by Sarah Willis
I feel such loss, and anger. Your mother abandoned you, I want to say. She must be an awful mother to have done that. It’s good you’re no longer with her. At the same time, I’m talking to myself. Stupid idiot. God, am I naive. This child smiled at me, and so I think she might want to live with me? All these thoughts are in my head, and the thought that I have to get her to stop crying before Mrs. Hunt comes back in. My hands bunch up, frustrated with words.
“I’m sure your mommy wants you, too, Larissa,” I say. “But everything is going to take some time. That’s what they told me. I’m new to all this. I just want to help. We got Lucy all sewn up, didn’t we? She’s better now. You will be too. We all want everyone to be better.” I’m thinking about her mother. What is wrong with her? Can she get better? “Mrs. Hunt just wants to help you. This is the sign for want.” I spread my fingers out, curling them, palms up, then pull my hands toward my chest. “You want your mommy,” I say, signing the words slowly. “Your mommy wants you. Lucy wants to be held by you. Mrs. Hunt just wants to be able to talk with you. I just want to be your friend. This sign, want, is one of the first signs I ever learned. Can you do this?” I show her again. Using the arm holding Lucy, she makes the motion with that hand, a small gesture, just the beginning of want.
Her face is blotchy, but the tears on her face are beginning to dry off. “Very, very good,” I say. And then her foster mother calls her for lunch.
Half an hour later, I walk into my own home and the quiet is unnerving. My cat is nowhere in sight and the place feels so completely empty. It feels as if my house is waiting for people to come home. I’m here, aren’t I?
I am no longer enough.
I recall the odor of Mrs. Hunt’s house and know what it was. People. The smell of people, bodies, in a warm home.
Once, someone told me that I was not a warm, fuzzy person. I shrugged. Who wanted to be warm and fuzzy? What the hell did that mean? I imagine, now, that it means being the kind of person a child might love.
I am a one-trick pony, me and my hands. I am a means for Larissa to communicate, always a means and never the end. I stand between people and interpret what they say, never getting involved. I have been loved by men, and thought I loved them until I had to tell them that, honestly, I didn’t; that I was fooled by a love that never quite came full-fledged, unfeared, whole. I am trying to be a foster mother for a child who, if things work out as they are supposed to, will only leave me to go back to her mother. I keep standing in the middle, never making a commitment to anything. I don’t know why I am alone. I don’t know what I did wrong. I had a normal childhood. What made me a person alone?
Choices, Vince says to me, a common theme in our old talks. He said I was afraid of choices. I said he kept making the wrong ones.
At least I make choices, he’d say.
So you’re saying I’d be happier if I were divorced twice?
Better to have loved and lost, he’d say.
Bullshit. You went on a three-month drunk after Cindy left.
So I get emotional. It’s a fucking crime?
It was an old argument. I can’t help answering him, even now, trying to finish arguments we already had, getting the last word. Did you choose to walk out in front of a car? I ask him. It’s not the first time I’ve asked this. How can you not see a car coming at you?
Fuck you, he says.
I deserved that. But I’m still mad at him. Why the hell didn’t he look where he was going?
You’re always looking, he says to me, that’s why you never go anywhere.
Fuck you, I say.
I’m talking to a dead man. He’s right. I need a life.
I put my purse down and open a can of cat food. Sampson comes running when he hears the sound of the electric can opener. Sitting down on the cool linoleum floor, I watch his quick tongue dart back and forth. I have never sat down on my kitchen floor before. It seems like a very strange thing to do.
Chapter Ten
Tuesday morning, I drive downtown to East Twenty-second and Carnegie, and park in a three-dollar lot near the courthouse. I’ve never been to Juvenile Court. Interpreting legalese into ASL is a skill I don’t have, or want.
One step through the front door and I’m in a line of people. I stand behind a black man wearing a suit two sizes too big for his thin, lanky body. Ahead of him are a couple, side by side, both wearing jean jackets, both with the same exact mullet haircut. Farther up, a bald man with a mustache must have set off the metal detector, and now a policeman waves a thick wand over his body as the mustached man rolls his eyes and mutters. Someone comes in behind me and stands so closely that I shift my weight, almost bumping the skinny black man. Men and women wearing suits duck underneath a strip of black ribbon that holds the rest of us in line, flashing their badges.
When it’s my turn, I sign a ledger and place my purse and the book that I brought on a tray. I walk through the metal detector, sure nothing will happen, giving the police officer a quick smile and a nod as if he, too, knows this. Nothing buzzes. The people ahead of me walk up the stairs to the second floor as if they all know where they’re going, so I follow them. It’s warm outside, but this marble staircase, this whole building, feels dank and cold.
At the top of the steps is a waiting area, filling quickly, with frosted windows at each end of the room. I go to one window and am directed to the other. They tell me to sit and wait. I sit next to a large woman in a long, flowing African dress and head-wrap. She’s talking with a woman holding a clipboard. All over sit people, young and old, talking to people with clipboards. I open my book and pretend to read. Which one is Larissa’s mother? The woman with the flowery African dress? There wasn’t anything very African in Larissa’s apartment. Maybe she’s the black woman across from me, sitting with a grizzled black man, both in deep conversation with a woman with a clipboard. There are two black women in the row behind me. They have a small boy with them who kicks steadily at the back of the bench with his heel. I try listening to the conversations going on around me, listening for the word Larissa, but the drone is low and constant, and I can’t make out most of the words. Every time new people walk into the room, I look at them, trying not to be obvious. Maybe Larissa’s mother won’t come.
Finally Yolanda Walker comes into the waiting room and waves to me. I get up and we move into the area by the stairs. Yolanda’s hair is different, higher up on her head with flat curls. She’s wearing the same kind of black slacks and jacket, though, and the badge around her neck. “Is she here?” I ask.
Yolanda peers into the waiting room. “Not yet. How’d it go at Mrs. Hunt’s?”
“Really well. Larissa said a few words, and I talked to her using sign language and my voice for almost an hour. She likes it when I sign. I think I’d be good for her.”
She nods. “I have another case this morning. I’m going into conference for a few minutes. I spoke to Magistrate Lucarelli. She said you could attend the hearing. Someone will call out ‘Benton’ when it’s time for you to come in. You go down this hall.” She looks over her shoulder at a closed door with a sign that reads AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY. “Four rooms down on your right. I’ll be there. It could be a wait.”
“I brought a book,” I say, wanting her approval.
“Good thinking.” She opens the AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY door and walks off. When I turn back to the waiting room, all the seats are taken. I stand against a wall and once again pretend to read, checking out each person as they come up the stairs. Eventually I have to use the restroom. When I come out, several people are walking through the AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY door, and I think I see Mrs. Hunt. I ask the man behind the window if they called the case for Benton. “Yes, they did,” he says.
The fourth door on the right leads into a small office and I peek in. Sitting behind a desk is a woman, maybe forty, with short brown hair, half glasses like Polly’s, and a high-necked blouse. Right next to the door, in one of two chairs, is Yolanda. A plump white woman holding a clip
board sits in the chair next to her. They’re talking with Mrs. Hunt, who stands there, nodding at something they say. In front of the magistrate’s desk are six chairs crammed into two rows. Two people sit in the front row, a blond woman and a young man in a pinstriped suit. Certainly this is not the courtroom, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s getting up to go somewhere else.
I inch past Mrs. Hunt and move into the back row to sit in the corner against the wall, my purse and book in my lap. Mrs. Hunt finishes talking to Yolanda and sits next to me. We politely nod to each other. I want to ask her how Larissa is, but the room has gotten suddenly quiet, as if in expectation of something about to happen. There are two empty chairs. Larissa’s mother must not have come. Without a word from the magistrate, Yolanda reaches out her arm and swings the door closed. The magistrate clicks on a tape recorder on her desk.
“Good morning,” she says, studying her papers and lifting up a page. “I’m Magistrate Lucarelli. Let’s see who you all are.” She looks over her half glasses at Yolanda Walker and the woman sitting next to her. “Yolanda Walker, social worker for Larissa Benton, Leslie Crowley, assistant prosecutor for Family Services.” Yolanda and the plump woman both say, “Here,” just loud enough for the recorder to pick up.
“Michelle Benton, the child’s mother?” The magistrate looks up from her papers at the woman in front of me. The blonde. She has an inch of dark roots showing down the part in the middle of her hair.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Larissa’s mother.”
She’s white. Larissa’s mother is white. It never occurred to me, even though Larissa’s skin is not very dark. I’m so confused by this that I hardly hear what the magistrate says next. The man in the suit says something, and Mrs. Hunt next to me, but it’s just a muddle of words. I pictured Larissa’s mother in so many ways. Heavy, too thin, angry looking, doped up, young. But black, always black.
Now the magistrate is saying my name, with the tone that implies she has said it more than once. “Yes,” I say. “Here.”
“And you are an interested individual?” she asks.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
The woman with the dyed blond hair—Larissa’s mother—turns to stare at me. She has a small oval face, green eyes, a ton of black eyeliner, long flimsy bangs, and is wearing pale, shiny pink lipstick. She looks nothing like Larissa. Has someone made a mistake, like the kind you read about in the paper? County Gives Child to Wrong Mother?
“You came and took my baby?” she says, her eyes narrowed. “Who do you think you are, coming into my home like someone asked you in? Who the hell are you?”
“Excuse me,” Magistrate Lucarelli says firmly, so that Larissa’s mother turns back, not without one last nasty look at me. “I won’t allow that in here. Do you understand? Everyone in my courtroom will behave properly and will speak only when I ask them to. Once again, Mrs. Benton, do we have an understanding?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice is lower now than when she spoke to me, but she certainly doesn’t sound timid. She gives me one more evil glance back.
“Now then.” The magistrate turns to the assistant prosecutor. “Do we have good service on everyone?”
“Yes, we do, Your Honor.”
“All right. This is case number 0292109. Do you all have a copy of the complaint? Mrs. Benton?”
Jesus. Does that mean there have been 292,108 previous cases?
“Excuse me?” Larissa’s mother says. “The what?”
“The paperwork we mailed to you along with your appointment for this hearing?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I want to inform you that as a parent with a child in the custody of the county, you have the right to an attorney, the right to cross-examine your accusers, the right to due process of law, the right to speak on your behalf or remain silent. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be made available to you through the public defender’s office. Do you wish to be represented by an attorney, Mrs. Benton?” The words almost lose their meaning in the singsong way she says them, like disclaimers at the end of commercials.
Larissa’s mother shakes her head, and even from directly behind her, I can read that head shake. It means she doesn’t understand. “I just want Larissa back. She must be scared to death with strangers. I can’t stand to think how scared she must be.”
“And we would like you to get your daughter back, Mrs. Benton,” the magistrate says, “but there is a process to follow. We can stop now, and you can get a lawyer, or we can move on and begin to determine that process. Would you like representation?”
“I just want to do what’s right. Get her back soon as I can. You tell me how to do that, and I will.”
“Mrs. Benton, once again, would you like a lawyer to represent you?”
“Do I have to?” There’s worry in her voice now.
The magistrate sighs. “No. We can proceed right now without a lawyer, if you feel comfortable doing so.”
“I just want to do it quickly. Get her back. Let’s just get going on that.”
“So your answer is no? You don’t want an attorney?”
“That’s right. Go ahead.”
“Then let’s get started. Mrs. Walker, will you read from the complaint, please?”
“Larissa Benton was removed from her home on July nineteenth by Children and Family Services due to abandonment,” Yolanda says.
“And were you the social worker who removed her?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And were there reasonable efforts to prevent removal?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Mom was not on the premises, and had not been for at least three hours.”
“And this length of time was determined by?”
“Miss Marlowe, the interested individual, was in the apartment for more than three hours before calling the police. The police arrived at seven twenty-three, and the child was removed at eight-thirty, at which point Mom had still not appeared. At that time we believed she had been absent for forty-eight hours, but Mom now says she was gone only nineteen hours. Please note that amendment to the case. Either way, the time period was substantial. Certainly enough to warrant removal.”
Larissa’s mother stands up. She’s inches from the magistrate’s desk, and although she’s short, she has presence; her shoulders back, determination in her stance. “I got there right after they took her!”
“You will have your turn to speak in just a moment, Mrs. Benton. Please sit down.”
Larissa’s mother turns and looks at me before she sits back down. This woman, girl really, despises me. It feels physical, as if she were touching me.
“Is there a history with Children and Family Services, Mrs. Walker?” Magistrate Lucarelli asks when she’s certain Larissa’s mother will be quiet.
“Not with us, Your Honor, but the mother was arrested twenty-two months ago for driving under the influence of alcohol, and kicked the arresting officer in the shin, along with verbally abusing him. Her driver’s licence was revoked, and she was put on a year’s probation and was required to attend substance abuse counseling. When she arrived at CFS at eleven A.M. on the morning Larissa was brought to us, Mrs. Benton caused a scene and was verbally abusive to me. One of our security guards had to remove her to a conference room. I am certain I smelled alcohol on her breath at the time of our confrontation.”
“Is this last comment in the complaint?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Then put it in or don’t mention it.”
“I didn’t drink nothing for over a year!” Larissa’s mother says facing Yolanda. “Nothing until that night. I know I made a mistake. One bad mistake, but you can’t take my little girl away for that!” Now she turns back to the magistrate. Her tone changes. “Ma’am, my husband, he was killed two years ago. Shot for no reason ’cept he was black. I couldn’t take it—”
“Please, Mrs. Benton. You will have a turn. I promise you.”
“I just want you to know—”
The magis
trate holds up her hand, and Larissa’s mother doesn’t say anything else.
“Please finish, Mrs. Walker.”
Yolanda reads again from her papers, stating that Larissa was granted emergency temporary custody to the county and placed into a foster home. Temporary custody was granted three days later. Visitation had begun.
“Are there any relatives the child could have been placed with?”
“There is Mom’s father, Your Honor, but Mrs. Benton refuses his help.”
“No way he’s getting my baby,” Larissa’s mother says. “He’s a nasty son of a . . .” She looks around the room. “We don’t talk no more. Enough said.”
Yolanda Walker continues as the magistrate keeps her eyes on Larissa’s mother. “And there’s a set of grandparents on the deceased father’s side, but they are out of state and live in a trailer with only one bedroom. Also there is an aunt, who was in the hospital during the time of the incident, and who is unable to take the child at this time due to medical problems.”
The magistrate nods and writes on the paper in front of her. I can hear the tick of a clock above my head and Larissa’s mother’s feet shuffling back and forth on the floor. On the desk are photos of a husband and a dark-haired child.
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker,” Magistrate Lucarelli finally says. “Now, Mrs. Benton, you may plead to the complaint. Is it true or false?”
“I left to get a job. I was planning on being right back. I thought her auntie was coming to stay with her. I never meant to leave her alone for so long.”
“How long were you planing on leaving her alone, Mrs. Benton?” the magistrate says. “Never mind. I apologize for asking that. The complaint, as filed, do you agree to the facts?”
Larissa’s mother points at Yolanda. “She only lets me visit my daughter once a week at Metzenbaum, they won’t even tell me where she is, and they let this woman who came into my home go see her.” Now she turns to me again. I want to move my chair backward, but it’s against the wall. “Why’s she get to see my baby?” She puts one hand over the back of her chair. She has fake nails with little gemstones.