Her Little Family

By

Rick C. Garcia

©2025 Rick C. Garcia. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission from the author.

When I was four years old, two sheriff’s cars and two women from the Department of Social Services pulled up in front of my family’s home, came inside, and took my two little sisters and me away from our mother. One social worker put my sisters in one car, and another social worker put me in the other. The cars pulled off in different directions. I remember standing on the seat, staring out the back window until the car carrying my sisters faded from my sight. I was crying.

I went to a farm to live. The foster parents there were Mr. and Mrs. Matthews. I cried a lot the first few days I was there because I didn’t understand what was going on. All I could think about was, “Where is my mom? Where are my sisters? When am I going home?” Day after day I would ask, “How much longer do I have to stay here?” No one knew. It was up to the courts. Eventually, I quit asking.

I soon warmed up to Mrs. Matthews. She would tickle me and make me laugh. She would sing to me and teach me songs. She would tuck me in at night and read to me, and she would always stare at me and tell me how handsome I was. Because Mr. and Mrs. Matthews were up in age, I was the last child they’d ever be taking into their home.

I can still remember the day I first called Mrs. Matthews Mommy. There was an old house beside ours that no one lived in. I used to play around this old house, and I can still remember peeking through the keyhole in the back door and seeing a round blue container of Morton Salt sitting on a table. At the time, I’d been living with the Matthews for about six months.

One day when I was playing on the porch of this old house, I heard a whimpering sound coming from under the porch. I jumped down to investigate. Under the porch was a mother dog with her newborn puppies. I was so excited about finding the puppies that I went running up to our house screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, come outside and see what I found.” I didn’t even realize I’d called her Mommy; it just came out.

Mr. and Mrs. Matthews weren’t able to have kids of their own. They’d been foster parents for over thirty-five years. No child had ever called Mrs. Matthews mom, or Mr. Matthews dad. All they’d ever heard from children placed in their home was, “You’re not my mom,” or “You’re not my dad.” This was the first time a child had ever called Mrs. Matthews “Mommy” — and she liked it.

I can still remember the day I first called Mr. Matthews Daddy. It was the summer before I started kindergarten, and we’d gone to the beach. Mr. Matthews and I spent most of the day playing in the waves, building sandcastles, collecting shells, and lying on our blanket soaking up some sun. Mrs. Matthews sat under an umbrella because she said she didn’t tan, she only burned.

Later, when I was playing around in the water by myself, I noticed that whenever the waves would come in and then the water would go back out, there would be these little sand crabs trying to dig themselves back into the sand. I tried to catch one, and after many failed attempts, I finally did. I was so excited about this that I went running up to our blanket with this sand crab cupped in my hand yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, look what I caught!” I didn’t even realize I’d called him Daddy; it just came out. After that day at the beach, I never again called them Mr. and Mrs. Matthews; they had become my mom and dad.

Before we left the beach that day, Mr. Matthews stopped a man walking by and asked him if he’d take our picture. The three of us sat on a nearby bench with me on Mrs. Matthews’ lap and Mr. Matthews sitting beside her with his arm around her shoulders. We all smiled, and the man snapped the picture. When Mrs. Matthews had those pictures developed, she fell in love with that one picture. She had it enlarged to an eight-by-ten, framed it, and hung it above the television in the living room. She called it “her little family.”

When I was nine years old, a social worker came out to our house to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Matthews. While I was riding my bike around the social worker’s car, I saw two kids sitting in the back seat. I got off my bike to investigate. They were two girls. I ran into the house to ask the social worker if the two girls could come out and play. She asked me if I knew who they were, and I told her I didn’t. She told me they were my sisters. I hadn’t forgotten about my sisters; I knew they were out there somewhere. I just didn’t think I was ever going to see them again.

I opened the car door. My sisters just stared at me and then started giggling. The youngest of the two said, “You’re my brother,” and then they started giggling even harder, as if this made them happy. My only memory of my sisters was of the day we were taken away. The youngest was an infant wrapped in a blanket, and the other was a toddler in diapers. There’s no way they could remember me, but it felt like they did; it seemed like we knew each other.

I asked them if they wanted to see the farm, and they started giggling again and said yes. We took off running across the field to the back of the farm. I wanted them to see the lake. I showed them the deck Mr. Matthews built for me and the rope he tied to a branch so I could swing out into the water. Next, I took them to see the chickens, the hogs, our goat, the cows, and the horses. My sisters were afraid of the horses because they were so big.

We then played in the barn, the hayloft, and on the tractor. I dug up a few potatoes to show them potatoes grow underground. I picked us each a tomato that we ate right there in the field. I took them to the grapevines and then showed them the doghouse I built for my dog, Red. They were impressed, even though it wasn’t level, squared, and was full of bent-over nails. Though we were strangers, it seemed like we had spent our entire lives together. This was by far the happiest day of my life!

The social worker came out to the backyard and started yelling for my sisters and me to come back to the house. We raced each other back, laughing the whole time. I purposely fell down so that one of them would win. When we got there, the social worker was holding two suitcases. My heart jumped for joy when I saw them. My sisters were staying!

The social worker then told me I needed to go inside and hurry up and say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Matthews so we could leave — the suitcases were for me. I asked where we were going, and she said my sisters and I were being adopted. I can still remember how I felt. It was like someone had poured ice-cold water over me, and I started shaking uncontrollably.

I went inside and saw Mrs. Matthews on the floor with Mr. Matthews kneeling down beside her trying to console her. She looked up at me and sobbed loudly with her arms outstretched for me to come to her, so I did. I can still remember feeling her warm tears running down the back of my neck into my shirt. She held me so tight I could barely breathe. Mr. Matthews finally pried me away from her. I heard her cry out as we were walking out of the house, “Please, God; don’t let them take my baby from me.” After four years and ten months, they were taking me somewhere else to live. We drove away, and I never saw the Matthews again.

Twenty years later, I was reading the newspaper one morning when I came across a picture of a woman whose face had been burned deep into my memory. It was Mrs. Matthews. Someone had taken the eight-by-ten picture we’d taken that day at the beach, the one that hung above the television in our living room, and used just her face from that picture for her obituary photo. She looked exactly as I remembered her.

Under the picture was her name, Opal Matthews. I’d never known her name. Under that it said, “preceded in death by her husband, Wilbur.” I’d never known his name either. The last of the four short sentences said, “Burial today at 2:00 pm, Cumberland Gardens.”

I pulled into Cumberland Gardens at exactly 2:00 pm. Nobody was there. No tent, no chairs, no flowers. There was only the hearse driver who’d delivered the casket, and two cemetery workers who would fill in the grave. This broke my heart because this woman had taken broken, abused, and neglected children into her home and done everything she could to make them feel welcome, and now her end came as if none of that mattered. It hurt me deep in my heart to know no one was around anymore that even knew her.

A car pulled up while I was standing there, and a lady got out. She was the director of the assisted living facility where Mrs. Matthews died. She asked me who I was, and I told her Mrs. Matthews was my foster mother. She asked if I’d like to see her one last time before they buried her, and I said yes. The hearse driver opened the casket. When I saw her, a big lump came up in my throat and tears came to my eyes, and then I started crying uncontrollably. Tucked neatly under one of her arms was the picture we took that day at the beach, “Her Little Family.”