It has been said that if certain situations are traumatic enough, children can remember painful events as far back as
infancy. Is there any truth to that theory?
I don't know. I can only tell you what I remember... The sheer energetic happiness of the terrible two's.
The joy of being Daddy's little girl. The horror of being Daddy's little girl.
It seems so strange that today, midway through my life, I can remember the horror vividly, a permanent portrait in my
mind. I see a little girl whose wide mouth is open in a fixed, protracted wail, though no sound emits.
Deep inside my soul that scream still exists, searing, straining to give birth. The closest release is weeping,
daring not to lend voice to the scream. Ever fearing where this release will take me: realizing that, unlike Dorothy,
I will not wake up back at home in Kansas.
Instead my senses would return, finding me locked in a cage below the ocean floor, with no means of escape.
My experiences as a foster child in the 1950's have shaped and molded the very core of my being. Certain
characteristics I display even today are based solely on the events that occurred between the ages of three and eight years
old.
So, as Lenora Williams tells her story, she is telling mine. Who would care about what happened to rock a
little Black girl's world in 1954? I mean, if I say to everyone everywhere, that the indignities a child sucked up in
the system happened to Lauretta Ali, would that really be important to anyone?
No. It wouldn't. So maybe someone will listen to Lenora and put emphasis on a little girl with no where
to run but into the abyss. We just might realize that foster children truly need our protection. That foster moms
are moms also and sometimes children are best left to their care and attention.
