dream

We'd moved, and we were poor.. it was the Fernandina version of New Jersey. So last night I sort of relived the darkest period of my life. Many details were changed dramatically. The boy wouldn't go to bed. He kept trying to follow us in the road, but finally I had the children settled. Child welfare came. I demanded someone of our nation and told the two White women to get out of my home. The White women became Black women and still I pointed them to the door. I was sent to a Hopi caseworker in his earth home. He looked like someone I had seen at a poetry reading a few months ago. Tall, rounded, big-boned, black bushy ponytail. I explained to him how my son had done well when he had a case worker (for his emotional problems) that had been reservation-trained, and how the minute we moved to NJ things went very bad. How the people there told us that we had to just "adapt to a White world" and how things got steadily worse because they were more interested in molding him and harming us than they were in understanding and helping. I told him that this was why - now that I had both children again - I wasn't going to stand for it. He said that the White woman I turned away was his friend. I told him that it didn't matter. He said that being poor did not mean one was abusive or unfit. I said that was exactly my point. (Thinking of New Jersey) He told me that my case was cleared, that I was a good mother. I went home to an empty house, for while I spoke to the man the White women had come and stolen my children away. The revisited grief is the same, despite the change in circumstance. In real life I sent my son away to protect him from the hands of an abusive White bigot, and I still have custody today for all he lives with his father for now. In my dream, both of my children were stolen. I tried calling my father (although in real life he wouldn't have done a damn thing) but could not get through. I lost my job because of it: I couldn't go to work, because I was desperately searching. There were people around me, but they only watched. When I saw a caseworker I demanded my children back, but I might as well as been invisible. The dream changed at some point, and I was once again in my parents' neighborhood. A barrel of my belongings had been stolen off of the side of the road, and I was looking for them. I knew they had been buried. The children still had not been returned, and this was in the back of my mind. Two men came down the road with shovels, picked an empty driveway and started to dig. I went to them and told them straight up that if they had my barrel they were giving it back. They stopped digging and said that anything found on private property belonged to the property owner. For some odd reason a tall city worker (for lights maybe) appeared from my left. He had some red on him. It was his equipment; a belt of tools and whatnot. He pointed out a city marker that was behind the men and told them that whatever was here was public property, and as such I had the right to reclaim it. It almost started a physical confrontation. One of the thieves was very tall, and he said something that pissed me off. Being very small, I couldn't quite reach a particular height. I tried to punch his nose anyway. The people around me laughed, but I didn't care. I tried again. I wanted very much to hurt this man. And my children still had not been returned. The alarm rang, ending the dream. I wonder what was in that barrel.