I was standing barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, searching high and low for my favorite cup. Every day after school I rode the bus home, but then I had to walk the entire block in the brisk Oregon air. Once I walked through the front door, I slammed it and plopped down my backpack to go get juice in the same cup every day, while I sat and told my mom every detail of the second grade. She made sure she sat with me, because with four siblings under the age of four she never wanted my independence to impact me negatively. But today felt different, maybe because I lost my cup. But there was a funny feeling in my stomach.

The kitchen smelled like fresh homemade cookies. This was not unusual. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and whenever she finished everything she wanted to accomplish for the day, she would bake. I liked these days, or at least I used to. As I turned to go check the dishwasher for my cup, I realized that the cookies were not stacked neatly like they typically were. Weird. I called for my mom, mostly to find my cup, but also because the funny feeling was starting to grow. When I saw her I knew why, or at least I thought I did.

When she came around the corner I could tell she had been crying. My mom is the type of woman who gets up and gets ready every single day, from head to toe without fail. Today, she had no makeup on and her cheeks were just a little puffy. Without saying a word, she walked up to me and pulled me into a tight hug. This was not normal, but it was nice. She hugged me for so long I could smell her tropical scented lotion through her scratchy oversized sweatshirt. She pulled away and said, “I have something I need to tell you.”

     I looked up at her confused. Had I done something wrong? Had the school called her? My grades are good, right? She turned me around; I was so nervous. My feet were sticking to the floor that recently felt was cold. We looked at the calendar, and she pointed to a date. I heard her fingernail tap on October 11th. That was not a birthday. What was it?

 In the softest voice I have ever heard, my mom said, “I got the call. Xavier is going to go back to live with Tina. They’ll come pick him up on this day.”

I had never heard my heart beat so strongly and that funny feeling was the strongest anxiety that my eight-year-old self could feel. I spun back around to hug my mom; we both cried silently. For a very long time. Afterwards, she went and got the babies. We sat around the table, eating my moms delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies that were still warm. My little sister broke into giggles, as she was too little to understand. Her joyous laugh was only noise in the house. I hugged Xavier. I never wanted to let go. He was my brother.

 My mom saw what I was doing and simply stated,  “We knew this was a possibility when we chose to foster-adopt.” She was right, but I did not like it. Then suddenly, as if she were done being sad, my mom stood. “We need to clean this house before your dad gets home.” So we did, she and I worked in silence for the next two hours before my dad walked in. Acting as normal as possible. 

Normal was permanently altered. Destroyed by the monster that is the foster care system. The monster takes children. The monster took my baby brother when he was too young to even say no. Xavier was returned to live with his biological parents, who were once deemed unfit, which is why he was placed into my family. The foster care system is a flawed system that wreaks havoc on both biological and placement families. Thousands of children are being held captive by the monster within the United States. Barricaded by years of court appointments, paper work, lack of funding, and indecisiveness by those who cooperate with the monster, this captivity feels indefinite.  The foster care is set up to prioritize biological reunification. Blind reunification. Parenthood is more than meeting criteria on a form. Parenthood is more than taking one more file off of a judge's desk. 

Many support the ideology of reunification. The notion that a child belongs with his or her parents has become ingrained into society. However, define a parent? Is parenthood based on biology? Then there would never be a need to remove a child at all. Is it based on money? How is that any different than selling a child? When you agree to become a foster parent, the requirements are classes, background checks, home alterations and inspections, and much more depending on the state and scenario. Yet somehow the genetic component of two people, who violated the safety of a child so horrifically that a monster became the safest option, is who the court votes in favor of. The system is flawed from start-to-finish but holding children in limbo preventing them from finding a stable, loving, forever home is one of the worst things that it does to every child in its midst. 

Xavier is now a seventh grader, attending public school and living a decent life. He never got to play little league or run around his backyard because he grew up without a family car while living in an apartment. He is most likely happy and healthy but drastically different than he would have been. He never got to grow up with siblings close to his age, and he will never know a whole extra family loves him like one of their own because in their hearts he always will be. The court decided blood over bond, like precedent states it should. A monster left a silence in my house one day. Over time the noise came back, but no amount of joyful noise will ever fill the void that was created when Xavier was “stolen” from our home.