Liza and The Reverse Fairytale

Stories from the Field

If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. ~Shirley Chisholm

This is the third installment of Liza’s Story. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

The Little Princess was Shirley Temple’s last major success as a child star, and her first film in color. It is the story of a wealthy white girl named Sara who has to go to a boarding school to live while her father, and ariel ace in the military, goes off to fight a war you’ve probably never heard of. There she lives a life of privilege until her father is lost in war, presumed dead, and no further cash would be coming to support The Little Princess.

On a dime, Sara’s life is transformed. She is stripped of all her opulent belongings. She is removed from her well-appointed room and given servants quarters. Moreover, she is now required to work in the school instead of attending classes and taking riding lessons. She is also half-starved and generally neglected. Her only solace is the friendship of a servant from a neighboring property, an Indian man named Ram Dass, and the brother of her tormentor, Bertie, who is opposed to Sara’s treatment. These two guys indulge Sara’s fantasies that her father may still be alive. They also team up to restore Sara’s dingy little servants’ quarters to splendor with lavish carpets and furniture and food! It’s like a dream come true and an unforgettable scene in the movie.

These goods are found, and Sara is seized by her tormenter, Miss Minchin, the manager of the school. Miss Minchin then locks Sara in a closet and screams at her that her father is dead and that is that. She calls the police. Sara flees out a window and makes her way to the hospital where a mystery patient is about to arrive. You guessed it, that mystery patient who keeps whispering “Sara, Sara” and whom the Queen (Victoria for the record) has just happened to come to see to honor him and his bravery is Sara’s father. In a breathtaking scene in front of royalty, the father and daughter are reunited and all’s well that ends well. It’s a true fairytale in the classic Victorian style of rags to riches, with a twist—riches to rags to riches restored.

And so it was with Liza, only in reverse.

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Liza’s is a rags to riches to rags restored story, if you think about it. Instead of being redemptive, like Shirley Temple’s story, it’s persecutive. It’s a story of deprivation and loss, sudden joy, and just as sudden loss. I can’t even imagine the additional trauma Liza has sustained as a result of the whole sordid affair. To be the victim of your own family, and then to follow that up with victimization at the hands of the system that was supposed to save you? To have Child Welfare professionals with degrees, credit, and mortgages be so routinely careless with children they would let a politically connected person gain privileges and avoid consequences when YOUR life is the one at stake? Why would she ever trust any authority in South Carolina ever again?

When I think of Liza these days I see her in all the stages of development in her life and her circumstances during those phases. In my mind’s eye I can see her beautiful brown chubby face as a baby, her hair spilling out high on her head and smiling, the way any well-loved baby would. I can see her a year or two later, still chubby, hair in those super-cute fat braids clasped in barrettes, and a more serious, worried look on her face. I can see her as she entered school, just a mess of bruises on her legs and a quiet, fearful disposition. I see her growing taller and more slender, wearing ill-fitting clothes and shabby shoes to school, walking with books clenched tight and her big brown eyes looking down. She’d wear more hats and oversized jackets as she navigated her dangerous neighborhood. In Charleston’s filthy and shameful ghettos, the culture of rags was firmly claiming this young lady. It was transforming her.

Then she went into foster care for the longest stretch of her childhood, and she could not know that she would not see her mother again. That happened at some point during this case. Whether mom dropped out of the picture on her own or didn’t meet the federal guideline for correcting the issues that led to the finding in the case, I don’t know. (Those federal guidelines suggest parents should be able to gain the necessary parenting skills, or quit methamphetamine, for example, in 15 months. If the parent(s) doesn’t, we can terminate parental rights and the guidance says we probably should unless there is a compelling reason to continue the case.)

In foster care, Liza experienced the same stasis that Sara did in her boarding school. Life was somewhat bearable, but more painful due to separation and uncertainty. While not preferable, the environment could be endured due to the temporary nature of it. Like Sara, Liza pined for her mother and her extended family in this lonely period of her life.

Then, suddenly, she is rushed through an adoption process with a person of means, whom she also likes. She goes to live in a big house somewhere else, where it’s just her and her parent, Candidate A. She has a whole room to herself, something she has never had and always wanted. Her room features a full-sized bed with a headboard and everything. The dresser matches, as does the giant standing full-length mirror in the corner. Liza has never seen her whole body in a mirror. She gazes admiringly at herself, notices a zit popping up on her chin, and grimaces. The clothes she is bought and the hair she is allowed to frequently change and the almond shaped acrylic nails she’s allowed to get excite her and have her walking a little taller in school, when she goes. I can’t even imagine what all of this meant to her as she transitioned from her 14th to her 15th year. It must have seemed a kind of miracle. Like she could breath easier.

And in the blink of an eye—for reasons Liza really can’t understand—it’s gone. All of it except the clothes. Liza is back in a foster home. She is 15 and she will never see Candidate A again unless they happen to run into each other around the Lowcountry. Candidate A may sometimes feature in news stories, and when Candidate A does, Liza will tell whoever happens to be there that she was adopted by this person once, but it didn’t work out. She will tell this story like it’s her fault it didn’t work out. But we know darn well that’s not the case.  She likely never will know.

Adoption through foster care is a bizarre process. Workers are pressured to place children from every state’s Heart Galleries and often go to desperate lengths to “achieve Permanency” for these kids. Liza and Candidate A’s story is but one of many horror stories I have seen and heard of in my tenure working in Child Welfare. I once knew a case worker who talked some poor Christian family into adopting 15 children, even though had wanted to stop much earlier. They ended up years later with a house burned to the ground, though everyone got out safe. I knew another case manager whose case I assumed who shared with me how my charge, then committed to a mental institution, had been adopted by an extreme pedophile and she and her sisters were raped and assaulted for years. This youth’s likely “Permanency” was this commitment, granted one year at time. As the case manager rightly pointed out—CPS did this to her. We did not save her because we were making too many decisions at lightening speed, and we were picking people from the bottom of the pile to make those decisions.

But the worst cases are the failed adoptions. I have witnessed a frightening number of those. Liza is but one of many stories, and hers was particularly interesting due to the abuse of power that took place all around this case. But failure in adoptions happens all the time. Some adoptions fail in months because adoptive parents truly weren’t prepared. Sometimes they fail after years because a cute child can sometimes grow into a menacing teen. But it behooves us to remember that they are all children, and all have been failed by the adults in their lives, even the so-called good or professional ones. These kids aren’t responsible yet. The loss they have experienced in childhood is greater than most of us will ever know in whole lifetimes.

Liza’s losses are incalculable and inhumane. She will likely never trust again. She may never learn to have healthy relationships, or to love and feel loved. She will have memories of Candidate A swishing around inside brain for the rest of her life, just lying-in wait to spring out and sabotage whatever efforts Liza might be putting into her life. She will likely question herself forever and will assume she should be rejected because that’s been her life. She may become engulfed in the culture of rags again, afraid to break free, if she even could. In just 15 short years we took a smiling baby and conditioned her to expect the very worst in life. It didn’t have to be that way. We could have taken the same 15 years and the same money and kept that child smiling, well-adjusted, and well-loved.  We chose not to each and every day we trusted this child’s future to the sad and sorry system that is SCDSS.

Are we ready to talk about how we can do better together? Like, for real? Not just lip service? Not just sloganeering? Are you ready to live up to those values you keep spouting off about and posting all over Facebook and LinkedIn? Are we ready to accept these systems must be abolished and completely, intentionally, and mindfully rebuilt with the ability to impact real change? Let me know, because I have ideas…