B 21 "Red Pen Marks"

"Red Pen Marks" (Jan 2, 2001)
Chapter 21

Jan. 2, 2001

When _____arrived for his visit, an unusually fine January morning, we first did our regular errand of taking out the garbage. I always gave him a light paper filled bag to carry out. It gave him pride and a sense of purpose to be helping Grammie out this way. When we finished our task, we stopped for a while to watch a young boy maneuver his remote control car in the parking lot. ______had never seen such a thing before and you could tell that he was amazed watching this noisy sports car boom across the bumpy pavement. Nevertheless, he remained respectful of this contraption watching from a "safe" distance, but squatting down to take a closer inspection whenever it ventured to come close.

After a few minutes, we came in and _______ headed for the kitchen to get his ritual allotment of his favorite drink, dairy eggnog. This was also a Christmas favorite of mine which I utilized in my coffee whenever I had the opportunity. Being concerned that _______ was too young to understand the disappearance of his favorite drink at the end of the holiday season, I extended its availability by freezing a number of liters in the refrigerator. I don't think the foster mother knew or cared about his passion for eggnog, but then, this made it, all the more, a special treat between the two of us.

With his drink polished off, we got ready to bake the Pillsbury Rudolph reindeer cookies packaged in the festive cardboard cylinder. "_____ cook, _____ cook" he chirped with much pride as together we donned our full aprons, mine a gentle blue with diagonally spaced dainty white flowers and his a handcrafted natural canvas with scattered multicolored hand prints. Then I popped open the tube, slide out the dough, and began slicing the disks of dough on the counter while this little angle boy eagerly waited standing by his cookie tray placed on a small table beside me.

As one by one, I turned and handed down the slices to him, I watched with delight as he, with unusual ability and without instruction, carefully spread them evenly across the pan. Then I had to laugh. As I handed a slice to him he deftly turned his back to me, bent his head slightly as he took a bite and then, without missing a beat, smoothly slid the remainder on the cookie tray. He was so cute. What a well orchestrated tricky maneuver. Did he really think I had not noticed as I stared at this now crescent-shaped cookie portraying a now one-eared Rudolph!

After the cookies were cooked and cooled, with a large grin stretched across his face, he triumphantly carried them out on a plate to offer the driver. Then he settled down in front of the Christmas tree with me to enjoy the fruits of his labor with yet another drink of his thick milky nog.

The remainder of the visitation was filled with happy play: bouncing on the spring horse; conversing with Paddy, the orange mop headed tot-sized puppet; flipping through _____'s photos and those of his brother's, my first lost sheep; and then making the social circuit in the apartment hallway, greeting the many neighbors who knew and cared about him.

When we returned from our hallway stroll, our time together was coming to a close so I decided to change ______ to make sure that he had a fresh diaper when he returned to the foster home. However, when I laid him out on the change pad on the floor and removed his pants I was concerned by the appearance of some very odd marks that appeared at the front of his legs in the area of the knees.

I remember trying to call the driver's attention to this but she did not seem interested. I looked very closely at them. They were fine lines, perfectly straight, red, but not bright red. I knew that they had been made by the application of some sort of pressure but I could not figure out what possibly could have made these marks. They looked almost as if someone had wound thread around my grandson's knees except the lines did not extend to the back of his legs. I remember telling this to the driver.

When she still persisted in her disinterest, I picked ______ up and brought him into the bathroom. Suspecting the foster mother might try to explain these marks as red ink, I determined to show the driver that this was not the case. First, I tried to rub the lines off with soap and water. Then I utilizing rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad. Nothing either lightened or removed the marks. Then I brought _______ to the driver and I specifically explained to her why these marks could not be red ink marks. Number one, as mentioned above, all the marks were perfectly straight. If ______ or someone else had made the marks with a pen they could not be so straight. Number two, the lines were too thin to be made by a pen and they were not red enough to be the type of ink usually found in a red pen. Then I demonstrated to her that I could not remove the marks with soap and water or rubbing alcohol, explaining that, if they were pen marks, I should have been able to make some difference in their appearance. At this point, the driver feigned some interest and promised that she would ask the foster mother about these marks.

Can you imagine the frustration I felt when I was to find out, later, from reading the latest update of the Children's Services’ Case Recording Report, that the document stated that

[the driver] "feels that the marks on the child's leg's look like pen marks (7)"

and when the foster mother had been questioned upon ______'s return, the

"foster mother told worker that earlier this morning ______ got into her red pen and marked on himself on his legs and ankles (7)".

My careful explanation and demonstration indicating how these could not be red pen marks had not even been reported. And to make matters worse, according to the Children's Services case recording report, the foster mother stated, when ______ was picked up in the afternoon for a visit with his father

"that she did not want to scrub it off and figured it would come off through the day in the bath (7)".

Meanwhile, the foster mother was reporting that my grandson's

"behaviors are getting worse daily. He has ruined their new carpet with crayons, broke most of the Christmas decorations. He appears to be genuinely mad. He has knocked foster sister's glasses off (7-8)"

Yet ______ was not behaving this way in my home. He had thoroughly enjoyed helping me put snowflake decals on the window by dipping them in a pan of water, being lifted into the air to set them in place. He had also helped to trim the tree and he was gentle around all of my fragile Christmas decorations.

This child described by the foster mother was not the little boy I knew. It broke my heart that it was apparent that there was something wrong, and I was helpless to do anything about it. It was frustrating that the reports seem to indicate that Children's Services were oblivious to any possible concerns in the foster home, or were unwilling to connect this negative behavior with separation trauma. Instead, they would allude to other outside causes, like too many visitations from family, or they would state that

"it is apparent that ______ is a strong willed toddler that will require a lot of energy to care for" (9).

In the documentation, they had also stated that this negative behavior was most apparent after visits with me. In this, I believed they were somehow trying to "blame" me for this behavior instead of connecting this acting out to his sadness of being separated from me again.

For months I pondered on these strange red marks on my grandson‘s knees, asking everyone and anyone what could possibly make such afflictions on the skin. Then one day, when I described these marks to a resident in my apartment building, he, immediately and matter-of-factly, responded that these were the type of marks that would be made by whipping with a fine guitar string.