Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Holiday Hopes

Grandma's home is where their hearts are

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published December 15, 2006

Kathleen Bristol walked into a dark Sulphur Springs duplex one day eight years ago, looking for the 4-year-old granddaughter she had never met.

She walked past a mattress on the floor, strewn with dirty clothes, and into the bathroom, where the woman she barely knew was washing the girl.

Just a few days earlier, the woman had approached Bristol in a restaurant and said Khadijah wanted to meet her. Bristol had met her only once, when the woman claimed Bristol's son had fathered her baby.

When Bristol walked into the apartment, Khadijah saw her grandmother for the first time and smiled wide.

Her teeth were black and decayed.

Khadijah insisted on going to play at her grandmother's house that day. When it came time to go home, Khadijah screamed.

Bristol asked her why she wanted to stay.

"You're nice and your house is clean and you let me have food," Khadijah told her.

After that Bristol took Khadijah out every weekend. Soon she started to notice odd behavior in the 4-year-old.

The first time Bristol bathed the girl, dirt and sand from her hair covered the tub. Bristol noticed bruises all over her tiny body. At McDonald's, Khadijah sprinkled cola on the table and tried to snort it through a straw, saying she was "smelling baby powder."

Then Bristol got a call from a day care telling her she needed to pick up a baby - it had been left there for days. It turned out to be Khadijah's sister, Isis, whom Bristol had never met. Day care employees had exhausted all the emergency contacts in the baby's file and had moved on to Khadijah's.

When her mother came to Bristol's house to pick Isis up, she left without thanking Bristol.

Eventually, the woman told Bristol she couldn't handle being a mother. Six years ago, she told Bristol to keep the girls.

Bristol was ecstatic. The 50--year-old who had given birth to three sons finally had two little girls. She wanted to get them something nice for Christmas, starting with a tree.

Khadijah was confused when Bristol brought a Christmas tree into the house . She asked to go to the homeless shelter, because that was the place Santa brought presents. Santa could bring Khadijah anything she wanted, right to the house, Bristol explained.

Khadijah thought it over, then asked for a can of Vienna sausages.

Liking their new lives

But with every Christmas, the girls grew more accustomed to their new lives. They woke up one morning to find a swing set in the back yard. Another year, Isis got a Barbie car.

They also made themselves at home. Khadijah, now 13, got to paint her room orange. Isis, an 8-year-old who prefers Spiderman, got to paint her bedroom blue.

They made friends at Orange Grove Middle School and Lomax Elementary. Khadijah soon will take the SAT with other gifted seventh-graders as part of the Duke Talent Identification Program. Isis wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

Then last year, on New Year's Eve, a phone call startled them.

Their mother wanted to get into a homeless shelter and heard it would be easier to get in with kids. "Get them ready," she told the grandmother. She'd be there in an hour.

Bristol panicked. She hid the girls in her neighbor's home that day, then filed paperwork in court for custody of the girls. Bristol armed herself with letters of support from relatives, neighbors and school officials. Bristol's son wrote one. He doesn't have a job and is struggling to get his life together, but he entrusts his daughter to her grandmother's care.

The day of the hearing, Khadijah wrote her grandmother a note of encouragement: "I hope we can stay with you forever and help you when you are old," she wrote.

A financial crunch

But the girls didn't get assurance from the judge that day. The problem: Bristol was badly advised, and spent almost $400 to open a case in the wrong court.

Then she lost her job. She couldn't afford to reapply in court and started to struggle with essential bills, like light and electricity. Bristol worried that the girls could get taken from her if she couldn't afford them, so she sold her living room furniture and even stopped paying for her insulin to keep up with bills.

Her diabetes caught up with her and landed her in the hospital this fall, but when officials from St. Joseph's Hospital learned why, they helped her get insulin for nearly free.

But Bristol still hasn't found a job. She chews her nails until they bleed, worrying about bills and losing the girls. The girls still hide when they think they see their mother's car.

Their mother could not be reached for comment. Hillsborough Circuit Court records show her summons to family court went unanswered. The Tampa City Housing Authority has filed several delinquent tenant motions against her, and records show five arrests, including charges for aggravated assault with a weapon, petty larceny and driving without a valid license.

Bristol admits she isn't educated and can't understand a lot of legal language on court papers. She wishes she could have a lawyer help them for free.

All Khadijah and Isis want for Christmas is to get a judge's assurance that they can stay with their grandmother.

"God didn't put them here to then snatch them back," Bristol said.

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 226-3354 or azayas@sptimes.com.

How to Help

To help grant Isis and Khadijah's wish, call Priscilla Cruz at the Salvation Army, 813 226-0055, ext. 402.

About this series Holiday Hopes is a four-part Brandon Times series profiling people in need. We will update readers if and when wishes are granted.

[Last modified December 14, 2006, 07:27:47]