The uncle with whom Jumoke was staying called us with some disturbing news.  He did ask Jumoke why he didn't want to go home.  Jumoke told him.  Not straight out.  Jumoke had never talked at ease with adults. Well, not normally.  Sometimes he'd break thru and have an interesting conversation. But most of the time, he'd pause for long moments and say "I don't know" a lot. 

He did this with his uncle as well. But the uncle patiently drew him out. 

Perhaps Jumoke was just trying to think of things to say.  Maybe he didn't really intend to cause trouble. That was certainly what I thought after talking to the uncle.  I could not believe a seven year old boy could come up with that stuff like he did. There had to be some strange mistake.

The uncle told us that Jumoke had told him of many instances where we had mistreated Jumoke.  "Mistreated" being the nice way to say "abused".

Almost everything Jumoke told had a grain of truth in it, but the grain of truth could in no way be interpreted as abuse.  It was the way that Jumoke shared the "truth" that inferred abuse.

For example, we have a laughing joke that Tim started. I said I wanted all of our children to live with us forever.  Daddy said, "No way! I want 'em out of here when they turn 18!"  I argued like a lawyer to keep my children, and finally Tim would compromise, and say, "OK. The girls can stay. But the boys must go!"

It was all in fun, and all the children laughed. Including Jumoke.

But he told his uncle that one of the reasons he didn't want to go home was because his daddy didn't want him living there anymore.

Later we asked Jumoke why he said that. He referred to the conversation I just wrote about. We told him that his uncle thought he meant that his daddy didn't want just him, Jumoke, living at the house right now.  He was unconcerned. His uncle didn't ask him to expound, so he had felt no need to expound.

Another disturbing thing he said was that he didn't want to go home because his mommy gives him bloody lips.

I was shocked beyond belief!  Three and a half years ago, when Jumoke had first come home, he was into biting people.  Most moms have to deal with this with toddlers, and like most other moms, I use my first two fingers to tap little mouths that bite. I'm an experienced mom.  I know the difference between a tap and a smack.  I know how to gentle tap and get the child's attention without hurting them.

However, Jumoke has the large, swollen lips common to some Africans. The skin on his lips didn't take kindly to being tapped, and the first couple times I did it, the top of his bottom lip would split a bit.  The tiny bit of blood concerned me, and of course, I quickly decided we would have to go another route to stop the biting.

But that had been when he first arrived! I was surprised he even remembered it.  And that he used it to say that he was scared to come home now implied that I was doing something far worse currently.

There were other things as well along the same lines. When questioned at home, Jumoke in every instance went back and told us the situation surrounding his accusation. He was accurate in his memories, and in every case, the situation was shown from his perspective to not be abusive at all. 

 But why did he present it to his uncle in a manner that implied abuse or at least a scary situation when he knew for a fact that no such thing existed?

He didn't even try to keep up the pretense with us. His attitude was that his uncle didn't ask further, so he gave no further explanations that would have enlightened his uncle.

We did not understand at all.  Tim had for some time been insisting that Jumoke knew exactly what he was doing, even when he got that blank look on his face and began wringing his hands.  We were split on this thing...Tim believing Jumoke was doing things on purpose and with malice and cunning, me believing he was way too young to be able to do things like that on purpose. 

But after this one, even tho I could see with my own eyes that Jumoke knew that what he told his uncle was deceptive, I still couldn't fathom why he would do it.

We became concerned when the aunt and uncle told us that, while they did not believe that we abused Jumoke, they did believe that from Jumoke's perspective, he felt abused.  These were relatives, and we knew we were being given the benefit of the doubt.  But to not be believed that the boy was outright deceiving them...well, that was a bit scary.

We decided that we needed help.  Tim was concerned that this thing was going to get out of hand. All we needed was for Jumoke to get really angry with us and tell someone we were doing something we weren't, and then who knew what could happen? We'd heard horror stories, and wanted to believe that it couldn't happen to us, but we felt it wise to get help and have some back-up.

We called PLAN, the adoption agency we had adopted the boys through.  A fellow named Don met with us and a child psychologist and we talked about Jumoke.  Tim had called the meeting in order to get help to avoid a disruption.  I just wanted to find out what was going on with Jumoke so we could reach him and start having a normal life again.  I was still in denial that anything could possibly be wrong outside of what we could do to change ourselves.

We stayed in touch with the psychologist  over the summer.  She asked us to look for cycles in his behaviour, and gave a few other suggestions. Tim kept wanting to go back and meet with her again. I wanted to forget the whole thing.  Jumoke seemed to be doing better over the summer. We had some bad days, but were also having just as many good days.  I didn't so much discourage Tim from pursuing help, but I didn't encourage him either.  The busyness of the summer helped to cover over the mess of the preceding spring.

His behaviour continued to be equally good and bad.  But the bad was getting worse.  He wasn't hiding some things from me anymore.  He was getting more malicious and more sneaky.  He was hiding matches and lighters and starting small fires out in the yard.  He was tormenting the older boys till the boys were crying and shaking.  He still wouldn't obey the slightest request. He wouldn't say no or stand up to me. He'd just walk away and find something else to do. Or if told to be quiet in bed, he'd be quiet for five minutes then start up again. Or if told to stay out of the road, would stay out of the road while we were watching and go onto the road when we weren't. When confronted with his disobedience, he often declared we hadn't told him any such thing.  I wondered if I were going crazy.  Why would he lie like that? Maybe I wasn't telling him the things he said he wasn't hearing. I was terribly confused, but still would not believe the boy was anything other than a normal boy who was a bit of a difficult Tom Sawyer.

Things were starting to disappear.  Not a lot of things. But suspicious things.  Jumoke would get mad at me, and one of a pair of earrings would disappear. Jumoke would get mad at Isaac and a model that Isaac had made would disappear.

Jumoke quit playing with Isaac except to get him alone and quietly taunt him or to set him up to hurt him.  Isaac began crying a lot. Not just in connection to Jumoke but in connection with everything.  He went from a happy little man to a crying, whining boy. 

During the fall, we had some good day where Jumoke would do his chores and get along quite well.  But like I said, the bad days were getting unbearable.  Even on Jumoke's good days, my muscles were tense and I felt on edge, waiting for the bad days.  Isaac continued to get worse, crying more and more often over smaller and smaller things.  Maria became more clingy and whiny and followed me around like a puppy dog. She clung to strangers and was acting very immature for an almost 8 year old.  Ouseman was withdrawing from us.  Anne was spending more and more time at her Nana's house, trying to find some quiet and peace.  Matthew was disappearing more and more with books and projects behind closed doors.

But I was too busy with Jumoke and the baby to give more than a cursory notice to the other children.  I knew things weren't right, but instead of looking at the forest, I just looked at each tree.  Instead of noticing that my children were withdrawing from the family or regressing into immaturity, I just saw that each of my children were going through a "stage".  I was way too busy trying to keep Jumoke under control to do anything for any of the other children, even if I knew what to do.