My Name Is River Blue Read Free

my first
grade class.
    I was terrified
the day that Mrs. Glover, my caseworker, drove me the five miles across town to
the Bergeron County Junior Boys Home where the boys' ages ranged from six to
fourteen. I had heard rumors that the older boys beat up the younger ones, and
I was scared to be the youngest kid there. Mrs. Glover attempted to appeal to
my ego when she said that big boys like me were supposed to live with other big
boys. She even tried to fill my head with scenes of kind, older boys teaching
me to play catch, but she fell far short of soothing my nerves. I had already
learned that adults would lie to gain my quiet cooperation.
    None of the boys
at the junior home ever beat me up, but many of them and the staff verbally
abused me and discriminated against me. Within a couple of months, I discovered
that there was a reason why most people in the home disliked me, and why
families adopted Ricky and Cindy but not me.
    I can easily
remember the day that marked the end of my ignorant bliss, the early period of
my childhood when I never gave a thought to being better or worse than other
kids were. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the BC Junior Boys Home was hosting
an open house so that visiting adults could interact with the boys to see if
there was mutual interest. I didn't know much about how people were supposed to
act during an open house, but it bothered me that the adult visitors didn't
smile at me or speak to me as they did some of the other boys.
    Once during the
afternoon, I saw Mr. Bonner, the boys home director, point me out to a
well-dressed white woman who shook her head and walked away from me to talk to Timmy,
a blond-haired kid. Later, I saw the same woman nod her head towards me before telling
another visitor that she resented "trashy whites mixing with illegals and burdening
hard-working Christian taxpayers with supporting their little bastards."
    I'm not making
it up. She really said those words close enough for me to hear her. At the
time, I wasn't sure what the woman's words meant, but I was smart enough to
know that she didn't like me.
    I was clean and wore
my best clothes, a blue dress shirt with khaki pants. Still, I knew that there
had to be something wrong with my looks. After carefully observing the white
visitors, I saw that they gravitated to white boys with fair skin, and if one
of the boys had blond hair and blue eyes, they paid him even more attention. With
my jet-black hair, dark chocolate eyes, and brown skin, I obviously didn't look
like the kind of boy the visitors favored. I wondered if the home would ever
have visitors who were more like me.
    I knew that
leaving the boys home to live with a foster family or an adoptive family had to
be a good thing, or the older boys wouldn't want it so much. During open house,
even the regular troublemakers behaved like angels in hopes of impressing our
visitors. I decided that I had to know how to make people like me so that I had
a chance to be part of a real family. Since Mr. Bonner yelled at us for asking
him questions that required more than a one-word answer, I had to talk to Sean.
    Mr. Bonner was a
tall, thin white man with leathery skin that resembled the parched and cracked
ground of a severe drought. He looked ancient to me and moved very slowly as if
every step hurt. He needed all the help he could get and that inspired him to
start a program that would make running the boys home easier until he could
afford to retire.
    Mr. Bonner appointed
an older boy as a "big brother" to each new, young kid, and Sean Kelley
was mine. Any big brother who took good care of his little brother and
lightened the load of Mr. Bonner and his small staff accumulated weekly credits
that awarded the older boy special privileges such as trips to the arcade, the park,
or the movies. One of the most popular uses of credits was to earn an entire
Saturday's visit with a school friend, usually a girl. The boy could have a girl
come to the boys home, or one of the