A Mother's Trial

by Wright, Nancy

  He wondered for a moment how Priscilla could claim this was the only time she had been separated from Erik and Jason. He remembered all those nights she had spent at the hospital.

  “They’re all right, Priscilla. I think Steve is doing very well. He’s had to battle off the press—”

  “Yes, he’s told me.” She had regained her composure. “And he’s real upset about the police search of our house. Steve said they took away all Tia’s leftover medical supplies, the baking soda from our cupboard, a book on Korea we had, my appointment books, the girls’ baby books, and even the Merck manual that Steve used when he wrote up disability evaluations—the book with all the medical diagnoses.”

  “Priscilla, is there anything I can get you—or do for you?”

  “No, I guess not. I’ve been reading a James Herriot book. Oh, and thanks for picking my mother up at the airport yesterday.”

  “That’s okay. She’s doing wonderfully well with all this. She’s holding on beautifully.”

  “And the boys? You’re sure they’re all right?”

  “They’re fine, Priscilla. Steve has started them back in school. Is there anything else?”

  “No—just your prayers.”

  “Of course, Priscilla. You always have those. Will you be all right?”

  “Yes. I’ve been so cold—they finally brought me a sweater—but it just penetrates everything. And I have a lump in my throat all the time.”

  “Won’t they bring you a drink?”

  “Only coffee—and you know how I hate that.”

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “I didn’t sleep much last night. I asked them for something and the nurse brought me a pill but she wouldn’t let me swallow it. Instead she poured the powder out onto my tongue—I could barely get it down. It’s so dehumanizing—” she began to cry.

  “Jails are terrible places, Priscilla. We’ll have you out soon.”

  “Jim?”

  “Um?”

  “I didn’t do it! Why are they saying I did this when I didn’t? I loved Tia so much—it was like a part of me died along with her! How can they do this?”

  Jim, conflicted, hesitated.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  With a final murmured word, he left. As he walked distractedly toward his car, he wondered about Priscilla’s convincing protestations of innocence. He had majored in Pastoral Psychology, however, and he thought he had an answer. He had learned that most pathological people are convincing not in spite of but because of their pathology: they believed their own stories.

  7

  One week later, Steve walked up to the clerk at the Marin County jail and handed him a check for $40,000. The clerk looked at him in disbelief.

  “This is Priscilla Phillips’s bail money,” Steve said.

  “Hey, man, I can’t take this! You gotta go to municipal court with this.” Steve slumped. It just seemed like the next in a series of incredible hassles he had faced attempting to raise the bail. From the moment of Priscilla’s arrest, Steve realized that finances were going to be a serious problem. Since Jim Doudiet was a treasurer for Pacific Gas and Electric, Steve had consulted him.

  “I guess we’re talking about big bucks here—by the time we finish with the bail and the attorneys,” Steve said.

  “Absolutely. Now let’s see what you’ve got in terms of assets. Then we can decide how to proceed,” Jim answered.

  “We’ve got about three or four thousand dollars in savings, and the house. That’s about it,” Steve told him.

  “I think you’d better hold the house back. A bail bondsman’s going to want collateral, and if you give him the house, you’ll have no resources for the lawyer. I think any reasonable attorney’s going to need some collateral, too—a second mortgage or something. So we should keep the house in reserve.”

  “So how do we get bail without a bondsman?”

  “We organize a defense fund and we raise it, Steve.” They had done just that. In fact they had raised $50,000. The extra $10,000 was to go to the attorney. The money had trickled in erratically and in different forms. There were checks from Steve’s and Priscilla’s families on the East Coast, money orders, cash donations. It all had to be collected and cleared and placed in one account before a cashier’s check could be issued. Steve could do nothing but wonder at the extent of the community response—he had been so fearful at first about how people might react.

  The first night after the arrest, he had walked nervously about the house. Looking back on it he realized that he hadn’t behaved totally rationally. At one point that evening, he had loaded his twelve-gauge shotgun and sat up with it across his knee like some old-time sheriff expecting the outlaws to ride in. He was so afraid that when the news got out, a carload of the kids he had been counseling might see fit to come out and blow up the house. Priscilla had been working on the Child Protective Service, writing reports that were taking children out of their parents’ houses—there was no predicting how those people might react when they read in the paper what their social worker had been accused of doing to her own children.

  But his fears had proved groundless: No one had threatened them. Their friends had rallied in total support, and the boys were doing well, although sometimes Priscilla’s daily phone calls reduced them to tears. Visiting at Marin County jail was bleak: glass separated the prisoner from the visitor and communication was by telephone. Since the family was not permitted to use the attorney’s room, Steve didn’t take the boys to visit, deciding it would be too upsetting for them. Marietta’s arrival had relieved some problems, particularly the babysitting chores. Steve was worried that Marietta might drop dead of a heart attack when he called to tell her the news of Priscilla’s arrest. He and Priscilla had never told Pris’s mother, nor any of the family, about Mindy’s formula and her subsequent removal to a foster home because they kept telling each other that it would all blow over, that it would be only a needless worry for their relatives. So the news had been a shock. But Marietta had borne it well. Steve knew she was a very strong woman with a religious faith that would support her through anything.

  But Steve had other problems. The press was hounding him; Priscilla didn’t realize how terrible it was. Television vans and reporters camped on their doorstep, shouting questions at him every time he emerged. Finally Garety gave Steve permission to talk.

  “If you give them a little something, it will get them out of your hair,” the attorney said. “You can talk all you want about your background—how you met Priscilla, your jobs and community ties—that sort of thing. But stop at the point when you adopted Tia. Don’t tell them anything beyond that,” Garety cautioned.

  “Okay,” Steve said. Yesterday he had granted his first interview, determined to be absolutely frank about their family. He had told a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle about meeting Pris.

  “She bowled me over,” he confided. He reminisced about their marriage and, in an effort to be completely open, even brought out their problems together when he had first worked at San Quentin. But mainly he stressed what a wonderful wife and mother Priscilla had always been. The Chronicle had run a front-page story today, a long story with other quotes from their friends and neighbors and even a quote from Jim Hutchison, who had discussed Priscilla’s journal of Tia’s illness. Steve thought it strange that Jim should mention that—it didn’t seem very supportive. Fleetingly, it occurred to Steve that Jim should not be talking to the press at all. But basically Steve was pleased with the Chronicle story, which had been accurate and favorable. After he bailed Priscilla out, Steve hoped there would be no further reason for press coverage for a while. The preliminary hearing would be closed, Garety assured them. Maybe they’d retrieve a bit of their privacy; that would be damned nice, Steve thought.

  He would never forget the experience of having his house searched—the day following Priscilla’s arrest. Steve had been expecting it, but it still rolled over him like a huge invasion, like somethi
ng out of Nazi Germany. There had been four detectives and a uniformed cop who had left after introducing the detectives. The others stayed for several hours, dividing themselves into two-man teams and working methodically. Steve was glad Lindquist wasn’t with them. He couldn’t have dealt with Lindquist right then, he knew. Not that he trusted any of those suckers. He moved from room to room with them to make sure they didn’t plant any evidence. He could see the whole search was basically a fishing expedition. He laughed grimly to himself when he saw them take the baking soda and baking powder out of the cabinet: as if there was a house anywhere without those boxes! It had annoyed the hell out of him when they wanted to take Tia’s baby book; he had fought with them over that. The cops had finally ended up removing it—along with Mindy’s—but they agreed to leave behind the album of Tia’s photographs. They had confiscated some crazy things, Steve thought: Pris’s telephone book and her calendars from the previous couple of years; the can of Korean formula they had been saving to show Tia when she grew up; all eight of Pris’s handbags; the numerous formula bottles and cans they had collected; the syringes and sterile gloves they still had from when Tia’s central catheter was heparinized; even their copy of Dr. Spock and all the copies of a parents’ magazine they subscribed to. Well, he hoped they’d have fun plowing through all of that.

  “I don’t know when I resigned from the state of California,” he told Jim Doudiet later, “but I felt like I had right then. I don’t remember signing away my constitutional rights. Hell, they invaded me.”

  Jim shook his head in disgust. “I know it must feel that way. But how’s Priscilla doing?”

  “Not real well. She got super depressed when Garety showed her the police reports. Up until then she kept saying that there was no way they could claim she had done it, but she says those reports have all kinds of damning evidence from doctors—people she thought were on her side. Even Jim Hutchison talked to the cops—steered them around to other infant deaths in the community. It certainly looks like he was helping the cops when he was mouthing off to us that he supported Pris,” Steve said in disgust.

  “It doesn’t seem very ministerial of him,” Jan Doudiet said wonderingly.

  “You’re damn right. And Pris also says there’s lots of things in the police reports that are wrong, like a Kaiser nurse saying Pris mixed some formula when she didn’t, and some woman over at Kaiser-San Francisco who claimed Pris walked off and left Tia when she was about to die. That really ticks me off! But Pris said she was real shocked at what some of those supposedly supportive doctors like Shimoda and Applebaum had to say to the cops.”

  “Has she talked to the lawyer about the false reports?”

  “Yeah. She asked him how we were gonna fight back on all of that, and he said it wasn’t like that—that we have to come up with evidence to dispute their evidence. He’s optimistic, though, Pris told me.”

  “She’ll improve once she gets out of there,” Jan said.

  “Yeah. It’s the separation from the boys that’s really killing her,” Steve said.

  Well, now he was going to get her out, Steve thought as he crossed the road from the county jail to the section of the Civic Center that contained the courts. And without spending a penny of their own money, either. He couldn’t believe they had pulled that off, but it was damned fortunate. They were going to need every cent of his salary because Social Services had suspended Priscilla the minute she had been arrested. Their income had been cut in half. That was just the least of it.

  This arrest has torn Steve apart; there was no other way for him to look at it. When Pris had spoken to him from Lindquist’s office the day of the arrest, he thought he would burst with anger and shock. He had hurled himself about the house, kicking at the furniture like a two-year-old. Deep in his heart, he was afraid he would be arrested too. Numbly he arranged to have the Doudiets care for Erik and Jason. Then he sat waiting for the roof to cave in. Ragghianti didn’t want him down at the jail, and that made sense to Steve. He knew they wouldn’t let him see Priscilla anyway.

  Thoughts had raced in his head, darting in and out of his consciousness. He wondered about that damn polygraph Pris had taken a few weeks ago, whether maybe they should have pursued that some more. She had gone in for the test with the attitude that if she passed, it would impress the police, maybe force them to return Mindy to them.

  But Pris had been in such a state about everything, Steve was certain every nerve in her body had jumped whenever the examiner mentioned Tia’s or Mindy’s name. He was positive he could be lying through his teeth and still pass one of those things, that he could make any part of his body lie quiet if he told it to. But Pris was as emotional and wrought-up as hell, and that’s where these tests fell down on the job. She had passed most of the exam: Later she had tried to reconstruct the questions and wrote down what she remembered and showed it to him. About half the questions had been control questions designed to establish a baseline for truthful and untruthful responses. There had been four questions directly relevant to the case, and she had done all right on three of them.

  “When he asked me whether I intentionally induced a sodium substance into Tia or Mindy, I freaked out,” she told him. “You know I’ve been going around telling everyone I would never intentionally harm any of my children. I told the examiner that the use of that word was what I was responding to.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He agreed—because I passed the question about whether I had knowledge of what caused the high sodium to occur and the one about whether I felt directly responsible for Tia’s death. He said I should probably redo the test and reword some of the questions, that he would talk to Ragghianti about it.”

  But the test had never been rescheduled. Everyone had focused on that one question, deciding that a report should not be written by the polygraph examiner because the results were inconclusive and wouldn’t help Priscilla.

  It was the way this whole damn thing was going, Steve thought as he lined up to speak with the municipal court clerk about Priscilla’s bail. Here Steve ran into another snag. The court clerk was accustomed to dealing with bail bondsmen and didn’t know what to do with a certified check for $40,000. So they danced Steve back and forth in a kind of crazy waltz of frustration. The jail wouldn’t release Priscilla without a receipt, and no one would issue one.

  Finally the transaction was completed. Then he waited. The processing for Priscilla’s release stretched into the afternoon. When she emerged, shortly after five-thirty, she flew into his arms. Ten minutes later they were knocking at the Doudiets’ door. Erik and Jason launched themselves at their mother, hugging and kissing and patting her. Everyone was crying. Priscilla was home.

  8

  The fire flashed, arced, and sped up the flesh of her arm to her shoulder and neck. Suspended for a moment on the point of understanding, Priscilla stared at the flaming cup of white liquid gas that she still clutched, watching it shrivel—the edges blackening and curling like a leaf blown haphazardly into a barbecue fire—in her hand. Then she was on the ground by the campfire, rolling.

  “Priscilla!” Steve was by her side at once, pouring handfuls of dirt on her bathing suit as she twisted, trying to smother the flames with it.

  Skip Schaefer sprinted across the Lake Berryessa campground to the clothesline and was back in a moment with an armful of wet towels. Nancy Schaefer added a bedspread, and with these they wrapped Priscilla.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Jason and three-year-old Scotty Schaefer were in hysterics. Marietta moved to comfort them, her face ashen.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Oh, my God. What more can happen?”

  “Someone call an ambulance!” Steve cried.

  “Let’s get her in the car. It will be faster if we meet the ambulance at the turnoff,” Skip said. He helped Priscilla to the car. “Nancy, how is she?”

  “She’s pretty badly burned,” Nancy said. She looked anxiously at Priscilla, watching her chest. “But her breathing is
okay.”

  “Skip and I will take her—you and Marietta stay here,” Steve said to Nancy.

  “But Nancy’s a nurse—shouldn’t she go?” Marietta said.

  “I’m so cold! Oh, I’m so cold,” Priscilla moaned from the car. The pain was suddenly excruciating, focusing in on her right arm. She began to shake. Quickly Nancy rolled up the car windows.

  “I think I’d better stay here to help Marietta with the kids,” Nancy said. “It’s not life-threatening—I can see it’s not life-threatening.”

  Priscilla sat and cried and trembled as Skip drove the ten miles to the crossroads where the ambulance would have to turn off.

  “It’s going to be all right, Pris,” Steve kept saying.

  “Oh, it hurts—it hurts so much.” She struggled to turn her mind from the pain. This was supposed to have been her last weekend of peace. The preliminary hearing was scheduled to start Monday. The twenty-four days since her arrest had been one of the worst periods in her life.

  They had not appeared in court to plead for Mindy’s return. After Priscilla’s arrest, such a petition was no longer feasible, and they had been forced to abandon the effort. It had been an active pursuit—Priscilla had seen to that. She had asked friends to write to Catholic Social Service recommending that Mindy be returned home; Mary Vetter told Priscilla that she had received over twenty-five favorable letters and not a single negative one. But after the arrest, Priscilla realized the futility of their situation.

  Until then, Mary had not been pushing to place Mindy in a new adoptive home, although she indicated that there had to be some reasonable time limit. The foster home arrangement could not be allowed to continue indefinitely; it would not be good for Mindy. But after Priscilla’s arrest, Mary called. She was not unkind, but she was firm.

  “I’m afraid things have changed nownow. If you persist with the petition to have Mindy returned, we’ll have to take it to court and get some kind of a determination.”