I left you last week with “Soon after she got him back, she would look me up and enter our lives. Up until now in my mind except for the one visit from another sister (which will come later in my story), she was my cousin.”
As luck would have one day while my parents were shopping they ran into my younger sister who had been adopted by another set of family members. She asked what I was up to and my parents kindly told her just over there, and told her the number of my trailer. She showed up one day at of the blue. Me wanting to know more about my sibling, looked forward to having her over.
The first time she came over everything was fine. My third child Dennise and her first child Bryan were only 17 days apart. We had the same bio parents and knew everyone in our adoptive families, and not much about our bio mother’s side. Other then that we really didn’t have all that much in common.
The second time she came over she asked if we could watch Bryan, we said sure. Besides I was use to taking care of kids as that was my primary job. Well the time went by when she was supposed to be back to get him. He was out of bottles as he was only 9 months old, so Dennis ran over to walmart and picked up a can of formula for him. I breastfed and I wasn’t that comfortable with my sister so this was a short time answer.
The night ticked on by, I tucked Bryan into sleep with all of the other kids. I was worried, didn’t have anyone to call to get a hold of her, and it was getting pretty late. I paced the floor, called my parents, told them what was going on. They told me to go to bed and she should be back the next day to get him.
Morning came and went with another run to the store for a can of formula. Afternoon came and I called DSS to see if someone there could help me out. They didn’t know how to contact her, but her adult supervisor would look for her. They asked if he could stay with us until she showed back up. I told them yes he could and they offered me some kind of voucher to purchase formula, diapers, and baby-food for the Bryan at the store, which was really nice, but made me think how often does something like this happen, that they had the funds for this right away?
She showed up the following day to pick him up, with an excuse that I can’t even remember now as they all kind of blend together at this point. Only a few really stick out. She continued to do this one and off for a couple of months, the longest time that she left Bryan with us was for two weeks no one saw her, or knew where she was. We had found out where she lived and no one was even home there. When she finally showed up I told her that Dennis didn’t want me anywhere near her anymore, as apparently we were only someone who she could pawn her child off on, and it was messed up, and even having its toll on Bryan.
The few times that I got to see what her apartment looked like inside was no bed of roses I can tell you that. I even called her worker telling them that something needed to be done. She said that she looked in on her a few times a month, and my sister was trying to get things done. I even watched him a few times when she said she was doing just this, to drop him off later and find nothing looking better.
So a couple of more months went by without me seeing or hearing from her, me being worried about Bryan and how he was doing was keeping me up at night, so Dennis tole me to take a trip down and check on him. Well I brought the kids with me all three of them and told Buke and Samantha to stay in the car. I took Dennise in with me and knocked on the door. When she opened the door the smell made my eyes tear up and my nose was twitching.
I told her I wanted to check up on them and see that they were alright. On top of piles of garbage bags to the ceiling and no place to step without stepping on something, I see on a chair, my bio mother sitting there with a big smile on her face. Soon as she saw me she kept going on how I looked like so and so from her side, and just filling my head with nonsense. Her tricks might have worked on my younger sister and some of my older siblings but she wasn’t getting to me.
My purpose for being there was to check on Bryan and Bryan alone. He was sitting in a corner on top of a pile of dirty clothes. I held onto Dennise while picking him up, to find that he had a diaper so full of crap, and pee that it had exploded and was running down his leg and all over me. I asked if she had any diapers in which she answered. I haven’t had any for a couple of days. I placed him back down took Dennise out to the car, grabbed her diaper bag, strapped her in her car seat, asked my son to watch her and if anyone came near the car to honk the horn.
I marched right back inside and said here you can have our diapers, in which my sister replied I am not changing that. I said fine, picked him up and started up the stairs to her bathroom, so I could give him a bath. Holly crap her toilet was overflowed all over tons of clothes and toilet paper, the tub was full of wet clothes with mold all over the place. I could get down her hall to even check to see if there was a cleaner spot so I went back down the stairs, cleaned off a spot on her opened fold out couch that was piled high with garbage bags, and dirty clothes.
While opening his diaper I asked why there was so much garbage. She said she liked to go dumpster diving. I said most people do that and only bring the good stuff home and not whole bags. I told her she had a dumpster right outside. She said she was scared to go out and put the garbage in by herself. Really I was thinking to myself….but you can go out and Dumpster dive in the middle of the night? So I open Bryan’s diaper up and boy is it a mess, I only had a few wipes but he had one hell of a rash, and I couldn’t get him as clean as I would have liked. I grabbed the cleanest thing I could find and went to the kitchen while holding him to get the piece of clothing wet so I could clean him better. There were maggots, and cockroaches everywhere at it was daylight out. I couldn’t even get to the sink so I wiped him off the best I could, put some A&D ointment on him, his diaper, handed her my whole diaper bag, and said get to the store and get him what he needs. I gave Bryan a kiss and set him down.
I went straight to where my husband worked and told him what I had just seen. He told me to call her worker, they would have to do something. I went home gave my kids a snack and told them Mommy needed to make an important phone call. I called got her worker on the line and was given we are doing the best we can, she just got him back a few months ago, it is taking her some time to get used to it all, and yadda yadda. When I did get off the phone I wasn’t sure what they would do if anything. I prayed that night pretty hard that something would be done.
Siblings Separated a True Story 
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