My mother called it “teaching responsibility.”
What it really was, was a locked bedroom with six children who weren’t mine.
I was seventeen when she first turned the key.
The room used to be my bedroom. Pale blue walls, twin bed pushed against the corner, a dresser missing one handle. By the time she finished “reorganizing,” the bed was gone, replaced by two stained mattresses on the floor. Toys were piled into plastic bins. A baby monitor blinked red on the shelf, pointed at me.
The kids ranged from eight months to six years old. None of them were related to me. They were foster placements—temporary, she said. Emergency situations. She told the agency I was “eager to help.”
I wasn’t asked.
That first night, she shut the door from the outside. “You’re in charge until morning,” she said, smiling like she’d solved a puzzle. “This is how you learn.”
I knocked. “Mom, I have school tomorrow.”
“You’ll manage,” she replied. Then the lock clicked.
One kid cried immediately. Another wet himself. The baby wouldn’t stop screaming. I spent the night pacing, rocking, wiping noses with my own T-shirt, counting minutes until sunrise. The door didn’t open until 7:12 a.m.
She handed me a granola bar. “See? You survived.”
Weeks turned into months. The lock became routine. I missed homework deadlines. I fell asleep in class. Teachers asked questions. I lied.
One night, after a toddler bit my arm and the baby had been crying for hours, I sat on the floor and started shaking. When she came to collect the kids the next morning, I told her I couldn’t do it anymore. My voice cracked. My hands were numb.
She smirked.
“You’re lucky we didn’t give them away,” she said. “Other people would’ve.”
I stopped talking after that.
Nine months later, I stood in the hallway of family court, listening through a cracked door as my mother cried loudly enough for everyone to hear. She kept saying she didn’t understand.
None of the kids would even look at her.
My name didn’t appear in the foster paperwork. That was the first thing the social worker told me when everything started to unravel. I was eighteen by then, legally an adult, sitting across from a woman named Karen Liu who smelled like peppermint tea and paper files.
“You were never listed as a caregiver,” she said carefully. “Not formally. Not legally.”
Which meant my mother had been locking me in a room with foster children without authorization.
It started with a bruise.
One of the kids—Ethan, four years old—showed up to preschool with fingerprints on his arm. Perfectly shaped. Too small to be accidental. The teacher reported it. CPS followed the trail back to our house.
I didn’t defend her.
When investigators came, my mother did all the talking. She said I exaggerated. That I was dramatic. That teenagers didn’t understand sacrifice.
I stayed quiet. But the kids didn’t.
They talked about the locked door. About calling my name at night. About how I was the one who fed them, cleaned them, slept on the floor so they could use the mattresses.
One of them said, “She said my sister would disappear if we didn’t behave.”
That got attention.
CPS pulled the children immediately. The foster license was suspended pending investigation. My mother screamed when they carried the baby out. She told them they were ungrateful. That family stuck together.
The case went to family court.
I was subpoenaed.
Sitting in that witness chair felt like stepping out of my body. My voice sounded far away as I explained the locks, the nights without sleep, the monitor blinking red while she watched from the living room. The judge asked why I never reported it.
I said, “Because I thought this was normal.”
The courtroom went quiet.
Medical records showed I’d been treated twice for exhaustion and once for anxiety-induced collapse. School records showed my grades plummeting. Neighbors testified they’d heard kids crying late at night.
My mother’s defense said she was overwhelmed but well-intentioned.
The judge didn’t buy it.
This morning, she cried on the courthouse steps.
Not quiet crying. Not private. The kind meant to be seen.
She called my name once. I didn’t turn around.
The ruling was final: permanent revocation of foster eligibility, mandatory counseling, supervised contact only—if any child ever agreed to see her again. None had.
I moved out three months ago. Small apartment. Secondhand furniture. A lock on the door that only I control.
I sleep now. Not well, but enough.
Sometimes I wake up counting kids who aren’t there. Sometimes I listen for crying that never comes. Therapy helps. So does the silence.
I’m in community college. Studying early childhood education. People think that’s strange when they hear my past.
It isn’t.
I learned what children need by seeing exactly what happens when adults use them as tools.
Last week, I got a letter from CPS. Ethan was adopted. So was the baby. They’re safe.
That matters.
As I walked past my mother today, she said, “I did everything for you.”
I kept walking.
Responsibility isn’t locking someone in a room and calling it love.
Responsibility is knowing when power turns into harm—and stopping.