Martha's Miracles

Elizabeth Slenker

Description

Everyone has hopes and dreams as a child.  Some children are better able to realize their dreams because of their family and economic conditions.  Some children dream big, but due to circumstances in life have to scale down their ambitions and settle for less than they had hoped.  Some children have a bleak future because of social, environmental and economic situations, but in spite of these adversities are able to overcome these obstacles and live meaningful, productive lives.  This is a story of a young girl in the direst of conditions - an orphan, stuck in an inner city social service system, often moved from one place to another, unwanted and with no one to advocate for her welfare.   She has good fortune fall upon her and makes the best use of her new found luck, until she gets caught in a trafficking ring, and has to use all her wit to confront what happens next.

Sujets

• Foster Homes
• Orphans
• Juvenilee Fiction
• Family

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 22 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977263056
• Langue: English

Extrait

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Martha’s Miracles Life is What you Make it All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Elizabeth Slenker v3.0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Photo © 2023 Elizabeth Slenker. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Chapter 1: School, a Haven
Chapter 2: Another Move
Chapter 3: A Brand New Life
Chapter 4: Sharing Life Stories
Chapter 5: Too Good to Be True?
Chapter 6: A New School Experience
Chapter 7: Placement Testing
Chapter 8: Martha’s Classmates
Chapter 9: The Incident
Chapter 10: The Surprise
Chapter 11: Zander, Columbia and Cloud
Chapter 12: Grateful Friends
Chapter 13: The Hair Salon
Chapter 14: A Living, Real Nightmare
Epilogue
Chapter 1
S CHOOL , A H AVEN
Martha didn’t want to go home, if that’s what you could call it. School was over for the day and she had dallied as long as she could helping Ms. Conrad, her teacher, straighten up the classroom. Ms. Conrad told her she would love for Martha to help her longer but she had a doctor’s appointment and needed leave. Martha walked slowly because she couldn’t bear the thought of what awaited her when she got to the apartment building. She lived in a foster home because her mother had died of the pandemic virus. Her father had left them when she was very small. Because she had no known relatives, she became a ward of the state. She wouldn’t know her father if he ever came around, and she didn’t even know if he was still alive. Martha felt all alone. The family with whom she was now living only cared for her because of the money they received from the state. The foster parents demanded that she earn her keep which meant that every afternoon when she got home from school, she either had to take the laundry to the laundromat, clean the house, or do the mountain of dishes that were piled up in the sink. It seemed Martha was the only one who cared if there were clean dishes in the house. The rest of the people who stayed in the house just threw their dirty dishes in the sink and let them pile up. Martha didn’t feel comfortable where she was living, but she knew if she complained, the Social Worker would move her to another site. Since she had been in foster care she had been moved quite a lot. With no one to advocate for her, she fell between the cracks of the foster care system. She had been previously placed in some houses where things had been a lot worse. At least at the Sampson’s house, as long as she helped out she was left alone and ignored because she did what she was supposed to. For the most part, she had a little time to herself when she finished the chores. It was better than where she had stayed with one of the other families. When she had finished one task, they always found five more waiting for her to do. It seemed that if she worked quickly, it meant another job was piled on her leaving no time for her school work or any thing she might be interested in. The money Social Services paid that family for keeping her it was spent on cigarettes and beer. If she didn’t do a job the way the foster parents had wanted it done they would fly into a fit and scream and yell at her until she couldn’t stand it. They knew better than to lay a hand on her, but she could tell in their eyes they were on the verge of losing control of their tempers, especially when they were drunk. There were also two boys in the house, who didn’t do anything, sassed the woman and did whenever they wanted. They were older than Martha and were spiteful and mean. They heckled her about her bi-racial heritage telling her she was a half-half. She was afraid of what they might try, so she was glad to have gotten out of that situation, and didn’t want to ever have to be in such a toxic environment again. There had been other situations where she had stayed only a short while and the moving around was disruptive. Although where she now stayed was not ideal, at least she didn’t have to worry about being harassed and fearful of what might happen to her. It was a step up from previous foster homes she had been before. She was given many chores. She thought that it would have been fairer if the responsibilities could have been shared by the others who were living there, but because Martha did them, she got more to do.
Martha appearance kept her from standing out in a crowd. She was rather short and skinny. Her permanent teeth had grown in crooked. Her hair was uncontrollable. She would have loved to have it brushed and braided every day like some of the other girls she saw at school, but the foster parents couldn’t be bothered to try to help her get it combed and braided. They didn’t take the time to help her with grooming and hygiene. Sometimes Martha didn’t even get to wash before leaving for school because other people in the house would dawdle in the one bathroom for eight people and make her late. If she complained the parents, would tell her the others were "family," and she was just staying there temporarily. They told her that if she didn’t like living with them, maybe she might tell the Social Worker about it and she could move on to a place where things could be worse. She was no more than a burden to them and the only reason they kept her was for the monthly check from social services. She had to share a room with three other girls, and the only privacy she had was when she crawled under the bed to read her book.

School was her haven. The one lesson she had learned from her mother before she died was that if she worked hard, studied and got a good education she could be whatever she wanted. Martha thought that even though life had been hard up to this point, she was determined to make the best of herself and do something to make the world a better place. In spite of the fact that she had been transferred from one situation to another, at school she was on equal footing with her classmates because she was very bright. There were a lot of problems with some of the students who didn’t want to be in school. They made it hard on the teacher who tried her best to give those who wanted to learn a chance. Martha minded her business, and when she had finished the classwork always had a book to read while the rest of the class was urged by the teacher to finish the work. Some of the students in the class were much older because they had failed some grades and had to repeat the work. The boys especially were bored and wanted to be out on the street and join one of the gangs that ruled their piece of turf. Of course these under achievers teased Martha and told her she might read all she wanted, but she was a "ghetto girl" and she always would be. No matter how hard she worked at trying to learn, it wouldn’t get her any where because first of all being from the inner city stigmatized a person. Second she was an orphan and had no one to help her with her dreams. Third they teased her that she was ugly and skinny. She had three strikes against her. They made fun of her, but she let their insults slide right off like water off the back of a duck. She would smile at her tormentors, and continue to read her books. Since these boys couldn’t get a rise out of Martha they left her alone. They turned their scorn to other girls in the class, teased and tormented and told them what they would like to do to them. In a way Martha considered it good luck that she was invisible to the boys because of her appearance. Since she didn’t seem to be affected by the taunting, they ignored her. The books she read let her imagination take her to other places much more peaceful and compatible than to what those gang hopefuls aspired. She thought Ms. Conrad tried her best, but it was discouraging when the students wouldn’t pay attention and acted up on her. That class was a handful to say the least, and the teacher spent more time trying to control the class than teaching them. So Martha tried to help Ms. Conrad by straightening up things after class.
Chapter 2
A NOTHER M OVE
As she rounded the corner to her apartment building, she saw a dreaded sight. The Social Worker’s car parked in front of the door where she was staying. She was confused. Why would the Social Worker come to the house? It could mean only one thing, which filled Martha with anxiety. She wanted to turn around and run back to school and hide inside her desk in the classroom. As she drew closer Martha saw Mrs. Sampson with her belongings in a plastic bag. She could have wept because she knew what that meant. She was on the move again. She wondered where she would wind up this time. Hopefully not in some place where she’d find living conditions worse. Usually moving in foster care was not moving up in the world but moving down. This move would probably mean not only transferring from one home to another, but possibly to another school, where she would have to start all over again. Foster care was unpredictable and very unstable, especially for a child who had no one to advocate on her behalf.

Mrs. Morley, the Social Worker, greeted Martha who had bi