Unprotected

by Kristin Lee Johnson

  “You have to check me out? Is that what you’re saying,” LaToya found her cigarettes and lit one expertly. She took a long drag, leaning forward and staring at Amanda. “I ain’t got nothin’ to hide. Did Marlys tell you about the guns?”

  Amanda’s heart started beating fast, and her eyes darted to the end table where there was an old cigar box that easily could have contained a handgun. She was alone in a stranger’s house and had no way to escape if she would have pulled a gun. This was beyond stupid.

  “I used to work for Zigger T,” LaToya said with a swagger. “You know, the record producer.” LaToya inhaled on her cigarette deeply to allow Amanda time to digest LaToya’s importance. “Turns out Zigs was dealing guns. I went down with him cuz I loved Zigger. I done forty-four months in Shakopee.” Shakopee was a women’s prison. Alone in a trailer with a felon who sold guns.

  “Um, okay,” Amanda said haltingly, not sure what to do next. “I guess I should write down when you were arrested. We’ll have to look into the criminal stuff pretty thoroughly.”

  “You know Lana James? I love Lana. She’s my PO, but we had to be sisters in another life,” LaToya ground out her cigarette in a black plastic ashtray, and Amanda could see LaToya’s gold lipstick on the butt. “Lana can tell you about how I turned my life around in prison. I got my GED and worked on my singing. I started a gospel choir at Shakopee that’s still going strong. Most important, sweetness, is that I discovered our Lord Jesus Christ,” LaToya said with a proud smile, and sat back in her chair with her hand on her ample chest.

  Amanda relaxed at the news that LaToya had found her lord, assuming that meant she was probably safe.

  “Do you have any kids, LaToya?” Amanda asked, looking around and noticing no evidence of children.

  LaToya’s head dropped to her chest, and the beads clicked and swished. “I guess my sister didn’t tell you nothin’.” She heaved a large sigh and reached for another cigarette. “I lost my baby, JaMarquis, when he was still a baby,” LaToya said, pulling off her glasses and rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “I knew I was gonna have to talk about this, but that don’t make it no easier,” LaToya cried. Tears streamed down her face, and Amanda sat in complete awkward silence. “He was sleeping with me in my waterbed,” she wailed. “I just didn’t know, sugar. I didn’t know babies could die that way! Oh, I’m sorry, sugar.” LaToya heaved out of her chair and went to her entertainment center, opened the top cabinet and pulled out picture after picture of her son, JaMarquis. She brought Amanda a framed eleven-by-fourteen picture of a fat, smiling little boy in a blue train conductor suit, complete with hat and red kerchief around his neck.

  “He’s really sweet,” Amanda said. “I love his little outfit.”

  “His daddy worked for the railroad, so when he met JaMarquis, he brought him that suit.” Amanda assumed that meant that JaMarquis’s daddy wasn’t around much, so LaToya was a single mom.

  “Did your family support you?” Amanda asked.

  “Oh, that Marlys was so strung out on the crack that she didn’t know what happened. We had our babies at the same time and lost them at the same time,” LaToya said, kissing each picture before putting them back in the cabinet.

  “What do you mean lost them?” Amanda asked, suddenly confused. Marlys had two young children, but she had never heard that Marlys had a baby die.

  “Oh, honey you really don’t know nothin’ do you?” LaToya sat back down and hoisted her plump ankle on her other knee. “When Marlys was still livin’ at home with our daddy, she started getting herself in real trouble with the gangbangers. She got initiated in by a whole mess of them who all raped her. She got pregnant.” LaToya shook her head and rubbed her hand on her ankle. “Marlys was sixteen, and I was nineteen and pregnant too. I had a real good job working in the WIC office as a secretary. You know what WIC is?”

  Amanda nodded. Though she didn’t know what it stood for, Amanda knew that WIC was a federal program that provided milk and formula for low-income women.

  “Those nurses at the WIC told me to get Marlys to a doctor right now and get her to quit doing drugs. She quit everything and moved in with me right after I had JaMarquis. She had to quit school to help pay rent, but she was doing real good at the Cub store bagging groceries and babysitting. Then the GDs came down here one day pissed at Marly cuz she was supposed to be their dealer, and she wasn’t sellin’ nothin’. She tried to tell them she was havin’ a baby and wanted out. Them dealers beat her so bad she lost her baby. Was a little boy. She was so far along they had to birth the baby dead.”

  “Oh, my god,” Amanda said. “What happened to the guys who did it to her?”

  LaToya shook her head at her. “Oh, sweetness, ain’t nothin’ happened to them. Marly didn’t know who got her, and even if she did she wasn’t tellin’ no one.” LaToya stared out the window and lit another cigarette.

  Amanda sat incredulous. She had never heard such awful stories. Even with her own childhood as bad as it was, Amanda never really feared for her safety the way Marlys must have. She had been through a lot, but for the first time in her life, Amanda had met someone who had been through so much more.

  “Marlys wasn’t never the same after that,” LaToya continued. “Marly left my house cuz she couldn’t stand seeing my baby. She went up to the cities and hooked up with some Asian gang for a while, then went back to the GDs. She didn’t come to JaMarquis’s funeral. We couldn’t even find her. After I lost my baby, I decided to focus on my singing, but you know where that got me. Then Marly started prostituting herself and got pregnant again.”

  Amanda, who had been chewing on her pen cap, choked. “Are you telling me that Tyler’s father is a john?”

  “Oh, yes,” LaToya said. Amanda found herself liking LaToya, gold jumpsuit and all. She was big hearted, tough and resilient. They talked for over an hour about Marlys’s life, almost all of it tragic and sad. A part of her wondered why Marlys never went to anyone to ask for help. The other part of her knew just how stupid that was.

  “Well, LaToya, we need to figure out if it makes sense to move the boys here, and if we even can with your, um, background issues. Marlys should be done with treatment in a few weeks. Is it still your plan to have her stay with you?” Amanda tried to get back on track and figure out a visitation schedule for the kids.

  LaToya laughed, shaking her head and clucking her tongue. “My sister is coming here. I’ll do anything for her. I’d lie down on those tracks right now if you thought it’d help her. But let’s be real, sugar. My sister ain’t never getting any better.”

  “She’s doing pretty well in treatment,” Amanda said, wanting suddenly to defend her.

  “I know she is. But, honey, people don’t change who they are. My sister ain’t never going to quit doing her crack and her johns.”

  Amanda’s mouth dropped open. “You said you’d do anything for her. Why, if you don’t think she’s ever going to get any better? Why even try? You must have some hope.”

  “Honey, I got hope I’m gonna see my JaMarquis when the good lord brings me home. I got hope I’ll make it on the big stage someday. But there’s no hope for my sister. You better try your hardest for her, but I tell you right now: I’ll be elected president of the United States before my sister becomes a good citizen.”

  “But you changed! Why not believe your sister can too?” Amanda couldn’t figure this woman out.

  “Honey, when you was little, did you play in the neighborhood with all the kids?”

  Amanda didn’t want to tell her that her neighborhood when she was growing up was much like the one they were in at that moment. “What are you getting at, LaToya?”

  “Kids play doctor, right? Or they play house and the two bigger kids go off and be the parents, you know what I’m saying?”

  Mikey Quam was the resident doctor in Amanda’s neighborhood. “Yeah, I know what you’re saying.”

  “Marly would play hooker. She’d do favors for boys, suck their weenies
and stuff, when she was six-years old. It’s who she is, baby. There ain’t no changin’ that.”

  Chapter Eight

  Amanda felt like she had learned more in her ninety minute interview with LaToya than she had learned in five years of college. She found she couldn’t do much more than stare at her computer monitor, and her tropical fish screensaver. A message popped up telling her she had email. Amanda clicked on the open now box.

  “When you get back from your visit with Marlys’s sister, please bring me the background check forms and let me know if you want me to send the rest of the stuff or if you’ll be doing it. Zoe.”

  Crap, Amanda thought.

  Zoe was the foster care licensor who gave her a pile of paperwork that needed to be signed by LaToya. Zoe had reviewed some of it with her, but she said it was pretty self-explanatory so she should be fine. Amanda had forgotten about it completely. Once again, she felt like the clueless new girl.

  Max stood outside her cube and knocked on the metal frame.

  “Hey, Amanda, did you get my message?” he asked.

  She stared blankly at him.

  “Guess that’s a no,” he said, unfazed, sitting down across from her in her lone chair for visitors. “I want to talk to you about heading up a new program. I just came from a meeting at the superintendent’s office, and she is asking for a social worker to help with a truancy thing they’re doing.”

  “Truancy,” she said stupidly.

  “Everyone’s favorite thing. But you know how the governor set the new mandate for school attendance, so the school has to demonstrate that they are trying to keep kids in school or they could lose funding.” Max sat back in his chair, squirming. “Geez, these chairs are terrible.”

  “Watch out for the crack on the seat,” Amanda warned him, pointing at the seat of the chair.

  “Yikes, I will. Crappy government furniture. Anyway, they have a new EBD teacher who used to work at Outward Bound, so she wants to do some hiking and rafting with some of the kids as a motivator to stay in school. I thought you’d be great at something like that.”

  “Thanks,” Amanda said, flattered that he thought enough of her to assign her to a new program.

  “You bet,” Max said, setting a thin manila file on her desk. “These are the notes on the program. Call the EBD teacher, tell her you’re the social worker assigned, and she’ll take it from there.” Max moved to stand up, but suddenly yelped like an injured dog and grabbed his crotch.

  The crack must have gotten him. Amanda was mortified. His eyes widened and he was immediately sweating and rocking gingerly on the chair.

  “Did you catch your … uh … skin in the chair?” Amanda asked.

  “Important skin,” he squeaked. “Oh, god.” He lifted his right butt cheek off the chair quickly emitting a final squeak, and then he relaxed, his “important skin” obviously free. He wiped his face with both hands. “Let’s keep this horrifying moment between us, Amanda.”

  “Of course,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

  “And, I’ll get you a new chair.”

  * * *

  Amanda sheepishly admitted to Zoe that she had forgotten the paperwork. Zoe was gracious about it, even offering to meet with LaToya to get it signed. Amanda decided she would take care of it on her way home.

  When she got into her car after work, something didn’t feel right. She was sitting at an angle. Getting back out of the car, she saw she had a flat. Since she was parked behind the building, no one else leaving work would realize her predicament. She glanced at her cell phone but didn’t even bother trying it because she knew she hadn’t charged it for days and the battery was dead.

  First, she tried to get back into the building, but it was locked for the day, and Amanda hadn’t been issued a key card yet. Across the street, she could see several attorneys including Jake leaving his building. Her options were to walk downtown, a good twenty blocks, to use a phone to call a garage and spend the rest of the evening dealing with the mess, or ask Jake for a ride and deal with it from home. Since it was almost dark, Jake was the best option.

  “Jake,” she yelled out weakly, running across the street awkwardly in her high heeled boots. He looked up, waved, and got in his car. “No, you idiot,” she said under her breath. “Don’t leave!” she yelled. That sounded desperate enough.

  He opened his window. “Do you need a ride?”

  “I have a flat,” she breathed, stopping and panting.

  “Hop in,” he said, moving two files from his front seat into the back of his VW Jetta. Leather seats. Great stereo. She would have loved a car like this, and thought for the first of a million times that she might be in the wrong profession.

  “Thanks, Jake.” She slid into the front and clicked her seat belt on.

  “Since I have you hostage, you have no choice but to get a drink with me.”

  She couldn’t contain her smile.

  * * *

  They went to Las Margaritas, a tiny bar that was packed with happy hour drinkers. They served fantastic margaritas served in big plastic cups with endless baskets of nachos and real salsa. It was decorated with kitschy jalapeno-shaped Christmas lights and crepe paper limes hanging from the ceiling. Amanda loved the warm atmosphere.

  They sat at a table in the front window, and the waitress brought a basket of chips and salsa and two-for-one lime margaritas. Amanda sipped slowly, not knowing what to say.

  “So …” Jake said, “how do you like the county?”

  “Fine … good.” They had already had this perfunctory conversation, and both of them knew it.

  Jake took a deep breath. “Amanda, let’s try not to act so weird, okay? Everything that happened was a long time ago. We’re going to have to work together, so let’s try to be friends.”

  Amanda took a bigger drink. “It’s hard for me not to act weird, Jake. I’m a fish out of water everywhere I go.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Wah wah, Amanda. Don’t start the pity thing.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Pity?!”

  He waved his hands in the air in front of her. “That’s not what I meant to say, please don’t freak out. I just mean that you have always had this thing about being such an outsider in the world, and you’re not. You need to quit thinking that way.”

  Amanda knew Jake was well intentioned, but she couldn’t believe his nerve anyway. “Jake, you knew me for three months over five years ago, and we have seen each other three times since then. You don’t know me at all.” She had never known anyone who was willing to lecture her like a nine-year-old. Not even her mother talked to her the way he did.

  “Keeping track, huh?” He smiled at her.

  She got up to leave.

  “Okay, Amanda, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sit down.” He handed her a margarita. She glared at him.

  “Quit being an ass and we’ll get along fine,” she finally said.

  “A guy can try.” He winked.

  * * *

  Their conversation settled down after that. Jake asked about how she got hired, and she ended up talking about college and how hard she worked in the last two years to graduate. She tried not to act like her first years were wasted with drinking, and tried to look like she had no regrets.

  He caught her up on law school in Chicago. Most of the law students he met went to private schools and had a lot of money and a lot of interest in making more money. He lived near downtown Chicago, clerking for the office of public defenders and Cook County Attorney.

  “It’s drugs and poverty. All we did was prosecute poor people who committed crimes to get drugs, and committed more crimes once they were on drugs.

  “Being poor doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to use drugs,” she said, feeling herself reacting again.

  “Of course, it doesn’t,” Jake said. “I’m not talking about not having very much money. I’m talking about the whole lifestyle of inner city poverty. I felt like I was banging my head against a wall.”

  She tried to squash down
her defensiveness. It wasn’t always about her.

  “So, if you felt so hopeless, why are you still in criminal law? Why don’t you go make a lot of money doing something for some big company?”

  “Because brand new lawyers don’t get hired ‘doing something for some big company.’ Plus, I didn’t go to a private school, and I don’t have any connections.”

  “Now who’s feeling sorry for himself?” Amanda said, eyebrows raised.

  “The whole law school experience soured me on a lot of things, but not law. Most of the people there came from families of lawyers, and they had firms waiting to offer them clerkships or practices to step into right out of school. During my work in the OPD, I realized I’m more cut out for prosecuting. It’s cleaner.”

  “Well, no kidding,” Amanda said, dipping her chips into the salsa. “What’s clean about defending criminals?”

  “It’s really easy to get righteous about it until you do it. These people have a right to a defense, a good defense, too. Just because you’re a nineteen-year-old black kid in Chicago doesn’t mean you’re automatically guilty of whatever they say you did. But I couldn’t take it because most of them were guilty, but they also had such shitty lives that it’s no wonder they were criminals. None of these people had any hope, so they flushed their lives down the toilet in exchange for feeling powerful, or just to feel something until it wore off and they shot up again.”

  “That’s really depressing,” she said, now playing with the salt on her glass. Jake held up his hand, waving two fingers at the waitress. She returned instantly with two more margaritas.

  “I tried to get everyone into treatment,” he said, starting on his second drink with an ironic smile. “Most of the time they got one shot at treatment, and then the funding was refused. A lot of times they just took the jail because it was quicker and easier. The whole thing was a black hole, and I couldn’t stand it. It drove Trix nuts because I was so disillusioned. She couldn’t stand all the negativity.”