I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [14]
In the first or second grade, kids should be bonding over Matchbox cars and action figures and playing tag. That wasn't the case for me and the way I connected with my family. Because we shared that strange bond of being neglected, I think my brothers and sisters and I were especially afraid of being split up. It was like we knew--even if we didn't understand it--that the system had already failed us, and would fail us again, so we didn't want to lose the one thing we had together.
As far as we knew, the foster care people were the bad guys. We had a sense of us-versus-them, and whenever we recognized one of them coming around to our house, we would all start getting scared.
There was one woman who we were especially afraid of: Bobbie Spivey. She was a no-nonsense social worker in Memphis who always seemed to be snooping around, talking to the neighbors, asking questions about our family and living situation, and trying to figure out what was going on.
There was another lady from Child Protective Services, named Bonnie, who was in charge of checking up on my family before Bobbie took over our case. I don't remember much about Ms. Bonnie except that she was tall and would visit each week or so to see how things were at home. Before too long, though, I think she got promoted to another job, and that's when Ms. Bobbie took over--and when things started to change.
No matter where our family moved, she tracked us down. She was like a bounty hunter. Sometimes she would come to the house three times a week on what they called "homemaker visits," in order to check up on the situation in the house, to see if my mother was still clean and that there was food in the refrigerator and that we kids were going to school. On a few of her visits, it was clear that we'd been left alone for a day or two. We were terrified of those visits because we knew that sooner or later, she wasn't going to be leaving by herself.
Of course now, when I look back on it, I realize that she genuinely cared about our well-being and our safety. She didn't want us having to live in terrible conditions or missing out on an education. She had our best interests at heart and was fighting to give us a chance. But as kids, all we could see her as was the lady who was going take us away from one another. So in our minds she was just someone mean who didn't want our family to live together.
I don't know who first called the authorities about our family. It might have been a neighbor who knew we were getting left alone a lot. It might have been a friend's mom who was tired of us coming over for food or a place to sleep. It might have even been one of my mother's cousins who called. She had a couple of family members who were always worried about how we were living, though when I was a kid I just thought they were busybodies.
I wonder sometimes, though, if it actually was my mother who had called. I wonder if she had just realized she couldn't take care of us--that we were too much for her and she felt overwhelmed and figured it would be better if we stayed with someone else, or if she just wasn't in the mood to be responsible for us anymore. I know that she loved us and wanted to keep us with her, but sometimes it seemed like she just knew that she wasn't up to the job of feeding and looking out for so many kids, so maybe she handed us off. If that's the case, it may sound like a terrible thing for a mother to do to her children, but in some ways it could also be the kindest thing. I mean, if she couldn't take care of us, at least she wanted to get us to someone who could, even if it meant we had to be apart.
We'll probably never know who first reported us; Tennessee law protects whoever makes the call to report a family. I guess that's in case it's a teacher or a neighbor, they don't have to worry that an angry family member will come after them to try to get revenge. But once a PCO (protective custody order) is issued, it doesn't matter who made the phone call. It means that there is enough documented abuse, neglect, or endangerment that