news-record.com

GREENSBORO - Julia Charles' book is all of 95 pages. So if you're lucky, you can read it in an afternoon.

Yet, dig into it - even a chapter or two - and you'll find a powerful story of a young girl from Guilford County's foster care program who felt she was too black, too skinny, too ugly and too alone.

Here's some of what you'll find:

She carried her clothes around in a trash bag. She got beaten by her biological mother with a plastic bag full of cans. She cursed, screamed, bullied people and walled herself away from any kind of love.

She wrote a poem in school about how she hated her face and considered stealing a box of sanitary napkins from a local convenience store because she had no money. With tears in her eyes, she asked the cash­ier for help.

"I am 12, and I live across the street in those apartments," she told the cashier. "I have no money, but I need this, sir. Please, will you let me have this?"

As you can probably guess, Charles is different now. She's 26, a college graduate and a polished speaker who, according to one of her best friends, "loves so big."

Charles thanks Lorraine Tutt for that transformation. That's her "Mommy."

Tutt, a friend from church, became Charles' foster parent nine years ago and adopt­ed her in 2005. Charles now wears around her neck a recent birthday gift from Tutt: a quarter-size locket in the shape of a heart.

On the front is Tutt's nickname for Charles: "Sweetie." Inside are pictures of Charles' family and her best friends. On the back is a three-word inscription that still makes Charles cry: "Your Forever Family."

Eight years ago, Charles graduated from Dudley High. After a stop-and-start college career - she needed scholarships, tuition waivers and $20,000 in student loans - she graduated in May with honors from Bennett College.

She got a degree in English. Now, she's got a book, "Surviving the Storm: The Life of a Child in Foster Care," published by a Durham company as a guide and self-help tool for foster children, foster parents and social workers nationwide.

It began as a journal. With her laptop across her thighs, she'd sit on her sofa, listen to gospel or old-school jazz and write about her grandmother's death, her mother's wrath and her own anger.

She saw her journal as a forgiving place to purge her feelings. Then a social worker urged her to turn her journal into a book. At first, Charles said no.

"It seems like the typical foster kid story," Charles responded.

"But you'll never know whose life you'll change," the social worker said.

Last spring, after a dozen revisions, Charles finished a book that has taken her to Oregon, New York and Washington for book signings. She has stood in front of 1,500 people and watched a line for her book wrap around the block.

There was a time her hands shook. Not anymore. She'll make a comment meant to calm her nerves - like the time in Washington when she saw her face on a huge screen and said, "You can't see my cute shoes."

When she hears people laugh, she knows she has them. Then she begins - about her book and her decade of tough numbers as a "foster care kid" in Guilford County.

Last week, Charles returned to where it all started: the Guilford County Department of Social Services.

At the DSS, Charles was once known as a "ball of fire." Last week, she was its guest of honor, complete with a white sheet cake, plastic flowers and dozens of people filling four rows of chairs.

There, inside a conference room at the department's headquarters off Maple Street, she met a 10-year-old in an oversize football jersey. His name was LJ.

"Why are you so special?'' LJ asks.

"I don't know if I'm special per se," Charles responded, leaning down a few inches from his face. "But I wrote a book."

"I see all these people talking with you, so you must be important," LJ responds. "I want somebody to talk to."

So, she did. She and LJ. Right there in the front row.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com