I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [21]
A couple of times I just sat by the front door and waited for her to return. It was tough to know how she would react when she found me there. At times she would grab me by the arm and march me right back over to the house I'd just left. When that happened, I think she must have been at a place emotionally where it was a relief to her that we were in someone else's hands. It seemed like she thought if someone else had us, then we were getting looked after, fed well, and had a roof over our heads. It was more than she could guarantee when we were with her.
But other times, she would give me a big hug and let me inside. We would stay there at her house for as long as we could. I say we, because sometimes Carlos ran with me and one of our other brothers might be there at the house, too. Most of my older brothers had been placed in group homes rather than with families, and I think that might have given them a little more freedom to come and go. Or maybe they ran, too. It didn't seem like anyone was keeping close tabs on us. Those times, when my brothers would be there, were the ones that made running worth it. Sometimes we would only get to stay a few hours, but a few times we were able to camp out at my mother's house for several days or weeks without anyone looking for us too hard.
Usually nothing much came out of me running away because the authorities always knew where I headed and could scoop me up pretty easily. But during those times when I had a long stay with my mother, a runaway report would be filed and the police would have to get involved. That happened three times while I was with Velma. The challenge was that my mother learned the rules of the system--that the authorities couldn't enter her residence without a court order or permit to do so. So whenever they came around looking for us while she was feeling like she could take care of us, we would not be allowed to answer the door. She would be the one to do all the talking and say that she had no idea where we were and that she hadn't seen us. Meanwhile, I remember peeping through the curtains to watch, and even though I thought I was being sneaky, I'm sure they could see me. But the law was on her side and my mother understood that, so she used it to her advantage.
Ms. Spivey ended up getting a guy named Eric to help her with our case. He was a short guy with curly hair; her hope was that maybe if there was a man working on our case, too, we'd respond better to him and look at him as kind of a role model. It was a great thought, but it didn't really work. It still felt to me like it was us versus them, and he was just another "them" who wanted to keep my family apart.
Eventually, though, I always got caught. Ms. Spivey was not going to give up easily. When I asked her about it recently, she laughed and told me it was always her goal to find us because she didn't want us thinking we were smarter than she was. Usually it was at school (when I would go) that the authorities would end up getting ahold of us. They would pull me out of class like they did the first time they took me away, and I would end up right back at Velma's house until the next time I ran. I think it even got to the point that they could predict my escapes. They almost always came right after one of our supervised family visits. My heart would hurt so badly after seeing us all together--one or two times my mother was even able to cook us dinner to eat together while we were there--and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted a nice family life. The only thing I could do, as an eight- or nine-year-old, was to run, so it seemed to me like it was better than doing nothing.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PUBLISHED a study a few years ago about adolescents who run away more than once from foster homes. 1 According to the report the authors wrote on the study, children who run away from care more than once: "May be experiencing harm in their placements, missing family, receiving inadequate attention to their mental health needs, or lacking access to normative