When love and the best of intentions aren't enough

Isn't it funny how when you don't hear bad news for a while, you start to assume that things must be fine now? I just made that mistake.

Yesterday I was attempting to start on cleaning out my classroom (really I was being entertained by two students who just graduated.) I flipped out my phone and noticed I had four missed messages. How I didn't hear those little trills from my phone that indicate a new text, I have no idea, but there they were sitting. All were from KC. She sounded panicked and/or very stressed. "Pedro is leaving our house today" one said, and "They're moving him to the children's home where I work" said another. "Please call me if you can," ended the last.

What? What? I thought things were ok now. I thought they were ok! I skim through the messages again. Yes, it was all still there. Pedro was leaving. I text KC back b/c I couldn't really call right then. "What happened? Is everyone ok?"

Sometime later, KC responds. "Yes, we're fine. Call me when you can." I work out that I'll try to call her after her flight to OKC lands. In the meantime, after my former students leave, I see that my dad has called, and I return his call. He fills me in on a lot of details. I guess Pedro has been continuing to obsess about this idea of being Mexican. He had a dream where Dad was trying to take out his (Pedro's) blood and fill it with our (white) blood. Apparently, Pedro was sitting on Dad's lap and telling my dad how even if he was dying, Pedro would never want a blood transfusion from anyone other than a Mexican, even if it were from our family. My mom tried to explain to him how there is really nothing different about blood from person to person. Everyone is either A, B, O, or AB. He didn't care. He refused to listen. I guess he got pretty forceful about it, and the scene became really ugly and hurtful. Pedro said things like, "If my real dad dies, are you going to tell me? Or if my real mom dies? If they die, there's no point in living. I'm just going to walk in front of a car." My parents tried to assure him that they don't even know where his biological parents are. Dad didn't go into too many other details, but I can imagine. I've seen how words can fill up a whole room and seep into the hearts of everyone in that room till all you can think and feel are those words. Those words become so heavy, so scarring. They sap your energy and control your focus, and even when everything around you is fine, you're sure nothing is really ok. Everything is really a ruse, and you know the bottom is soon to drop out from under you again. It's just a matter of time.

In her pain and uncertainty, my mom calls the counselor who's been working with Pedro for several years. LeeAnn takes action. She wants to know if Pedro is suicidal because if he is, he has to be admitted to the Pavilian (Amarillo's mental hospital). Mom and Dad have to make Pedro sign an agreement that he won't hurt himself, and if he does want to, he has to first contact these certain people. Then, when Pedro said he wasn't going to hurt himself, LeeAnn said he had to move out of our house. He had to go to a children's home and stay there for a year. Or, I guess the program requires that he stay there for a year. He will have no privileges until he earns them through a point system. Dad said Pedro was leaving that day (Friday). My dad had to take him to the home. Although my mom offered, they were afraid Pedro would turn violent against her. He has no respect for female authority. My dad sounded so sad. I couldn't tell if he felt like he had failed or not; I hope not. I know he and my mom tried so hard to bond with Pedro, but all Pedro wanted to do was play violent video games and watch movies with gangs in them. He wanted to be "Mexican" like his biological family was. He couldn't and didn't want to understand that being Mexican has nothing to do with being in a gang. He refused to do anything with my parents, and I guess things got harder for him because now KC has a job that keeps her away from home a lot.

What I can't decide, and what I guess I won't get to know for a long time, is whether or not this will help or hurt Pedro more. At the end of this year, Pedro will be able to make a choice as to whether he wants to come back to our family and try to live with us, or if he wants to stay in the children's home until he becomes an adult. Should my parents have stuck it out longer and said, "You can stay with us even though you don't want us as family," or is it better for Pedro to get out of the home and be in a different environment? Will that just make him feel more abandoned? My parents didn't really get to choose to send Pedro to this home; they were told he had to go because he hadn't improved in the year he lived with them. I know how hard my parents tried, how they completely changed their lives around to accommodate the arrival of these two children. Cely seems to be able to give and receive at least some love, but Pedro can't.
So I'm left with three questions: one, how can anyone have children and then destroy them the way Pedro has been destroyed? How can the idiotic, selfish choices of people still consume the generations to follow? Two, how will this affect Aracely? Will she be able to stay with our family? Or will she too be trapped in the cycle of violence that has enveloped her family? And three, if the love and commitment of two absolutely unselfish, giving people like my parents aren't enough to heal the brokenness of kids like Pedro and Cely, will anything ever be?