A New American Family: A Love Story

4. Still More Kids

4 Still More Kids Teresa Ben Hunter’s show was not normal television fare for Pat, but she did watch “Adoption Interviews” one more time. A beautiful ten-year-old Indian girl on the show from the nearby Morongo tribe had lost both parents and was languishing in foster care. Our oldest child, Lora, was then nine, and we knew that adopting a youngster with ten years of unimaginable experience behind her would be more difficult than our prior adoptions, but our hearts went out to this little girl and we wanted to learn more. When we inquired, we discovered a very complicated situation that threatened to engulf this lovely young lady, whose name was Terry Marshela Alto. We have a photograph of Terry’s birth mother in Indian attire, mounted on a pinto pony. She was a beautiful woman then, but when alcohol destroyed her life in her early thirties she left behind at least seven children and a husband who soon thereafter fatally ran his pickup into a tree. Her mother, Terry’s Grandma Hyde, released all the children as wards of Riverside County; they were separated and lodged with different foster families. In addition to an older half brother, Terry’s siblings included two boys aged twelve and nine, two sisters aged eight and seven, and at least one younger child already placed for adoption when we met this family. (There may have been others released earlier for adoption.) Terry specifically asked that her seven-year-old sister, Florenda Maria Alto (known then as “Jonesy”), be placed with her in a new family. We had four of our own children to think about, aged nine, eight, four, and three, so the idea of adopting a ten-year-old and a seven-yearold was not to be decided by Pat and me alone; we had to have a family conference. We would be creating a family with six children ranging in age over a span of less than seven years, with the first child no longer the oldest child. Lora and Paul gave their enthusiastic blessings and we felt Still More Kids 61 as their parents that they really did understand the implications of this decision. All four of our children knew that they were adopted, but the older two knew what that meant. They knew that these two new girls needed a family and our kids were ready to share. When our friends at the L.A. County Department of Adoptions were informed of our desire to add two Indian children to our brood, they proceeded with caution. They arranged for Terry and her little sister to meet the whole Likins family in a park for a supervised visit, so we could meet the girls and decide whether or not we really wanted to do this thing.The social workers didn’t seem to understand that for us there could be no trial to test for familial compatibility; our decision was made before we met the girls. We asked ourselves if our four adopted children might imagine that they, too, were subject to banishment if we rejected these two new girls. There was no going back for us if we had trouble at that first meeting in the park; the deal was done. Happily, that first encounter went well and we soon brought home two more children. By that time only the two older Alto boys were still in foster homes, so we arranged for them to visit with their separated sisters for a weekend in our home. We quietly explored with the social workers the possibility of additional adoptions of Alto children, but were discouraged.The older boy, a handsome young man at twelve, knew that their tribal customs often included growing up in foster homes before returning at eighteen to the reservation, and that was his choice. We adopted the two girls as Teresa Marshela Likins, born April 16, 1962, and Linda Maria Likins, born June 10, 1965, realizing that we would continue to call the older child Terry and her little sister would have to relinquish “Jonesy” for Linda. This was easy, but other aspects of these adoptions were challenging. Terry was a truly beautiful little girl, but she was also a healthy, athletic ten-year-old who had grown accustomed to fighting for her share of anything she desired. She seemed to be conditioned to present a tough demeanor and a rough exterior. Terry hoarded food against some imagined future famine. She rejected...