My Runaway Girl
By Beryl Singleton Bissell
I no longer spend days and
nights worrying about my runaway daughter Francesca, wondering if she is
safe, if she has enough to eat, if she is warm. Nonetheless, the fear that
delineated seven years of our lives remains. It shudders through me each
time I hear of another child missing, read statistics of homeless youth,
learn of another teenage death. For whatever reason, our children are out
there -- troubled and frightened and in need of help.
That my daughter should have
become a runaway is a fact that still aches through my psyche, her reasons
as elusive as those balls of mercury that divide and scatter as one
attempts to capture them. When she was little, I remember listening to
other parents grouse about their rebellious teens and thinking how lucky I
was. My little girl would never give me that kind of trouble. She was so
bright and loving. If I worried, it was about her attachment to home, the
way she seemed to prefer my company to that of her peers.
I think I rationalized her clinging, thinking that it made sense that we
were so close. After all, wasn't she the comfort that eased me through her
daddy's death soon after she was born? For eighteen months I nursed her,
finding in the warmth of her sweet body the strength to the days that lay
ahead. And it was Francesca's presence that gave me the courage to leave
the deceptively soft-spoken man I'd subsequently married, though it took
me ten years. Francesca was entering middle school at the time and wept
unceasingly, claiming she was worried about me. I had little patience with
her tears: I was struggling to make ends meet, working full-time, caring
for an elderly mother, and trying to get my college degree. When the
crying finally stopped, my spirits lifted.
Then Francesca tried to kill
herself and my pretend world shattered, its place usurped by hospitals,
psychiatric units, and my daughter's blistering rage. We seemed to live at
the heart of a whirlwind. I never knew which Francesca I'd confront when I
returned from work -- little girl weeping, ice-maiden, or virago. At the
age of sixteen, she tested positive for cocaine use. While on the way to
the treatment center, she leaped out of the car and ran, coatless, into
the snow, disappearing for over four months. When Francesca returned home,
it wasn't to stay. From then on, she was on the runaway list so often the
police knew us by first names. She ran from friend's home to friend's home
until the homes ran out. She was eighteen when I found her cowering
outside our garage at 1:30 in the morning. The temperature was 13 below.
She said she was waiting for friends.
"When you're homeless, you walk all night to stay warm," she once told me.
"You have no choice. It's that or freeze to death."
On September 11, 2001, moved
perhaps by the tragedy happening in New York, Francesca asked if she could
return home to live. On the day set for her arrival home, she was shot to
death. She was 24 years old.
I no longer have to worry
about my runaway girl, whether she is safe, whether she is warm; but the
fear those years instilled is still there. It lives in the hearts of those
who run, and of those who love them. Programs like Renaissance and Street
Outreach offered by Lutheran Social Services in Duluth are bastions
against such fear. Had Francesca access to similar help, she might have
found the affirmation and support needed to get her life back on course.
Some lessons are learned only when one hits bottom; the helping hand
extended then can be the healing salve.
