, in the confines of his own room, he did not explore any further, but he still could not ignore his fascination with this region of his body. As he lay in bed, he would become consciously aware of a certain stirring down at that end of his body, a feeling that created a rhythmic beating in his chest. At first, this excited him, made him wish to keep that feeling alive in him. Later, as he became more accustomed to these sensations, he accepted them freely, letting them rise and fall at will. There were other emotions as well, ones that he did not quite understand, but ones that he was learning to master. From his long periods of having to stand in corners with his hands on his head, with only the ugly patterns in the concrete wall to stare at, he learned endurance. From his having to go off to school with the palms of his hands puffy and red from the hits of whatever available object, he learned pain and cruelty. From having to eat lumpy oatmeal and drink milk that was either sour or laced with scabs, he learned tolerance and patience. And from having to sleep in a dreary cellar, with his leg tied to the bed, he learned to overcome fear, and he mastered loneliness.

This all became for him, in time, his only understanding of existence. As each day passed, he gained a little bit more knowledge about pain, cruelty, and loneliness. As other children his age were learning about kindness, love, family, and safety, his was a world of a different kind. He did not know that these things were wrong, or that there was indeed a different way to feel; he only knew what it was to feel hurt and fear. His daily encounters with the other members of the household, more specifically the woman, only saw some form of this pain that he came to believe as natural. The cellar only provided further assurance that his was to be an existence of separatism; he was to be considered an outcast from the larger group.

He learned early that there were similarities and differences in the house. There were two types of people here. From his lessons in school, he learned about tall and big, short and small, boys and girls, men and women, and that colors helped paint a world that was red and orange, blue and yellow, black and white. From these teachings, he was able to apply them to what he saw in the house. There were big people, and there were little people. There were boys and girls. There were black people and white people. He and the woman, along with one of the other smaller boys, were black, the woman being the darkest of the three while he was the lightest. The man, the two bigger children, and the remaining smaller children were white.

He was still too young to understand what any of this meant, what all this difference in colors meant now,