by Selena Kitt
Erica found her way blocked by a crowd of spectators that had begun to gather at the front of the restaurant, near the restrooms. Patty used her shoulder to edge her way through, saying, “Excuse me! Excuse me, please!” the whole time, but she was knocking patrons aside like a linebacker, and Erica followed in her wake, the screaming turning to crying, wailing really, a high-pitched keen.
“Leah!” Patty burst through the crowd, finding her daughter being restrained by a burly security guard, but she was still struggling, kicking her feet—her heels were scattered on the floor, along with the contents of her spilled pocketbook. Erica got on her knees, hurriedly picking up her sister’s things, still trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“This is hers too.” The woman handed her a hair comb she recognized, one with sharp metal teeth, and Erica looked up, seeing matching gouges in a long line down the woman’s bloody face, right under her eye.
If the puzzle wasn’t clear enough already, Patty cleared things up, leaning over to whisper in Erica’s ear, “It’s the social worker.”
“She could have blinded me, the vicious little bitch!” the social worker snapped as the owner of the restaurant apologized, offering her a cloth and some ice for her cheek, and Erica watched this with growing anger, resisting finishing what Leah had started only by sheer force of will.
No matter what Patty or Erica said, the security guard refused to let Leah go, insisting, “She assaulted that woman! She’s going to jail, Lady!”
Desperate, Erica ran for the pay phone, calling her father who was, thankfully, still at the house. She told him what had happened and he said he was on his way, hanging up before Erica could even finish telling him everything.
“Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?” Over and over Leah screamed, her voice growing hoarse, whittled down to a croak by the time the police arrived. The crowd gathered was told to disperse, but they refused, staying to watch the train wreck.
The officer put her in handcuffs, but he told his partner they really needed four-point restraints and radioed for an ambulance. When they arrived, Leah was put on a stretcher, this time in some sort of jacket wrapped around her body and buckled to keep her from moving.
Her eyes were closed, and she was drugged and mumbling when they started wheeling her away. The only word Erica could make out was, “Grace.”
The paramedics tended to the woman, the one Leah had called ‘the ghoul,’ bandaging her face and suggesting she come with them to the hospital.
“I’m not riding in the same ambulance with her,” the ghoul sneered, looking over where Erica stood, her father just arrived, hugging his daughter close, his desperate gaze searching for some glimpse of his wife, but they had just wheeled her away. Patty was holding Leah’s things—the dropped pocketbook, her shoes, looking as lost as Erica felt.
The ghoul pointed in their direction, eyes burning with anger. She came closer, her voice low, but loud enough to hear. “That dirty little whore will never, ever get her hands on that baby now. She’s going to jail for this, and I hope she rots there. I’ll see you all in court on Monday.”
Chapter Eleven
“All rise.”
Leah did, with Rob’s help at her elbow, although her knees were wobbly and threatened to buckle. She had dreamed about Grace all night, tossing and turning and crying out in her sleep. Poor Rob had a bruise on his side from where she had elbowed him, dreaming about fighting the ghoul for her baby, wrenching the infant away from the woman, only to find the blanket empty.
She had done her best to cover her dark circles, dressing very modestly—their meeting with Donald Highbrow the day before had deeply impressed that upon her. Appearances mattered. He just shook his head and sighed when they told him about her arrest and being taken in restraints to the hospital. She’d only stayed there overnight, being released in Rob’s custody on Sunday.
She knew she had put the case in jeopardy, but when she’d seen the woman in the restaurant bathroom, just standing there washing her hands, carefree and happy as a lark, she had lost it. There was the ghoul, the woman who had taken Leah’s baby right out of her bassinette, bold as you please, right under her nose. The ghoul was singing to herself as she dried her hands, turning to see Leah standing in the door, and the worst part was, she didn’t say a word. Not one word.
The ghoul just straightened her shoulders, tossed her head back and walked right past her, nudging Leah aside to open the door. It was the cold, callous treatment, the woman’s utter disregard, like Leah was nothing to her, invisible, that had done it. Leah had snapped. She couldn’t remember much after she grabbed the ghoul’s arm, turning the woman to face her at the front of the restaurant, demanding to know where her baby was.
She didn’t remember the fight, and Erica and Patty weren’t much help in that regard, since they had arrived after it had been broken up, but she had, apparently, removed the comb from her hair and gouged the woman with its metal teeth at some point during their argument. Rob told her it was probably the drugs causing her loss of memory, but she wasn’t sure. Everything in her vision had gone black with rage when the ghoul had turned around and told her in a hiss she would never, ever see her baby again.
Rob sat, pulling Leah down with him, and she collapsed into him like a rag doll, trembling against his side. Her mother served as another bookend on her right, holding her up, and Erica was next to her. Erica had asked Clay to come with her, and she was sitting close to him, holding his hand.
The lawyer had explained everything. First the judge would come out and he would call their case. There would be other cases, and other people in the courtroom. Today they would be simply addressing Donald Highbrow’s motion for the child to be returned to Leah based on the law—she had six months to change her mind about the adoption, regardless of whether or not she was coerced into signing the papers.
The lawyers would present their arguments and witnesses. Leah would be called to the stand to verify that, yes, she was changing her mind about the adoption and now wanted her baby back. Donald explained the state would present their case, calling the social worker and others in an attempt to show Leah as an unfit mother. They would also be able to cross-examine her. He had prepared her as best he could for their questions, making it very clear if she had another outburst in the courtroom like she had in the restaurant at Hudson’s, it was likely she really would never see her baby again.
Leah looked around the courtroom, searching for Grace—there were lots of babies and children in the room, more than she’d expected—but the lawyer had reminded her of their tactics. Donald told them they would likely try to stall and give reasons, even if the judge deemed her a fit parent, why Grace couldn’t be handed over right away.
“They aren’t above lying,” they lawyer had assured them. “We will just have to be persistent. So don’t expect to take your baby home from the courtroom tomorrow.”
When she didn’t see her baby anywhere, Leah rested her head on Rob’s shoulder, watching things unfold, cases called. Some adoptions were being finalized, and adoptive parents cried and hugged their new family members when the judge brought his gavel down, giving them forever-rights to their adoptive child, and every time, Leah winced. She couldn’t help but wonder about the baby’s mother. Had she really wanted to give her baby away? she wondered. Had she been too scared to speak up? Had she been told, like Leah had, that she didn’t have anything to offer a child?
Had she been tricked, lied to, treated like dirt? Less than dirt, really, more like an object, a baby machine, useless once its job was complete. And the irony was, it was all legal. The lawyer had explained, the church couldn’t ask adoptive parents for money directly in exchange for a baby according to the law, but they really didn’t have to. They just had to make the suggestion that the “standard donation” was $20,000, and desperate, infertile parents would pay it. More, upwards of $50,000 depending on their requests—if, for example,
they wanted a boy, or a specific hair or eye color, or a mother whose hobbies included playing the piano or singing or whose parents were doctors or lawyers or other professions.
That was the reason they had all been asked to fill out those endless questionnaires, why the ghoul had kept asking and asking and asking, “Who’s your baby’s father? What does he do? What do his parents do?” The more information they had, the more valuable the baby became, the more money they could ask for in “donations.”
“Leah, it’s you,” Rob whispered, giving her a gentle nudge, and she looked up, seeing Donald waiting expectantly near the witness box.
She stood and made her way down the row, past her mother and Erica and Clay, who smiled encouragingly at her. Donald Highbrow waved her into the witness seat and Leah approached on shaky legs, grateful to take a seat, even if it meant she was right next to the judge, who was a stern looking man with gray hair and half-moon glasses he peered over to look at her.
Leah put her hand on a Bible and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and that’s exactly what she did. Donald smiled a lot, putting her at ease, and she found it effortless to answer his questions, letting him build his case, layer by layer. Yes, she had been a resident at Magdalene House because she was an unwed mother at the time. Yes, she had intended to give her baby up for adoption because she felt she had no other choice, but after the baby was born, she changed her mind and wanted to keep her.
Once that had been established, Donald painted a picture with a deft lawyer’s brush, and with simple strokes, he showed her as a bright, competent, talented young woman, getting her to mention her invitation to audition for the American School of Ballet. He clearly made the point she was now a married woman, in fact married to the father of her child, who was a very successful and well-known photographer. He established they had a stable environment in which to raise the child and a network of support in the community, including a solid relationship with the Catholic Church.
The judge nodded, writing things down and even smiling at her occasionally when she dared to look his way. It seemed to be going so perfectly, Leah couldn’t believe it. She tried to remind herself, Donald had warned her not to get too excited, not to anticipate what might happen, but after her lawyer’s questioning had gone so well, she couldn’t help it.
Then the lawyer for the state got up to cross-examine her.
Leah took a deep breath, looking at the kindly man who approached the bench. He was an older man, probably in his fifties, maybe sixties, and he introduced himself to her as Frank Talley, “But you can call me Frank,” he assured her with a wink. He wore a brown suit and a yellow tie, and when he smiled at her, his teeth matched his tie. He wore glasses that made his eyes appear much larger, making Leah think of a fish. How bad could this be? she mused, watching him look at his notes on the legal pad in his hand.
His questions weren’t any harder than Donald’s. He wasn’t mean, he didn’t badger her like her lawyer had during their practice. His questions were asked in a non-threatening way. In fact, he seemed to sympathize with her when she told him about her breakdown, how much she missed her baby, how she woke up at night sometimes, thinking she heard her cry.
“Does that still happen, dear?” Frank asked kindly, leaning on the edge of the witness box.
Leah nodded, her eyes welling with tears. “Sometimes.”
He seemed very interested when she told him she felt as if she was being followed around all the time, like there was a shadow behind her she couldn’t quite catch, a ghost-baby in the house.
Whenever she looked away from him—up to the judge or over to where her family was sitting, or to where Donald sat in front of them—Frank would redirect her, smiling and dropping a wink, saying, “I’m right here, Dear. Can you focus on me? Good girl. There we go. Hi there! Are you back? There you are!”
It made Leah laugh, the way he did that, and then he would continue his questions. He had a lot of them written down on his yellow legal pad.
Even when he asked her about the altercation at Hudson’s, he didn’t get angry or confrontational. He was very interested when she told him “everything went black” when the argument started, and she couldn’t remember much about the actual argument itself.
“But I’m very sorry,” Leah interjected before he could ask anything else. “I’m really very sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted to know where my baby is, that’s all.”
“I understand, Dear.” Frank even patted her hand where she was clutching the railing in front of her.
When she sat back down next to Rob, she smiled up at him and whispered, “That was easier than I thought it would be.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded, putting his arm around her shoulder, but he didn’t say anything. She couldn’t understand why they all looked the way they did, her mother and Erica and even Clay—like someone had died and they were attending a funeral.
Then Frank asked the ghoul to take the stand and Leah watched her world crumble around her ears. She thought they’d been playing the game perfectly, but the ghoul, with Frank’s help, created a sudden tornado that knocked down their house of cards.
The Frank who had cross-examined Leah disappeared. That kindly, sympathetic old gentlemen became a direct, confident lawyer, asking the ghoul questions about her experience of Leah at Magdalene House—“rebellious, defiant, clearly sexually deviant”—and after Grace’s birth—“depressed, belligerent, anxious.” He asked her matter-of-factly about the assault—that’s what he called it, “the assault,” and he kept calling it that, saying it so many times Leah lost count—detailing her injury, asking her about the diagnosis and treatment, whether or not the doctor said she would be permanently disfigured.
Donald objected—“Hearsay, your honor!” —and it was sustained, so Frank started asking the ghoul, in her “professional opinion,” what kind of person assaults an elderly woman in such a way? Donald objected to that too, but the judge allowed it, saying the witness was, after all, a professional and it spoke to the point. So Leah had to sit there and listen to the ghoul throw out diagnosis after diagnosis—neurosis, borderline, depression—doing just what Donald said they would do, proving to everyone Leah was unfit to be Grace’s mother, she was unfit to be anyone’s mother, and the more they talked, the more she started to believe them herself. Frank asked the ghoul if she believed a psychological evaluation was warranted, and of course the ghoul recommended one be done immediately, because Leah just wasn’t a danger to herself and others she knew, she was a much bigger danger to “society at large.”
Leah looked at the judge, who had been smiling before, but not anymore. By the time Donald got up to cross-examine the ghoul, Leah felt so small she was sure she was invisible next to her husband, whose jaw was working again. She could hear his teeth grinding. But of course there was nothing they could do but sit there, sit there and wait for them to nail the coffin shut and seal her in.
It didn’t seem to matter what Donald asked, the woman was as slippery as a fish.
“Mrs. Goulden, I didn’t ask you your opinion of Mrs. Nolan’s mental state, I asked you where her baby had been placed.”
“As you know, that information is confidential.”
The ghoul looks bored, Leah thought. No, not quite bored—she looked like she had better things to be doing than being cross-examined by Donald Highbrow.
“It’s only confidential after the adoption has been finalized.” Donald corrected her with a wag of his finger. “Until the mother has signed over her rights, she is allowed visitation. Was Mrs. Nolan informed of her rights to visit her child?”
“In my opinion, Mrs. Nolan isn’t fit to visit her child.” The ghoul sneered, emphasizing the Mrs. in Mrs. Nolan as if Leah was misrepresenting herself as a married woman. “She’s a danger to herself and others. I have the scars under here to prove it.”
The ghoul tore off her bandage and, as if on cue, the whole courtroom gasped. It felt so staged and
dramatic to Leah, she wondered if the ghoul and Frank had planned it somehow. Not that it mattered. Leah sank down further in her seat, feeling everyone’s eyes on her.
“She could have blinded me, you know!” the ghoul snapped, tossing the bandage aside.
“Again, I didn’t ask your opinion of Mrs. Nolan’s mental state.” Donald ignored the woman’s drama, not looking at her but at the judge. “Can you please direct the witness to answer the question, Judge Solomon?”
The judge frowned at the ghoul, leaning over and asking, “Mrs. Goulden, where is the baby now?”
The ghoul touched her cheek, which was healing, Leah saw, just in the two days since their altercation. Erica said there was a lot of blood and there were gouges on the woman’s face—she made it sound like mincemeat—but from where Leah was sitting, it didn’t look that bad. Like surface scratches made from fingernails maybe.
The ghoul sighed and relented, looking up at the judge. “We placed her in foster care at our facility on the other side of the state. She needed special care, Your Honor. We believe she’s exhibiting signs of her mother having some sort of drug habit. The doctor’s aren’t sure.”