Miss Lillie's first graduate

Editor's note: The names of foster children in this story have been changed to protect their identity.

By Callie Clark ~ Southeast Missourian

Her story comes out in tangled bits, as though she's never quite pieced it together before. She mumbles some of it, stares up at the painted ceiling during parts that are particularly painful.

Mom ... dad ... shouting ... screaming ... .

Shannon starts with her birth, the easiest part -- Kennett, Mo., 1986, three months premature. She continues, avoiding details that are either too hurtful or too embarrassing to tell.

Her parents split when she was little. She lived with her mom in Mississippi for a while, until one summer when her mom told her she was going to visit her dad in Cape Girardeau. Shannon was actually being sent to live with him.

She won't talk much about her father, says he left one day and she doesn't know where he is now. She leaves it at that. It's not easy to tell a stranger your dad is in prison.

Where's mom? Still in Mississippi with some siblings.

"What do you want to know about her? Good stuff, bad? There ain't nothing really good about her," she says, not bitterly, just matter-of-factly.

And she leaves it at that.

In the next room, a 68-year-old lady is laying carpet. Soft-spoken, spry and spiritual, Miss Lillie Watson puts the grand in grandmother.

She remembers vividly the first set of foster children to land on her doorstep, a brother and sister, 15 years ago. Their 14-year-old mother was the third foster child Miss Lillie took in. They stayed around three years and last she heard had moved to Kansas City. She wonders about them.

Miss Lillie has a penchant for antiques. Her front parlor is like a museum, but her charm makes the stiff, formal furniture inviting. There's a black Steck piano in one corner. Miss Lillie gazes at it from time to time, wishing she knew how to play.

"If I could only learn a few chords, I just know I'd take off and play beautifully," she says, laughing.

The tiniest boost

That's Miss Lillie's take on foster children, too: Give them the tiniest boost and they'll fly. For years, she's hoped one of her foster children would graduate from high school, but they've all flown in different directions.

"I've just always thought that if I could get one of them through school then I'll have accomplished something with my life," she says.

Miss Lillie rents her house in downtown Cape Girardeau. It's old, but much bigger than the one she used to live in. There's an apartment downstairs for her children and plenty of room upstairs for her revolving collection of antiques.

At age 53, Miss Lillie was coaxed into becoming a foster parent by a friend. She called Division of Family Services and asked if she was too old for the job.

"They said I wasn't," she says, somewhat dubiously.

By all appearances, Miss Lillie still isn't too old, even 15 years later. There are three foster children and an adopted daughter living with her now. One of them is Shannon. She calls Miss Lillie grandma.

Shannon arrived at Miss Lillie's door five years ago, 13 years old and angry at the world. She was quiet at first, nearly silent.

Miss Lillie calls that the honeymoon period. After a while, children grow accustomed to their new surroundings and begin to act, well, like children who have had a tough time in life.

Miss Lillie soon realized that Shannon's anger was only a mask for pain and confusion. It took a month for the teenager to open up but bit by bit Miss Lillie pulled most of the story out of her.

Dad ... alcohol ... pain ... jail ... .

It's a sad story, the kind that might make you wonder how the little girl who lived it will ever overcome the suffering she's endured. That's part of Miss Lillie's job, to help her children overcome. Shannon's story hit particularly close to home for Miss Lillie.

"I've been through some of the same things," Miss Lillie told her. "Life's like that sometimes. You just have to make adjustments. There's no special age that it happens, you can get hurt at any part of your life."

Miss Lillie was born during the Great Depression, and her father died when she was 7. She dropped out of school to work in the fields and never graduated.

Her own story makes it that much more important to her that her foster children finish high school.

"When you come to live here, that's just part of the expectations," she explains.

But after 15 years, not one child finished school while in Miss Lillie's care. Maybe the wind pushing them off course was too strong. Some went into the military, some moved on to other families. There are some she's lost track of.

Shannon was different, though. A social worker once told Miss Lillie that Shannon made straight A's in school before she entered foster care.

"There's nothing wrong with her brain," Miss Lillie says. "She can do well in school when she wants to."

Sometimes Shannon wanted to, sometimes she didn't. She wasn't particularly interested in school, didn't have a favorite subject or participate in any extracurricular activities. She just wanted to get it over with, and her grades weren't that important.

Other hurdles

There were nonacademic hurdles along the way as well. Shannon got into fights at school, got suspended. At home, she and Miss Lillie had their share of altercations.

"I guess it's like a normal family, sometimes we argue, sometimes not," Shannon says.

Shannon didn't spend time roaming the streets, like some kids, just mostly stayed in her room and listened to rap and R&B music.

During the fall semester of her senior year, Shannon stopped doing her homework. Miss Lillie worried as her grades dropped. They were so close to finally soaring.

They talked about it, fought about it. "You really need your education," Miss Lillie insisted.

Shannon was never enthusiastic about school, but she never expressed any desire to drop out either. By the second semester, her work ethic kicked back in.

Shannon's mom drove up from Mississippi to watch her graduate among 286 other students at Central High School last May. It was the first time she'd come to see her daughter since she'd sent her to Cape Girardeau six years earlier.

If the visit meant something to her, Shannon doesn't show it.

"It was OK," she says. Just OK.

Miss Lillie was there too with the rest of her girls. Her heart thumped loudly when Shannon's name was called to accept her diploma. Here, finally, was the finishing touch on her life's work.

Moving to Mississippi

For a while, Shannon talked about going to Southeast Missouri State University, then going on to a larger school to become a dentist. That was the plan. She changed her mind last week, decided to move to Mississippi to be with her biological family. There was no real explanation why.

"It's all right here, but they're not my real family," Shannon said.

Before the 18-year-old's Thursday departure, Miss Lillie sat her down in the front parlor for a mother-daughter talk.

"Let some of the things I've taught you stay with you," she said. "You're not going to live in this world and not make mistakes, but try to limit them. I know you can do well if you want to."

It'll be a little quieter in Miss Lillie's house now. There are still three girls -- two foster children and an adopted daughter -- but Miss Lillie doesn't expect to take in too many more foster children in her life, especially for as long as Shannon stayed.

"They come here, and they have a lot of hurt. They'll pass it along to you if you let them," Miss Lillie says. "I don't know how much longer I can do this, but they keep me young."

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128