Baltimore Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

who finally asked Derek why they were there.
    â€œMy mommy said she is coming back for us,” Derek said. After waiting with Derek and Scar for three hours, the trash man finally called the authorities.
    Derek never saw his mother again. When the child protective service workers and the police showed up, Derek still refused to move. They had to finally, forcefully remove him from the dumpster.
    â€œNo! I’m waiting for my mommy! No!” Derek screamed and kicked. It was to no avail. Derek and Scar were whisked away to the hospital for a medical clearance and then off to foster care.
    The boys remained in foster care for more than a year, but with the mandatory expiration on parental rights, after eighteen months they were put up for adoption. Every Wednesday, Derek and Scar went to the agency along with about twenty-five other kids, to be on display for prospective parents. Derek would always hold Scar’s hand and tell people that they were not being separated and if they wanted him, they would have to take Scar too. With one look at Scar’s disfigured face, the potential parents always turned away and found other kids to adopt.
    Derek’s plan had worked for weeks, and each week, Derek and Scar would go together back to the foster home. After a few weeks of this flat out rejection, the social workers couldn’t figure out why at least one of the boys could not attract an adoptive family. The workers finally started sitting close to Derek and Scar. When the workers got wind of what Derek was doing, the next Wednesday, they put Derek and Scar in separate rooms. Derek was picked immediately. He was seven, with the cutest dimples and the prettiest smile. Scar, on the other hand, had been overlooked again and again.
    The day Derek’s new family—a father who was a cop and a mother who was a teacher—came to pick him up, he refused to leave without his brother. He fought and cursed and even locked himself inside the bathroom. The social workers lied to Derek in order to coax him out of the bathroom so his new parents could grab him and get him home.
    â€œYour brother will be coming along soon. Go ahead. You will see him again,” she said.
    Not fully believing her, but also not wanting to do anything that would possibly delay his brother’s departure, Derek reluctantly went. He wouldn’t see his brother until almost fifteen years later, when they had both landed on opposite sides of the law.
    In Derek’s new adoptive home, everything seemed to be perfect. His father fought crime and his mother taught him everything there was to know in any book imaginable. They were a real family. They ate dinner together and had fun movie nights on Fridays, his father’s day off. Derek lived like a kid that had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He wore the finest clothes, had every toy before it even became popular with other kids, and most of all, he had a real family life—with both parents. But despite how it seemed from the outside, everything wasn’t as peachy as it seemed.
    Derek’s father worked the midnight shift, and when he left home at ten o’clock after tucking his son in and kissing his wife, things would take a dark turn in the house. Derek’s adoptive mother would creep into his bedroom at night and wake him up. She would shake him awake and stand over him wearing a see-through nightgown. Longing for her husband’s touch and affection, Ms. Fuller was lonely and desperate. She would climb into bed with her adopted son and stroke his hair. Then she would tell Derek that she loved him more than anything in the world.
    She knew the one thing that was most important to Derek, and she used it against him. Mrs. Fuller told him that if he wanted to see his brother again, he would have to touch her, and she would help him find his brother.
    Derek was so desperate to see Stephon again that he would have done anything his adoptive mother asked of him.