The Orphan Who Refused to Starve

I have always possessed an absurdly high sense of self-worth. Which is ironic, considering I grew up in the foster system. In kindergarten, I demanded three massive slices of sheet-cake cornbread for every meal. The director of the group home said, "You eat more than a grown man. Who’s going to want to adopt a girl who eats like a horse?" I didn't stop chewing. "If poor people are adopting kids, aren’t they just dragging us down with them? Why should they adopt at all?" In class, our teacher read us The Giving Tree, trying to teach us the beauty of selfless sacrifice. When she finished, she held up a single apple. "Now, if we only have one apple, who should we give it to?" The other children, perfectly conditioned, chimed in unison, "Give it to the teacher!" I was the only dissenting voice. Startled, the teacher asked me why. I looked up at her. "The boy in the story gave away everything and got a reputation for being a good person. If I give away my apple, what exactly do I get?" 1 Ms. Helen, our director, didn't just let my defiance slide. She tried to teach me a lesson. She instructed the cafeteria staff to limit me to one slice of cornbread. The very next day, I snuck into the staff room, stole a teacher’s cell phone, and dialed 911. I told the dispatcher there was systemic child abuse happening at St. Jude’s Home for Children. When Child Protective Services and the police arrived, Ms. Helen was frantic. "I’m not starving her!" she pleaded. "The portions we give the children strictly follow the USDA dietary guidelines! It’s the healthiest option! Besides, no child can stomach three huge slabs of that cornbread. Even an adult couldn't finish it. What if her stomach bursts?" The reality was that my stomach had never burst. In fact, I was the tallest, sturdiest kid in my grade. Meanwhile, the obedient kids—the ones who quietly ate their single slice—were sallow and dangerously thin. A seasoned cop sensed something was off. He launched an immediate investigation into our food supply. It didn't take long to uncover the truth. The catering contractor was cutting the cornmeal with cheap fillers and pumping the batter full of air. The slices looked huge and golden on the outside, but if you squeezed them, they collapsed into nothing. "You think a kid eating three of these is too much?" The cop crushed a piece of cornbread in his fist, his jaw tight. "I could eat ten of these and still be starving." Ms. Helen’s face went completely bloodless. She didn't say another word. That single slice of cornbread unraveled a massive embezzlement ring involving the state food contractor. The cops jokingly gave me a plastic "Junior Detective" badge. But more importantly, I learned a fundamental truth about the world: Never listen to what other people tell you. Listen to your own body. Hunger is hunger. If you aren't full, you aren't full. And if you find yourself suffering, you can bet someone else, somewhere in the shadows, is profiting off your pain. 2 At school, they often showed us viral videos designed to teach us about humility and sharing. One video featured a mom, a dad, and a little boy. The dad and the boy each had a slice of pizza, but the mom had none. The mom stared at the boy with pathetic, pleading eyes. The boy hesitated, then pushed his slice into his mother’s hands. The background music swelled with manipulative piano chords. The comments on the screen praised the boy’s beautiful soul. I watched it and felt nothing but profound annoyance. Why was there not enough pizza? Why were the parents running a psychological test on a child? What exactly was the point? Aside from stories of sacrifice, the teachers loved the cake-cutting scenario. "There is one cake and three children," the teacher asked the class. "How do you cut it so everyone gets a fair share?" The other kids scrambled to figure out how to divide a circle into perfect thirds. I simply said I would cut the cake in half. I’d keep one half for myself, then divide the remaining half between the other two kids. The teacher stared at my worksheet, her brow furrowing so deeply it looked like crumpled paper. "Stella, why did you give yourself the biggest piece?" I didn't flinch. "Because it’s my cake." "Right, it’s your cake. But why distribute it like that?" I looked her dead in the eye, enunciating every word. "It is my cake. I will divide it however I please. If I want cake, I’ll give myself more. If I don't want it, I’ll give it all away. Is there a problem?" The teacher was stunned into silence. After a long moment, she crouched down to my eye level. "It’s not a problem here, sweetie. But if you act like this out in the real world, you’re going to end up getting hurt." "Hurt?" "Yes. If you act like this when you get adopted, your new mom and dad might think you’re being selfish. They might stop loving you." Her voice was impossibly gentle. But her words made absolutely no sense to me. "If their love comes with conditions," I said, "then I don't need their love." The teacher opened her mouth, closed it, and walked away. 3 I was adopted twice during kindergarten. My first adoptive mother was Eleanor, a single woman in her early forties. The first time she saw me, she smiled and said, "This kid has fire in her eyes." She held my hand and took me home. She lived in a beautiful, tastefully decorated three-bedroom condo in the suburbs. She had set up a bedroom just for me. The duvet cover and the stuffed animals were brand new; everything smelled like clean laundry detergent and sunlight. Out on the balcony, she had strung up fairy lights that blinked softly in the dark. I asked her why she adopted me. She told me that before I arrived, she had spent ten years sitting on that balcony, looking at the stars alone. "I grinded for two decades to become a VP at my firm," she said softly. "I married my college sweetheart. We were together ten years. Everyone envied my life. But my reward wasn't happiness. It was betrayal." "He told me I was too career-driven, too aggressive. He said we just weren't compatible anymore. The truth was, he had been sleeping with someone else for years, but he didn't want the guilt of being the one to end the marriage." "He waited until his girlfriend showed up at our door, pregnant." "I divorced him. I bought this condo, bought my own car. I thought I could just live the rest of my life on my own terms. Then, last year, I buried both my parents." "I sat on this balcony on my fortieth birthday, and this crushing, suffocating loneliness just washed over me." She stopped and stroked my hair. "Why am I telling you all this? You’re just a kid. You don't understand." I did understand. But I also knew that adults needed kids to be innocent. They needed us to be blank slates. I tugged gently on her hand. "It works out perfectly. I like looking at the stars, too. From now on, when you get off work, you can watch the stars with me." Eleanor smiled and nodded. I lived with her for three months. She was a corporate executive; she rarely got home before ten o'clock at night. In those three months, we only managed to watch the stars together four times. One afternoon, a social worker from St. Jude’s showed up at my kindergarten and took me away. The social worker told me Eleanor was sick. Acute Myeloid Leukemia. She knew she couldn't take on the responsibility of raising a child while fighting for her own life, so she surrendered me back to the state. It broke my heart. She was the gentlest person I had ever met. Her life shouldn't have ended as a tragedy. 4 Not long after, I was adopted by a married couple. The Davises were corporate grinders. Together, they pulled in a very comfortable six-figure income. But they had leveraged themselves to the hilt, buying two suburban properties. After taxes, health insurance, and 401k contributions, almost every dime of their take-home pay was swallowed by mortgages. They lived in a bright, modern, beautifully staged house. But they were never in it. They were home for maybe eight hours a day. They’d walk through the door, shower, and immediately collapse into bed. Just like Eleanor, they had strapped themselves with immense financial burdens to buy a certain lifestyle, but they had zero time to actually live it. I learned another lesson: a house is not a home. They adopted me because they had spent their twenties and early thirties climbing the corporate ladder. By the time they realized they wanted a family, they were approaching forty. Sarah Davis had suffered multiple miscarriages. The IVF treatments were bleeding them dry financially and emotionally. They couldn't take the heartbreak anymore. When they came to the group home, they said they felt an instant connection with me. Mark Davis ruffled my hair. "This kid’s got a double cowlick, just like me." They were generous. They bought me endless racks of new clothes and piles of toys. They enrolled me in ballet, piano, and advanced tutoring. Even when I explicitly told them I didn't want any of it, they forced me to go. They used to look at me with this intense, desperate expectation in their eyes. But I knew they weren't really looking at me. They were looking through me, searching for the ghost of the biological child they never got to have. I stayed with the Davises for over a year. One day in the first grade, I brought home a math test with an 89—a B-plus. I needed them to sign it. Mark snapped. "We spend a fortune on tutoring, and this is the best you can do? I pulled straight A’s when I was your age, and I never had a tutor." Sarah was in the bathroom, dry heaving. When she walked out, she looked at me with sheer exhaustion, like I was a bad investment she couldn't afford to keep throwing money at. "If you keep this up, we’re sending you back to the home." I didn't cry. I didn't throw a tantrum. I didn't say a word. Because I knew that if they really wanted to send me back, an A-plus wouldn't have saved me. Three months later, they packed my bags and drove me back to St. Jude’s. Mark told Ms. Helen I was defiant and refused to apply myself. Sarah claimed I was unhygienic and refused to bathe. I knew those were just excuses. The real reason was that Sarah was pregnant. They had finally gotten their miracle. They finally had a child of their own. 5 Once I entered elementary school, my chances of being adopted plummeted to zero. The truth behind my first two adoptions was purely logistical. Most of the kids abandoned to the state foster system have severe medical or developmental needs—cleft palates, cerebral palsy, missing limbs, albinism. Among all the kids on the ward, I was the one who looked the most "normal." Prospective parents prefer toddlers. They believe young children are blank slates, easily molded. Once you hit seven or eight, you have your own thoughts. You have a history. No matter how normal you look, nobody wants you anymore. So, I settled into my life at the group home, taking it one day at a time. St. Jude’s functioned as its own ecosystem, with a built-in charter school running from kindergarten through middle school. My classmates were the same kids I slept in the dorms with. Back in kindergarten, I had a best friend named Lily. Lily was tiny. She had a voice like a whisper and was scared of her own shadow. The older boys loved targeting her. They’d force her to hand over the pudding cups from her lunch tray, threatening to pee in her bed if she snitched. The day I caught them, I didn't hesitate. I picked up a hard plastic cafeteria chair and swung it directly into the ringleader’s head. The boy, stunned and bleeding, started bawling for his mommy. I despised bullies who crumbled the second they got hit. "Even if your actual mother came back from the dead, it wouldn't save you!" I screamed at him. He cried harder. He had ended up in the system because both his parents had died in a car crash. His mom was never coming back. I didn't see the point in crying. Ms. Helen told me I was left in a cardboard box on the steps of the facility. Statistically, my mother was likely still alive. But to me, the difference between her being alive or dead was zero. From that day on, Lily was under my protection. She shadowed me everywhere, and no one dared lay a finger on her. The day Eleanor adopted me, Lily wailed like she was at a funeral. By the time I was returned to St. Jude’s the second time, Lily was gone. I checked the dorms, the classrooms, the asphalt playground. Nowhere. I assumed she had died. The kids at our facility didn't have the best immune systems or genetics. Death, and bearing witness to death, was just a Tuesday for us. I went to the director's office. "Did Lily die? I went to the cemetery down the road, but I couldn't find her headstone." There was a public cemetery a few blocks from the home. We used to sneak in there and eat the apples families left on the graves. Ms. Helen laughed so hard she choked. "Who told you Lily died? She got adopted by a wonderful family." "Oh." I dropped my gaze to the floor. For the kids left behind in the system, being adopted and dying were essentially the same thing. Either way, you were crossing a boundary, and we would never see you again in this lifetime. So, inside my head, I quietly built a tombstone for Lily—the best friend I ever had.