Once upon a time...

According to a tip given to social services, the meth lab was supposed to be in one of the kitchen cabinets...She kept telling me it had been in the bathroom cabinet.

She was very skinny and had the appearance of a drug addict. Her speech was slow and her eyelids half closed, but didn't seem to be impaired.

Finding nothing more than grocery items in the kitchen cabinets I asked her to show me the bathroom cabinet, which turned out to be completely bare. "When I moved in it was in here." she said pointing at the cabinet.

"It was leaking some kind of watery stuff when I found it." She said that she called her landlord/slumlord and told him about it.
He gave her a trashbag and a wet/dry vac and told her to "clean it up" which she did. She also found a few baggies with "crystals" in it. She called our agency and the officer that responded collected it for disposal and left.

The woman invited me to search the rest of the of the trailer. We started in her children's room. I didn't find anything there either, but I noticed a picture of Mr. And Mrs. George W. Bush framed and hanging on the wall.

"That's an odd thing to see in a kid's room." I remarked. She pointed to a framed letter from the president next to it and further down the wall in another frame was a child's color pencil drawing of a large flag with an eagle's head amidst the stripes. At the top written in the careful scrawling of a kid's handwriting was the word.."FREEDOM"..

"My son drew that for a contest at school and they sent it to the president." She said proudly. "They sent him back the letter and photo." She finished.

She then took me to her room and I searched it finding nothing. She showed me two "escape hatches" that had been cut into the floor of her bedroom closet by the mobile homes previous occupants. She had placed plywood over the holes and stacked several plastic totes containing various odds and ends over the plywood to keep out intruders.

The house smelled overwhelmingly like some type of chemicals, but she had been cleaning the trailer like crazy and I saw the bleach and pine sol along with scrub brushes and other cleaning supplies, on the kitchen floor.

She told me she had just moved in about a week ago and that the dogs she kept inside had been barking all night. She thought she heard movement under her house and in her closet area.

She said she was afraid that whoever had lived there before her was trying to break in and get the drugs they had left behind.

This would be consistent meth addict behavior I knew. I thought about my son sleeping in his room at night while I lay in my room staring at my closet all night, waiting to see if the noise under my house would give way to a paranoid meth addict crawling through the floor and into my bedroom.

She looked very tired. I told her about contacting the housing authority and how they would make her landlord basically either remodel the entire trailer or condemn it. She told me that her landlord/slumlord only charged her 250 dollars a month for the trailer and had told her it was a reduced rate for tennents who "didn't make any trouble for him" and she couldn't afford to live anywhere else. She had already lain new carpet over the old and had begun replacing the interior paneling of the walls.

The children were talkative, brite and seemed to be pretty well taken care of. The little girl was six and had blonde hair. Her brother was 11 and small for his age. He had brown hair cut into a little mullet. His little sister kept smiling and rubbing the top of his head asking me if I thought she did a good job of "Spiking brothers hair?"

"Did you fix his hair?" I asked her smiling.
"Yep." She said proudly.
"You sure did." I said.
She beamed at me and put her hands on her hips. She looked as though she had just topped Mt. Everest.

The social worker was outside in her van waiting for me to tell her it was safe for her to come inside. I told mom I was going to give the worker the green light to come in.
"O.K." Mom said, but seemed worried and trepidicious. She had had her children placed by social services twice before and wasn't exactly looking forward to DSS being involved in her life again.

Even people with drug problems love their children in their fashion and their children love them in return, no matter how bad the situation is. I saw moms defenses start to rise as I walked out of the trailer and into the driveway.

"Hi, I'm Dana, with the department of Social Services." The worker said to mom while shaking her hand. I could see the invisible wall mom had erected between her and the worker. Her eyes were cold, she had closed body posture and avoided eye contact. She was preparing for battle.

Mom and Dana sat on the couch while Dana arranged her paperwork to begin the interview. While mom and Dana talked I spoke to the children. My lips were starting to feel numb and my mouth was slightly burning. I began to imagine all the health problems I would likely have if I was breathing in old meth fumes.

I watched the children.

The little girl was telling me how much she liked "potted meat" while her brother wrinkled his nose and said he thought it was "gross."

As if to prove her point the girl went into the kitchen and climbed up onto an overturned milk crate to retrieve a can of potted meat which she opened and began eating. She smiled at me as she spooned some of the dish into her mouth and asked if I wanted some.
I told her "No thank you, I'm more of a spam fan."
"Spams icky!" she giggled.

Her brother showed me an armful of trophies and medals he had won in academic contests at the three schools he had last attended.
"You guys move a lot huh?" I asked.
"Yep." said the boy. "I hope we stay here for a while though."

He then showed me a book he had gotten from scholastic.com about spies and spy cameras. He told me about the devices and how to write in secret codes.

He told me that when the mailman drops the book off he isn't allowed to put it n the mailbox, but instead has to walk it up to the door and have someone sign for it.
He looks around the living room to make sure no one is listening, then tells me quietly "That's how serious this spy book is."

I ask him if he is ready for school to start back. Not really he tells me, he likes school but he gets bullied a lot. He's sure this year will be different though. I think it's too bad that school is about learning your order in the social structure as much as it is about learning your abc's and mathematics.

His little sister tells me that she will be starting the first grade this year, and when she tells me the name of her school I tell her that my son is in the same grade at the same school and they may even be in the same class.
Her eyes grow large as she asks "Does he have a really big head?" I laugh at the question and say "No, but he's got really big ears."

She covers her mouth snickering and turns to her mom "Momma!" She exclaims "His son has really big ears."
Her mother smiles at her.

I hear the social worker ask mom about her criminal history and past involvement with DSS.
My lips are still numb and now my mouth has really started burning. No one else seems to be bothered.

The social worker finishes with mom and starts to talk with the little girl. "How does your mom discipline you and your brother?" Dana asks. "Sometimes she spanks us when we fight with each other." she answers.
I begin talking to mom so Dana can do her thing without interjections.

Mom tells me about the last city she lived in and how bad the neighborhood was. That she was the only one in the area that had a phone, so her neighbors were always using it to call the police.
"I know every cop in that town." She says smiling.

It strikes me that she has a very pretty smile. For a moment I can see how pretty she probably used to be and I wonder what chain of events led her to her current position in life.

She tells me she had a garden at her old house and the neighborhood kids were over every day helping her tend it. She shows me several very good landscapes that she and her four children painted together, and I can tell that a large part of her longs for those days.

She's proud of her children. She takes a portrait from the wall and shows it to me. She looks sad as she runs her fingertips over it and tells me it was taken two years ago.

she is in the picture, wearing a green sweater and smiling. She isn't boney, she looks healthy. Her children surround her and are caught giving her an eternal hug by the photographer. They are all smiling.

Once upon a time they were happy together...A family.

I leave the house and sincerely hope with all my heart that things get straightened out for them and that they will once again become the people in that photograph.