“Me either,” I assured her on my way out the door. I turned back in the doorway to tell them they could wait in front for Derrien, or pick her up at the end of the hour.
Chapter 23
Derrien hadn’t eaten her snack, not any of it. She sat at the table with Bailey when I walked into the playroom. I watched them for a moment before speaking. My stomach ached for these two babies who’d survived the untimely deaths of their mothers. Suffer the little children …
I walked between them and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. God, can everyone but me have a baby? How could You so easily give children to mean-spirited people? But You’ve given me Bailey, haven’t You? Thank You. Thank You. Now, just please bring Jordan home.
Bailey looked up and grinned.
Derrien jumped like she’d been shot.
“Sorry, girlie,” I said to Derrien, “didn’t mean to frighten you. I just came in to check on you.”
“Okay.”
“You weren’t hungry?” I asked, motioning toward her filled plate.
“I’m still sick to my stomach. Sorry to waste food,” she said. “Please don’t be mad.” She looked braced for a lecture.
“She’s not mad,” Bailey said.
I smiled at my girls. “Nope, not mad.” I turned to Bailey and laid my hand on her shoulder. “Sweetheart, can you go find Bella and draw with her?”
She looked disappointed but said, “Can Derrien come?”
Derrien blinked but made no move to get up. She looked sick and ghastly white.
“Thanks for inviting her,” I said to Bailey, “but I want to visit with Derrien for a few minutes.”
Bailey rolled her eyes. “She always means for a whole hour,” she said, trying to sound “in the know.”
I chuckled and waved our budding smarty pants out the door, then sat at the table opting for the chair Bailey just vacated. Derrien looked visibly nervous, and in the bright lights I could see the dark patches circling her eyes. Again, she tucked her chin into her chest. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“No.” I waited a second. “Derrien, why do you think you’re in trouble?” I desired to lay my hand on hers to reassure her, but not wanting to frighten her, I waited. “Remember, I’ve already told you there’s no problem with the commode.”
“I don’t know, but you’ve been back there talking to my mom.” Derrien gestured toward my treatment room. “And, I think I heard my dad come in.”
“He did, but Derrien, you’re okay. Look at me.”
She glanced up but still found it difficult to maintain eye contact.
“I must go now,” she said. “My parents are probably waiting for me, and I don’t want to get in trouble.”
I must go now? This child … I couldn’t recall having heard the phrase “in trouble” packed so tightly into such a short period. “I’ve asked your mom and dad to allow you to visit with me for an hour.”
Shock registered on her tiny face. “Oh, no, they won’t.” She started to push her chair back. “They would never.”
“They said ‘yes.’”
She stared at me, arching her brows.
“Want to go sit on the back-porch swing?” I asked, then stood and extended my hand toward hers.
“With you?”
I smiled. “Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
I started toward the door with my hand still stretched toward her.
She made hesitant steps toward me. “Did they really say yes?”
“Yep,” I said, then opened the door.
Just then, the voices of Jim, Tracia, and Alicia shot down the hallway. Derrien shot another nervous glance toward the front office as we walked out of the playroom, down the hall, out the back door, and down the steps. Together we walked to the swing and sat.
“Derrien, I promise it’s all right.” I squeezed her hand. “Let’s swing.”
“Did she say it’s okay? I don’t want to—”
“You. Are. Not. In. Trouble. The next time you say the word ‘trouble’ today, you’ll owe me a dollar.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
“Good,” I said. “You can’t afford to say it then. Let’s swing.”
Finally, she stretched her right leg, found the porch with her foot, and pushed.
“So,” I said to Derrien, “what if I were magic and could grant one wish for you?”
She looked at me with eager-for-Derrien eyes.
“What would that wish be?”
“I would want my mother back.”
I should’ve seen that coming. I could never be in this business long enough to stop feeling the pain. “How long since she died?”
“Two years.”
“I’m so very sorry, sweetheart.”
“You are extraordinarily kind,” she said.
I’d not met many eight-year-old kids who said extraordinarily either. I squeezed her hand again. “Well, what if I’m good at magic, but not that good. What would your next wish be?”
“Will I get in—”
“Unless you have a dollar, watch it,” I warned playfully.
“Oh yeah.” She bit her lower lip then attempted a grin, but sat for a long minute.
I stirred the swing with my right foot.
“Well, you know when the commode spilled over, and we talked about me sleeping in the shed?” Her face went whiter than it had been before.
“Yes. I won’t forget that.”
“I wish, if you were magic, and I know that you are not—my mom says there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny or any sentimental fairy-tale garbage— that you could keep me from having to sleep in the shed.”
She looked at me as though she begged me to be magic, just this one time. “It’s not really sleeping. I’m scared, so I’m awake all night.” Her chest jerked with the sharp intake of her breath. “I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.”
A warm breeze ruffled our clothes and tickled our skin.
“Derrien,” I said, “you’re very mature for your age. I’m not sure that’s good, but it’ll help us have a difficult conversation.”
“What?” She looked like maybe she’d said too much.
I found those awful shadowed eyes unsettling. An eight-year-old kid should have happy eyes. “I have a promise from your dad and mom that you’ll not sleep in the shed tonight or any night again.”
Her body tensed. Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand what you mean.” She shook her head.
I nodded. “It’s true. Your parents have agreed to dispense with the shed punishment.”
Her hand became a block of ice, and she didn’t appear relieved.
“Derrien, I have your parents’ word.”
She took a deep, ragged breath; she had something to say. “You are a very kind lady, but you don’t live at my house, and you don’t know my mom well.”
Derrien stopped the swing with her foot, stood, walked to the edge of the porch, and turned her back to me. “Neither,” she said over her shoulder, “are you magic.” She stepped off the porch and onto the sidewalk, facing a squirrel feeder that’d been attached to a large oak tree in the backyard along the porch edge.
A gray bushy-tailed squirrel nibbled an ear of dried corn but paused to make sure Derrien was harmless. She looked at the squirrel, her back to me still.
The squirrel resumed munching.
I peered at Derrien while she watched the squirrel for a minute, then left the swing and walked up behind her. “Derrien, I’m not magic, but I do have some power or at least some leverage in your situation.”
She stood very still. “I don’t know leverage.”
“It’s the power to lift some of your burden.”
“Not even my dad can do that.”
“That’s another piece of the difficult conversation.”
“Life is difficult,” she said, sounding forty if she were a day.
“Yours is more difficult than is necessary or fair.” I touched her shoulder. “Look at me.”
&
nbsp; She turned, tilted her chin, and looked passively at me. She had the ability to look where she was told, but not necessarily see what she’d been asked to look at.
“Your dad knows that Tracia has inflicted cruel punishment, specifically putting you in the shed to spend the night for failure to flush the commode.” I breathed deeply. “Putting a child in a dark shed is not only cruel, it’s against the law.”
Derrien looked hopeful for a second, but her eyes clouded, and she faced the squirrel feeder again. “You don’t know my mom,” she said over her shoulder. “She works for a lawyer. She’s not afraid of the law. I don’t think she’s afraid of anything or anyone.”
I hesitated for only a second. “I’d hoped not to have to say this to you directly, but, Tracia is afraid of something.”
“What?” She whirled around, but her eyes said she still didn’t believe it. But she looked curious about what I might say.
“Your parents know that if you’re ever put in the shed as a punishment, during the day or night, I’ll call Child Protective Services to report them both.”
“How can you do that?” She reached her hand toward the squirrel, but he scampered away leaving behind the bare cob.
I walked to the outside closet by the far side of the swing where the enclosure had originally housed a water heater. But during the building renovations, a new water heater landed inside, leaving this space to shelter rakes, a bag of Super Bloom, and a large sack of dried cobs of corn.
I reached inside, drew out a fresh ear of corn, walked backed to the sidewalk, and handed it to Derrien. For a moment, she looked like she didn’t know what to do with it, but when I nodded toward the empty cob on the feeder, she smiled and walked back toward it.
“Let me show you how to attach this.” I reached and dislodged the old cob.
“Derrien,” I said, helping her push the squirrel’s dinner onto the empty spindle, “I’m licensed by the state as a professional counselor.”
“Okay.” She fiddled with the feeder until she shoved the cob in place. “Oh, we got it.” She smiled with satisfaction. “The squirrels can eat again.”
“Good job, girl.”
She scrubbed her hands to shed the corn dust then asked, “So what about the license thing?”
“I report child abuse when I see it.”
She barely breathed. “When did you see it?”
“Today, in the hallway—”
“No wait, if it was something I said, and you tell anyone about it, you cannot think what’ll happen to me.” Her breath became shallow, and her body shook. “Whatever I said … forget it. That magic thing was a game.”
“Derr—”
“No, no, no. You don’t get it. Whatever you think you get … you don’t. You do not get it.” She started to back away from me with extended palms, her body posed in a self-defensive mode.
“Tracia is deathly afraid of her pastor,” I said in a bold attempt to garner Derrien’s attention.
“So what?” But she dropped her hands to her side and listened.
“So, I will tell her pastor if she puts you in the shed again.”
Her eyes widened. “She would kill you in a heartbeat.”
This child would forever amaze me. “Let her try,” I said.
And then … Derrien giggled. She giggled, and magic lived in that laughter. “You’re not afraid of Tracia.” She laughed a second time. “My mom, I meant.”
“I am not afraid of Tracia by any name.”
Derrien stopped laughing and looked at me. “I want to understand. I need to understand what you mean.”
“I want you to.”
“If Mo—Tracia—puts me in the shed, how will you know?” she asked, her gaze intense.
“You will tell me.”
Her hope vanished like morning mist, at the first glimpse of sunshine. She shook her head furiously. “No, no, no. You must find out some other way. I cannot tell you.”
“Derrien, if you’ll come back and sit on the swing with me, I’ll tell you about the conversation with your parents.”
For the next long minutes, I talked while rocking my feet from heels to toes against the concrete, keeping the swing in soft motion while Derrien sat beside me and listened. At first, she kept her hands folded in her lap and sat primly, but eventually, she relaxed and extended her legs in front of her little body, as the humid wind played with her feet and stirred her hair. I explained that it wasn’t what she’d told me, but what Tracia had said when she opened the door and found us kneeling in the water that had caused her mom potential serious trouble. I told her why I’d called her dad.
“Your dad should never have allowed you to sleep in a shed. He should’ve stopped the shed punishment,” I said. “And in not doing so, he understands he could be in serious trouble also.”
“He couldn’t stop it,” Derrien informed me.
“He could have.”
“He said he couldn’t.” She looked at me as if she needed me to challenge what she’d been told.
“Yes, baby, he should have. He didn’t.” I watched her face. “For whatever reason, he didn’t,” I repeated, “but he should have.”
I explained to Derrien that there would be new rules that had to pass by me. She appeared very relieved to know she’d be coming to see me weekly. I made sure she understood that if anyone were to mistreat her again, and she told me about it, that she wouldn’t be the one in trouble. Of all the possibilities of what could happen to abusive parents, the only one she took comfort in seemed to be the pastor thing. She exhibited complete awareness that Tracia was a religious zealot.
The Dickman household had been run in prison-guard style with some sick notion of God-expectations. And Derrien believed the only forces on earth feared by Tracia Dickman were God, her pastor, and the failure to look perfect in the eyes of either.
When the time came for us to return to the waiting area, Derrien still appeared fearful. But she appeared on the verge of believing, or at least hoping her life could be better.
Jim sat perched in a waiting-room chair and looked like he’d been crying, but at the sound of our footsteps, he looked up and smiled. Tracia didn’t look up at first. She flipped sporadically through an issue of Psychology Today.
“Here’s your girl,” I said to the couple. “I would like to see her next week. Did you get those appointments made?”
Tracia slapped the magazine shut.
“Yes, ma’am. We did,” Jim said.
“You need better magazines,” Tracia said. “What’s wrong with Sports Illustrated?” She tossed the magazine onto the table beside her and stood. “I hoped to get something out of this hour even if only to find out what’s going on with the Cowboys.” She sighed. “Did you know that Deion Sanders is coming to Beaumont in a few months?”
“Can’t say that I did.” I knelt in front of Derrien, and ignoring everyone but her, I took her still-icy fingers in my hands and assured her I’d see her next week. “Oh, and sweetheart, enjoy your room and get some good rest this week.”
A snort erupted from Tracia before she glided out the front door. I declare her hair still hadn’t moved.
“Jim?” I stood to look at him.
“Derrien will be here next week,” he said as he stood to face me. “Tonight will be pretty rough, but I’m relieved that we talked. I’m … grateful that you called me.” His eyes misted. “I’ve been feeling pretty desperate and hopeless.” He leaned down and scooped Derrien into his arms.
She looked both delighted and surprised. He gave his daughter one last big hug, but then put her down before they walked out to join Tracia. Before they reached the door, she grasped at his hand, but he gave his fingers a little flick, causing her to let go before he walked out where his wife awaited them.
Chapter 24
Derrien presented all evidence that things were better at home. She arrived, eager to see me, on warm, humid Mondays. I always found her in the playroom with Bailey at the time for our session. Jim brought
her early and allowed her to stay for a few minutes afterward because he knew her friendship with Bailey meant a lot to her.
Bailey looked forward to their time together and referred to Monday afternoons as Derrien Days. And on some of those days, Derrien and I spent our sessions outside with the swing and the squirrel feeder.
One Monday, a blowing rain chased us inside the clinic. When rain pours on Texas in August, no one escapes the indigenous sauna, but my treatment room provided relief from the wet heat that even an eight-year-old girl appreciated. As always, I asked Derrien about the commode, about any punishment and, more generally, how things progressed at home. She reported things were better. She said her mom had been a little weird after the first day they’d come to my office, but that within days, things started to improve. Derrien looked healthier, and thankfully, the circles lightened beneath her eyes. She’d gained a bit of much-needed weight and didn’t startle so easily. I heard her laugh more and more often. That rainy day, I asked Derrien about her relationship with Tracia, and she beamed.
“You’ll never guess what.”
“What?”
“Just try one guess,” she said.
“You’re getting a convertible for your birthday.”
She giggled. “No, but it’s good.”
I nodded, bit at my lip, waited to hear the good news, and felt happy to see her excited about anything.
“My mom let me walk with her inside her Dallas Cowboy room.” She clasped her hands together.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Isn’t that special?” she asked. “Aren’t you excited?” She nodded. “She didn’t let me touch anything, but still it was awesome.”
“Derrien, do you love your mom?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “Not like my mother, but yes.”
“Do you feel loved by her?”
“Yes.” She looked nervous again. “I’m scared of her, but I know I needed a mom.”
“Does she tell you she loves you?”
“No, but she doesn’t tell my dad either, and of course she loves him.”
I just smiled. “Tell me about the Dallas Cowboy room.”
Her eyes lit. “It’s so cool. My mom has been collecting stuff for years. She had all kinds of memorabilia before she was my mom.”
The Children of Main Street Page 22