He is watching me. I see him peeking through her ugly 1990s plaid curtains. And now he’s coming outside, exactly like the divorce orders say he’s not supposed to.
The kids are inside with me now, Alex in front and Lucia in back, completely silent. They sense the tension, the coming confrontation. Why does he do this?
He walks around to my side and waits until I roll down the window. I’d rather drive away, but I don’t want to create additional drama in front of the kids either.
“I have to talk to you,” he says.
“I don’t have anything to say.” Asshole. Bastard. I’m not going to say those words. The kids won’t hear me say what I’m thinking.
“I’ll call you later tonight,” he says.
I roll up the window and drive away. I’ve said nothing, but the kids are frozen in their seats. Afraid. I hear it in their silence, smell the fear in the air between us. Why does he do this—make them afraid? Make us all afraid?
“How was your Thanksgiving, guys?” I say.
“Good,” they both mumble.
“Who wants ice cream?” I say, my voice creaky and thin. Good parenting skills there, offering calories as comfort. Great job, piggy.
Stop. Stop. Don’t let him get you to this point.
The kids mumble nothing words.
“Or how about frozen yogurt?” I say.
Jesus Christ. Listen to yourself.
I hate lying here in the dark waiting for him. This time I’m waiting for the phone call, but it feels just like when we were married and I’d wait for him to come to bed and continue whatever argument we’d started earlier in the evening. Or I’d lie in a pool of imaginary sweat, right next to him, and wait for him to say anything at all. Or I’d wait for him to come home after I’d put the kids to bed with a story: Daddy’s working late so he can make extra money to buy you nice things.
It feels the same now as it did back then, this constant strife between us. When does it end? What do I have to do to end it?
This is why people kidnap their own children—pick them up and haul ass across the border. Faces on a milk carton. “Last seen with mother.” It’s to get away from this—the unending unhappiness created by a single mistake.
Getting married was the biggest mistake I ever made, and yet it created Alex and Lucia, the best part of my life.
How does that happen, over and over? Everyone loves their kids—every normal person does—but everyone gets divorced. I bet I’m not the only one who lies awake fantasizing about some way—time machine, turkey baster—to have my kids, but without having any history with the other half of their DNA. I think about elephants, the way the females live with the babies and only visit the male elephants to get more babies. One of the girls at work calls her ex “the sperm donor.” I wish that’s all Mike had been.
The phone rings at 10:47 P.M. I answer without saying anything.
“Natasha?”
Don’t say my name, this way or the old way. Don’t speak to me, enemy. Villain who stole my youth. The clock on my nightstand ticks. The tree outside my window makes a miniblind-slatted shadow on my wall.
“What do you want?” I say.
His voice is raspy. “Listen. You’re not going to win this one. You may as well just meet me this week and sign the papers.” So now it’s that easy, in his mind. He’s so certain of getting his way.
“That’s not going to happen,” I say.
“Natasha, you don’t want me to take you to court over this.”
“Go right ahead. You don’t have a leg to stand on.” He’s getting whiny-pitched already, but I keep quiet and steady. I won’t let him upset me.
“No, you’re wrong,” he says. “I have a list. There’s your temper, there’s Alex’s accidents at school, his slow physical development—”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” I say.
“—and then there’s the company you’ve been keeping,” he says.
Suddenly it makes sense. The man in the silver economy car, watching me as I left the hotel. Both hotels. It must have been one of Mike’s friends. Or maybe a detective. Oh, God, that’s it—he found out that I’m sleeping with someone else, and he’s jealous, angry that I’ve moved on, even though he’s already done the same thing. That’s why he’s putting me through this.
I laugh. I can’t help it. “You try to bring that up, Mike. Tell them I’m dating someone while the kids aren’t here, then tell them how you’re practically living with a woman out of wedlock and forcing the kids to live with her, too.” It’s ridiculous. Listen to how it sounds out loud. Why am I worried about this?
He says, “I’m not talking about that.”
“Oh, you’re not?” I’m sitting up now. I feel it happening—the tone of my voice, my lip curling into a sneer. I should hang up on him before I lose my temper, not waste any more of my night engaging in this. Where’s his girlfriend? Shouldn’t they be in bed together now? Is she lying there next to him, waiting for him to finish with me? Maybe that’s what it takes for him to get aroused now—an argument with his ex.
I’m done with this loser. I’m hanging up.
He says, “I’m talking about your friends—those women you let baby-sit my children. The prostitute, the drug addict, and the old lady they hang out with.”
“What?”
“Are you so desperate to keep the kids away from me, that you’d rather have them with people like them?” he says.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I’m sitting bolt upright now. What is he talking about?
If he’s hired a detective, then he probably found out that Sara waits tables at a strip club, and he’s exaggerating that into something worse. He’s willing to lie about it to the judge. “She isn’t a prostitute or a drug addict.”
“Are you serious?” He laughs a fake laugh. “You don’t even know who you’ve got watching our kids?”
I should hang up now.
“That friend of yours—the little dark one? She’s a hooker. She works at a place called the Dollhouse up by Continental. You can see her half naked online and everything.”
He’s lying.
“And then your rich white friend? She buys pot every week from a thug who delivers to that rathole you live in. And last weekend she was partying at the house of a known Ecstasy dealer.”
Oh, God. I feel sick. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying,” he says. “Did you know or didn’t you? God, Natasha—I can’t decide which is worse. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you even care?”
I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe.
He presses on, pressing on me to get his way. “You can meet me tomorrow and sign the papers my attorney’s drawn up. You can avoid going to court altogether.”
Sara told us she was a waitress at her cousin’s strip club. By the airport. Did she lie? Why would she lie?
Or maybe the question should be, why was I so quick to believe her?
And Haley…Haley hangs out with drug dealers? When? How?
I’ve already caught her lying to me once, though. What’s wrong with me? How can I have fallen for this? Jesus. Are Haley and Sara scamming me in some way? How stupid am I? What kind of mother—
“Natasha? Are you still there?”
I make a noise. I can’t help it.
“So are you coming to meet me or not? Will you sign the papers? I need to know right now.”
There’s nothing to say. There’s no defense. I can’t even explain it to myself.
I remember Sara telling us about the strip club like it was a joke. And Haley so quick to take interest in it. Then Haley’s story about her ex…the way she made me think they were separated when they weren’t. And Haley’s been so freaked out lately—maybe she is a drug addict. How would I even know if she was? I don’t know anyone who does drugs.
What was I thinking? I wanted to believe that I could trust these people, and I was stupidly, horribly wrong. Maybe I don’t deserve to have custody of the
kids. I can’t even keep them safe.
“Natasha?”
Yes, I probably will have to meet him to sign the papers. I don’t want this to go to court, do I? This is it. This is the end. He’s going to take the kids away from me.
No. It doesn’t make sense.
I hang up. I turn off the phone. I lie down again. But I already know that I won’t fall asleep.
This time they deliver the subpoena to me at work. I accept it as graciously as possible, hoping the other girls will think it’s a run-of-the-mill couriered letter and not a service of suit.
As soon as I can, I sneak the papers to the ladies’ room, lock myself into a stall, and read.
In addition to the items listed before, the Defendant regularly exposes the children to the company of a prostitute, Sara Cardenas, employed by the brothel known as the Dollhouse.
The Defendant exposes the children to the company of a drug addict, Haley Harrison, who purchases illegally obtained prescription pills from former convict John “J.D.” Chase.
The Defendant regularly neglects her duties as a parent in order to have a sexual affair with a man she has only recently met.
The Plaintiff prays that the Court will turn over custody of Alex and Lucia to their father immediately, for the sake of their health and safety.
Sara
I’m never gonna forget that phone call, because it made me feel so bad.
I was at the apartment, getting ready to drop Junior at Geronima’s so I could go to work. It was right after Thanksgiving, so the girls were back at school.
I saw that Natasha was calling me, and I figured it was something important, so I quit messing with my makeup and picked up the phone.
The first thing she said, before I could even say hello, was, “Sara, where do you work?”
I was like, “What?”
And she goes, “Tell me where you work. Tell me the truth, right now.”
And I knew then that someone had told her. I didn’t know who—it couldn’t have been Haley or Geronima, because they didn’t know. They thought I was working at the lingerie store, just like Natasha did. So I was freaking out about that, wondering who the hell it was. But I had to say something, so I said, “I work at a place called the Dollhouse.”
She made this noise into the phone, kind of like she was crying and kind of like she was going to throw up. She told me, “You lied.”
I said, “I know. I’m sorry. But I had to.”
She was so upset. I could hear it in her voice, but I didn’t know why yet. She was like, “Why did you lie to me? You told me you were a waitress, and I didn’t care about that, where you were working.” And then she said, “But you’re a prostitute. And you’re a liar.”
Yeah. That’s what she said. A prostitute and a liar.
What’d I say? What could I say? I told her, “I’m not a prostitute. I’m only a dancer.” But I felt like I was lying when I said it. You know? I mean, it was bad enough that she thought I was still a waitress. If I told her, “I got promoted to stripper,” she’d be thinking I was dancing onstage in my cousin’s club. But if she knew what I was doing for real, she’d probably call that being a whore. Right? Someone like her—that’s how she’d see it.
She told me…
Fuck. This sucks. I don’t want to talk about this right now.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah, just for a second.
Where are they, in the bathroom? Oh, I see the box over there. Okay. Give me a second.
I know. I’m not embarrassed because I’m crying. I’m embarrassed because it’s such a shitty thing, the way it happened. You know? I’d give anything if I could go back and make it turn out different.
So yeah. She told me I was a prostitute and a liar, and I said no, I was only a dancer. And then she said, “I’m sitting here looking at the website, Sara. I’m looking at you naked online. What kind of dancer does that?”
Yeah, the website. I didn’t tell you that part, did I? That was something Jackie made everybody do. We had our pictures on this website, so customers could see what we looked like before they came in. I didn’t want to do it, but they made us. And I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, because it didn’t have my real name, you know? How was anybody going to know to look for me on a stripper website with the name Raquel?
She found it, though, and she said she was looking right at it. So I started trying to explain everything to her. But she wasn’t listening. She was so pissed off, you know? I don’t think she could even hear me talking at that point.
She said…This is the part I remember the worst. The most. She said, “I wish I’d never met you. You’ve ruined my life.”
And then she hung up on me.
It wasn’t until later, when I heard from Geronima, that I figured out everything that was going on. Natasha had just gotten the extra papers from her asshole husband, telling her that she was a bad mother because she let her kids hang around with a prostitute and that he was going to take them away from her so they could be safe.
When I heard all that, I couldn’t even blame her for being mad at me. She was right—I’d ruined her life. I’d fucked everything up.
I mean, yeah, her ex-husband had it wrong. I guess the detective he hired didn’t do the full job, or else he told the truth about me and then Mike decided to make it sound worse than it really was. But it didn’t even matter. He had dirt on Natasha, because of me. And because of that dumb-dumb Haley, too. It turned out that idiot she was trying to hook up with—J.D.—he had some minor record for selling X or whatever. And he was selling Haley weed, too. I don’t even think she was smoking it—she was just buying a little bit every week so she’d have an excuse to see him. He only took her out one time, to some stupid party, and of course it turned out that the dudes running the party were real drug dealers, so Mike and his detective had a field day with that. It didn’t even matter if it was true, what they were saying about Haley and me. They had enough to make Natasha look bad.
And so she had to quit talking to us, totally. She already looked bad enough just knowing us. But her lawyer said she had to do damage control and act like she wasn’t our friend anymore.
Well, I guess she really wasn’t, after that.
Yeah, you’re right. It was hard. It sucked. I felt like shit about the whole thing, for a long time. I still do.
Geronima tried to talk to Natasha. She told her all about what I was doing at the Dollhouse and why. And later she told me that she thought Natasha understood and wasn’t really mad at me anymore. But she still wouldn’t talk to me. Of course she couldn’t. And I didn’t even blame her for that. She had to do what was right for her kids.
Haley? Oh, she never even talked to Natasha about it. She totally bailed as soon as she found out. Geronima said Natasha called and left Haley a pissed-off voice mail, the same day she called me. Haley heard that shit and couldn’t deal with it. She packed up her stuff, packed up Jared, and took off.
Back to her husband’s house, yeah. Of course. Where else was she gonna go? She called me a couple of times after she left, but it was either real late at night or when I was busy at work. Then, when I’d try to call her back, she wouldn’t answer. But Geronima told me she’d gone to her husband to try to work things out with him. And I was just like, whatever. I mean, I felt bad for her. But I felt way worse for myself.
Yeah, my kids were still going to Geronima’s, and she was still watching Natasha’s kids, too. But not as much. I noticed that Natasha stopped taking her kids over there as much as she used to. And she quit taking them out to the park. And I felt bad about that, so I stopped taking mine to the park, too. You know? I didn’t want her to feel like she had to stay locked up inside all the time, to keep away from me.
Yeah. It totally sucked.
Because I’d spent all this time feeling happy that she and Haley were around—that I finally had friends who weren’t total losers, you know? For a while it was starting to look like things were changing for me, like my life was getting bet
ter. But of course I found a way to mess it all up. Just like always.
Natasha
Looking at the subpoena makes my stomach hurt. Literally. I want to throw it out the window, into these bushes behind the office parking lot, and drive away. Drive back home and act like I never saw it.
I don’t even have to reread the words. Anytime I see a court paper with our family-court number typed on top—our court-case number, which I know by heart by now—I get actual cramps in my stomach. It’s posttraumatic stress disorder, just like they say happens to the soldiers when they go to Middle Eastern restaurants. Seeing this paper makes me think of sitting in the hallway of the family-court building downtown. I can smell it—the paint, the piney wooden benches that remind me of school or church, all the people around us. Some were dressed up, like me. Trying to look like responsible parents and sweating through their polyester dresses and suits. Some weren’t dressed up at all. Teenagers with tattoos and bandannas on their heads, wearing untied tennis shoes and constantly chewing gum into their phones. They were there for the same reason as me: We all had to spill our guts to the judge and hope he’d see our side of it. I was there to listen to him make decisions about my family that I was used to making myself.
I hated that judge, and I’m pretty sure he hated me. He never gave me more than a second glance. I wasn’t allowed to say more than “Yes, Your Honor” or “No, Your Honor” when standing in front of him.
Mike, on the other hand, got to say whatever he wanted. He could go on and on with his explanations, and he could interrupt me or my lawyer whenever he wanted. The judge loved Mike. They kind of looked alike, the judge just a little bit older and fatter. And white, of course. All of the judges were old white men.
I still wonder if I made a mistake, picking a female lawyer instead of a man, like Mike picked. At least Joanne was straight with me. She warned me that the judge wouldn’t like it if I looked too smart or too confident. “Cocky” was the word she actually used. I remember her saying, “Sound too cocky and the judge won’t like you—he’ll think you’re an uppity feminazi who’ll be mean to your kids. Sound too pathetic and he won’t like you—he’ll think you’re a whiner who can’t take care of kids properly.” Meanwhile all Mike had to do was wear a shirt with buttons and speak with the same Texas accent as the judge, and he was golden. Freaking men. It makes me sick the way they stick up for each other, even when they’re strangers.
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