She ignored him.
“I’m afraid your participation in these counseling sessions is no longer voluntary,” Mr. Ishii said. “Now I have a job to do. At the end of these sessions, I must write a confidential report so the judge can decide how best to deal with you.”
Danny angled sideways on the chair and stuck out his elbow.
“Would you like to tell me what happened?”
“What for? You’ve already got the police report.”
“Yes, I do. But I’d rather hear it from you.”
“Read it yourself.”
“Very well.” He sat back and read the two-page typewritten report. He took his time, leaving Danny to stare awkwardly around the room. Finally, the counselor looked up. “You may go.”
The second Saturday night at Papa Joe’s was much like the one before. They discussed the players and their records. Papa Joe knew more than Danny did. The potato chips were his favorite kind, and Buddy wolfed down crunchy doggy treats. Danny was surprised how soon it was time to go.
“The police say you reacted very negatively when they arrested you. They describe you as an ‘angry young man more interested in being belligerent than in taking any responsibility for his crime.’ Do you agree with that?”
Danny glared at the counselor. “They were jerks,” he said.
“So…they failed to treat you with courtesy and respect?”
He tossed his head. “Yeah.”
“Is it possible they were just doing their job?”
“I thought their job was to help people.”
“Even people who commit crimes?”
Danny said nothing.
“Is it possible they were helping you?”
“What is this, like, a cross-examination? Am I on trial?”
“Should you be?”
“Yeah, right. Why me?” He lifted up his palms. “Why me and not all the other criminals out there?”
“Do you mean you shouldn’t be accountable for your actions?”
Danny licked his lips.
Mr. Ishii tilted his head. “It sounds like you’ve had some negative dealings with the police.”
“They’ve never done a thing for me.”
“I see. So, at some time in your past, the police failed you. Is that what you’re saying?”
“They destroyed my life.”
“Ah, yes. And you’re still angry about that?”
Danny bristled. “You would be, too.”
Mr. Ishii pursed his lips. He rose slowly. “Well, David,” he said mildly, “our jails are full of angry young men.” He paused. “You may go now.”
On Sunday night Danny talked himself into asking Nixxie out. On Monday morning his voice caught in his throat and his courage deserted him. On Tuesday, Danny missed art class for his counseling session.
Mr. Ishii wrote the date on his notes. April 1. Session 3. “Do you shoplift a lot, David?” he asked.
Danny’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “What makes you think I shoplift at all?”
“Your mother told me.”
“My mother told you?”
“Yes.”
Danny twirled his baseball cap around and around.
“Do you know why you do it?”
He thought back to the watch and to the easy money for cigarettes and beer and forgetting and belonging…
He snorted. “No money.”
Mr. Ishii nodded and put down his pen. “So you steal because you’re poor?”
“Well I wouldn’t have to steal if I had money, would I?”
“Ah, yes. Well, there are a lot of poor people who don’t steal.…”
The counselor’s words felt like weights.
“Do you think it’s a way to get ahead?”
Danny spun his cap on his index finger. Parties and feeling good. Shortcuts to relaxation. “Sure, why not?” he replied.
“I understand your mother’s working now.”
“She told you that, too?”
“Yes.” He paused. “She’s very anxious to help you. She knows things haven’t gone very well, and it’s been hard on you.”
“At least she’s got that right.”
Mr. Ishii pressed his fingertips together. “You’re angry with your mother, too, aren’t you?”
“She got me into this mess.”
“And how did she do that?”
“By making poor choices.”
“Just like you?”
Danny’s face hardened. “She shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“Well, whatever ‘it’ was, it sounds like she’s trying to fix it.” He picked up his notes. “Before Christmas you were on social assistance, and now she has a good job.”
Danny didn’t say anything.
“And your sister has taken the Red Cross babysitting course.”
“Nobody told me.”
The counselor paused. “Yes. Well. It sounds like your sister’s making an effort, too.” He put down the papers and looked squarely at Danny. “So, David,” he finally said. “And what are you doing?”
Chapter 25
The thermometer plunged. It was bitterly cold with a relentless wind. Danny appeared at Nixxie’s locker at lunch time, leaned his back against the wall, and slid to the floor. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied. She popped the lock into its slot and sat beside him. Shy silence separated them until she said, “It’s sure cold out.”
“Uh, yeah,” he replied. He busied himself with his lunch bag. “Want an apple?” he asked, holding one out.
“No thanks.” She opened her bag. “Want an orange?” she offered.
They both laughed, and it was as if the months between them had melted away.
“Are there more reasons you’ve been stealing other than being poor?” Mr. Ishi asked.
Danny cracked his knuckles.
“What kind of activities do you have outside of school?”
Danny thought about the basketball team he’d quit after Christmas. He remembered the coach’s invitation to try out for the volleyball team. He remembered the library card his mom had propped up against his clock radio and that he’d abandoned under a pile of unwashed clothes. He couldn’t remember the number of hours he’d spent in front of the TV.
“Everything’s boring,” he replied. “My life’s boring.”
“Do you mean there are obstacles to getting out and doing new things?”
“I can’t even buy any stuff.”
Mr. Ishii paused. “Have you considered volunteer work, to help people less fortunate than you?”
Danny started spinning his cap.
“You can work toward your future without first solving every obstacle in your path.”
Silence.
“There is a minimum amount of time you are required to spend in our counseling sessions. However, there is no maximum. You have a lot of work to do.”
Danny and Nixxie agreed to a matinee that weekend. He let her pick the movie. He asked his mom for an extra two dollars for bus fare.
She handed him a five. “What’re you going to see?”
“It’s a western. Nixxie likes westerns.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Nixxie?”
“A girl from school,” he replied, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
The movie wasn’t going to win any awards but as far as Danny was concerned it could have been a blank screen. The important thing was to be with Nixxie. After the movie they wandered into McDonald’s for some fries.
“What’re you doing for Easter?” Nixxie asked.
“Just hanging around.” He shook the ice in his cup. “What about you?”
“Going out to the lake. We have a cabin on Lake Winnipeg.”
“Go there often?”
“Most holidays.”
“Is that where you were last Christmas?”
“Part of it.”
“Where else did you go?”
“Same as always. Mom and Dad take me to the reservatio
n to see my mom for my birthday. Then we go to the lake for the rest of the holiday. The lake’s the good part of the holiday.”
“Did you see her?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Not this year.” She held up a french fry and picked off the salt grains.
“When were you adopted?” he asked.
“When I was two.” She idly swirled the fry in some ketchup. “Denise raised me for the first year and a half. Then she started dropping me off with my grandparents. At first it was just weekends, but then it was more and more often. One day she never came back, and my grandparents adopted me too.”
“Why did your grandparents adopt your mom?”
She sat very still and her eyes unfocussed. “It’s a long story. Ever since Canada became a country, the government thought First Nations people were a ‘problem’ and needed ‘fixing.’ So they forced kids from their homes into boarding schools run by churches. The white teachers were supposed to teach them to be ashamed of their culture. The government wanted to ‘kill the Indian in the child.’ It was child abuse.”
Danny felt a noose tighten around his chest.
She picked up a napkin and started twisting it through her fingers. Her hair fell forward along the sides of her face. “They didn’t have families to protect them and couldn’t protect themselves. For some, it was a death sentence.”
He crushed the empty chip box between his fingers.
She started shredding the napkin. “My mom, my mom’s mom…for them it was a life sentence – of killing the pain with alcohol and drugs.”
He swallowed.
“My grandparents are always trying to help others. They adopted her because she had nowhere else to go. When my mother got pregnant with me at sixteen, they already knew they’d end up raising me, too. But they never complain. They never give up hope Denise will change. So, every year we trek out to the reserve. Every year she disappoints me.”
Her words sent his mind racing. He had to change the subject. “You said your painting was your name. And the initials you put on it were P.S. I don’t get it. What does the P stand for?”
“Phoenixx,” she replied.
“Phoenix, like the city?”
“No, Phoenixx like the bird, but with an extra x.”
“Bird?”
“A mythical bird, the only one of its kind. A bird that lives for five hundred years, then burns to death and rises again from its own ashes. A bird so beautiful that astronomers put it in the night sky.”
He frowned. He didn’t remember a constellation named Phoenix in the stars stuck to his ceiling. “Where is it?” he asked.
“In the southern hemisphere. My mom said a person didn’t have to see it to know it was there.”
“What’s it like, knowing you’re adopted?”
“Sometimes I feel sad, like a piece of me is missing – like I’ve lost something, and I don’t know where to find it. Sometimes I feel lucky I have my grandparents and they’re always there for me. And sometimes I want to scream and scream, or crawl into myself and never come out. It’s all so unfair. I wish I had a normal family like yours.”
“Your mother says you spend a lot of time locked in your room,” Mr. Ishii said.
“So?”
“Is it true?”
“Maybe.”
“And when you lock the door, what are you trying to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you locking yourself in, or locking the world out?”
“I need my privacy.”
“Of course. Everyone does. But is privacy the only thing you need?”
Danny’s eyes shifted around the room.
“If you’re like most teenagers, you want to have friends, you want to have the freedom to make choices, and you want to be loved.”
Danny’s knee jiggled. He thought about the friends he’d made. He’d gotten along with the boys on the basketball team, for a few days. He’d probably been in Chad’s group too long. Papa Joe was a friend, but not the same kind of friend. Even Buddy, who never judged or complained and was always happy to see him, was sometimes more excited to see Papa Joe than him. Except for Nixxie, it had been a year and a half – no, longer – since he’d had a true friend.
“Do you think you can make friends from behind a locked door?”
No answer.
“Perhaps it’s time to stop locking and start unlocking. Perhaps it’s time to let go.”
“Let go of what?”
“I think you already know.”
“How well are you and your mother getting on, David?”
Danny shrugged his shoulders.
“Your long silences worry her. She’s afraid for you.”
“So. And just what have you been telling my mother about me?”
“I haven’t told her anything. She tells me things and I listen.”
Danny crossed his arms.
“The judge and the police will keep the report confidential.
It won’t be read in open court, and the court file will be sealed at the end of the case.”
“So now I’m supposed to trust the judge and the police?”
“It wasn’t the failing of any one judge or any one police officer that resulted in your being here. And it was not just your mother’s failing, either.”
Danny narrowed his eyes.
“Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Let’s say there’s a small child – three or four years old. And let’s say that child found some matches.”
Danny stayed silent.
“And let’s say that child was striking those matches and watching the little flames – playing with fire. And the child was having a good time.”
Danny chewed his lip. He started to see where this was going.
“And then, before he got burned or set the house on fire, his mother came by and pulled the matches from him. Do you think that would be the right thing to do? Even if you cried over the injustice of losing your plaything?”
The question bore into Danny’s consciousness like a drill. Ishii knows. If she can tell, then I can tell, Danny thought.
His curfew had ended and Danny was free to meet Nixxie for a movie on Friday.
He spent the half-hour bus ride trying to keep his hands steady. He hustled off the bus ahead of Nixxie and looked quickly right and left, then right again.
She cocked her head to one side. “It’s this way,” she said, pointing.
“No. We need to talk.”
“Talk?” She paused. “What about the movie?”
“It can wait,” he replied. He remembered a park bench in a coin-sized green space between two office towers. “This way.”
The temperature dropped with the sun and the park had emptied. Danny hoped Nixxie would think his hands were trembling with cold.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen? Are you all right? Is something wrong with your mom?”
“No, nothing like that.” He paused. “Well it kinda is.”
“Is she sick? Was she in an accident?”
“No.”
The concerned look on Nixxie’s face turned to puzzlement.
He interlaced his fingers to stop the shaking. He leaned forward and rested his forearms along his thighs, and started talking. The story spilled from him like blood from a wound, pumped until there was nothing left in the hollow muscle that was his heart.
Danny talked with Nixxie almost every day. He told her what Mr. Ishii had said, trying to focus his thoughts by talking them out.
“My mom – Denise – had a lot of good intentions,” she replied, “but she couldn’t follow through. She didn’t know who to be, so she ended up being nothing.”
“Do you hate her?”
“Sometimes, but not as often as I used to. She used to say she’d visit me all the time, we’d go places, and do fun things together. She told me I was lucky because I had two mothers. She said she’d teach me how to be Native, but she couldn’t because she didn’t know how to be one herse
lf. When we went to the reserve, I didn’t want to see her. I started resenting her more and more, and my parents stopped taking me see her so often. And now, I don’t know if there’s a future in being Native.”
“But you are Native,” he replied.
“Sometimes I wish I were, but most of the time I don’t. I just want to be Nixxie, be my own person, but it’s not easy. It’s complicated.”
“You sound like Mr. Ishii.”
Nixxie stared straight at Danny. “That’s because he counseled me, too.”
“He did?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He asked me not to. He said it was better that way.” She rubbed her arm. “He was Denise’s school counselor. Later, when I needed someone to talk to, Mr. Ishii was there.”
His face was rigid when he met the counselor. As soon as he sat in the chair, he confronted Mr. Ishii. “You know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Mr. Ishii replied.
“How long?”
“Your mother told me a while ago.”
“After she told us – no, lectured us – everybody lectured us –we could never tell, never breathe a word?!”
“Your mother moved you here to give you a better life, but she’s afraid she’ll still lose you. She told me because she thought it was the only way to save you. Not from your dad this time, but from yourself.” He paused. “Don’t you think you can trust your mother, David?”
“My name’s not David. And it’s her fault.”
“Are you sure?”
“How could she let it happen?”
Mr. Ishii put down his pen. “Maybe that’s not the right question.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s easy to blame the victim. I’m sure some people thought Everett – and your mother – ‘had it coming.’ But isn’t the real question, ‘Why did the abuser do what he did?’”
“But she lied to us.”
“Your mother made an error in judgment. Haven’t you ever done that?”
“What, like the shoplifting?” Danny challenged.
“And the bullying?” Mr. Ishii countered.
Danny was silent.
“So. Why did you do it?”
This time, Danny asked the questions. “How can I be sure my dad really did all those things that Mom said?”
The Second Trial Page 23