Amy Efaw

by After (v5. 0) (epub)

  The woman turns and moves toward the door.

  Devon follows. The chain of her leg irons ching, ching, chings between her feet behind the soft slap of the woman’s sandals.

  The woman opens the door. Devon steps inside.

  A waft of stale air, then a hushed ambience, flows over her. The door closes softly behind her.

  It’s the courtroom, but it doesn’t look anything like Devon had expected. This seems much smaller than anything she’d seen on TV. Up front is the judge’s bench. It’s a two-level, terraced wood structure. On the top level sits the judge, wearing a black robe. Two cylindrical white pillars sandwich him, one on each side, and the U.S. and Washington state flags stand tall behind him. On the lower level below the judge, two women sit facing each other and tip-tap on computers, their flat screens back to back. Three rectangular tables are perfectly spaced across the width of the room before the judge. People sit behind those tables, their backs to Devon. A uniformed officer is stationed in the corner of the room, covered in partial shadow.

  The woman with the clipboard slips off to the right, sitting in a chair near the door. And Devon is left standing at the threshold alone.

  Devon stares at the judge, unsure of what else to do.

  The judge’s hair is short and dark, his features lean. He is briskly sorting through a stack of papers before him. After a moment, he lifts his eyes, trains them on Devon. They are intense and commanding and seem to look right down into her, down into her mind. Like he can read what’s there.

  A shiver runs through her, and Devon shifts her eyes away to the gold nameplate on the front of the raised wood structure:HON. STEPHEN V. SAYNISCH

  Her judge.

  A light sweat breaks across Devon’s body, and her hands tremble. This is for real. She wipes her hands along the sides of her legs. A smattering of coughing and throat clearings comes from somewhere off to her left, and she jerks her eyes in the direction. A small window is there, and through that window she can see a long crowded bench along the back wall. The gallery. She yanks her eyes away, looks back at the judge. People are there in the gallery, watching her. Just like in all those courtroom dramas on TV, people are sitting back there and thinking things about her—terrible, imagined things.

  And her mom. Is her mom sitting there with them?

  Devon feels dizzy, light-headed. Queasy.

  A loud, staccato whisper. “Hey!”

  Devon’s eyes snap straight ahead toward the sound, toward a man sitting behind the table closest to her.

  He’s glaring over his shoulder—over his reading glasses—at her.

  “Sit!” he whisper-hisses, his index finger pointing at the chair on his right.

  Devon quickly shuffles forward, lowers herself into the chair, her heart thumping in her chest. She places her hands on her lap and folds them carefully.

  “I’m your lawyer,” the man whispers into her ear. “At least for today. We’ll talk later.”

  Devon nods because her mouth is too dry to trust with her voice. But her lawyer has already turned away from her, his attention directed at the piece of paper in his hands. Devon wets her lips and observes him cautiously out of the corner of her eye.

  His hair is sparse—the few tufts rooted between his receding hairline and his bald spot fluff up like the crest of some exotic bird. His dark suit is wrinkled, the shoulders lightly dusted with dandruff. As he scans the paper, his lips move, silently forming the words he sees.

  Nothing like what Devon expected a lawyer to look like. Nothing like those lawyers on TV. He’s sort of shabby. And old.

  But then she feels a twinge of guilt. After all, he’s her lawyer. He’s going to get her home today, away from this place. Right? Yes. Definitely, yes.

  “Just keep your mouth shut unless I say otherwise,” Devon’s lawyer whispers without looking at her. “If the judge asks you something”—he jabs his finger on the piece of laminated paper taped to the tabletop in front of her—“you have two choices.”

  Devon looks down. Two sentences in bold black scream:“Yes, Your Honor.”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Devon swallows and nods again.

  “State versus Devon Davenport, number zero zero, dash eight, dash seven five seven nine four, dash one.”

  Devon turns toward the new voice. Only a few feet to the left of her lawyer, behind his own table in the middle of the room, sits a young man speaking into a microphone. He wears a dark suit and power red tie and seems nervous by the way his leg shakes up and down under the table as he reads from the file before him. Looking across him, Devon can see the third table over on the far left side of the room. Behind it two women hunch over a stack of papers, their heads close—pointing at this, nodding at that.

  Her lawyer pokes her with his elbow, and Devon jerks upright. She glances at him apologetically.

  “Sit up,” he whispers again. “When the prosecutor speaks, act like you care.”

  “Your Honor,” the young man in the red tie—the prosecutor, apparently—is saying, “the respondent is before the court today for an arraignment—”

  Respondent? Wait. Didn’t her lawyer just say that man was the prosecutor? Or is that her—the “respondent”? Devon wants to ask, but her lawyer is so busy, rifling through a cardboard box of folders on the table before him. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. He pulls out a yellow. Opens it. Leafs through it.

  The young man drones on. Devon looks down at her hands in her lap, at her fingertips, specifically. They are gray. From the fingerprinting. Earlier today, the frizzy-haired woman behind the bulletproof glass had uncuffed Devon’s wrists before snip-ping off the hospital wristband and replacing it with another, similar band for Remann Hall. Then she held Devon’s hands. Had rolled each fingertip over the cool black ink, had stamped each onto a white card until all the little boxes had been filled with her prints. Devon couldn’t get the ink off completely, not even when she’d scrubbed her hair in the shower afterward.

  Devon shoves her fingers under her thighs, hiding them. The humiliation of the inprocessing is still so raw. Fingerprints were only the beginning. Then came the mug shot. The strip search. The lice check. The shower. A different woman—one with short gray hair—had watched from the corner of the bathroom as Devon stood naked before her, the water trickling over her shoulders, down her back.

  The woman had, at least, turned her eyes when Devon dried herself. But afterward, the woman had spotted the blood smeared on the rough towel, the small pinkish puddles on the tile floor.

  “I take it you’re pleading Not Guilty to this.” Her lawyer is looking at her, frowning over his glasses.

  Devon looks back at him blankly.

  “Pay attention,” he whispers again, harsher this time. “I’m talking about the charges just read against you.”

  Charges? Devon blinks. Charges against me? What had just been said about her? How could she have missed that? All the other people—in the gallery, behind the computers, sitting at the tables—had heard it. But she—The Respondent—had not.

  Her lawyer sighs heavily and turns back to the yellow folder, visibly displeased. “Generally, at this point in the process,” he says, speaking directly into the folder, “we plead Not Guilty. Once we get a chance to talk, things may change.”

  Devon nods, but her lawyer doesn’t see it. Doesn’t even check back to see if she understood. Doesn’t he care? He licks his index finger, flips to the next page in the folder. Shouldn’t he talk to her now? Ask the judge for a time-out or something and then take a few minutes to get to know her? Explain these charges to her? Or, at the very least, look at her? Why won’t he look at her?

  The red-tied prosecutor suddenly stands, starts moving toward Devon’s table. She feels herself shrink back.

  “Due to the age of the respondent,” he says, slapping down papers in front of Devon’s lawyer, “which is two months short of sixteen, and the severity of the charges”—he walks toward the judge’s bench and hands a duplicate copy to one
of the women typing at her computer, who in turn passes it up to the judge—“the state requests declination of jurisdiction to the adult criminal court.”

  Adult criminal court? Stillness blankets the courtroom, and Devon feels panic churning inside of her again. Clothing rustles behind her, someone sniffs, then a faint whispering. What does this mean? Criminal court. Criminal? Oh, God. They think she’s a criminal.

  Devon’s lawyer snatches up the papers and whips through them, shaking his head, muttering.

  Devon’s eyes dart from her lawyer to the judge to the prosecutor with the red tie. The prosecutor returns to his seat, hands folded on the table, also watching the judge.

  The judge finally surfaces from the papers. “Sounds reasonable.” He squints across at Devon’s lawyer. “Defense?”

  Devon watches as her lawyer slowly stands, his face still in the papers, shaking his head.

  “Your Honor,” her lawyer starts, his tone incredulous. “Clearly the State has not reviewed the respondent’s file.” He pointedly opens the yellow folder. “She has no prior arrests. And she’s maintained an exemplary school record.” He starts pulling papers out of the folder, one by one. Makes a show of reading details from each and then dropping them—flutter, flutter—before they finally rest on the table. “No disciplinary problems . . . exceptional grades . . . participates in school athletics . . . honors classes . . . tutors fellow students.” He looks up at the judge. “Your Honor, she’s as clean as you or I—”

  “However, she is currently charged with a crime, a number of felonies in fact. Correct, Counsel?” The judge looks annoyed. “You have received a copy of the charge sheet? Yes?”

  Devon’s lawyer stares back at the judge, saying nothing for a moment. Then, “‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ Your Honor. We must look at the respondent prior to the charges. Her record is spotless. Zero priors. How often do you see that in this courtroom? Her record screams rehabilitative potential, and at the very least she deserves the chance to demonstrate this potential with a hearing. She and respondents like her are the very reason the juvenile system was created.”

  The prosecutor disagrees. It goes back and forth for a time, the young man and Devon’s lawyer both making speeches with big words, waving their hands all around. Devon tries to stick with them, but their words are too unfamiliar, her body too tired, the voices too buzzing, blending together. The small courtroom, squeezing her in, making her feel trapped. Caged. Her forehead sinks into her hand, her eyelids droop closed.

  Is she really the person sitting here? Is she really wearing this orange polyester jumpsuit with the chains between her feet? Is there really a judge in a black robe presiding over all these people? It’s all so surreal. Just this morning, Devon had awoken to a nurse with a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs and toasted English muffins, packaged apple jelly and butter on the side. The nurse had gone over the discharge instructions with Devon then, absently smoothed her hair, petted her, like she was some little lost child.

  How could it have come to this so quickly? How could it have come to this at all?

  “All right,” the judge breaks in. “Probation, please weigh in here.”

  One of the women from the table on the far side of the room clears her throat and starts to speak. And she’s saying, “Jennifer Davenport, the respondent’s mother.”

  Her mom. Devon sits straighter in her seat, her heart beating fast.

  So, is her mom somewhere in this courtroom? Maybe she’s been here all along, silently willing Devon to turn around and look at her, to see her sitting there in the gallery supporting her. Maybe she’ll stand up right now and beg the judge to let her daughter come home, promising that this time she’ll take good care of her. Really good care of her.

  The woman across the room is still talking. Devon listens as the woman explains to the judge and both lawyers and the uniformed officer stationed in the corner and the women typing at their computers and the woman with the clipboard sitting near the door and the people watching from the gallery that Devon’s mom is currently “unavailable.”

  That Jennifer Davenport, the respondent’s mother, has failed to report to the police for questioning.

  That Jennifer Davenport, the respondent’s mother, has not turned up at either place of her employment—the Safeway at the intersection of 25th Street and Proctor or her bartending job at Katie Downs on Ruston Way.

  That Jennifer Davenport, the respondent’s mother, has not returned voice mails left on her cell phone.

  That Jennifer Davenport, the respondent’s mother, has apparently vacated her residence at Kingston Manor Apartments. That at this point in time, it is unknown whether she has done so temporarily or permanently.

  “And,” the woman finishes, “she is not present in the court today, Your Honor.”

  The woman says all this with no emotion, so matter-of-factly, like it’s no big deal. Like it’s expected.

  Devon crosses her arms in front of her aching chest, hugging herself against the hurt and disappointment and guilt. She puts her head down on the table.

  All Devon can think is her mom’s disappeared. Again.

  But this time, it’s Because of Me.

  Devon’s throat tightens. That look on her mom’s face that morning, the shock and disbelief. That look that said she was going to bolt. It’s right there all over again, filling Devon’s mind, refusing to be shoved away.

  Devon never should have hoped for anything else. She should have known her mom wouldn’t come to be here with her today.

  Her lawyer kicks her foot—“I said, sit up!”—and Devon snaps alert. She drops her arms to her sides.

  And then something truly horrible happens.

  Devon’s breasts suddenly feel like they’re being stabbed with a hundred pins, like they’re two huge pincushions. Like something is wringing them, hard.

  The nurse who had brought breakfast this morning had said this would happen. “Don’t be scared. You’ll need to bind yourself. Get an Ace bandage. Or a really tight sports bra. And ice, lots of ice.”

  Devon gasps with the shock of it, the pain of it.

  All eyes lock on her.

  All eyes watch as her jumpsuit changes.

  Two wet, warm circles form where her breasts touch the fabric, and spread.

  Milk. My milk. Oh, God, why?

  And Devon starts to cry.

  chapter four

  The gavel bangs, and a guard ushers Devon out of the courtroom.

  Devon’s face is down, hidden by the straight black strands falling across it like a widow’s veil. She watches only the gray, industrial carpet under her feet as she moves forward, her arms crossed tightly in front of her to hide her chest. She can feel the dampness there against the heels of her clenched fists—the cool, tacky dampness.

  What had just happened in there? Everything was chaos at the end.

  Her lawyer had rushed a whisper in her ear, a whisper that Devon hadn’t fully heard. She’d been distracted, desperately pressing her fists into her breasts to stem that warm and sticky oozing. But she was miserably unsuccessful, just as she had been unsuccessful That Night when she could no more control her body than she could stop each ticking second. That Night when this nightmare had begun.

  “We’ll talk,” her lawyer had said. “Very soon.” Devon had looked directly at him then. She’d needed some sort of connection. But he’d quickly turned away from her to straighten his stack of papers, smacking them on the tabletop one or two extra times to give himself something to do until the guard appeared and led Devon away.

  “Hold up a sec,” the guard tells Devon now that they are in the quiet hallway outside the courtoom. He squats before Devon to unlock her leg irons and remove them. “It’s Devon, right?” He looks up at her. “Devon Davenport?”

  Devon nods.

  He smiles as he straightens, awkwardly holding the leg irons in one hand. “Well, now it’ll be easier to walk at least.” He has dark, honest eyes that Devon trusts. His gaze drop
s for a moment to Devon’s tightly crossed arms.

  Devon looks down at her feet.

  “Hey,” he says. “I know it isn’t exactly easy in there. Especially the first time.”

  Devon nods quickly. She’s anxious to get moving, to reach the next appointed place.

  “All right,” he says. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” Devon whispers.

  “Then let’s go.” He slowly leads her away from the courtroom and through the hallway, a maze of white walls and olive green doors and gray carpet. When they finally stop, it’s inside a small and narrow room, a large closet actually, with shelves of folded things: blankets and sheets and pillows. The guard selects some of each and tightly rolls a blanket around it all. Devon allows her eyes to look around as the guard busies himself with collecting these things. She notices a shelf with jumpsuits, both blue and orange, and another with white tube socks and undershirts and rust-colored slides. Yet another holds white towels, just like the one she’d used to dry her body this morning. Rough and white and thin.

  The shower. Her nakedness. The blood, diluted pink from the tepid water dripping down her legs.

  Devon feels herself shake with the memory, and she hates herself for it. Hates her lack of control over her own body. Her lack of control, period. She hugs herself tighter.

  The guard is watching Devon now. He had just said something and is waiting for her to respond.

  Devon feels his eyes on her and looks up quickly. “I’m sorry?” she whispers. “I didn’t hear—”

  “Your bedding. The residents here carry it to their unit themselves. So . . . ”

  Devon hesitates a moment, studying the unwieldy bundle in the guard’s arms. Doesn’t he know why she’s here? Hasn’t he heard what had happened? About the kind of physical condition she’s in? No, not completely, she decides. He’d never ask her to carry all that by herself if he knew. She feels a tiny flutter of relief.

  “Oh.” Devon clears her throat. “Okay. Sure.” She turns away from him slightly, so he won’t see the front of her jumpsuit, and carefully unwraps one arm from across her chest and then the other and reaches for the bundle.