The Lost Boy

I had a life, a family, a home.
    Father drives into the garage. He turns to me before opening his door. “Well, here we are, ” he states with a false smile.
“
We’re home.”
    I look right through him, hoping, praying he can feel my fear, my pain from inside of me.
Home?
I say to myself.
    I have no home.

2 – An Angel Named Ms Gold
    On March 5, 1973, I received the long-awaited answer to my prayers. I was rescued. My teachers and other staff members at Thomas Edison Elementary School intervened and notified the police.
    Everything happened with lightning speed. I cried with all my heart as I said my final good-byes to my teachers. I somehow knew I would never see them again. By the tears in their eyes I realized they understood the truth about me – the
real
truth. Why I was so different from the other children; why I smelled and dressed in rags; why I climbed into garbage cans to hunt for a morsel of food.
    Before I left, my homeroom teacher, Mr Ziegler, bent down to say good-bye. He shook my hand and told me to be a good boy. He then whispered to me that he would tell my homeroom class the truth about me. Mr Ziegler’s statement meant the world to me. I so badly wanted to be liked, to be accepted by my class, my school – by everyone.
    The police officer had to nudge me through the door of the school office. “Come on, David, we gotta go.” I wiped my nose before I stepped through the door. A million thoughts raced through my mind, all of them bad. I was terrified of what the consequences would be when Mother found out. No one had ever crossed The Mother like this before. When she found out, I knew there would be hell to pay.
    As the police officer led me to his car, I could hear the sounds of all the schoolchildren playing in the yard during their lunch break. As we drove off, I twisted around in my seat to catch a glimpse of the schoolyard one last time. I left Thomas Edison Elementary School without having a single friend. But my only regret was that I did not have a chance to say good-bye to my English teacher, Mrs Woodworth, who was ill that day. During the time I was Mother’s prisoner, Mrs Woodworth, without knowing, helped me escape my loneliness through the use of books. I had spent hundreds of hours in the dark, reading books of high adventure. This somehow eased my pain.
    After filling out some forms at the police station, the officer called Mother to inform her that I was not coming home that afternoon, and that she could call the county’s juvenile authorities if she had any questions. I sat like a statue, feeling both horror and excitement as the officer spoke on the phone. I could only imagine what was going through Mother’s head. As the policeman spoke with a dry voice on the phone, I could see beads of sweat cover his forehead. After he hung up the phone, I wondered for a moment if anyone else had ever had the same experience after talking to Mother. It seemed to be very important to the officer that we leave the station right away. I didn’t help matters by pestering him over and over again as I jumped up and down and asked, “What’d she say? What’d she say?” The officer refused to answer. He seemed to breathe easier once we drove past the city limits. He then bent down and said, “David, you’re free. Your mother is never going to hurt you again.”
    I didn’t fully understand the weight of his statement. I had hoped that he was taking me to some kind of jail, with all the other bad children – as Mother had programmed into me for so many years. I had decided long ago that I’d rather live in jail than live one more minute with
her.
I turned away from the sun. A single tear rolled down my face.
    As long as I could remember, I had always wiped my tears and retreated inside my shell. This time I refused to wipe the tear away. I could feel the tear reach my lips, tasted the salt and let the tear dry on my skin as the rays from the sun baked through the windshield. I wanted to remember that tear not as a tear of fear, anger or sorrow, but as one of joy and freedom. I knew that from that moment on, everything in my life was new.
    The officer drove me to the county hospital. Immediately, I was taken into an examination room. The nurse seemed shocked by my appearance. As gently as possible, she bathed my entire body from head to toe with a sponge before the doctor examined me. I couldn’t look at her. I felt so ashamed as I sat on top of the cold metal examination table,