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THE FORGOTTEN CHILD
By Rosanne Catalano
“That poor little boy across the street…” she began telling her husband, as he walked in the front door that night.
“Why? What happened?” he asked, removing his scarf and coat.
“His mom abandoned little Jerry and her parents and ran off to Pennsylvania with her new boyfriend.”
“What?! I thought she was married…” Ralph exclaimed.
“What we saw from across the street was not the truth of Katie’s situation,” she began to tell her hubby, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Katie and her son, Jerry, were living with her parents… she had told me she had moved in with them shortly after Jerry’s father abandoned her and the little boy one day.”
“And now she is abandoning her little boy by running off with this new guy.”
“So where does that leave little Jerry?” her husband asked, plopping into a chair across from her.
“Most likely, he’ll be put into a foster home, if his grandparents can’t care for him… Let’s pray and hope that little boy doesn’t have to go into a foster home; that his grandparents will take care of him and don’t feel they’re too old to do so.” She said.
“Well, let’s see… We could inquire about adopting little Jerry, when the situation calls
for it.”
“The only thing is our lifestyle isn’t conducive to us having a child living with us, sweetheart.” She said, sighing.
“I know, but we shall see what happens. All we can do now is pray to God that he takes good care of that poor little boy,” he said.
“God, I pray to you for that scared little boy and his family who lives across the street from us; even though I was always jealous of the attention Katie paid to my hubby, I always had lots of affection for the little boy… poor kid. Amen.” she said, making the sign of the cross to end her prayers.
“Actually, I think they took little Jerry to the Medical Center because the grandparents weren’t able to take care of the boy, and the neighbors had begun to notice he wasn’t very well-cared for, the house was falling down around them, and the mother, Katie, didn’t seem to care or didn’t have the money to care,” she told her hubby this latest news, that she had heard from their landlord upstairs.
“Then there were signs of abuse to the boy?” he asked.
“Not sure, but the neighbors, and then the grandparents, had called the police on Katie… Katie just up and moved to Pennsylvania with her new boyfriend without taking her son, so the grandparents called the police or the neighbors did… I’m sorry, Hon, but I got this information from the landlord and I’m not even sure she knows all of what happened across the street,” she said, getting up to pour another cup of coffee.
“In any case, I’ve been sitting here all day thinking of a way to help poor little Jerry… Maybe as soon as they discharge him from the Medical Center, we could inquire as to who will be taking care of him… Would it be possible to put him in our home – we could be Jerry’s foster parents until they find another home for him?” she asked, sitting back down at the kitchen table.
“Baby girl, you know our lifestyle is definitely not conducive for a kid…” he began, gruffly getting up and beginning to pace the kitchen. “Especially not for a three-year-old!”
“I know,” she agreed. “Now I feel as if my hands are tied… I want to help the little boy but we really can’t.”
When I realized the good Lord was not going to bless us with any biological children of our own, I figured I could give the love I have to give to the children of the world who needed us to help them. But, as my hubby said, the truth of the matter was that we were both in our late-40’s and only had two cats to care for… We were used to coming and going as we pleased. That is what made it so hard… They both knew there was no way the courts would even consider them as foster parents, because of their age.
“What a shame,” she said. “It is not fair, I tell you!”
“I know, Princess,” he said, putting his arms around her in a bear-like embrace.
She was remembering what her hubby and her mother told her many times; that “charity begins at home…”
She hated to admit it, but they were right. Besides sponsoring Hermalinda years ago, the only other charity she had offered was to her sister and her two girls… when her sister’s ex-husband had walked out on her and their two daughters two days after Thanksgiving. She had begun to help her sister out whenever she could by babysitting as much as possible so that her sister could go out with friends on occasion, and would often help her nieces’ with their homework right after school or, when her sister’s girls were little, she would read them bedtime stories until they fell asleep so that her sister had free time to herself.
The one thought that kept going through her mind was, “That poor little boy across the street… Now he has no family to speak of… His mom abandoned him along with her parents (little Jerry’s grandparents) to run off to Pennsylvania with her new boyfriend, and I don’t understand why she would abandon her own son!”
She picked up the telephone to make some inquiry calls at the medical center to find out how little Jerry was faring, and ended up saying to the hospital receptionist, “I would like to inquire how to go about foster parenting a little boy who was brought in for neglect by his mother.”
Copyright © January 2006 by Rosanne Catalano
Written by Rosanne Catalano,
(a.k.a. R.C.Kayla and ctrosanne)
Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and writer/author
Publisher: “The Cat’s Meow for Writers & Readers” (A Progressive Ezine)
Author: “Touch of Tomorrow – In Loving Memory” (book of poetry) and numerous other short stories and poetry published online.
Member: of the "National Writers Union" (UAW LOCAL 1981/AFL-CIO).
Author Web Site and Home of "The Cat's Meow for Writers & Readers Ezine": http://www.rosannecatalano.net.
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--rckayla,
publisher/author/writer
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