Introduction
Isn't it strange how everyone goes through life the same yet different? There are certain things that every human being goes through, well every one that I have met any way. We'll use the average person that lives to get to the age of approximately 70-80 years old. On the first day of our life we are born, we slowly but surely grow up, hit puberty (what an awkward stage that is), try to make it on your own and then eventually you croak. Not exactly the best way to put it but it's the only way to describe how I personally see it. Anyways, that's how we're all the same. But look at how many different possibilities that lay before you? Some are your choices and other choices are made for you but do any of them really matter to the next decision that you're going to have to make?
Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself here. We'll take the rest of this introduction very slowly. Hi! I'm Kimberly Cannizaro. You're entering the mini-series Music In My Heart…
Chapter One
Nice to see that you came back. As you already know my name is Kimberly Cannizaro but now I'll tell you a little bit more about me, a quick auto biography if you may.
I was born on June 10, 1985 to Antonio and Julia Racz. There were three daughters that came before I did Eva was born in 1975, Natalia in 1979 and Amber in 1983. My parents weren't done there though. Two years later along came twin girls; Darci-Lynn and Alexis.
The house that we grew up in was definitely not a happy one. I don't think that I have one memory of my mother when she was happy. She was always screaming at everyone. Us children were told quite frequently that she regretted having all of us. Even though she complained about having kids the person that I felt the worst for was my father.
He was definitely not as loud or as aggressive as she was so he quite frequently did as she told him to do. My mother never had a job a day in her life. She would lay on the couch all day just watching television. When father came home at the end of his work day she would yell at him and complain about how we did not have enough money which ultimately meant that he had to get another job, so he did. He did this again and again. There was one point where he had three jobs and she was still complaining about money so as soon as Eva was 12 she was babysitting and cleaning houses. The same went for Natalia.
My mother was so lazy that she even refused to go to the store. Usually my father would go to a store that was open 24/7 and do the shopping for the family late at night but there was one day where my mother could just not wait. She sent Eva to the store with a crisp hundred dollar bill but she was getting annoyed with some of us so she sent Natalia to help, Alexis because she wouldn't stop crying and myself.
Now any other person wouldn't care what store you went to as long as you got the requested items, my mother on the end wanted us to go to a store on the other end of the city.
It took two buses to get to the store, over an hour to do the shopping because the store was huge and the items that were requested were not what we usually had in the house. After two buses back home we had been gone for about three and a half hours. Alexis was very cranky now and in need of a nap and a snack.
When we finally got home we were all shocked at what we had come home to. The windows were boarded up from the inside and the doors were locked. We all panicked at first but Eva was the first to regain her composure. She took a bobby pin out of her hair and after some time was able to get the back door of the house open. What we saw on the inside of the house confused us even further.
All of the food was cleared from the cupboards and pantry, all of the electronics were gone, the crib that Alexis and Darci-Lynn had shared was gone along with all of Darci-Lynn and Amber's clothing. In my parents room much of the same. The clothing was all gone as well as most other personal items.
Eva gathered us up, got clothes for each of us and we walked a couple blocks with the groceries that we had just bought to Eva's friend Tara's house. Tara's mom fed us supper that night, let us stay the night and then at noon the next day there were social workers sitting in the living room.
After that everything just seemed to be run into the other. There were emergency foster homes, group homes, and lots of moving but all that we were thinking all the while was why our parents had abandoned us, why they hadn't done the same to Amber and Darci-Lynn, had they done the same to the other two girls and we just weren't aware of it, where they were, there were a million things going through our minds.
We were all going through an extremely difficult situation but it was Natalia that definitely took it the worst. She refused to accept the help that we were being given, started smoking, taking back, swearing profusely, developing an anger problem and after the first four months in the care of the care of Child and Family Service Natalia ran away and at the young age of six even I could tell that the people that were taking care of us didn't try that hard to find her.
It didn't get much after that either. I suppose that they knew that it was extremely hard to get a family to adopt three siblings, especially when one was already 16, so they sent Eva to a group home where she would stay in school and then when she turned 18 she would be out on her own, without one person in the world.
There wasn't much time before they also realized that it would be very easy for them to adopt Alexis out as she was only a baby and that is what every family wants when they begin to think of adopting.
It was no longer a requirement for us to adopted together. Alexis was gone two weeks later. The four of us that had been abandoned were now all on our own.
On June 10, 1997, my 13th birthday, the social worker that was assigned me came to see me. It was a a day that I never wanted to see come. It is almost impossible to get adopted once you turned 13. After all, look what they did to Eva. The last person that I wanted to see that day. The only thing that she said to me while we were driving is that we were going outside the city and that I would like it a lot more there than at the group home or any of the foster homes that I had been in.
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