Foster Dad

1

Dakota

When I was sixteen I was thrown into foster care after my mother Od’d on heroin. My life up until then was no pretty picture, but at least I had a roof over my head thanks to the section eight housing she’d been smart enough to get during one of her better stages.

My life consisted of school, home and dodging the shady characters in my neighborhood in between those two places. I was very focused, because I knew that I had only one way out, a degree of some kind.

My hopes weren’t too high. I never allowed myself to dream beyond my meager means, just something a little better than what I’d known is all I was hoping for. So I learned from an early age to avoid bad company and stay focused in school.

My friends were very few, mostly the rejects who nobody wanted to sit with because they weren’t considered popular enough. Those are the ones I gravitated towards.

I wanted nothing to do with my mother’s lifestyle and though I loved her, because she was my mom, I couldn’t wait to get away from her. But I didn’t want it to happen this way.

I’d always dreamed that one day I’d make it out and come back for her, get her the help she so desperately needed. I’ve seen the pictures of her when she was younger, before she had me.

And I could believe her when she said whenever she got pissed at me, that I had destroyed her life. Mom used to be beautiful, exceptional even and it had led her down the wrong path at an early age.

She claims she became wild at fifteen because she wasn’t getting the love and attention she needed at home, so she sought acceptance from others, mostly men. Any guy that told her she was beautiful she went to bed with.

My father is an unknown face in the crowd. Some guy she hooked up with at a bar where she was pretending to be older than she was. He was visiting from out of town and took her back to his hotel room and fucked her into the early morning.

From the stories she told when she was too high to know she shouldn’t be sharing, she told the same tale over and over again. Men were always so enamored of her they couldn’t help themselves.

Young or old, it didn’t matter. She believed she had this power over men that made them all want to jump into bed with her. I’d sit there transfixed and just a little nauseous as she regaled me with the sordid details.

I hated those times when she’d give me these little X rated glimpses into her past. They made me uncomfortable because I was afraid that one day I might turn out just like her. It scared me so much I was terrified to even hold hands with a boy.

I lived in fear of myself, because of the way people looked at me, talked about me. From the time I reached fifteen everything in my life changed. That summer I grew up I guess you can say.

My breasts went from a nondescript A-cup to a C almost overnight and my baby fat that I’d worked tirelessly to get rid of without much success suddenly disappeared on its own. Even my face looked different. Smaller, more defined.

It was the first time I saw the resemblance to mom the way she used to be. My body changed in more ways than one that summer. Not only outwardly but also on the inside.

I started getting these urges especially in the shower when I washed between my legs or my hands brushed against my nipples. I was so confused. Confused, scared and alone.

I couldn’t talk to mom because she was hardly ever around. And there was no way I was gonna ask my friends and teachers were out. Most of mine were male and they were all pervs with shady reputations among the seniors.

The only difference is, that year I became one of their many targets. So there I was learning things about my body through trial and error and scared out of my mind that if I even looked too hard at a boy I’d get pregnant.

Meanwhile my body was going out of control and this only added to the fear. It was right in the middle of this internal warfare that mom died, leaving me more alone than before.

She might not have been much of a mother but just knowing she was there had always added some comfort.

Then I was alone, no family since mom was a runaway whose parents never found her if they’d even tried and of course there was no name under father on the birth certificate.

Everyone knew that older kids were never taken in as easily as the babies, but no one was going to adopt someone my age anyway so it didn’t matter.