That’s the sentence I grew up with. It was the first line in every file a social worker ever opened on me. Mother deceased, 1995. Father unknown. No relatives able to take placement.
I don’t remember her face without the help of one photograph. In it, she’s twenty-four, wearing a bright orange safety vest, laughing at whoever took the picture. Her name was Diane Hale. I was told she died in “a traffic accident on her way to work.” That was all anyone ever said. Nobody seemed to know more, and after a while, I stopped asking.
I lived in four foster homes before I turned eighteen. Two were kind. One was fine. One I don’t talk about.
There was only one thing in my childhood that never changed.
Every year on my birthday, March 9th, a card arrived. No return address. Inside, there was always a $50 bill and the same short message, written in neat block letters:
