Nutmeg
Copyright 2011
Jacqueline Kelley-Kinnie
Smashwords Edition
Prologue
There was once, really and truly there was, a wonderful place called “Children’s Garden,” in Marin County, California. In our country, many small children are released from the parentage of their dysfunctional biological parents by the courts. Most have been seriously abused, physically, sexually and/or psychologically. A good many passed through Children’s Garden’s doors, treatment homes and fost-adopt homes to live better lives in safe places with people they learned to love and trust.
Children’s Garden came about through the efforts of a wonderful dedicated woman, Doris Kirgan, a Boston Clinical Social Worker who, dismayed at the plight of children adrift in America’s foster homes, decided to try to show that there was a better way. Doris led us, her staff, to learn the developmental theory of “attachment,” originally written by John Bowlby and greatly elaborated upon since its beginnings. Doris knew that helping children to separate and re-attach was a monumental task and urged her staff onward with the simple sign on her desk: “I know you CAN, but WILL you?” Long before a campaigning young presidential candidate used the phrase “Yes we can,” we all knew the phrase as certain to come out of the mouth of Doris at every staff meeting. “Of course, you/we, they can” was her most frequent verbalization. And so we learned we could and we did.
My years at Children’s Garden were spent first as Coordinator of the Evaluation Program, then as Counselor and Coordinator to the Treatment Homes and their houseparents and children, thirdly as Coordinator of the Foster Home Program and finally as Assistant Director to Doris. I shall always cherish those years as the finest learning experience in human relationships I would ever have.
The story told in this book is fiction in that it does not really represent one child but is the culmination of the experiences of several staff members and many children who went through the doors of Children’s Garden. I have written this book to increase our awareness of the pain and suffering known to all too many children in America and the world, and to tell some ways in which we can provide a path wherein they may learn once again to trust a world from a safe haven for their young lives.
I am grateful to Doris, to the staff of Children’s Garden with whom I shared these experiences and years, and most of all to the children whose lives I shared for a brief moment in time. I am also grateful to the members of the Humanist Writing Camp of Sarasota, Florida which prodded me to write and complete this tale, and whose feedback has been so valuable.
Chapter 1
Nutmeg Arrives
She was, according to the records we had received, just seven years old, reportedly a bright child who had “failed” six foster homes and an adoption placement in the Bay area since the age of three months. When she was but three months old, the courts removed custody from her schizophrenic mother and made her a ward of the state of California. Now she stood here defiant, stating that she had indeed fried the goldfish on the radiator, and she was proud that she had.
“So what you gonna do ‘bout it?”
“Not much at the moment,” I replied. “What’s your name?’
“I am Nutmeg.”
“Hmmm, it says here your name is Katy.”
“My name is NUTMEG!” She screamed. I wasn’t at all sure the sounds coming from this cute little girl in front of me were human, but they were intelligible and very, very loud.
“How did you get the name Nutmeg?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“I made it up for myself and it’s MY NAME!” She screeched back at me, stomping a little foot in a Mary Jane patent leather shoe with a lacey sock above it.
“I see. OK, then Nutmeg it is.” I said quietly as I kneeled down to look eye to eye into this little girl’s face. She pushed me away. “I don’t like you,” she screamed.
“Well, welcome to Children’s Garden anyway,” I replied quietly. “Since this will be your home for the next few months, would you like to see your room?” I stood up and offered my hand.
“I get my own room?” She asked, peering at me finally with incredible deep brown eyes as a small tear fell from her left eye. “What color is it?”
“Pink and white,” said the housemother who had stood and witnessed these somewhat bizarre moments.
“I don’t like PINK!” she shouted.
It was clear to me that this little girl was used to intimidating people, with her temper and shouting. It was just as clear that we, the staff of Children’s Garden, were unlikely to be favorably impressed with such behaviors, though we were certainly used to dealing with them.
“Nutmeg,” I said very quietly, “Your room can be any color you want, but for today it’s pink and white. Tomorrow you can go with your house mom and pick out whatever color you want.”
At Children’s Garden, we sometimes worked from the “outside – in” to change the behaviors, feelings and self appraisals of our seriously disturbed children. We gave them beautiful rooms which they designed for themselves after moving in, and beautiful but sturdy clothes they were not used to. We made every attempt to let them know that though they often misbehaved in hateful ways, we respected them as people and we let them know we cared enough about them to not let them continue their sometimes hateful and usually less than polite and amiable ways.
“You’re lying,” said Nutmeg, but took my hand suddenly and pulled toward the hallway which was evident to all. So began a journey and a relationship between a little bi-racial child and me which I would never forget.
Chapter 2
Nightmares
At first I thought it was a dream. Then I recognized the ringing phone. It was 1:30 AM. “Hello” I said picking up the phone.
“Hi, sorry to bother you, but we can’t get Katy to sleep and she’s been screaming about voodoo outside her window and insisting her mother is there. She’s wakened the whole house twice now, and all the kids are on edge. She says her mother is going to kill us all. And she’s not dreaming.”
“Have you tried some warm milk, singing to her?” I asked rubbing my eyes and sitting up to try to wake up. I’d had a rough couple of days and nights with the children in the Evaluation Home, and this was the third night it looked like I was going to have to get up and go again.
“We’ve tried everything. Nothing works. There she goes again … she’s making the most awful sounds!” The housemother, Marci, sounded frantic.
“OK, I’m coming,” I replied. I quickly grabbed my jeans and a flannel shirt. I looked bleary eyed into the bathroom mirror and quickly ran a brush through my hair, then grabbed my car keys and purse from the hall table and went to the garage to start the car. As I backed out of the garage, I felt the fog close around the car. Putting on the fog lights, I headed up Highway 1 to the house in Novato where the nighttime ruckus was happening again.
As I drove, I tried to collect my thoughts about what I had read of Katy’s social and medical history provided by County Social Services. It had been sketchy, but I recalled something about her mother being a voodoo practitioner, who in one of her more insane moments had cut off the tip of a finger on her baby, believing that it would release the evil spirits within the child. I didn’t recall seeing a short finger, but I really hadn’t looked for one when Katy arrived. Everyone had been focused on the nasty little girl who had immediately fried the family goldfish upon her arrival.
Arriving at the house where our house parents live with six young seriously disturbed children, I saw that all the lights were on. “Oh boy,” I thought, “she’s got the whole house going.” As I opened the front door, I heard the wailing. Both Marci and Jack, the house parents of the Evaluation Program, were in the living room with Katy on the couch. Marci stroked her hair and Jack was trying to reason with her in a quiet voice.
“Katy, Katy,” I said quietly moving toward the group.
“My name is NUTMEG!” She screeched, and suddenly stopped the wailing, sitting bolt upright and staring at me silently.
“OK Nutmeg,” I quickly corrected myself. “What’s all this about?”
“I can’t sleep in this house – EVER!” Nutmeg yelled.
“Hmm -- is your bed comfortable? Do you sleep with your teddy bear?” I knew from reading her history that she had a teddy bear she had carried around with her from home to home for as long as she had been in foster care.
“That’s not it,” she sobbed, tears now rolling from those beautiful deep brown eyes down her face.
“And?” I said.
“SHE’S here -- she’s gonna kill us all!” she sobbed.
“Who, Nutmeg?”
“Betty Lou.” I knew Betty Lou was her birth mother’s name.
“Betty Lou is not here, Nutmeg. She can’t get to you here,” I said quietly and moved a bit closer.
“You don’t know,” she cried. “She’s -- she’s outside my window!” She began to shake as she pointed a finger, the short second finger of her left hand, at me. “You don’t know!” she sobbed.
“I know she hurt you very badly a long time ago, “I said.
“She almost killed me.” The sobbing was softer now. And she curled into Marci in fetal position, softly crying. I nodded to Marci who picked up my cue and carried her very gently to her pink and white bedroom, cuddling her as she placed her on the bed beside her.
After settling the other kids with Jack and getting them off to bed, I went to the pink and white bedroom to find Marci still cuddling Nutmeg in her little bed with her teddy bear held between them, softly stroking the long black curls and singing a lullaby. Nutmeg was huddled close, and seemed quiet now.
As I entered the room, Nutmeg looked up with those big soulful dark eyes. “It’s always like this the first night,” she whispered. Her words broke my heart: she was obviously considering this just another move -- one of many in her short life.
I sat on the bed near her. “It’s OK, Nutmeg. You are safe here in Children’s Garden. We won’t let anything hurt you here. We promise. And we always keep our promises, you will see.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and closed her eyes, holding the teddy bear and Marci tight.
The Evaluation Home now quiet and the kids asleep, I hugged my house parents, and bid them a good night. It was 3:30 now and I had yet a long drive home before I could sleep.
Chapter 3
School
As I made my tea and toast the next morning, I kept hearing her words in my ears: “it’s always like this --” How were we to find a way to this little girl’s heart so that she could attach normally to someone for at least her growing up years, setting the stage for good adult relationships and attachments? How were we to teach her to trust that someone could care for her and not hurt her? She had never been in a placement where that was true unfortunately, or so the records stated.
Our job was never easy … to ease the pains of separations and abuses that often had occurred over and over in the children’s short lives. But this one somehow seemed especially hard. Nutmeg, after several foster placements and considered “ready” for adoption, had literally refused an adoption, saying to her new black parents: “I don’t want to be Black like you!” I could feel for the new young parents who felt this child had totally rejected them, and who, disappointed and heart-broken, took her back to Social Services. Public adoptions didn’t offer therapeutic support to adoptive parents. And so, Nutmeg had come to be classified as “unplaceable,” meaning that unless we could change her heart and feelings and could somehow teach her to trust and attach and love a parent or set of parents, she would spend the rest of her life moving from foster placement to foster placement, never knowing a home or family of her own.
As I entered our offices, the secretary called me over. “There’s trouble at the school with the new kid. They want you to come up right away.”
Without even checking my mail, I headed back out to our small private school where our children in the Evaluation Home were placed. Here we did complete educational assessments of their abilities and skills, as well as keeping behavioral observations of how a child performed and acted, or acted out, in school.
Arriving at the school, Barb, the head teacher, came outside to greet me. “This one’s a real pip,” she said with a wide grin. There was nothing Barbara enjoyed more than a good challenge in our children!
“OK what’s she done already? “ I asked.
“Well, she bit little Michael, and she’s been masturbating ever since, putting on quite a show. I put her in the bathroom for a time out,” said Barb.
“OK,” I said as I went inside.
As I entered the bathroom, I heard Nutmeg singing: “There’s no mama in the sky --” I listened outside the small cubicle in which she sang: “and there’s no papa there to make her cry.” Nutmeg crooned and cried softly in between verses.
I opened the cubicle door slowly, and sat on the floor beside her. “Nutmeg, did you hit Michael?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah, so what?” She looked at me defiantly.
“So you hurt Michael. And here at Children’s Garden we don’t let anyone get hurt or hurt anyone else.”
“So whatcha’ gonna do about it?” she asked with a challenge in her voice.
“Oh, probably separate you from the other children, give you extra chores, and take away your best loved activities,” I replied firmly.
“So?” she shouted. “I don’t care.”
“Cradling her gently there on the floor, I said quietly, “Well Nutmeg, it’s too bad that you don’t care. We hope that you will learn to care and care about being cared for here at Children’s Garden. Now I think you and I had best get up and go home.”
Nutmeg began to wail. “No, no I’ll be good – please --” She cried loudly and began to kick and scream.
“Nutmeg, temper tantrums won’t do any good for you or the other children,” I said quietly but firmly.
“You have broken one of our most important rules –- not to harm another person -- and you must go home for today. Tomorrow is another day, and perhaps you can think about how you will behave differently then while you are home.”
“But I don’t want to be alone,” she screamed.
“You will not be alone. Your house mom is there with you,” I reassured the frightened child who now hung onto my hand tightly and tried to get into my lap.”
I stood up, put my arms around her and led her quietly through the back of the classroom, out to the parking lot and into my car. I buckled up her seatbelt, climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine.
“Wait,” Nutmeg said quietly now. “If I PROMISE to be good, can I go back to school? There’s a party later and I’ll miss it if I have to go home. PLEASE, PLEASE -- I PROMISE I’ll be good.” She whined and looked up at me with those deep, dark brown pleading eyes.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, and I am really sorry you will miss the party, Nutmeg,” I said. “but your behavior today is unacceptable, and we care enough about you to teach you that you cannot behave by hitting others. You’ll have lots of time to think about that today while you are home.”
I drove out of the parking lot and listened to her screech over and over how much she hated me for the five miles to the Evaluation Home. To say she was loud is an understatement.
This child had an amazing ability to turn on and off her screeching, apparent emotional upsets and outbursts and her crying and screaming. The minute we drove into the driveway of the Evaluation Home, she stopped, sighed a bit and eagerly got out of the car.
As we entered the house, she smiled and ran to the housemother. “Can we go get the blue paint now?” She quickly asked in a charming voice.
Marci looked at me questioningly. “Uh -- just a minute, Nutmeg.” It seemed that Katy had convinced her house parents to also call her Nutmeg in this short time period. “I need to find out why you are home now.”
I hastened to explain what had transpired at school as Nutmeg sat on the floor and pouted, chewing on her fingernails. And Marci, a seasoned houseparent in our agency knew what to do and say next.
“Nutmeg, we need to have a little talk about your behavior and the rules here in Children’s Garden. Then you can help me with some chores until the children return from school.”
Nutmeg screamed: “Don’t I even get lunch?”
“Yes, of course you get lunch,” Marci replied. “But first, you and I are going to sit down and talk.”
I left once again for the office, feeling comfortable with the knowledge that Marci would somehow get through to Nutmeg at least once. I also knew that Nutmeg was smart and would likely find another way to hurt someone or something soon.
Chapter 4
The Agency
The team at Children’s Garden worked 24/7. It was a high burn-out job, no matter whether you worked in the Evaluation Program, the Treatment Home Program, or the Foster-Adopt Program. Our director, Debra, had a prominent sign on her desk with a quote we all knew by heart: “I know you can, but will you?” That little sign said it all.
No matter how capable we all were, the issues of plodding through the tiredness of the constant barrage of problems with one or more of the sixty-five children we served daily was a real one. There was never a day that one would consider “normal” for any of us.
So it was no surprise that a houseparent from the Treatment Program was waiting in my office to talk with me about one of her charges. Phil was a sad boy who set fires, and today had set one directly under the housemother’s chair! Life was never boring at Children’s Garden.
I suggested we discuss Phil and his problem behaviors with our consulting psychiatrist, who also evaluated and treated our children in their various placements and stages of getting well. Phil had done well for two years, but suddenly seemed to be reverting to his old ways. We weren’t sure why, though we suspected we knew. Phil was about to enter an adoption placement, as that was what his southern California County had requested for him. We disagreed, knowing that his original attachment to his biological parents, despite their horrific abuse for years, was very strong. Such children often cannot sever that original attachment and form another, and we were pretty sure Phil was among those kids who would balk and begin to tell us he didn’t want a new family through his behavior. Such events were not unusual in our agency. But it was difficult to convince referring county agencies that a long term foster placement would be better for a particular child than an adoptive placement. They were under enormous pressure to get the kids off the state and federal welfare rolls, despite the child’s real needs.