Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave (14 page)

On Monday my social worker gathered my things from Orangewood and came out to the house. When she got there, she saw the indecision on my face and said, “You can either stay here or you can come back to Orangewood with me, but you have to make a decision now.”

I went back to Orangewood. Part of my decision was based on fear. What if this family turned out to be as bad as my previous ones? Another part of my choice was based on my gut feeling. My intuition told me that something was up with this family, but I could not put my finger on it. Not to mention that there were no kids near my age and I had hoped to find a family that had some kids I could bond with closely.

My next few days were spent at Orangewood, but when a staff member said, “No other family is in sight for you,” I went back to this new family. My new foster mom and the youngest daughter again picked me up, and on the way back we stopped for lunch at an upscale family burger place. Then we went to my new home.

I have to say that the house was beautiful. It was located in a wealthier area of town and had four bedrooms. My new foster mom and dad, Patty and Steve, shared the master bedroom. Steve was tall and had the looks of a television anchor. Patty was short, like me, but blond. The nephew and oldest son roomed together, the two girls were together, and there was a room for me. There was a large open area in the home that no one seemed to use, and a living room that opened to the kitchen, which was where everyone hung out.

Not too long after I arrived another foster kid was brought into the family. This girl was two or three years younger than I was and was a deeply troubled child. In the years that I was with this family there were dozens of girls like her who were in and out of the house. Most stayed a matter of weeks, although several stayed a few months. All of them roomed with me. For these girls my family was a transition family to see if the girl was ready to go back to her real mom and dad, or if she needed to be put into permanent placement.

Each girl was between the ages of eleven and thirteen, and each changed the family dynamic with her presence. This was a bit unsettling, especially when the new girl had serious behavior problems, as some did. But others were sweet. In either case the reality was that by the time I got to know a new foster sister, she was gone. This did nothing for my issues with trust, nor did it help me bond with others. In fact, the situation did the opposite. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to try to get to know any new girl. Because if I did and I liked her, then my heart would be ripped out when she left.

My relationship with the nephew was challenging but in a different way. He seemed resentful of the time and attention Patty and Steve gave to me. If I did the smallest thing wrong, or if I forgot to do something, he was sure to tell his uncle and aunt. Very little got by this kid because he was always watching me.

I liked the other kids, though, the seven-year-old boy and the four- and six-year-old girls. These younger siblings reminded me of the younger brothers and sisters I had left behind in Egypt. I missed them beyond words, but in the years since I had left the home of my captors, I had forgotten even more about my siblings. Now I found that I loved being a big sister again! These were good kids, and we had a lot of fun together.

Steve was a good provider, and the love he showed to his kids made me revise my frosty opinion of the male species. Maybe, in addition to Mark Abend, there were good men in the world. My foster dad showed genuine concern for each kid who lived under his roof and often asked me if I was okay. He let me know I could always talk to him if I had a problem, and I appreciated that so much. Few other people had ever done that for me, and I often took him up on his offer.

But he and my foster mom did not get along. That was the odd thing about this family that I had not been able to put my finger on at first. In my previous homes the dad had always been the aggressor. In this home it was my foster mom.

Patty and Steve battled frequently, and it often got out of hand. I saw her chuck a bottle of hair spray at his face. She yelled a lot and had no friends that I knew about. And her spending habits were the cause of many of their arguments. The battles over money made me feel that my foster mom wanted me around only for the money. That was not a good feeling to have, so I withheld my feelings for her and enjoyed spending time with the three youngest members of the family.

•    •    •

Even though life in my first two foster homes, and to some extent at Orangewood, had been hard, I had learned a lot and made great strides. For example, now, for the first time, one of my social workers was a man. While I still worked with my social worker from Orangewood, I guess the new county I lived in felt I was far enough away from my Muslim upbringing to feel confident enough to talk with a man who did not live in my home. And you know what? They were right. I liked this guy. He knew my foster family from other foster kids who had been in the home, and he was an exceptionally nice person. He was a good advocate for me, and I greatly enjoyed our sessions.

Unfortunately, I thought my new therapist was the worst ever. I was afraid that she was passing everything I said on to Patty, and I felt I could not talk about my feelings without fear that my words would come to slap me in the face. This was disappointing because my previous therapist had been quite helpful and I had been hoping for more of the same.

Before too long I made the decision to stop therapy. Why waste time when something was not beneficial? Plus, I had become pretty good at talking about my feelings with people I felt close to, especially Mark and my social worker.

•    •    •

That fall, the fall I was sixteen, I entered high school as a sophomore. I was lucky, as this was an excellent school filled with talented, caring teachers. I had finally caught up enough in my studies to somewhat keep up with my classes, even though I was placed in a remedial English class. But I had a regular English class too. Progress!

At home Steve and Patty’s fighting wore me down, and I tried to stay as far away from it as possible. When my social worker surprised me with my Social Security card and said, “Now that you have this card, you can get a job, and a driver’s license, too, if you want,” I thought of the perfect solution. If I had a license, I could drive. And if I could drive, I could get a job—a job that would keep me out of the house and away from my foster parents’ fights.

I had been craving independence for what seemed like an eternity, and the freedom that came with driving could provide me with some of that. The written test, though, was difficult for me. In fact, I failed it three times. While I could read English pretty well by this time, the way this test was written, many of the questions did not make sense to me. Finally a lady at the testing station asked if English was my second language. When I said, “Yes, it is,” she said there was an option where someone could read the test to me. Wow, what a difference that made. The fourth time I took the test I got 100 percent.

Patty and Steve had a huge, old white Honda that they let me drive. It drove like a truck, but I didn’t care. The next day I drove to the mall, walked around, and filled out job applications at several different places. I knew my choices would be limited. The job market was tough anyway, but without previous work experience I knew it would be nearly impossible for me to find employment. The way entry-level jobs were then—and possibly still are—college grads were taking many jobs that had previously been filled by high school students.

But a few days later Godiva Chocolatier called me in for an interview. I was nervous about talking to a stranger who essentially held the keys to my future in her hands. I interviewed with a nice female manager, however, and several days later she called me to tell me I got the job! I couldn’t wait to get started.

I now had wheels
and
a job. How cool was that? I soon began a new morning routine. On the way to class I’d stop at a gas station and pick up some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and a Monster Energy drink that I bought with my own money that I had earned. Once in a while I’d add some cream cheese to dip the Cheetos in. Yum, that was my “healthy” breakfast. For lunch I’d buy some SunChips and a huge chocolate chip cookie at the school cafeteria that I’d munch on throughout the rest of day. A few months earlier I had decided to stop eating meat. For some reason it no longer appealed to me. But, even though I was a vegetarian, I wasn’t eating many vegetables.

One thing I liked about high school was that several of my teachers treated me just as they did everyone else. It seems like such a small thing, but to me it was huge. This kind of treatment had been a long time coming, and I can’t tell you how glad I was to be considered a regular student, rather than someone people didn’t know what to do with.

My social skills had improved some, but there were still many things that I did not understand. I could not figure out why a lot of kids acted bratty and were disrespectful toward their teachers. Why did my fellow students not do their homework? Why did they complain about their mother dropping them off, as if it were the worst thing in the world? Didn’t they realize what a wonderful opportunity school was? Education is a gift that people here in the United States enjoy freely, but I know firsthand that the process of learning is not available to everyone in other parts of the world.

Education opens doors to opportunities. No matter what your dream is, it will be easier to achieve if you have the foundation of knowledge. I have always considered school an opportunity to make myself a better person and have never understood why others do not see it that way too. That was and is one of my biggest adjustments to life since my rescue. Why do people not appreciate what they have? Why do they cheat themselves out of a better life by not doing their homework and learning the subject matter?

Despite my thoughts about the other kids, I found I was developing a few friendships. Interestingly enough, my name helped make that possible. Shyima is an unusual name here in the United States, and it isn’t that common in Egypt, either. Shyima was the name of the sister of the prophet Muhammad, and out of respect, custom has it that only special babies can have the name, which means “strong-willed.” The uniqueness of my name made it easy for my teachers and the other students to know who I was.

It helped too that my English was now passable. Most people understood me, and I understood them. Learning the language of my new country had been a long, slow process, but it had been totally worth it. It’s hard to make lasting friendships or understand why things are the way they are when you cannot communicate.

Life was getting better, but inside I was still a jaded person. I can look back now and see that I wasn’t the friendliest person to be around, but my history was that the vast majority of the people in my life had not treated me well. Because of that my ongoing issues with trust were still with me.

One person who helped me gain trust was my new friend Amber Bessix. We went to the same high school, and although I had seen her in passing in the hallway, we had not spoken before we met through work. Amber and I became a great team at Godiva, and she went on to become one of my best friends.

I liked my job, even though I hadn’t specifically been interested in a retail store position. Meeting new people and having pride in a job well done were extra bonuses. I found too that when someone who wore traditional Egyptian clothing, or spoke a bit of Arabic, came into the store, I was instantly brought back to my early years with my family. In that way my job offered a small but comforting piece of home.

Since then every job I have had has been in a retail store. Unfortunately, the hours I spent on my feet at work were hard on my rheumatoid arthritis. I had been diagnosed with RA after I’d come to live with my new foster family. During my sophomore year of high school I had scary swellings on my body and raised bubbles on my knees, and my joints were so painful that I was limited in what I could do. Plus, my muscles would get tight and I often couldn’t move in the morning. On some days I had many sharp pains and couldn’t go to school. In fact, I was often so stiff that it would take me hours to get up and out of bed.

Even though I had been telling my doctor and my foster parents about my symptoms, not a single person took me seriously. “You’re fine. You’re just being a teen,” my doctor said. This man treated a lot of kids in foster care. I don’t know if he thought we weren’t worth his full concern and attention, but the way he dismissed me bordered on rude.

To make matters worse, my symptoms worsened as I grew older. One day I realized I had dropped twenty-five pounds in a short period of time. “I can’t eat,” I said to Patty. “I can’t move.” My foster parents followed the doctor’s lead and did not think that anything was wrong with me. I didn’t speak to my foster mom for three weeks. I was that mad!

Eventually Steve qualified for better insurance, and as soon as I could, I took the initiative to find a new doctor on my own. When the tests came back, my new doctor told me that not only did I have rheumatoid arthritis, but my disease was advanced enough that my joints looked like those of a woman in her eighties. While I was not pleased to find that I had RA, I was comforted that there was actually a name for what I had been experiencing. Until then, I’d had no idea what was wrong with me.

The diagnosis was a huge relief, because now that my doctor and I knew what we were dealing with, we could develop a plan to treat it. The first step in that plan was for me to go to a specialist. He was extremely helpful, and I regularly saw this physician until a few months ago, when he retired. Among many other things, he showed me how my knees and wrists were the most affected parts of my body. I was glad to hear this, because I had been telling people for a long time how much these joints hurt.

The medication I was now taking for RA was hard to adjust to, especially because I had not yet discontinued the medications I had been taking for years for insomnia, depression, and anxiety. With all of the meds combined I ended up with mouth sores and hair loss. But I quickly gained back the weight I’d lost—and then some!