Bleeding Perseverance - Episode 20

Autobiography Fridays

Our foster brother Kimo was a jackass bully. Being sixteen years old, he was naturally bigger than us and used it to his advantage. At dinner time he’d oftentimes take an item he wanted off Jesse’s plate. It saddens me to think about it, and is something I will always regret. Not doing more to stand up for my little brother.

If only I would have gotten ahold of that punk Kimo in later years.

As with the previous foster home, we were treated as second class. Not allowed near the frig or the TV remote, only able to eat what we were given, etc. Of course this meant we were never allowed to be home alone. One day after school, I arrived to find Kimo sitting outside the locked house. I joined him in waiting for someone to return home and soon had made him mad for some reason. Being a wrestling fan, he put a choke hold on me from the back. His hold got tighter and tighter and before I knew it I started to black out. The next thing I remember was a side angle view of the street, while experiencing a restful bliss I didn’t want to wake from. But Kimo shook me and I was fully conscious again. He was scared for what he had done and tried to make light of the situation. I still ended up telling on him, but nothing was done about it.

I don’t remember the reason why, but Kimo ended up running away. I was the only one who knew he was going to do it and asked him if I could have his keyboard since he was leaving it behind. He said yes and I was thrilled, with thoughts of learning to play music.

Well, I didn’t expect a pig to come along and take it from me, but that’s exactly what happened. Babes, the eldest daughter who didn’t even live there, ignored me when I said Kimo had given it to me and took it for herself.

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Like Phyllis at the other foster home, Angie was not a good soul. If I “talked back,” which in other words meant exposing some truth she didn’t like, she’d threaten to send me to D.H. She even slapped me in the face once, knowing I wouldn’t do anything back and risk being separated from Jesse.

Such injustice and bullying causes a person to want to learn how to defend oneself. I started taking boxing lessons. The place I went to only cost a dollar a year and was sponsored by the Police Activities League. I ended up having to quit after a while because my right wrist began to hurt like hell every time I’d hit the punching bag. I was thinking it had something to do with the two breaks I had earlier in my childhood, but ever since then I’ve never again had a problem with it. Who knows.

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Tweety, Angie and Kenneth’s youngest daughter, was the only one I really liked there. We sometimes talked for hours, and if she hadn’t of had a college boyfriend, Mac, who oftentimes stayed at the house there, I think I would have had a shot with her. Here’s why…

One time Mac was not around and Angie was going to take Tweety clothes shopping at the mall. She told her mother she wanted me to come along, so the three of us went to The Gap. While shopping she held my hand like I was her boyfriend! Can you imagine that?! A hopeless romantic like myself holding hands with a high school girl! I was obviously on Cloud 9! Magic! To the store clerks and passersby who didn’t know any better we were really boyfriend and girlfriend. Wow!

Unfortunately, that was the only time it happened. Boy was I jealous of Mac afterwards! If I hadn’t been such a shy coward I could have spoken up and possibly have won her over. Ah… what a dream!

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Soon we got a new foster brother named Eddie. He was a Filipino whose father had locked him in dog cages as a child. Before moving in, Eddie had lived in a group home. There he had known this “white guy” who had made a name for himself for being a “bad boy.” The white guy he was speaking of was Chino! Eddie was shocked to learn I was his brother.

Angie and Kenneth were on the go a lot. This meant Terrence, Eddie, and I had to find places to hang out while the house was locked. Up to this point I had never had such freedom, so this new environment was somewhat intoxicating, which allowed me to be foolishly influenced by my two hoodlum foster brothers.

Hardly having any money, we’d hang out at the local mall, Pearl Ridge, most of the time. The arcade, Fun Factory, was the place we started to be up to no good. I can’t tell you how many times we lied and said our five dollars had gotten stuck in the change machine in order to get free tokens. And we even stole a few purses while there. Being desperate and hungry thanks to our good ol’ ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle,’ we scrounged for what we could. This also meant going to Burger King, where they had free drink refills, and taking used cups off the tables and rinsing them out for soda.

For a while we had a pretty good scheme going on. We’d go to the drug store and look outside for discarded receipts. We’d then go into the store, find an item on the receipt and refund it. We could only do it so much so as not to cause suspicion, but boy were our stomachs happy!

That is except for