I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [15]
And, honestly, it didn't matter to us at the time. Our biggest concern was making sure that we stayed together as a family. Marcus used to pull together little family meetings where he would go over the game plan for when the authorities came to take us away--because we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Each time Ms. Spivey would make a visit, we were afraid she would be coming right back with the authorities, so Marcus had come up with a way to keep away from them and he wanted to make sure that we all knew exactly what we were supposed to do. As soon as one of us spotted the cars, our job was to yell to alert everyone else, and then to run as fast as we could in every different direction, just trying to get as far away from the house or as well hidden as possible. There was no way they could catch us if we scattered because they would not know who to go after. We'd meet up again a few hours or a few days later when the coast was clear.
He didn't want anyone to panic or be scared and forget what they were supposed to do when the time came. We knew we couldn't just pretend not to be at home. We had to do something much more drastic. We viewed our plan as a way of fighting back against the mean people who wanted to break up our family. I guess in some ways, it was the first playbook I ever learned.
In early June of 1993, getting close to the end of my first-grade year, we were all sleeping in the tiny duplex where the family was living at the time. If I remember right, all us kids were there: Marcus, Andre, Deljuan, Rico, Carlos, me, John, Denise, and Tara. My mother had left two days before and there had been no sign of her since then, and as usual, she hadn't left any food for us. She had, though, left the girls this time, even though little Denise was not quite three and baby Tara was only fourteen months old.
It was a school day, I think, but we were at home. I don't remember who first spotted the cars pull up, but there was a big window in the front room and we all peeked out to see the big car and the people in suits who stepped out onto the curb. There was no mistaking who it was. No one else in the neighborhood wore suits during the week.
Thanks to Marcus's family meetings, we all knew exactly what we were supposed to do. We ran to the back door and jumped down the steps even as they were knocking at the front door. Everyone ran a different way, hopping the fence and just getting as far from the house as they could while trying to stay out of sight. From the back door, I ran to my left toward an old body shop and tire store on the corner. It was a two-story building, and I don't know how I got up there, but I have a very clear memory of lying flat on the floor to catch my breath, and how proud I was that even though I was one of the littlest brothers, I'd remembered my job and had been fast enough to get away. And then I realized what had happened. The plan to run had been between us boys. We'd never even figured in the girls because our mother had usually taken them with her because they were so little. We had left Denise and Tara in the house.
There were a couple of windows facing our yard, so I crawled over to one to look out of it. I think there might have been some old curtains up that I kind of hid behind so that no one could see me. Sure enough, they were carrying my sisters out of the house, down the steps, and loading them into the car. They had caught John, too. All three of them were crying. They were scared and confused about what had just happened--why their big brothers were suddenly gone and who these strange people were who were taking them away from home.
All of our planning hadn't mattered. The grown-up world had won anyway. I could see Denise's face clearly in the car window as they drove off and all of the pride I'd been feeling just a few seconds