As we pulled up to the house, MLRA got superexcited and unbuckled his seatbelt. His aunt came to the car to greet him. My uncle and I grabbed his luggage: 1) a huge dufflebag of clothes; 2) a suitcase of his toys, play computer, favorite books; his towels; his sheets; and 3) his backpack of pictures and coloring books. MLRA was wearing a winter coat, a goosefeather vest and a winter hat.
He went willing to his aunt. She scooped him up and carried him inside the house. My uncle and I followed her in. Once inside, MLRA started screaming at me, "GO AWAY! DON'T TOUCH ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!". In a state of mild shock, I waved goodbye to him and my uncle and I walked out. The house was a mess. The aunts were rude. I felt like I was watching my year and a half of hard work going down the drain in a second before my eyes. I couldn't react. I went into survival mode which was to shut down my emotions.
The Denver aunt was there, having flown in for the occasion. Denver aunt was waiting outside when we walked out. She stood in my way and said, "I want some answers". I said, okay, let's talk. She started to insist that we talk later but I demanded to get it over with. Denver Aunt, Aunt #1 told me that she wanted to know why I was returning him to them. She said, What do you expect us to do with him now? Do you realize what kind of bind you have left us in? Now what? I explained that MLRA was a different little boy than when he first came to me and that she would see that he was starting to read and was much calmer. She replied back to me, "I don't give a shit what you think you've done for him. I don't give a shit how many clothes you bought him. All I care about right now is what am I going to tell my family when I walk back in there. They will want to have an explanation as to why we are now in this situation."
Somewhere in the conversation I said, I don't want you to say thank you but I do want you to acknowledge that it was difficult for me to keep him without any help. You guys have each other. I didn't even have one person who would watch him for 5 minutes.
But Aunt #1/Denver Aunt interrupted me to say that she had forgiven MLRA's dad for killing her cousin. That she had forgiven him because she came to realize that she was shot in a moment of passion. I asked her, how can you forgive him and hate me? She replied, I don't hate you but I do resent you for bringing him back. ARGH. I just wanted to finish the conversation and get out of there. I didn't want a reason to ever talk to them again. But, I also wanted to leave it clean so I could have a relationship with MLRA.
We left. I didn't cry. I just stared at the air as we drove back the 3 hours to my uncle's house.
The next morning I texted the Aunt #2 to ask her to say good morning to MLRA for me. She responded with the following text: "don't text me anymore, you stress me out too much". I thought about leaving it alone but decided that I couldn't. I texted her back- either you let me have a relationship with MLRA and let me talk to him or I will call the police and ask them to go to your house to make sure he is okay. Well that did it. I got a call from MLRA. He said he was fine. and he was told to tell me he would call back later because he was busy and that was that. Before he hung up he said that he had a lot of things to tell me but he was being told in the background to hang up. So, he did. I was grateful that I heard his tiny voice and that he seemed okay.
No comments:
Post a Comment