The McLeods asked HRS to classify J. as a child with special needs so they could get a modest increase in board payments. It didn't happen.

The diagnostic center at Miami Shores Elementary concluded that J. was severely emotionally disturbed. He whined and cried and threw things on the floor during the evaluation.

The recommendation: full-time special education class. But there were none at the public school. And Shelley McLeod, who worked, felt J. was not mature enough to catch a bus to another school.

So instead, J. attended class for the learning disabled for 1 1/2 hours each morning, then joined a regular kindergarten class.

He was the only child who could not print his name. When other kids sang The Star-Spangled Banner, he made peculiar noises. When they lined up to go outside, he banged on the piano keys. During math, he lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling.

"There are many times when I had J. by the hand, but he's in a class with almost 30 children, and it's impossible to give that much attention to one child all the time," his teacher Sue Becker said.

J. flunked kindergarten that year.

Judge Levy got the case in the fall and was faced with this question: Should the court sever the mother's rights and put J. up for adoption?

Dinah wanted her son. She showed up regularly for treatment at Douglas Gardens Community Mental Health Center.

But the clinic concluded: "There is serious concern that returning child custody rights to (her) at this time . . . could provoke a psychotic episode."

Even so, a psychologist declined to predict whether she might be a competent mother if treated properly.

Levy put the case on hold.

The turning point came in December 1987 when psychiatrist Josephine Perez declared that Dinah would probably never be a good mother.

The doctor had asked Dinah what she would do if her son was returned to her. "Well, take him to Disneyland. Watch TV. That's it. What else do you need?" Dinah replied.

Concluded the doctor: "It is highly unlikely that she will ever be capable of providing adequate parenting because of the severity and chronicity of her mental disorder and maladaptive life style."

Finally, 2 1/2 years after the state took custody of J., HRS abandoned efforts to reunify mother and child.

Now the goal was adoption.

The mother opposed the termination of her parental rights. She knew she would never see her child again if that happened. For years, she had faithfully showed up for monthly, hour-long visits with her son, bringing him a toy and a snack.

"This child is the only thing she has in the world," said her lawyer Arthur Luongo, who has represented her for four years without pay.

It would be Draconian for the state to take away her child forever simply because she is mentally ill, Luongo said. Society is wrong to "grind into dust" the rights of its most vulnerable members.

The trial occurred in dribs and drabs in the autumn of 1988. Dinah was living in a residential hotel on South Beach. Her room, 15 feet by eight feet, had no stove, only a bed, table, sink, hot plate and refrigerator. She survived on a monthly $630 disability check.

Wouldn't J. spend his entire childhood as a ward of the state even if the mother's rights were severed? Luongo asked.

"Only if this drags on, and he gets so old that he becomes impossible to place because of his age, because of his emotional problems," replied HRS worker Susannah Becker.

Isn't it possible the boy's situation won't improve? Luongo asked.

"No, I won't agree with that," she said.

"OK, why not?" he asked.

"Because he's a nice-looking, normal-looking, lively, charming, white young boy, and there are adoptive families out there willing to take him."

Judge Levy agonized. Florida law does not explicitly say what to do about the children of mentally ill or retarded parents, as do the laws of many other states.

Levy ruled he could not free J. for adoption. The mother, he reasoned, was too mentally ill to comply with the state requirements to get her son back.

The law did not allow him to sever the rights of a mother because of circumstances beyond her control, he decided.

HRS appealed the case to the Third District Court of Appeals, which has yet to rule.

In December 1988 the McLeods decided they did not want to be J.'s foster parents anymore.

"I don't feel that I'll be able to control him when he gets to be 11 or 12 or 13. Presently, when he has temper tantrums, I can't physically control him. So, I don't want to be responsible," Shelley McLeod said.

Shuffling from home to home hurts a boy, she said. She witnessed the poignant evidence of J.'s nomadic childhood.

At the zoo one day, he raced up to a woman and threw his arms around her. He thought she was his earlier foster mother.

When one of the McLeods' foster daughters left home for a day, J. and another child divided her toys. They figured she would never be back.

McLeod is worried. "They're going to piddle around until this child is unadoptable."

Last January the McLeods wrote HRS, Gov. Bob Martinez and Judge Levy.

"It is tragic that the state, for so long, has failed to determine J.'s needs and to provide him with the intensive psychological and educational therapy which he so desperately needs.

"It is extremely discouraging to see a life so in need of help wait in limbo for over three years. . . . Foster care should not be used as a 'holding pen.' "

No one replied.

When J. found out he would have to leave the McLeods, he asked his caseworker to find a "kind and friendly" family. He packed up quickly, without emotion.

HRS delivered him to a neatly kept mobile home on a man-made lake in Southwest Dade. His new foster parents, Gary and Patty Goodrich, have two adopted sons, an adopted daughter, an old yellow cat, a flop-eared rabbit, a white duck and two dogs.

Gary Goodrich is associate director of the Christian Community Service Agency. Patty Goodrich is home with the kids.

J. was terrified the Goodriches would not want him. He tried to be perfect. He was unnaturally polite.

"Will I be here when Santa comes?" he asked. "Will I be here for the Youth Fair?"

Over and over, he asks his foster father, "Daddy, can I stay here forever and ever?"

The Goodriches want to adopt him.

J., now 7, is in a full-time class for emotionally handicapped kids. "This is not a child we expect to pass on," Patty Goodrich said.

In summer school in July, J. fibbed that his sister had been shot and his brother hit by a car. His foster mother suspected he wanted to express some buried sadness.

When she sat down to talk to him, he began to ask questions. What does my real mother do? Where does she live? How long ago did I live with her?

"Someone can still love you and not be able to take care of you," his foster mother explained.

During the talk, J. made it clear he wants to be adopted. That's what he told Dinah, too, on a recent visit.

On Aug. 28 Dinah contacted her son's caseworker. She would be willing to let the family adopt J. She would also like visitation rights.

Unlike some states, Florida has no "open" adoption law that allows contact between a child and natural parents after adoption.

Dinah's lawyer and the state have not yet talked about a settlement. They plan to.

For now J. endures in legal limbo.

His mother lives a world away on South Beach. She walks through the crowded foyer of her apartment building without speaking, her face expressionless.

"She's a silent woman," said Sheilah Leva, who works at the building. "She has her own world."

Day after day, Dinah steps outside and sets out little dishes filled with water and cat food on the sidewalk. Neighborhood cats follow her. She caresses them.

"She lives for the cats," Leva said.