Marie Marthe Part 8 - Found Heart

• Part 1 - The Nazi Dillema
• Part 2 - The Boy in The Striped Pajamas
• Part 3 - The Girl with the Scars on Her Back
• Part 4 - Mary and Martha
• Part 5 - Betraying the Boy
• Part 6 - Betraying the Girl
• Part 7 - Learning to Feel

I started a new bed-time ritual with the kids a couple of weeks before Marie Marthe arrived: Highs and Lows. They each get to answer the questions "What's the best thing that happened to you today?" (high) and "What's the worst thing that happened to you today?" (low). It took them a few times to get the hang of it. Josiah still answers both questions with a good thing and Nico's low is usually some variation of "I don't like you," but we're getting there.

Wednesday, as we were going through our lows, I asked Nia: "What's the worst thing that happened to you today?"

"The same thing as yesterday," she replied.

"What was that?"

"The same thing as the day before."

"And what was that?"

"I don't like it when Marie Marthe cries."

At that point she had been with us for five days. She wasn't our kid-- not then, probably not ever. But that was all yet to be seen. We were scheduled to go before a judge with her the next morning. The most likely outcome of that hearing was her going home with her parents.

Marie Marthe was a good girl. She was spunky. She would get in these moods where her voice got funky and she would start waving her hand and head around as she talked. She could get rough when she played and rude when she talked, but not because she was mean or malicious. It was as if years of joy and energy were being released in her new-found freedom but she didn't really know how to contain it. She was really happy when she was happy. But often times she wasn't. Then she cried.
That Wednesday was supposed to be my day off. But a day off when you work as a house parent is not about spending time with your kids, it's about getting away from them. So I was holed up in my bedroom when Nia came upstairs and said that Marie Marthe wanted to talk. Now I'm no hero, what I wanted more than anything was to ignore it and watch my movie, but Marie Marthe hadn't wanted to talk since we left the courthouse. She realized what was coming on Thursday and had been pretty upset with us, actually. So I went outside, sat on the stairs and called her over to me. But she didn't want to talk. She wanted to cry.

She sat and cried. And cried. And then she would start calming down and I would say her name and she would start sobbing again and I just sat there and kept saying to myself "she's not your kid, you can't get too attached, and you don't want her to get attached, she's going back to her parents and you want that to be successful." And then I looked over and I saw my sweet Nia rubbing her back, holding her hand, and generally showing the love that I was withholding.

As the three of us sat, Sanndi walked up the stairs. Prisca joined us as well. And for some reason, maybe in solidarity, they began to share their stories. Sanndi admitted that she would be sad if her mom died, but didn't care too much about her dad-- he had tried to kill her once. Prisca shared about the night her mother died. She remembered her uncle crying and covering her dead body with a sheet. And she remembered running from the funeral, collapsing in a heap under a mango tree.

It was in these moments that I realized I'd lost my heart. But I wasn't losing it then. No that had happened long before. I had spent most of my life without it. But in this moment of realization that it was lost, I was actually finding it.