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So when I got home and no one came after me for a couple of days, I figured they might finally have decided to leave us alone--and I guess I was right. Since we weren't in any immediate physical danger, maybe the authorities just decided that it was worth another shot for us to try to live at home again. Or maybe they were tired of chasing me and figured that if I wanted to be at home so badly, they might as well let me. I didn't look like too much of a kid anymore, either. By then I was coming in around five feet seven, which is pretty crazy when you're barely eleven years old.

For all the great dreams I'd had about what it would be like when I finally got home, though, I was pretty disappointed. I'd always imagined that things would be just like they were before we got split up, with all of us kids together again, plus the new ones that seemed to just keep coming. But a lot had changed during those few years. Marcus was an adult now. Andre and Deljuan were about to be. Rico was still in the system, and John, Denise, and Tara were living with other families. So for now, home meant my mother, me, and a new baby or two. As their situations changed, my older brothers drifted in and out, but I was facing the hard realization that things would never be the same--that we'd never all live together again.

My grandmother had moved up to Minnesota. I have no idea if I have any family up there or if there was a specific reason why she chose that particular state. But as far as I was concerned, the farther she was from us, the better. I didn't want the DCS getting any kind of ideas about moving us back in with her. She died just a year or two after I returned home for good.

I had changed, too. I had started to put the pieces together of what was required to get a life and a job outside of the ghetto someday. As much as I had hated being in state custody, I did have someone getting me up each morning and making me go to school. It's amazing what regular attendance can do for you. Even if I had pretty much given up on trying to learn much, as I was changing schools so often, I still began to understand better what responsibility was all about and why it was important to show up where you are expected each day.

There was one big change that I was especially excited about, though. When I was close to turning eleven, we moved from Hyde Park to a house in Hurt Village that had three bedrooms, and as far as I could tell, it was a mansion. We had never lived in a place that big, and even if the every-man-for-himself rules still applied at dinnertime or in terms of grabbing a place on a mattress, I thought we were living large.

That year was actually a good one. I was back home with my mother, which I had wanted so badly, and I was put in Ms. Verlene Logan's fourth-grade class at Gordon Elementary. I had missed so much school at that point, and even at eleven years old I was much bigger than the other kids, but she never made me feel as if there was anything negative about that.

She had taught for many years and was wonderful at it. She made all of us feel special in her class and she went above and beyond in caring for her students. She could always make the rough, rowdy kids calm down with a few gentle words. She always told us that we were all intelligent and could accomplish great things in life if we didn't give up and take the easy road. She tried hard to let every student know he or she was important to her and seemed especially proud of me when I made the honor roll. I found out later that if there was ever a child who didn't have clothes or shoes that fit, Ms. Logan would quietly go out and buy them what they needed.

But I didn't know that then. I just knew that she was the teacher who was determined to make all of us in that inner-city school believe in ourselves. "Can't never could and ain't never would" she used to remind us, in order to help us believe in our abilities and the importance of working hard. She used to encourage me to keep up with sports because whenever