To stare into his crib, to watch his tiny chest rise and fall in a troubled slumber is to see what stinging white powders and hallucinogenic crystals can do to a new life.
His head is long and misshapen: lopsided at the crown, more narrow around his ears and swollen at the cheeks. His body, feet and clawed fingers are the size of a newborn`s, frighteningly small for a 3-month-old.
As he grew in the womb, so did his mother`s addiction to PCP and cocaine, a combination that forced him out after six months.
It took him 12 weeks to reach five pounds, and as soon as he did, hospital officials took him from his drug-dependent mother and turned him over to the Orange County (Calif.) Social Services Agency.
Not long after, he was placed in the open arms of Joanne Noyes.
”I`ve got a real nice rocking chair at home,” Noyes said as she leaned over the baby`s crib moments after he arrived. ”I`m just going to sit down and cuddle this little guy.”
In the last 13 years, Noyes has cared for 31 babies as a foster parent for the Social Services Agency.
Officials there say she is one of the best in the county`s 600-foster-parent network-a woman with boundless love and energy in addition to that which she gives her husband, Jerry, two sons, two adopted daughters and another foster child.
”Joanne is somebody who will take on all kinds of things, but no matter what`s going on, that baby comes first,” said Bonnie McInerney, the agency`s community program specialist.
”Joanne`s first love is the baby. And that`s what we want in a foster mother.”
The Noyeses were named 1989 Foster Parents of the Year by the Social Services Agency.
It is a combination of qualities that makes Noyes, 46, the foster mother she is. Her green eyes are warm and expressive. Her patience rarely runs out. She smiles easily. And her hands-despite the constant pain of rheumatoid arthritis-can scoop up two or even three babies at a time.
”The best part for these kids is a warm set of hands,” she said. ”Mine don`t close anymore, but they still know how to love.”
The Noyeses` Stanton, Calif., home is a jumble of comfortable couches and chairs, all worn and inviting. There is usually a small pile of clean baby clothes stacked on the couch. Toys sit in a neat pile in one corner, waiting for tiny hands to take them on adventures through the house.
Several days a week, Noyes does volunteer work at a foster parent thrift store in Anaheim and carts her two babies along. In the afternoon, she is home with her husband and the babies. In the evening, when Jerry works as a grocery-store manager, she stays at home with the children.
Most of the drug babies arrive with sad histories of very short lives. One baby was acquired when the Orange County Sheriff`s Department raided a suspected drug house. The suspects fled when the deputies arrived, leaving the infant.
The babies arrive with next to nothing: a pair of grungy pajamas, maybe a toy.
One young boy arrived wearing men`s underwear. ”That little boy had all his belongings in the world in one bag,” Noyes said. ”A T-shirt, a pair of men`s underwear and a pair of socks. At 7 years old, that`s all he owned.”
Noyes keeps a supply of diapers and clothes-washed, folded and packed in plastic bags according to size and sex-in a shed in her back yard.
When a Social Services worker dropped off the 3-month-old, she included a bag that contained two pieces of clothing and a stuffed toy, apparently a gift from his mother.
”Just little bits of nonsense,” Noyes said.
As Noyes sorted cothing, her year-old foster daughter scampered around the floor, smiling.
The girl`s mother had been addicted to PCP and cocaine.
”When I got her,” Noyes said of the dark-haired, round-faced child, ”I honestly thought she was retarded. Since then, her face has come alive. I can`t keep up with her.”
For that reason, the family calls her Silly, an affectionate name to murmur as she is gathered up and held close.
The Noyeses cared for her once before, right after she was born. After a few weeks-a short-term stay-she was turned over to another foster family for long-term care.
Then one day in August, while visiting the county`s Orangewood children`s home, Noyes saw the little girl in a crib, back in the hands of Social Services. The baby was unusually quiet and refused to eat. She had worn a patch of hair off the back of her head.
While the nurses watched, Noyes scooped the child out of her crib and set her against her chest. When her head rested against Noyes` shoulder, the baby let out an audible ”Ahh.”
”She was mine,” Noyes recalled. ”That`s the way I felt. The nurses said she wouldn`t go to anyone else. I said, `She`s going home.` ”
These days, there are hints-in conversations and in the way Noyes calls Silly ”my daughter”-that the family will adopt the little girl.
But no one will say for sure.
”I`m doing an inner struggle with that,” Noyes said, her voice suddenly hushed. ”I kind of let Jerry be the guide, because I would keep them all.
”We, in essence, keep a guard on our hearts. We let love out, but we are careful not to take too much in so we don`t get hurt.”
It is a lot of trouble for the money. Foster parents receive $293 a month for standard, long-term care-six weeks to three months. For short-term, emergency shelter-from one day to six weeks-parents receive $517 a month, or $17 a day.
”If you`re looking to make money, this is not the way,” Noyes said.
”If you get involved with the kids, you end up paying for it-with your heart, with the things you buy for them.”
An infant usually enters the foster-care system before it is born. Drug-addicted mothers-to-be are diagnosed in the hospital before or when they are ready to deliver. Often the babies are premature, small and addicted.
The hospital notifies the county Social Services Agency of the case, and when the baby`s condition has stabilized-or when the infant weighs at least 5 pounds-the child is placed in Orangewood until a foster home can be found.
While the parents undergo court-ordered rehabilitation at local hospitals and treatment centers, Noyes cares for the babies. Sometimes parents call to check. Sometimes they don`t.
”This one,” said Jerry Noyes, 49, nodding toward the year-old girl as his wife cooed into her ear. ”Her mother has never called. Never.
”I get the feeling that if you set a child on one end of a table and a packet of cocaine on the other, most of the parents we have to deal with would go for the coke first,” said Jerry. ”They just can`t stop what they`re doing.”
All but two of the 31 babies Joanne Noyes has cared for in the last 13 years have spent their first few months going through drug withdrawal.
They all have the same high-pitch cry. They shake uncontrollably. Their clutching fingers cannot open past a tiny claw.
”Drug babies have a special sound when they cry,” Noyes said. ”You have got to live with them to learn it.”
When they sweat, the soft scents of baby powder and shampoo are overpowered by the smell of the ether that their mothers used to cut cocaine and PCP.
”I`ve learned never to trust the drug babies, as far as their health goes,” Noyes said. ”They sleep right beside me, and I take them wherever I go. Even to the bathroom.
”I`m more afraid of their silence than their noise.”
When the babies leave Noyes` care, they usually have a new wardrobe, a full head of clean hair and a smile. The shaking has stopped. And the cries, when they come, are normal.
”Life is so neat,” she said. ”I just love watching them learn and feel. I get so many positives myself.
”I think what I do comes down to my needs as much as the babies`. I need to be needed.”
Having the babies also does something for the rest of the family.
Julie, 13, will enter high school knowing more about drugs and their effects than most of her classmates. She also is the consummate baby sitter, skilled at changing diapers, bathing young children and keeping them occupied. ”Drug babies are slower,” she said. ”Sometimes they`re littler. At first, they don`t seem as happy as a regular little baby.”
The Noyes` two natural sons, Michael, 20, and Robert, 19, also have found themselves comfortable around infants.
One recent afternoon, the young men ambled into the house, their workboots clunking across the floor, their baseball hats screwed backward onto their heads.
But the rough exteriors fell away at the sight of the new baby. Robert, ragged from a day of selling building materials, opened his arms to hold the boy. Michael watched as he talked on the telephone.
”Nothing to it,” Robert smiled.
”I`ve learned a lot about kids,” said Michael, who has a son.
Once the children go, the family rarely hears of them.
”It kind of hurts, that the people who loved these babies first- I just want to know that what we have done has promoted these kids into more good will,” Joanne Noyes said, scanning a bookshelf of school photographs.
”I love these little ones. I`d like to see them grow and survive and know that I had a hand in it.”
