The Lost Boy

“I have no friends, no places to hide, nothing to turn to. But I know exactly where I’m going–the river. Years ago, when I was a member of The Family, for every summer vacation we would drive up to the Russian River in Guerneville. The best times in my life were the days spent learning to swim at Johnson’s Beach, riding down the Super Slide, going on hayrides at sunset and playing with my brothers on the old tree stump by our cabin […] Guerneville was the only place I ever felt safe.” 

When David’s mother tells him to run away if he feels she treats him so badly, David decides to seize the opportunity and leave the house that has become a prison for him. He decides to go to the Russian River because he associates it with his only happy memories. What David longs for above all is to return to the times when the family was happy, his mother treated him well, and he did not have to constantly fear for his own safety.

“I feel like a trapped animal who wants to claw its way through the glass. The closer we get to The House, the more I can feel myself quiver inside.” 

When his father picks him up from the police station after his mother allows him to run away, David dreads returning to “The House,” where he knows his mother will be waiting to punish him. He feels as if there is no way he will ever be able to escape his abusive mother; even when he finally gets the courage to run away when given the opportunity, his parents managed to conceal the family “secret” by telling the police that he ran away because his mother would not let him ride his bike.

“I felt as if I were watching someone else’s life through my own eyes. I became so scared that I first asked, and then begged the policeman to check around every corner and enter every room before I did. I knew that somewhere out there Mother was poised, ready to snatch me away.”

After his elementary school teachers report David’s condition to the police, he is taken out of school and to the hospital for a medical exam. David is terrified the entire time he is at the hospital that his mother will suddenly appear to reclaim him. The experience of finally being taken away from his abusive home is so surreal for David that he feels as if it is happening to someone else.

“That’s where The Mother now lived–in my dreams.”

The first night that David spends as a foster child in Aunt Mary’s house, he has a nightmare about his mother trying to kill him with a knife and threatening to get him back. After he wakes up, he is afraid to go back to sleep for fear of encountering her again. In this moment, he realizes that although his mother may no longer have custody over him, his traumatic memories of her live on inside of him.

“I felt that by lying, I had protected Mother, that I had done the right thing. I knew Mother was going to get me back and no one could stop her.”

After a visit from his mother, during which she threatens to get him back, David decides to retract his previous statements to Ms. Gold about the abuse. He fears that his descriptions of her behavior will only make his fate worse when his mother inevitably manages to get him back under her control. David’s decision to retract his statements and give up hope that Ms. Gold will succeed in protecting him shows just how deeply he has been scarred by his mother’s abuse; he believes that she is so powerful that not even the county government will be able to defend him against her. 

“Have a happy life.” 

These are David’s mother’s final words to him as they are saying a tearful goodbye after the trial to determine whether he will become a ward of the court or return to his parents’ custody. David sees her repeat the words through the car window as she prepares to drive away. Although David is relieved to escape his mother, he is also saddened by the thought of being separated from the only family he has ever known. In this moment, it seems as if despite her horrific treatment of her son, David’s mother does have some attachment to him. 

“I just don’t want to miss this first day of the rest of my life!” 

After the trial, Ms. Gold offers to take David out for ice cream before taking him back to Aunt Mary’s house. When she asks him if he is okay after parting from his mother, he assures her that he sees this first day as a foster child as a fresh start after many unhappy years living with his mother.

“And Mom, Dad, I got a job. I’m married. I’m going to night school and this…is my new baby!” 

These words are spoken by Kathy, one of the Catanzes’ first foster children, to Lilian and Rudy. Soon after David moves in with the Catanzes, he goes with them to a picnic that they host every year for their current and former foster children. Kathy’s success and happiness in her professional and personal life proves that foster care can provide children with the nurturance and support they need to become functional adults. She thus provides an example of how foster children can grow up to lead healthy, productive lives and develop close familial bonds with their foster parents. 

“The two questions that tumbled over and over in my mind were whether Mother ever loved me and why she treated me the way she did.” 

For much of his adolescence, David continues to look for answers as to why his mother abused him. At times, his inability to escape his memories of the abuse makes it difficult for him to relate to the new people in his life and become acclimatized to foster care and his various schools. In time, he starts to accept that he may never know exactly why his mother turned abusive and that he can only move forward by putting the trauma of the past behind him.

“I remember August 21, 1973, as my day on my bike. That day was the first time I felt that I was a normal kid, caught up in the splendor of a never-ending day.” 

After he fixes the bike that his brother damages during his mother’s visit to the Catanzes’ house, David spends the day riding around the neighborhood enjoying his new sense of freedom. His bike becomes a symbol of the freedom of movement that he is able to enjoy once he becomes a foster child and is no longer held captive by his mother. David’s early love of bicycles anticipates his interest in motorcycles as a teenager and aligns with his lifelong desire to fly, which leads to him joining the Air Force.

“A few weeks before I started the sixth grade, I began to turn off my feelings. By then I was completely drained of emotion. I had become fed up with the teeter-totter effect of my new life.” 

After a few months in foster care, David starts to struggle in his new life and begins to act out, at school and at home. His father’s consistent failure to visit him at the Catanzes’ is one of the major reasons that he begins to “turn off” his feelings; he fears being hurt and disappointed by more people in his life.

“You may never find your answers, and I don’t want your past to tear you up. I don’t even know why these things happen to children, and I may never know. But I do know that you need to be very careful of what you’re doing right now, today, rather than trying to find the answers to your past. I’ll help you as much as I can, but you really have to make a better effort to maintain yourself.” 

Ms. Gold warns David that he may never find the answers he is looking for regarding his mother’s treatment of him and cautions him that if he continues to misbehave, he may end up being removed from the Catanzes’ home or even getting in trouble with the law.

“You couldn’t let it go, could you? It wasn’t enough for you to involve the police and have them take you away from school, then drag your mother and brothers into court. Jesus! You’re really a work of art, aren’t you? You had everything. A new life, a new start. All you had to do was keep your nose clean. And you couldn’t do that, could you?” 

After not seeing each other for over a year, David’s father visits his son at Hillcrest, the juvenile penitentiary. His father is furious that David has squandered his chance at “a new start” after subjecting the family to the legal proceedings that led him to be taken away from the house. David, who spent the past year longing for a visit from his father, is devastated by this condemnation. Clearly, David’s father does not recognize the degree to which he is to blame for failing to protect his son from his abusive, unstable wife and the way that the trauma of this abuse continues to affect him. 

“Your mother is claiming that your past behavior at her house warranted her to discipline you because you were so incorrigible. She’s trying to have you put in a mental institution!” 

When she visits David at Hillcrest, Lilian warns David that his mother is trying to prove that he has a history of “incorrigible” behavior to argue that she only abused him because she could not control him using acceptable parenting techniques. According to Lilian, David’s mother wants to do this to justify her treatment of him and get him removed from the foster care system. 

“You see, if these same people acknowledge–admit–a need for foster care, that means they are admitting to a bigger problem of what got you kids into foster care in the first place. And that means admitting to things like alcoholism, child abuse, children who run away or get into drugs…[y]ou get it? We’ve made a lot of changes in the last few years, but we still live in a closed society. A lot of folks were raised to keep things to themselves, hoping no one ever finds out about their family secret. Some of them are prejudiced, and that’s why whenever a foster child gets in trouble…” 

Lilian explains to David that some people would rather believe that foster children have done something wrong to end up as wards of the court rather than acknowledge the systemic social problems like child abuse and alcoholism that make it impossible for some children to remain with their families. According to Lilian, prejudice against foster children exists because they are a reminder of the “family secrets” that many people do not want to talk about.

“I didn’t care whether I slept on a couch or a bed of nails. I just wanted to stay at a place that I could call home.” 

After the Jones’ foster home is shut down, Gordon Hutchenson takes David back to stay with Alice and Harold Turnbough, the couple who briefly served as his foster parents before he goes to live with Joanne and Michael Nulls. Alice is reluctant to take him back in as he will have to sleep on the couch instead of having a room to himself. David has moved in and out of so many foster homes that he no longer cares whether he has his own room; what he longs for, above all, is a place where he feels truly at home. 

“Although on the inside, parts of me still felt awkward and hollow, I realized I was stronger than most of the kids at school who seemed to live in a ‘normal’ world.” 

When David begins to see a new psychiatrist, the doctor recommends some books about basic psychology to help him process the trauma that he suffered while he was being abused by his mother. These books teach David to recognize that his difficult early experiences have helped him to become stronger and explain why he feels so different from other kids who have had happy, “normal” childhoods.

“I know where I belong: 555-2647!” 

When David returns to live with the Turnboughs after living with Linda and John Walsh, Alice warns him that this is the last time he will be able to return to them. David responds by showing her he still has their phone number memorized. The line recalls an earlier moment in the memoir when David tells the Turnboughs that he now knows their phone number and address by heart, a sign that he is starting to consider their residence his permanent home.

“I know all about your kind. You’re a filthy little hooligan! Just look at your attire–you reek of street trash. I don’t know what you children do to end to  become…fostered children […] but I’m sure you did something hideous,  didn’t you?” 

While living in Duinsmoore, David’s friend Paul convinces him to knock on the door of a girl he likes. After chatting with the girl for a few minutes, her mother comes to the door and yells at David for approaching her daughter. She refers to him as “that F-child” and tells him that she cannot believe that “his kind” are living in her neighborhood. The woman’s remark reveals that she is prejudiced against foster children and believes that kids like him must have done something wrong to end up as wards of the court.

“The river of alcohol and the destroyed family life had stripped him of his innermost feelings. I realized that inside, my father was truly dead.” 

While he is in high school, David seeks out his father in San Francisco and attempts to reestablish a connection with him. During the afternoon that they spend together, however, David discovers that his father’s alcoholism and the difficulties with his mother and brothers have caused his father’s mental and physical health to deteriorate to the point that he is no longer capable of feeling deeply for others. While his father is currently dying from alcoholism, David realizes that his father has been dead on the inside for a long time. 

“In order to fulfill my vow of living at the Russian River, I knew I first had to find myself. I couldn’t do it living so close to my past. I had to break away.” 

After leaving high school and beginning his fulltime job as a cars salesman, David has an epiphany while eating lunch by the Russian River. He realizes that to escape the trauma of his mother’s abuse completely, he must leave the area in which he grew up behind so that he can someday return and build a new life on the Russian River as he often dreamed of as a child. He decides that joining the Air Force will give him the opportunity to “find himself” and “break away” from his past.

“Hours later, as the Boeing 727 banked its way from California, I closed my eyes for the final time as a lost boy […] Aboard my first plane ride, I opened  my eyes for the first time as a man named Dave. I chuckled to myself. ‘Now the adventure begins!’” 

 As David departs for Air Force training, he realizes how much has changed since he first became a foster child. He is no longer a “lost boy” because he has finally found a new home and family, with his foster parents Alice and Harold Turnbough. He is also no longer a child; he is now an eighteen-year-old who has overcome adverse circumstances, learned to support himself, and taken on adult responsibilities, and is now preparing to serve in the military. He has finally forged a new identity as “a man named Dave,” the title of the next book in Pelzer’s trilogy. 

“As I study the gull’s movements, I recall how its battle mirrored my own challenges while in foster care. Back then nothing was more important than wanting to be accepted and finding the answers to my past. But the more I matured on the inside, the more I realized I had to carve my own path.” 

 In the Epilogue, David–now Dave–describes his walk along the Russian River, during which he sees a one-legged seagull struggling to defend itself against a flock of gulls that are trying to take its food away. The gull reminds David of himself in foster care when he was struggling to protect himself against further pain and to come to terms with what his mother did to him. As he began to grow up, he realized that even if he never gets all the answers about his parents, he is strong enough to break away from his past and forge a new identity for himself that is not based around the past.