Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away

by Alice Anderson

Oh yes, I sure do want them to have a daddy.

  All kids deserve a daddy.

  Sure they do.

  Yes, this is sad, I agree.

  Yes, sir.

  No, sir.

  Oh, dear.

  Gosh.

  Me, worried?

  I just want whatever’s best for everyone, including Dr. Rivers.

  Yes, sir.

  No, sir.

  Happy to.

  Thank you, sir.

  This is how one acts when one is filled to the brim of the brim of the deepest back corner of one’s heart with fear and dread. This is how one acts when one is being questioned in a metal folding chair in a trailer courtroom when one’s published poetry book is being used against you as evidence of “pornography and perversion and unfitness to raise children.” This is how you act when everything you hold dear—when the babies who are made of your flesh, whose bones are your bones, whose hearts are your heart, whose sweet bodies lie next to you at night because they are still afraid their daddy will come back and finish killing you, who smell like starlight and sugar cookies and sing like birds filling blue skies in a thousand tomorrows—is being held just out of your reach, might just very well be snatched away from you, forever.

  This is how you act when you’ll do anything, anything at all, to hold on to the only thing in the world you want.

  I stand outside while Avery testifies for almost an hour without me present, without an attorney of her own. I’ll read the court transcripts later about how Judge Taylor asks her if she knows the difference between right and wrong and asks her if she’s a Christian and then asks her if she goes to church and then asks her which one and then tells her about his daughter and then tells her he told his daughter how she, Avery, was coming to his court today and how his daughter asked him to give her this Jesus bear. I’ll read about how she explains to the court over and over again about how she slipped in the shower and scraped her back against the Tupperware pitcher Mama uses to rinse the shampoo out of her long hair. I’ll read about how she goes off in a tangent about her favorite cartoon, Charlie and Lola, and speaks in a British accent and no one can understand her when she’s referring to a character called “Marv” and they think she’s saying the color “mauve.”

  “So then Mauve,” Avery says in her British accent.

  “I’m sorry, the color mauve?” Judge Taylor will ask.

  “No, Marv,” Avery will correct.

  “The color mauve?”

  “No, Marv.”

  “Mauve?”

  “Marv.”

  “Let’s move on.”

  I’ll read how Daddy took her to the emergency room and made her get x-rays but still took her swimming after at his pool. I’ll read how he didn’t have photos taken of her back at the ER but he made her strip naked on the dirty carpet of his condo and took photos of her with his phone. I’ll read how, when asked how I punish her, she says, “Sometimes I even have to clean my room.” I’ll read all this and be thankful that I wasn’t in the courtroom with her, as all of it would have made me think I’d be going home with her, to put this horrible day behind us once and for all and for good.

  Judge Taylor calls us all back in.

  “Thank you all for coming today. These situations are never easy. When serious allegations such as these are made, I am bound by law to see them through. Therefore, I’m ordering that the children be placed in the custody of Dr. Liam Rivers as of 4:00 P.M. today. I’m also ordering that Dr. Liam Rivers, Avery Macen Anderson Rivers, and Alice Mary Anderson Rivers undergo a complete psychological evaluation over the next ten days in the office of Dr. Colette V. Colette. While this evaluation is under way, Mrs. Rivers shall have no contact whatsoever with the three minor children.”

  I have a photo from that day: it’s of the sweet three and me sitting on the stair landing just before they left. We’re all trying to smile. There is an Adidas bag packed with their things. Grayson looks stricken. Avery looks exhausted, afraid. Aidan’s diaper shows above his shorts. It’s the first time any of them will spend the night without me.

  At the bottom of the stairs, discarded, is a purple teddy bear with a white cross emblazoned on the belly.

  EMPTY

  The next morning, there was no reason to get out of bed. For once, I wished I had the addiction. I wished I could drink myself into oblivion, swallow a handful of pills, plunge a needle in my arm, anything that would dislodge the horrible glass shard of pain that was angled between heart and lung. I wanted to go into Avery’s room and crawl under her covers, but someone was in there—someone who’d flown to fucking backassward Mississippi to my rescue, to no avail, was in there.

  I’d failed.

  The kids were gone.

  I wanted everyone out.

  I should have gone out and told everyone thank you. I was too destroyed to be polite. I’d used up a lifetime of polite in that metal folding chair the day before. At least I thought I had; I had no idea how many years of polite the battle still ahead would require.

  I was about to get a Ph. fucking D. in polite.

  But one by one, in the days that followed, everyone flew back to their normal lives, in normal states, where they had no-fault divorce. Where they had courtrooms. Where judges don’t hand out Jesus bears. Where poetry isn’t pornography. I could tell they couldn’t wait to get out of Mississippi, and I couldn’t blame them. I stopped pointing out, on the drive to the airport, the way the moss hanging in the oaks looked like torn lace. The way the moon hung over the low gulf, the exact same white as the sugar-spun beach. I stopped trying to convince anyone there was beauty in the place I loved so much. Because I could see the disdain in their eyes as they passed the bombed-out, post-Katrina state of the place. I knew they didn’t see the empty Waffle House signs in the sky as frames of something beautiful, as possibility. One by one, they each said the same sentence to me before they left: “You have got to get out of here.”

  My life had become something I needed to escape.

  “The court will never let me leave,” I answered.

  I wondered, when I’d cried myself to sleep at night, why no one ever warned me how much I’d lose by trying to leave? That’s the part no one ever tells you.

  People ask all the time: Why did she stay? What they don’t understand is that leaving is often—maybe always—much, much worse.

  There are women who don’t survive the leaving.

  There are tiny tombstones of tiny humans who don’t survive the leaving.

  Why hadn’t I just taken the three crisp hundred-dollar bills Liam left on the counter the day after he attacked me, bought some bikes, and gone on with life as usual? At the very least, why hadn’t I secretly saved money instead of running away? Made some kind of plan? Tricked him? Built up evidence against him? Anything but this? It seems so obvious in hindsight. But the wounded bird doesn’t know to build the secret nest.

  A wounded deer leaps highest? Fuck you, Emily Dickinson.

  He’d told me exactly this would happen for years.

  If you try to leave me, I’ll destroy you.

  If you try to leave me, I’ll good ol’ boy you into the ground.

  If you try to leave me, I’ll have you put away in an institution, declared insane.

  If you try to leave me, you’ll never see the kids again.

  All of it was coming true. The children were gone. And I was about to start an intense psychological evaluation with a doctor who wore maxi pads affixed to her dress. I’d been called a pornographer, a pervert, a child abuser, suicidal, and homicidal, a murderous danger to my own children.

  I stayed in bed most of the day, watching the flat, lifeless sky.

  How was it that my husband had beat me nearly to death and now I was alone, in bed, while he had custody of my children and I was accused of abuse?

  Maybe I am crazy.

  Is this justice?

  How do you leave a husband, covered from foot to crown with knife wounds and hand-shaped bruises, file
for divorce, and end up the accused?

  This is why people stay. This.

  There was no choice but to keep fighting.

  All day, I obsessively Googled custody evaluation and parental alienation and fathers’ rights and realized that I wasn’t in for a fair fight. I would have to not only defend myself and tell the truth, I’d also have to be smarter than Buford.

  I hated him at least as much now as Liam.

  If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was research. I read snippets of books online and tracked down e-mail addresses and phone numbers of experts. Something inside me told me this wasn’t going to be an ordinary fight.

  A single day without them made clear I’d never survive a life without my babies. No way, no how was I letting that happen.

  PINK FLAMINGOS AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

  I woke up and chose a nondescript outfit from my closet. Long, sand-colored linen skirt, peachy-pink T-shirt from Walmart, pair of Clarks Mary Janes. Typical mom-wear. I was going to be there for eight hours straight for psychological testing; I wanted to be comfortable. I also wanted to look as non-murderous as possible.

  I drove over to Gulfport. On the road leading to Dr. Colette’s office, a man stood on the outcrop with a big handmade sign that read, THE WAGES OF SIN IS A HURRICANE! REPENT, SINNERS! NO GAMBLING ON LAND! There was a great debate going on if the casinos should be rebuilt as barges, as they were before the storm, or if they should be finally allowed on land. I guess the good Christians of the Gulf Coast felt gambling wasn’t so bad if they weren’t doing it on God’s green earth. But when multimillion-dollar casino barges were torn asunder in the storm, the fate of the city’s coffers were in jeopardy if they didn’t agree to change the ordinance and allow casinos landside.

  I felt like I was gambling with my children. Say one wrong word, answer one question wrong, and that’s it—they’re gone. Addison had already warned me to “be honest, no matter what.”

  She’d also told me that if I lost custody, even if in error, there was little to no chance they’d reverse it back to me in the future, as the courts believed that was too much wear and tear on the children.

  The stakes were high.

  I pulled into a long strip mall of one-story offices in a horseshoe formation surrounding a gravelly parking lot with an Arby’s in the middle. Sitting there in the car, I felt such a sense of panic and dread. How could strangers, people I don’t know, who don’t know me, have the entire fate of my children in their hands? What if she believed everything Liam has said about me? I’d already been to one social worker who met with me once and then decided, with Liam’s help, that I was a murderous multiple personality that beat my children. That might murder my children.

  It felt like the world had gone mad.

  I dialed Mama.

  “Mama. Am I crazy? Is it possible I’m crazy and I don’t know it?”

  “Hush up! Of course not. Go in there and let her see who you really are and what hogwash this is.”

  I stepped out of the car, walked to the office, opened the door, and went in.

  In the small waiting room, the floors were linoleum, and the receptionist, Mr. Matthew P. Colette, was partitioned behind a bulletproof glass wall. Taped up next to him as he greeted me was a very large, smiling picture of President George W. Bush, signed to Dr. Colette V. Colette. He had me sign some documents and asked me to take a seat. The walls were hung with posters about drug abuse and domestic violence, and there were AA pamphlets on the end tables.

  “Alice?” Dr. Colette announced my name, loud and clear and friendly from an entrance to a hall to my left. “Come on back!”

  She was wearing a long skirt, a T-shirt with a flamingo appliqué, sturdy walking shoes, and was still walking with a cane. Her well-coiffed beehive was again impeccable. Stepping into her office was a sight for a panicked mama’s sore eyes: every inch of shelf space and desktop and floor space was covered with pink flamingos of every kind. Carved ceramic flamingos. Cartoon plush flamingos. Blow-up plastic flamingos. Rubber dog toy flamingos. Wooden carved flamingos. Flocked holiday ornament flamingos. Big lawn flamingos. Candle flamingos. Fluffy pillow flamingos.

  “Avery sure got a kick out of those.”

  “Oh, was Avery here?”

  “She hasn’t had her eval yet, but she came in with Liam’s folks when they were dropping him off and picking him up.”

  “How did his evaluation go?”

  Oh, my Lord, did I just ask that? That is the worst, most horrible way to start my day, I thought.

  Dr. Colette didn’t seem to mind, saying, “Well, let’s just say it was interesting. Does he always dress like that?”

  “Dress like…?”

  “He’s an interesting little fellow, that’s for sure. I can’t even imagine the two of you married.”

  This is sure getting off to an interesting start. Is she trying to trick me into being inappropriate?

  I felt so nervous I could hardly speak. Dr. Colette explained what we’d be doing all day and that she’d be recording everything and that there were no right or wrong answers on any of the tests and to just be honest and do the best I could.

  No right or wrong, except if my answer costs me my children.

  The first test was to be an IQ test.

  “You ready?” Dr. Colette asked, a wry smile spreading on her wide face.

  “I guess so. It’s not quantum physics, right?”

  “We’ll see,” Dr. Colette said, winked, and laughed uproariously. She pressed Record on the cassette deck on her crowded desk.

  And so it began. I can’t really remember most of the questions; it all passed like a blur—math questions, logic questions, reasoning questions, philosophical questions. How my IQ had anything to do with my fitness was beyond me, but at that moment it felt like I was in a race to save my children and every question was do or die. But as we got into it, I started to relax, mostly because, much to my surprise, Dr. Colette Colette was approaching it like it was Friday night game night down to the First Baptist. My answers to the language questions plum cracked up Dr. Colette Colette, and I started to feel like maybe she was going to be okay. Maybe I could trust her. When we got to the final question and I answered it, she paused, said, “Come again?”

  I answered it again.

  “Tell me how you got that.”

  I explained.

  “Well, hot damn. That does make sense!”

  It was my turn now. “Come again?”

  “Alice, you just explained why Buford called you an ‘evil genius’! I don’t know about evil,” she said, and lowering her voice to almost a whisper as if Liam and Judge Taylor were eavesdropping on the other side of the door, she continued, “but I already suspect that’s a big load of bullshit. But I’m not going to be surprised at all if you’re a genius. I ain’t never in twenty years of practice had anyone get that question right.”

  “Well, uh, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Call me Dr. Colette; we’re going to be here awhile.”

  She took me through a battery of tests: word matching, strange strings of questions, long lists of questions about my parenting style and skills, what I knew about Avery (apparently, she asked Liam and me the same list of questions and then planned to ask Avery and see which one of us got more of them right).

  After a short bathroom break—where there was flamingo-shaped soap and flamingo-printed hand towels, my face peering back at me with a desperate pink sheen to it I barely recognized like some mama beast who’d been searching three days for her babies in the wild, half-starved and furious, whittled down to ache and deprivation—I headed back into Dr. Colette V. Colette’s office.

  “I forgot to take your picture!” Dr. Colette boomed.

  It amazed me she still had this much energy. She held up a Polaroid camera and told me to smile. I tried to look as pleasant and motherly as I could. The camera flashed, and the photo spit out, and Dr. Colette set about waving it in the air like a fan at a Sunday late service.


  “Oh, that’s a nice one,” she said, turning the photo toward me. I looked like I was stricken with sorrow, as if someone had just died. “Did you bring the binder?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I handed her the carefully constructed binder I’d put together in the last few days. Inside were letters from dozens of friends attesting to my fitness as a parent. There were letters from the kids’ teachers, the priest at church, Sunday school teachers, relatives, the ladies from Walmart even. And at the back was a long letter from Thomas Lux, an esteemed American poet who also happened to be my mentor and teacher when I was in grad school at Sarah Lawrence College studying poetry. Tom had taken time to write about my book of poetry, my work, who I was as a person and a mother, and what poetry on the page meant. And he was very clear about why it should have no effect in the determination of my fitness as a mother. He was willing to drop everything to come and testify on my behalf as well.

  When I’d called Tom and told him what was happening, he cut me off midsentence, “Are you fucking kidding me?” he’d boomed.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “What do I need to do? Where do I need to be?”

  “For now, just write a letter, if you can,” I asked.

  “I can’t believe this shit! It’s not the nineteen fucking fifties,” Tom said. “Tell me where to send it and I’m happy to be there once you get to court.”

  Dr. Colette took her time reading Tom’s letter, then asked if I didn’t mind if she shared it with her husband.

  “Well sure, of course not. But why?”

  “Well, Miss Alice, we happen to be big fans of poetry.”

  Now, that was the last thing I expected to come out of Dr. Colette V. Colette’s mouth.

  “And we like to dabble in the poetry a little bit ourselves.”

  Well, hot damn.

  “We have taken the time to read your book.”

  Where is this going? Please let this be good. Please let this be good.

  “And frankly, we find Dr. Rivers’s assessment, as well as Miss Kahn’s assessment, to be complete and utter horseshit!”

  There was total silence in the room.