What Inspired the Story “Its Almost Tuesday”

What Inspired the story “Its Almost Tuesday”

The story, It’s Almost Tuesday is a fictional story based on true events of child abuse within the Texas foster care system. The story is told from an 8 year old foster child’s point of view, using a real foster child’s exact words when possible. This is how I came up with the story.

My name is Molly Hayes. I am the author of It’s Almost Tuesday. In February 2006, I  was approached by an advocate who I knew, asking if I would consider writing a poem for child abuse awareness month, which is in April.  I asked her what sort of message she thought should write about and she said “something to bring awareness to the truth of what happens and that will make people want to help.” I was happy to try and do that.  I love to write. Within 2 hours or so I had written the story, and had two alternate endings that I asked her to choose from when I read it to her over the phone.

“Its Almost Tuesday” depicts true incidents as they are reported online within the Texas Foster Care System.

I had spent a year or more researching incident reports on the Child Care lookup site for TDPRS’s.

This is required reporting of injuries, abuse or neglect, reported in foster home incidents.

While this story is fictional, the depicted situations in the story are based upon the true incidents of abuse, neglect, or injuries that took place in the Texas foster homes that are available to the public on the Texas Department of Family Protective  Services (TDPRS) website. Note – TDPRS main website can be found here and may be used as the main page to then search ‘incident reports’ on their page’s search feature as the links to specific sub pages on their site seems to change often causing a link to go bad)

I was looking up the incidents for a very specific reason, to find out what was happening to my son while he was in foster care. I visited my son on Tuesdays when they would allow me to. I made audio recordings of each visit using a hand held tape recorder that I kept in my pocket,  and I took pictures at each visit. Immediately after the visits, usually while driving home I would talk in the tape recorder as I drove making a log of everything I considered important before I would forget details. I suspected, rather, I knew my son was being abused, and I knew they were trying to hide it from me. I wanted to find out what was happening and (hopefully) where he was, so maybe I could do something to help him. That’s when I learned about the incident reports that had to be made available to the public by law. I began to compare my notes and recordings from the visits, and then I would look up incident reports that were online trying to match the two, and maybe out what was happening to my son in foster care. I did this in my own quiet private time for over a year.

My son was being abused for months before it became too obvious for CPS to hide.  I still don’t know what exactly had happened to him,  but I have a pretty good idea. I was appalled and devastated that this was going on, compounded by the fact that the real reason he was in there to begin with was due my own mother and her own agenda and selfish reasons. She had voluntarily placed him in foster care solely to keep him out of my reach so she could get custody of him. Not because he needed to be in there, but because she chose to put him in there, and he was being abused while in there.

Imagine that, as a mother. The trauma it caused me and him is horrific.

The worst day of my life, was arriving to a visit and seeing my 8 year old son bruised and covered in blood, with a black eye, a cut over his eyebrow and blood filling the white of his eye.

He was obviously over medicated at that visit, as he was noticably shaking, talking so fast he would stumble over words, and his hands were curled.

I can also say I’m a twisted way, it was also a blessing in disguise during that time, because it was that visit and the pictures i had taken of his injuries that led to his release from foster care.  I also found out that day that they had been lying to him on many other occasions when they gave me some excuse why I couldn’t see him, then told him I didn’t show up to see him, which was not true. I was there and turned away more times than I was there and got to see him.

The irony is sickening.

He never did come home though, he was given right back to my mother, which was their plan all along unbeknownst to be at the time. I never had a chance as it was all set up. 

I was placed under a gag order and my website depicting the timeline of events as they happened was shut down.

He was placed with my mother, she had his name changed, and the courts sealed his location from me. His biological father was arrested in 2005 and eventually convicted and sentenced to six life terms in prison where he remains today. 

From 2004 until 2013 I had no contact with my son, no updates, no pictures, nothing.

Back to the story.

As I spent my nights researching the incidents and replaying the tapes from the visits, there was one tape from that visit when he was injured. It was December 23rd, and something was said near the end of the visit that stood out. We were talking softly. There was a woman who was crying in the background, and there was the background noise of our caseworker, who was talking on a phone, rather loudly, so what was said between my son and I was very hard to hear.

I would often listen to these tapes after the visits and realise I had forgotten things that were said, or little details.

I had listened to this one tape though, and at the end my son said something that made this particular tape different from all the others. All I could hear “blahblah..(something said that was inaudible) … then…

“I just screamed…”

(more inaudible) …

It became my obsession to hear what he said before and after saying he just screamed. Why did he scream? Why did I forget what he had said? How could I forget that? I had to know.

So I listened again

and again.

and again. again again again. The frustration was growing- dammit, it wasn’t clear enough to hear. Why did the caseworker have to be so loud? Why was that lady crying so loud? Why can’t I hear it? Then I had an idea, I’d transfer the to my computer, make digital copies to it find software to tweak it.

So I did just that put in on my computer, and listened. It was still hard to hear, so I extracted those portions.

I tried changing my speakers,I changed the baud rate. I adjusted the treble, the bass, whatever each different software would let me do to it.

I did this with a fervent obsession in my own private quiet moments. I did this for over a year. Why was my baby screaming!?  Why?

Nobody knew I spent over a year trying to find out why my baby boy screamed.This was my secret ritual when I had any time alone.  

I wanted to save him and I couldn’t. I wanted to protect him and I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him how I screamed too, but I couldn’t. I cried like I never cried before in my life, and I got so frustrated and angry as I listened to that portion of the tape over and over again. The isolation of this year was suffocating me.

That one sentence and the woman crying in the background and the damn caseworker on the phone repeated on my head the same thing over and over in my head, over and over it was driving me crazy.

Until that day I heard it.

I finally heard it.

The words were absolutely clear and I finally knew why he screamed. 

He had screamed for me.  

This is what he said:

“Each time I go home from a visit I just scream at my foster mom.

I said “why baby?” 

and he said  “because each time she walks in (the room) it’s not you”

Imagine that. Just imagine a year and then finally hearing that.

I screamed too. I screamed. I screamed and broke things, punched things hit things, I had never done anything like that before in my life but I was so powerless to do anything to protect my son so I just let it all out and screamed screamed and screamed. I admit i lost it. What would you do if it was your child? Honestly you have no idea what you’d do until you are in that situation. 

So when my advocate friend approached me for a poem it had already been written, only it wasn’t a poem it was a story with two endings I couldn’t decide between. Those moments were the inspiration for my story.

I missed over ten years of my 8 year old son growing up. In my memories, dreams and mind, he stalled at 8 years old in my mind. We reunited but we have never healed or regained the bond that remains fractured. While he’s still alive and out there living his life, he is an adult now, and that still means my child is gone forever.

I will never hear his child voice again say “I love you Mommy” again. He’s gone. I never got to say goodbye. I never knew he’d be taken from me like that so maliciously by my own family who i should’ve been able to trust.

The child abuse depicted in the story are based on incident reports I had read online and things that my son had said to me at our supervised visits each Tuesday. The exact words I used were things he said that I remember all too vividly. The first thing in the story that was said was those few sentences it took over a year for me to hear. The story was already written.

Since only he and I attended the visits, and the caseworkers really were not paying attention, so those are memories that only he and I share. We’ve never talked about them since he grew up either.

These were memories that I simply cannot continue to carry alone, or allow him to carry alone, without a purpose or higher meaning. I will never heal from them.

I know he was not the only child being abused in foster care, and we are not the only family … traumatized.

That time of my life terrorized me and traumatized me beyond words.

As a mother, feeling so helpless and feeling so guilty for the mistakes I made. For not remembering what he was wearing the last day I had him. 

When I was asked to write something, I had no problem coming up with an idea.  Within 3 hours, I had written, by hand, on random notebook papers I had and pieces of scrap paper & a couple of napkins, I wrote the story “Its Almost Tuesday” with the two alternate endings; and called my friend back to let her know it was finished. She couldn’t believe it, as it was February and she didn’t need it until April.

Other than a few minor changes, spelling errors and grammatical corrections, the story was final in its first raw draft.

We chose an ending between the two I had written.  Its Almost Tuesday was put online for the first time to raise awareness about the issues for child abuse awareness month in 2005.

Foster homes are meant to be a temporary emergency placement of safety for children who are removed from their family homes due to substantiated abuse or neglect while the parents are offered services to complete to reunite with their kids. They are supposed to be alternative only if kinship care ( other family members) are not available. Only if keeping them in the home would cause danger. Imminent true danger. 

When child abuse occurs in foster care, something is terribly wrong. Something terrible has gone wrong. Please share my story. Thank you and Godspeed.