Andrew Bridge Fighting for Foster Kids

Andrew Bridge is on a mıssion: To fix the foster care system that he barely survived.

First-Hand Experience

"My name is Andrew Bridge. I'm a lawyer -- your lawyer," I said to the pale, thin boy in front of me, who looked about 13 years old.

He lived at the Eufaula Adolescent Center in Eufaula, Alabama, which I was visiting in the mid-1990s as part of the discovery process in a class action lawsuit against the facility. His parents had committed him to the care of the state, but for several days, the boy had been down in the basement, in isolation. I'd been startled to find him sleeping on a bare mattress, cold and alone. In a review of therapy and progress notes, our clinical expert concluded that nearly 30 percent of the children were disciplined in this way, banished to the basement at some point during their stay.

It had become my life's work to improve this child's circumstances -- and that of many other kids like him. I, too, had lived under the care of the state. I remembered the loneliness, the fear, the deprivation. I thought of how I'd meet a lawyer or social worker for the first time. So, tell me about yourself … I hear you're good at school … Your foster parents and I are proud of you … I'll call you. I wanted these children to be treated more thoughtfully. I wanted their physical and emotional well-being to be of paramount importance to the adults charged with their care.

"Why did the staff put you down here?" I asked the boy.

"I wouldn't get out of bed before school," he replied.

Had his parents visited him? They hadn't, though his father had called. "And your mom? What about her?"

"She won't tell me, but I know she wants me back."

Serious family troubles had landed him here, but his living conditions seemed cruel and unusual -- hence the lawsuit and my work on his behalf. Veering off the usual lawyerly script, I asked, "Is there anything you want? Is there anything you need me to do?"

"Would you tell my mom I'm sorry? That she can come see me now?"

I had no idea who his mother was. But my presence that day helped him get moved back into the boys' dorm, and he was later taken to another facility (Eufaula was closed in 1996).

Whatever had happened between this boy and his mother, I knew he would never forget her -- as I had not forgotten mine.

"Please Don't Hurt My Mom"
With dark hair, and eyes to match, my mother, Hope, was attractive and fun-loving. She was smart and said that I was too. But the demons of mental illness began cutting her down in the prime of her life. Sometimes voices spoke to her. She couldn't hold a job. We'd been forced to scrounge for food in Dumpsters.

One Saturday morning in 1970, when I was seven, I walked down the wide, empty sidewalks of the Los Angeles neighborhood where she and I had lived for two years. The local deli owner used to smile whenever I came in by myself. I'd hand him cash or a promissory note from my mother, and he'd give me a pack of cigarettes for her. This time, he was distant.

Perhaps a stranger had stopped in and asked about me. Maybe the owner was afraid that selling cigarettes to a child had gotten him in trouble. Whatever the reason, he refused to sell me the pack.

I began walking back to the motel where my mother and I were staying when a county sheriff's car swung around the corner, keeping pace behind me. I crossed the street. The car followed me for more than a block before finally pulling up. The deputy rolled down the window.

"Are you Andy?" he asked.

I stood motionless and answered, "Yes."

"Get in," he said. I opened the back door and obediently did as he said. As the car approached the motel, I saw my mother out on the sidewalk, barefoot. She was arguing with a well-dressed woman -- a social worker, I learned later.

The deputy parked. Forgetting me in the backseat, he ran out to protect the woman from my mother, who was now screaming, inches from her face.

My mind raced. Please don't hurt her. Leave her alone.

"Where Are You Taking Me?"
The deputy grabbed my mother's shoulder and shoved her away, but she returned with greater rage. When he grabbed for her again, I raced to protect her. She reached out and wrapped her arms around me.

For a few seconds, we stayed like that. Then the social worker yanked me into her car, and the deputy descended on my mother, pinning her facedown on the sidewalk.

My head rang. Please don't hurt her. Leave her alone.

As the social worker drove away and tried to comfort me, I wondered who had betrayed my mother and me. Was it our former landlord, looking for unpaid rent? Was it my school, when I failed to arrive for second grade? Each time I asked a question, the social worker replied with an ill-fitting answer.

"Did the police take my mom?" I wondered.

"Priscilla will be fine," she said.

"Can she sleep at the motel tonight?"

"Priscilla will come to see you soon."

"Did the policeman let her get her clothes?"

"Priscilla can take care of herself."

My mother hated her first name. She insisted on using her middle name, Hope, and no one who knew her and cared for her used any other. A small point for an adult, maybe. But I was seven years old, beginning a long trip, and only the words Mom and Hope mattered to me.

Los Angeles County had no place to put me other than an enormous holding facility for children called MacLaren Hall. As the social worker drove me to the forbidding cinder block compound, she outlined a well-rehearsed set of tasks. First I would go to MacLaren. Then I would go to a temporary foster home. After that, I'd go to a long-term foster home. Finally, I would return to Priscilla.

I only had to wait and count each step: one, two, three, home. Things didn't happen quite that way.

For several weeks, I lived a nightmarish existence at MacLaren -- banished to an isolated cell at one point over a misunderstanding about how and when to use the showers at night. Then I was driven to the Los Angeles County criminal court building with a bunch of other MacLaren kids. I was unsure why I was there until I saw her.

Silent Cry

My mother waited in the courtroom on the spectator side, an armed bailiff at her side. She was dressed in a red paisley blouse and jeans. She looked tired, I thought. As a deputy nudged me forward, I wondered if my mother would recognize me in my MacLaren clothes -- a stiff white T-shirt and jeans.

The attorney for the county began speaking to the judge. "The County of Los Angeles requests the continued detention of the child in accord with California Welfare and Institutions Code," the lawyer said. "The child requires protective services."

As I stared into my mother's desperate eyes, we listened to the county lawyer pound out formalities. "Mrs. Bridge continues to exhibit a resistant attitude toward Children's Services. The County of Los Angeles is better equipped to meet the child's best interests and safety."

Be brave for me, I imagined my mother saying.
Be a big boy. Be still. The judge banged his gavel.

"Objections?" he said, peering at the lawyer standing beside me.

"No, Your Honor," my lawyer responded. "No objections."

"Well then, motion granted. Child's detention is ordered continued."

My mother hadn't interrupted. She hadn't run to me. She was 24 years old, descended from a line of impoverished women, educated to the tenth grade, abandoned by a husband, gripped by mental illness. She could do nothing more than be judged.

Walking back through the corridors, away from her, I felt the world change. Numbness filled me. When I returned to MacLaren Hall, I waited for my mother to rescue me from the angry guards, the locked wards, the scary nights. Eventually I gave up. I did as I was told in silence.

When the county noticed that I had withdrawn completely, alarmed social workers resolved to find a foster home for me as quickly as they could. The placement they came up with was Mrs. Leonard's house in the dry foothills of the San Fernando Valley.

When the social worker delivered me to Mrs. Leonard, in the spring of 1970, by which time I'd turned eight, she glanced down at her young charge. "This is Andy," she said. "He's a little quiet."

She handed Mrs. Leonard a thin folder containing the facts of my life. "Be sure to be a good boy," the social worker said as she departed. My new foster mother, a large and formidable woman, reached over my head and shut the door.

Born in Eastern Europe, Mrs. Leonard had survived a Nazi slave-labor camp and arrived in the United States at age 16. She married Mr. Leonard, an electrical engineer, and ran their home with authority. It was her idea to take in foster children in middle age, after the couple had had their own three children.

That first afternoon, Mrs. Leonard drove me to get some new clothes. Pushing a cart down the aisles of the warehouse store, she shopped more like she was buying groceries than clothes for the frightened little boy trailing behind her. "Three shirts, two pairs of pants, a pack of underwear and some socks should do it." She pulled things out of cardboard crates.

Back at the house, she deposited the bags on the floor of her son's bedroom. "You need to change," she instructed, then waited as I surrendered the last of what I had from my mother. She glanced at the dirty bundle in her hands. "Thank God. You won't need these things anymore."

She rushed off to start dinner and left me waiting in the bedroom for her three children to return from school. I didn't know what else to do, so I just sat there, alone.

Christopher arrived first. He was four years older than I. When he saw me sitting on his bed, his first words were "She didn't tell me another one of you was coming."

Embarrassed for being an intruder, I jumped up and shifted to the far end of the room. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It was all I could think to say. "I'm sorry."

He locked his eyes on me with a glare that said, Don't look for fairness from me. Spotting the two shopping bags of clothes near the closet door, he reached for them and threw them at my feet. "Keep your s--- away from my stuff," he ordered.

Soon his two siblings, one older than he and one younger, arrived home. They said hello, and finally Mr. Leonard appeared. Round-faced, with glasses and a comb-over, he glanced at me, shook my hand and sat down to his evening paper.

It was clear I could expect nothing more. I was Mrs. Leonard's concern.

Put to bed that night, I lay in the darkened room, shaking, sweating. I tried to remember my mother's voice: Be still. Be still.

Mrs. Leonard quickly set down rules that I was to follow without fail. Anything could provoke her wrath. I might have forgotten to empty a wastebasket or wring out a washcloth. I might have made an odd expression. Or I might have committed no offense at all.

Sometimes she'd dig into my arms or grab at my face, screaming that the foster child in front of her was ungrateful, lazy, obnoxious, stupid and undeserving. With her hand at my ear or at the base of my neck, she pulled me from room to room.

For most of the 11 years I lived there, I felt her anger, contempt and annoyance at my presence. Though I was supposed to stay just temporarily, after the first 18 months, a judge examined my "best interests," then redefined me under the law. I became a permanent resident. Like a survivor on a life raft, not wanting to be there but having nowhere else to go, I stayed. I tried to make it work.

Early on, my mother came to see me a few times, but the visits were short and tension-filled, with Mrs. Leonard hovering nearby. "Be sure to do what they say," my mother would whisper as we sat in the bedroom together. "Promise not to cry. And don't forget we love each other. You're my only boy."

"And you're my only mom," I would whisper back, sealing the pact. She'd kiss me softly on the head and depart. I never knew when I'd see her again.

I became braver at school as time passed. During morning recess, I no longer hid in the bathroom but lingered in the school library. If a teacher let me, I stayed inside my classroom to read or do extra work. I never mentioned the Leonards or my mother to other kids if I could help it; I was ashamed of my needy circumstances. With my secrets carefully secured, school gradually became a haven.

There were a few standout teachers, including Miss O'Malley in fifth grade and others after her. They were genuinely kind and saw my potential, easing my loneliness and helping me succeed. They couldn't change where I lived or what had happened to my mother, but they did what they said they'd do. Day after day, the teachers shared their passion for American history, geometry or English grammar. If the entire world hadn't been safe for me, they showed me that at least a few regions of it might be.

Emancipation

In eighth grade, after Mrs. Leonard suggested I get a part-time job, I began bagging groceries at a supermarket. By tenth grade, I'd joined the swim team and the debate team. Savings from my job and a stipend from a sponsoring organization allowed me to attend a four-week academic program at University of California, Davis, during the summer between sophomore and junior years. The next summer, I attended Boys State in Sacramento, which the American Legion sponsored for free.

In English class during my senior year of high school, Mrs. Karen Ross taught poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot. The poem warned about a man who had wasted his life in silence, too timid to demand his place in the world. Mrs. Ross's class had an enormous effect on this shy student attending it.

In early March, a new social worker called to wish me goodbye. She was the last in a line of dozens of caseworkers, male and female, whom the county had assigned to me over the years. She said in a formal voice, "In six months, Los Angeles County will emancipate you. Emancipation is the judicial act releasing a child from the custody of the county." Her voice warmed. "It really means that you've grown up and that it's time for you to leave the Leonards'."

"Okay," I answered.

"You'll need to pack your clothes."

She began discussing college, recommending that since I was interested enough to have already applied to several schools, I should seriously consider state schools. If I attended one, she said, "the county would pay for your tuition and help with almost everything else too. I don't know if the Leonards mentioned that to you."

No, the Leonards hadn't mentioned it. I thought of the humiliation I'd felt over the years about everything from the "foster kid" school lunch passes to the summer jobs the county had given me, including one cleaning up dog excrement in a public park. About to graduate from high school, I wanted nothing paid for or helped with again.

Soon several admissions letters began arriving, and among them was a letter from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Though I had applied there, I hadn't interviewed with its admissions office or seen the campus (I didn't have money to travel). However, when its acceptance was followed with the offer of a generous scholarship, I felt relief and joy.

I accepted and told the Leonards. They had never heard of Wesleyan. Four months later, in July, Mr. Leonard finally asked me where it was.

Linked by Love

That summer before college, at the Leonards' house, the heat was blistering. Nearly six years had passed since the last of the Leonards' other foster children had come and gone. Their own three kids had long ago moved out. Only the Leonards and I remained.

On the morning of August 11, a Monday, when Mrs. Leonard awoke before seven and saw that I was still in my room -- if it was a sunny day, she insisted I spend it out of doors -- she snapped, "What are you still doing in the house? It's a beautiful day. Why do you think we paid for that bike?"

I spent hours bicycling around the valley, returning to the Leonards' porch in the afternoon. I warned myself, You've come back too soon. She'll be angry. When I walked through the front door, my T-shirt was soaked with sweat. I tiptoed to the kitchen for some water. Then I saw it.

Dangling from the refrigerator by a magnet, the note from Mrs. Leonard was brief: "Your mother called."

After years apart, something -- if just a whisper -- must have told my mother that her boy needed her, that he was about to leave the one place she knew to find him. Courting danger, I tried prying some information out of Mrs. Leonard. She told me that my mother had called from the Norwalk mental hospital.

"Did she say what she wanted?" I asked.

"How would anyone ever know what Hope wanted?"

I sat at my bedroom desk and pored over a map, figuring out a route to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Round-trip, the distance was about 90 miles. Two days after my mother called, I left the house early, before anyone else awoke, and walked to the bus stop. After several transfers, I arrived at the edge of the San Fernando Valley. By midmorning I had only begun the long journey through Los Angeles County's immense inner core.

Finally I arrived at the facility, a fenced and walled fortress. I told the woman in the reception area, "I'm here to see Hope Bridge. I'm her son."

Her fingers began leafing through the pages. "Are you sure she's here? I don't see the name."

Desperate, anxious, I thought maybe I'd already missed her. I reached back in memory for my mother's maiden name. "Could you look for Priscilla, please? Priscilla Reese?" I said.

The woman found it. I signed in and was taken to an empty room, where I was told to have a seat, that Priscilla would be brought out. I fidgeted. The sharp clack from the door's lock startled me. I turned my head. An attendant appeared and smiled. Then, suddenly, she was there.

Boxed in the door frame, the woman who had clung to me on a Los Angeles street long ago, the woman who had loved me unconditionally, no matter what her situation, stared at me.

Her hair was still dark but cut randomly. The bright flowered muumuu that she wore was really more of a bag than a dress. Her once slender form had swollen. My mother moved toward me. A smile of faint recognition crossed her face as she lifted her arms to hug me.

In her still familiar voice, she whispered, "Andy."

I stepped forward and gripped her. My mother, I learned, had arrived here only recently, after authorities took her off the streets, as they did from time to time. We strolled together to a grassy area bordered by patches of orange marigolds. I told her that I would be going away to college soon, that I would be leaving the Leonards'. The college was in the East.

She lifted her hand to my face, brushed it against my hair. "It's still blond," she observed with a faint smile.

"And yours is still black," I answered.

She looked to the side, then muttered to the emptiness, as much as to me, "You know, I tried. I tried."

I tried to concentrate on the space over her shoulder and the closed door that waited beyond.

"I know you did," I answered, feeling the burn of a first tear as it escaped and ran down my face."I know," I repeated."I know." And we held each other for a long, long time.

Andrew Bridge graduated from Wesleyan University in 1985 and Harvard Law School in 1989. He lives and works in New York City, where he advocates for foster children's access to legal and medical services and educational opportunities. His mother, Hope, remains in a mental health facility; Andrew visits her as often as he can.