The Rest is Still Unwritten

[TW: parent death, grandparent death, substance abuse, incarceration, child neglect]

Kaia believes she was doomed from the start. Kaia’s parents, Loretta Robinson and Derrick Jones, met when they were twenty-two. Derrick was working in construction, and Loretta had recently moved to Barton Point after graduating college and getting a job at a newspaper in Ellsworth. At first, everything was picturesque for the young couple, but tension began arising when Derrick was injured at work and prescribed narcotics. Once his doctor stopped filling the prescription, he turned to heroin. Despite the fact that Loretta protested his drug use, she nonetheless stuck by his side and gave birth to their daughter when they were twenty-seven. After Kaia was born, Loretta began suffering from post-partum depression. On top of that, Loretta was “coincidentally” laid off after requesting maternity leave. Derrick’s solution was, of course, heroin. 

For the first few years of Kaia’s life, Loretta was on and off of heroin and trying to balance taking care of a child while working a grueling, dead-end job. After getting sick of Derrick not pulling his weight, Loretta kicked him out and started raising Kaia on her own. However, when Kaia was only four years old, Loretta succumbed to her addiction, leaving the girl motherless. Kaia was immediately placed back with her father, who had not changed his ways since Loretta kicked him out two years prior, and his new girlfriend, Gabrielle Sweeney, who didn’t care much for her. 

From a young age Kaia had to learn how to take care of herself, and at the age of seven, after the birth of her first half-sibling, she had to start caring for others as well. From 2004 to 2013, Kaia and her siblings were in and out of foster care due to their parents’ drug use and overall negligence. The Jones kids were always placed in the care of their paternal grandmother, Carolina Jones, who fought to keep them in her care. But at the end of the day, they were always placed back with their parents, who, time and time again, broke the promises they made to Child & Family Services and went back to their old ways. Things started taking a turn for the worse when Kaia was thirteen; in that year, Derrick was arrested and convicted of criminal assault, and shortly after, Gabbie was hospitalized due to her deteriorating mental health. 

When Kaia was fourteen, in the summer before ninth grade, her grandma passed away, and the foster placements progressively became more random and more chaotic. While her siblings were placed with their maternal uncle, she was sent to live with a series of strangers all around Portland. During her year away from Barton Point, Kaia fell into a depression and gave up on school, causing her to be held back a year. When she returned to Barton Point at fifteen, she was placed in the care of Arthur Kingston. At first, she was hesitant to open up to Arthur and his daughter, Saffron, but in the year she spent in the Kingston household, Kaia began gaining confidence and seeing good in others. For the first time in her life, she had friends in school and felt like she was in a good place. But once Derrick was released from prison, Kaia had to rejoin her family. 

Upon returning to Derrick’s custody, Kaia discovered that her siblings were all in a much worse state mentally than they were when she was first separated from them. As soon as she could, she got a job as a waitress so that nobody would go hungry or unclothed. She made it here mission in life to ensure that the remainder of the younger Joneses’ childhoods were as happy as possible. There were no more run-ins with CFS until she was twenty, when her father and step-mother were arrested for drug possession and sentenced to five years in state prison. Instead of letting her siblings be thrown into a stranger’s house or into the care of their crackpot uncle, Kaia became their legal guardian. Now she is trying to raise three kids while working on a waitress’ salary and trying not to crack under the pressure.