King of the Road

After almost a year at Covenant House, staff attempted to facilitate family reunification with my mother. They called her in and didn't tell me. I came home from school and one of the social workers led me into a small conference room, where I was sat across from my mother. A state social worker and another shelter staff were also in the room. I was blindsided. I don't remember what was said or who said what, I was in that disassociative fog that I can still get into to this day. The talking seemed short because my mother started yelling and verbally abusing me, calling me a whore, a homewrecker and a mental case before grabbing her purse and storming out. I had said nothing in this meeting. The social worker and shelter staff looked at me sheepishly before excusing me to the common area in the shelter. I walked down the hall to the common area in a fog and played Sim City on one of the computers until it was government cheese and jailhouse slop time.

A couple of weeks passed, I think. I was still going to school daily but had to have been physically showing the wear and tear of my experience. Cheryl, the mother of a classmate that I didn't know well approached me at the end of a school day and asked if I would be interested in staying with her family.  She was a City Councilmember in Anchorage, that was all I knew. I moved in.

Her home was full of love and warmth. She had three kids-a son my age, a daughter who was nine and a three year old daughter. Her husband was a quiet, nice guy and she was a happy, Christian woman. She was a good mom. She had her two daughters share a room so that I could have my own room and let me use an old radio/CD player/tape deck because she knew I loved music. She did too. I had been able to retrieve some of my belongings from my parent's house with a state escort and took a few childhood mementos and all of my CD's. I listened to Pink Floyd "The Wall" and their live album, "Delicate Sounds of Thunder" endlessly. I had insomnia most nights and when I would get tired of playing my same handful of CDs over and over again, I would tune in to a late night conspiracy theory show on a local radio station.

That was the first time in my life that I had received love and discipline in healthy and equal doses. When I did something wrong I was reprimanded, not abused. When I needed love, I got it. The house always had music playing and the food was always good. One night, Cheryl had some friends over and they drank iced tea and listened to AM radio. Her favorite song, "King of the Road", came on and she blasted it, singing and dancing with abandon in her kitchen.

About three weeks into my stay there, I developed what I thought was a rash on my right hip. It was about an eight-inch series of small black dots from the top of my hip to the middle of my thigh. It was incredibly painful. I couldn't sleep on my right side and taking clothes off and on was excruciating. I said nothing. One day, I bumped into the refrigerator door in her kitchen and started to cry. Cheryl asked me what was wrong and I told her that I had a rash that really hurt. She asked to see it. I pulled my pants down and showed her and she reacted with shock.

"How long have you had this??"

"A couple of weeks."

"We need to get you to the doctor right away! Why didn't you say anything?"

I didn't know how to answer her. The answer was too big.

We rushed off to her family doctor and it was determined that I had shingles. I was in a lot of pain, scared of what I had and feeling guilty for stressing Cheryl out and making her have to take time out to deal with me. Cheryl held my hand as the doctor scraped a sampling off of my thigh. We both laughed when I said "that didn't even hurt, she said it was going to hurt!"

I stayed with Cheryl and her family four about three months until my biological father in California was identified as "next of kin" and moves were being made to unite me with my father. In August of 1996, I boarded a plane with my biological father, a man I barely knew, to San Francisco to start my new life there.