My Side Of The Story: Sheppard Pratt

The Kellers were a large family with around four or five children of their own and a foster child named Robbie. From what I understand they originally lived in a very bad neighborhood, but they worked and saved their money until they bought the house that they had at the time I stayed with them.

They were exactly the same way Pastor Emmanuel was. I asked Ms. Keller not to be so judgmental of her foster children because they may have issues, and since she'd not been in foster care she shouldn't assume. She just replied that foster children should "just get over" whatever they're dealing with since they at least have food and a roof over their head. Which is BS, as I can tell you as someone who's been both out on the streets and in foster care. I also recall Mr. Keller saying that domestic violence victims who stay with their abusers are "just stupid", which irked me. First of all, not all of them can leave since a lot of times they're dependent on their abuser, and even if that isn't the case, love isn't something you can exactly turn on and off at will. My boyfriend has done very nasty things to me, and as hard as I try to stop loving him I can't.

But the again, this is just another person who proves that wisdom does not come with age.

They were nice people, but there was clear bias against Robbie.

I could've been imagining it, but to me it seemed Robbie was being shunned and bullied by the rest of the kids. When I brought it up they said that it was because he lied to his worker and said that they didn't treat him right when they did and that he was the villain. But when I asked Sarah, she said that Robbie never even spoke of anything like that.

Plus Robbie was around ten or eleven. I knew from personal experience that foster homes, no matter how much they tried to deny it and say they treated the children equally, never did. Many of them rub your position as the outsider in your face. I'd been in over twenty foster homes by then and there wasn't an ounce of equality in a single one of them. You are not a part of the family. They make it very obvious.

There was no concrete evidence, but I didn't think a child this young would lie about the way he was being treated. Especially as I'd witnessed him being bullied myself, and he just stood there and took it without responding.

Once again, I became biased against them. I became defensive. I'd made up my mind: they were never gonna treat me the way they treated Robbie. I wouldn't allow it. And unfortunately it once again lead to me becoming paranoid. We got into an argument about me watching my mouth during a trip to six flags and I threw a fit right there in the park. It was a mess; everyone was staring at us. Repeatedly, I accused them of being biased against me for being the foster child while banging on anything I could get my hands on.

Also, around that time I found out that foster parents got paid thousands of dollars a month per child to take care of their children. This built up a lot of resentment in me, and I became even more biased towards them. I began to hate them for living off of me, and yet I still had to obey them and do their chores and etc. Some people may say "oh that money is for expenses" but trust me, no one child eats that much, uses that much utility or buys that much clothing. Most of that money does not go toward the children.

But then again, I guess no one would want foster children if they weren't getting paid.

They called for the people who stayed after hours at the agency to come and get me immediately. I was picked up from the six flags parking lot and driven to a respite home. There were no problems at the respite home, I'm proud to say. I got along very well with the lady and with her granddaughter. I stayed there peacefully until I moved into a more "permanent" foster home.

But I didn't last one day over there.

I was so fucked up. I couldn't control my temper for even the shortest amount of time; the slightest thing caused me to lose it. We got into an argument after I expressed that I didn't believe wisdom came with age. She got offended, we had a screaming match, and she threw me out.

Basically what happened was that she believe rap music shouldn't exist, and shouldn't be allowed because it's a bad influence. I think this is bull. I think it's the parent's responsibility to monitor what their kids listen to, and if you let your kids listen to something with a parental advisory sticker on it, it's your fault and you shouldn't complain. I think people have a right to express themselves freely, whether others like it or not, and if you don't like it, they don't have to stop what they're doing, you have to stay away from them.

She had no comeback, and when she got upset, she told me "Well, I'm older than you and have more life experience, so I'm right."

And that, my friends, is once again, why I believe wisdom does NOT come with age. She said this when she knew I was right, like her being older immediately meant she was the one in the right. NOT TRUE. I recall my parents said the same thing. When I tried to teach them not to be racist, they told me "Well I'm older than you so I'm right!" But were they? Nope.

I'm Asian, but I don't believe that life experience or wisdom comes with age. First and foremost, wisdom doesn't immediately come with life experience, you have to interpret them right. I guess life experience would come with age if life was exactly the same for everyone but it isn't, it's completely different. A 7 year old child soldier has more life experience than Chris-chan, who is near 30 and has done nothing but live off his parents.

Now Mentor Maryland had no more open homes. The state placed me with Caithness, an emergency shelter much like Open Door, and I resumed attending Foundation School.

That was a better option for me. In a setting like that, you couldn't get thrown out for petty arguments like you could with foster homes, who could throw you out for pretty much anything.

I am laughing a bit right now, for I'm recalling how everyone repeatedly asked me where I'd been for the past month when I returned. My first day back in Foundation School was so much like my first day back in Magruder.

There is not much worth saying about Caithness, except that they were very low on funding. For group "outings" and "trips" they took us to 7-11 because we couldn't afford to actually go anywhere. Yes, they took us to 7-11, sometimes bought candy and called that a trip. We were thankful for it though, because that was the only time we could leave grounds. Otherwise, it was the same as any other shelter, and asides from the occasional outburts that I was prone to and occasional bickering between girls, I didn't get into any noteworthy trouble.

Two months passed and I returned home from school to find my social worker Nancy sitting in the front office with my belongings around her, packed away in trash bags.

That feeling of dread once again rose in my chest. I knew by then what something like that meant. I was once again going to leave. Once again I was being plucked off without any warning of any kind beforehand and dumped somewhere random.

"What's all this?" I asked.

"Didn't they tell you? You're leaving today." she replied. "You're going to Baltimore."

The place where they sent me was Sheppard Enoch Pratt, more specifically the RTC center, an institution where they sent foster kids and kids coming out of detention centers to work on behaviorial problems. I was being sent to the girl's unit C4 for my anger issues and self-injury. Once they determined that I'd calmed down enough, they'd return me to normal foster care.

Honest to goodness, that part of my life is a blur. Most of the other girls were coming out of Waxter's, Baltimore's juvenile detention center for girls. Likewise, the boys were coming out of Hickey, the detention center for boys. There were fights breaking out several times every day. People constantly ran away, hurt themselves, each other, destroyed property, attacked staff, jumped one another, and there was just so much backstabbing and drama. I don't know where to start. How can I possibly separate certain events from others? Which ones are important enough for me to talk about in this story? Kids commonly beat each other up with furniture. A girl once broke into my room and attacked me in my sleep. We watched girls throw bricks at the window from outside and laughed at it. Can I separate one incident from another?

I'll have to try.

I recall C.O. (Close Observation), S.O. (Suicide Observation), and I.S.O. (Intensive Suicide Observation).

C.O. was what you were on if you were on punishment or you just needed to be watched carefully. I was on that one constantly because of my cutting. You couldn't sleep in your room-you had to sleep in the quiet room without any of your belongings. If you weren't in there for safety reasons, you might have been able to get some books or something to entertain yourself. You couldn't be out and about in the unit-you either had to be "zoning" or in the quiet room. In school, someone had to escort you to your classes and watch you.

Zoning was a sort of punishment where you couldn't have any privileges and couldn't interact with anyone else. You had to sit in a secluded corner, not doing anything. You could only leave to eat, go to the bathroom, and go to bed.

Oh yes, they had their own school as well, and a level 5 day school-Forbush-in the same campus. And staff searched you for weapons or anything you weren't supposed to have before and after school.

The quiet room was just a small, cold, empty room with nothing in it but a fitness mattress like the one you use for gymnastics and a special security blanket. There was a camera in there, and the staff could watch you from a monitor outside. That was where they sent kids who were acting out and were being violent, either to themselves or others. We called that a "crisis", and everyone had to go to their rooms until staff dealt with it. The door was lockable from the outside and they locked you in there until they felt safe about letting you out.

Lord, the hours and hours I spent in there, unable to sleep, just trying to pass the time, waiting for them to let me out.

During S.O., you had to go to the bathroom with the door open a crack. You also had to sleep naked for kids had tried to kill themselves by strangling themselves with their clothes before. And during I.S.O., which I only know about from witnessing someone else on it, someone has to be within three feet of you at all times. Someone would even follow you into the bathroom, and they watched you while you slept in the quiet room.

I sure do wish I hadn't thrown away so many of the journals I kept while I was in there, along with the songs I wrote. Those would've helped me greatly in writing this. There is no way on Earth I can fully explain all the rules and regulations. There's no way I can explain daily life in Sheppard Pratt within a chapter. There is no way I can recount all of the drama, backstabbing, violence, gossip, craziness and betrayal I'd witnessed and experienced during those two years.

While in there, I'd utilize almost anything as a weapon and keep it with me. Pens and pencils could kill if stuck up the nose, in the ear, or in the eye socket. I once got in trouble for keeping a bag of rocks in my room, though I never hit anyone with them. I just went and fucked up my wall with them when I got mad (and I had to sleep in the quiet room for the longest time once while they filled the hole I'd made). There was a belt buckle that I once wore as knuckles to help me hit harder when punching. I beat on my desk for so long that once, I was able to tear off the front of the shelf and use the wooden board as a weapon during a fight with a bigger girl. And as you'll read about later, I'd even learn to use water as sort of a weapon.

I was already biased against people like social workers and staff members, but the staff at Sheppard Pratt definitely reinforced my beliefs.

The staff there thought they could buy your affection. They'd put forth money for things like trips, and then turn around and rub it in your face, trying to use that as an excuse to disrespect you in whatever way they wanted. Even if you didn't ask for it. Personally, if them willingly spending money on me meant that they could disrespect me, then they could keep their goddamned money.

They also took advantage of the fact they could physically restrain the kids and take it way overboard (I remember one girl whose arm was sprained in a "restraint"), doing things they knew damn well they weren't allowed to do in a restraint. Kids would come out of the quiet room, bruised and battered, and the staff would say that it was only because they'd been causing trouble and needed to be handled in such a manner.

Really? What could a small teenage girl possibly have done to warrant that kind of manhandling, especially when restraints were normally done by three to four overgrown, large, muscular adult staff members? No, it sounds to me like you took advantage of the situation to take out your grudge/anger on the kid.

Then they'd use the group meetings we had every day to talk about things going on in the unit to lay out kids' personal issues, embarass them, gang up on them, and encourage their peers to bully the ones the staff members didn't like.

The system is run by disgusting, selfish people who couldn't give a rat's ass about the kids.

Are all of them like that? No. During my stay in Sheppard Pratt, I still exchanged letters with Sarah, my old case worker. I remember Ms. Laneel, who was very understanding and very decent. The foster mother that I stayed with after being discharged from Sheppard Pratt was, though we had our disagreements as well, a great woman.

But the majority of the people working in the system are sick bastards.

Bear with me; I am getting ready to sort through my memories and pick out the events and details that are worth telling in this autobiography.