Rutting Season

by Mandeliene Smith

  * * *

  When Jared first started at the DCF, Deanna had tried to talk to him about growing up in Newhallville, but the conversations never went anywhere. It wasn’t so much that Deanna was twenty years older as that they didn’t know anyone in common. Or, more accurately, that Jared didn’t know anyone. He hadn’t been allowed to play outside as a child, and his parents had pretty much kept to themselves—or maybe people had shunned them, he wasn’t sure which. In any case, it wasn’t something Deanna would have understood. She was a real Newhallville resident, the kind of person he and his mother had seen sitting on the porches as they walked silently home. How comfortable and happy they’d looked, leaning loose-limbed against the railings, talking and laughing and teasing. He could have reached out and touched them, he passed so close, and yet he could no more have joined them than flown to the moon.

  The reasons for this were too shameful to tell anyone, let alone Deanna. But one day, shortly after the engagement party at Eliana’s parents’ place in Philadelphia, Jared had found himself telling her anyway. Not just about his mother and her crazy ways but also things he had never told anyone, even Eliana: his father’s rages and his mother’s taunting and the last, surreal fight that had sent his mother to the hospital and his father to jail and Jared to three muffled, friendless years at his maternal grandparents’ house in suburban Massachusetts. It all came spewing out; he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t even want to stop, once he got started; it was such a relief to finally tell someone.

  A peculiar stillness had come over Deanna’s face as he talked, as though she were receding behind her features. It occurred to him as he babbled on, too deep in to change course, that this might be the end of their camaraderie, that the warm sense of belonging she had extended to him might be withdrawn. Later, driving home, he saw it more starkly: He had revealed himself as the outsider he really was. Now he would be exiled, shut out by the same invisible screen that came down behind Deanna’s eyes with people she didn’t trust. White people, mostly, like Will, their boss.

  Jared had spent that night in a state of secret terror. Everything his mind touched on seemed to be ringed with fear, even Eliana. At any moment, it seemed to him, the life he had built would swing back like a stage set and leave him in darkness.

  In fact, nothing changed. Deanna never mentioned what he’d told her; she didn’t even indicate that she remembered it, although she did stop talking to him about growing up in Newhallville. She went on treating him the way she always had—like a brother or a nephew, one of her own.

  At first, Jared had felt a shaken, almost tearful gratitude over this. Later, it began to seem like his right. He’d worked hard to make a life for himself. Why should his parents, his childhood, have any bearing on who he was now?

  * * *

  “That Porsche’s?” Deanna asked.

  “Yep,” Jared said cheerfully, as he stuffed the single sheet into an interoffice envelope. Relief was already buoying him.

  “She come a long way, you know? When you think how she came up, with her mother and all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jared said.

  “She still with that boyfriend?”

  “Uh-huh.” Then, as though to shrug off an invisible constraint: “Some dogs can’t learn, you know?” Too late, he heard how that sounded.

  But the rueful half smile Deanna turned on him was free of judgment. “Well, you know me,” she said, “always hoping.”

  Instantly, he felt the release, the sudden enlargement of space he so often experienced around her. “We wouldn’t have it any different, D,” he said, warmly.

  “Oh, go on,” she said, but he could tell she was tickled. “Anyway, she young. She got time to work it out,” she added.

  Jared was saved from responding by the sudden buzz of his phone—a text from Eliana. She was waiting out front.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “You have yourself a good night, okay?”

  He took the stairs three at a time, shoved open the old school door with its chicken-wire glass. Eliana was parked in front of the fire hydrant. Typical, he thought. She had an instinctive disdain for rules. He gazed at her hungrily as he walked around to the passenger side. Even in a tank top, even sitting in that busted-up old car, she looked slender-necked and queenly, a Nefertiti with dreads. He threw his bag in the back and got in.

  She looked up, leaned over to kiss him. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he whispered, already lost in the smell of her.

  * * *

  The trouble with Porsche had come out of the blue. She wasn’t even Jared’s case; they had just needed someone who wasn’t her regular caseworker to follow up on some new information they’d received, or so he’d been told. He’d scheduled the interview for a Monday, a beautiful day, as it turned out, warm but not humid, with a blue, boundless summer sky. Good weather for a dinner at the shore, was what he’d been thinking on the drive over—leave work a little early maybe, take Eliana to that outdoor seafood place in Guilford he’d heard so much about. Good thoughts, happy thoughts, which he was still turning over in his mind as he climbed the front stairs to Porsche’s new apartment, a first floor across the street from New Hope Baptist.

  The apartment looked nice enough, clean and organized, with her sons’ pictures up on the fridge and a pair of twin beds on display in the only bedroom. The beds, Jared noticed, were neatly made and piled high with cheap stuffed animals, as though the boys might be coming home at any minute. He looked away, his good mood evaporating. What had Will said? “Get her side of the story.” But also: “Confirm what’s in the reports.” And if he was able to do that . . . A shadow fell over his mind. He reached up to pull his collar away from his neck, as though it were choking him.

  Porsche was standing in front of the stove, one tawny hand on her swollen belly. Her hair had been professionally braided and her large, amber eyes were carefully outlined in black. Island eyes, Jared thought as he took a seat at the kitchen table. Her mother was African American but her father, he knew, had been Puerto Rican. That was normal now, a mixed background; people hardly even commented on it. Not like when he was growing up. And he was only what—six years older than her? Seven?

  “You want some coffee or somethin’?” Porsche asked softly.

  He shook his head. For some reason, he found the offer irritating. But then everything was suddenly irritating him: the stuffed animals and the pictures on the fridge and the pungent smell of the cleaner on the still-damp kitchen floor—the whole, frantic effort. He opened his bag, removed the police report, and laid it in front of her.

  Her young face sagged.

  “So,” Jared said, suppressing the weird smile that had sprung to his mouth, “as your caseworker—Peggy McClaren, right?—okay, as Peggy no doubt told you, there’s going to be a comprehensive review of your case. But first, you and I need to get straight on a few things. A few facts, okay?” He sounded all right, he thought: professional, in control. Will would have approved. “First, this police report. Now, you told Peggy you were admitted to the hospital because you fell down the stairs. Is that what really happened?”

  Porsche opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.

  “So the real story—correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “the real story is that you and your boyfriend at the time, Dante Rodriguez, right? So you and Dante were walking down Bassett Street, when he was witnessed”—he turned the police report around and scanned it for the exact wording—“striking you and knocking you down, and then dragging you by your shirt and/or hair along the sidewalk as far as Newhall Street, where he was apprehended by Officer Reginald Bryant and placed under arrest.” He looked up at her. “Is this what happened?”

  “It’s just—he just get a little rough sometime,” she said.

  “Is this or is this not what happened?” he asked, calmly.

  “I guess. I mean, if that’s what they saying.” Her wide face was as passive and expressionless as a c
ow’s.

  She looked like the kind of girl a man would hit.

  Jared averted his eyes. A pressure was building in his chest, an outward-pushing tension, like what he’d felt as a kid when he held his breath too long underwater. He pulled at his collar and plowed on. “So that sounds like ‘yes, he did hit you,’ causing you the injuries for which you were then treated at Yale New Haven.” Without looking at her for confirmation, he began to write this answer down. The pen dragged against the paper—running out. He pressed down harder: y-e-s. “And are you still involved with Dante Rodriguez?”

  “Dante the father of my baby,” she said in a helpless voice. As if it weren’t up to her.

  “So you’re still involved with him,” he said.

  “Yeah. I mean, mostly, I guess.”

  “So I’m going to put that down as a yes.” In a kind of rage, he carved “YES” into his notepad with the nearly inkless pen. “Now, as you may recall, a drug test was performed while you were in the hospital. That test came out positive for cocaine. Here’s the results right here.” He took the second paper out of his bag and laid it on top of the police report. “Do you recall getting high on cocaine that day?”

  Tears were welling up in her golden eyes.

  “I’m going to need an answer,” he said.

  “Okay, yeah,” she whispered.

  “So that’s ‘yes,’ ” he said. “And are you currently taking drugs?”

  “No!” she cried. “No, I’m clean, I swear.”

  “You’re clean,” he repeated, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

  “Look, I messed up. I know I messed up but that was just one time! Outta all the days I done right, all the days I done exactly what I’m supposed to, that was my one and only mess-up and now I’m back on track with it, I really am. You got to believe me!”

  Full-on crying now. Jesus.

  “Just ask my counselor! She know. She see me comin’ in for the meetings. Please, you got to ask her, you got to hear the good. All you got is the bad, the mess-up. You got to—”

  “I don’t ‘got to’ anything,” Jared said. “All I ‘got to’ do is report the facts, which is precisely what I’m doing right now.” He etched “Claims to be drug-free” into his pad and stood up.

  Porsche clasped her hands together. “Please, I can’t give up my kids, I just can’t,” she cried. “No one else gonna be Momma to them, not in they minds. I’m the only one. And I’m tryin’, I really am. You got to believe me!” Her face looked almost obscene, the pain in it was so vivid.

  Jared shoved the papers back into his bag. Now would have been the time to wrap up the interview, say, “Your caseworker will follow up with you,” or even “Good luck.” But he said nothing; he slung his bag over his shoulder and made for the door.

  Why he was shaking as he walked out into the brightness of the street, why his heart felt like an unpinned grenade, were questions he didn’t ask himself.

  * * *

  What got to him, he told himself later, was how she hadn’t really tried. You saw it all the time with these DCF families—that hopeless passivity, that utter failure to change. In idle moments, Jared sometimes thought about how he might put together a lecture or a workshop on this—tell it like it really was, light a fire under a few butts. Because the truth was you could determine the shape of your own life. He’d done it himself.

  It was during the darkest period of his life, when he was fifteen and living with his maternal grandparents. He didn’t mind telling people about it, if the subject came up: how all on his own he’d figured out what he wanted to be and set about achieving that—without parents or role models, without even a friend.

  What he didn’t want to tell anyone, couldn’t even really let himself remember, was the fear.

  During the day, he had been all right: sitting with his not-quite-friends at lunch, walking the lonely mile home to his grandparents’, dropping his eyes when anyone looked his way so that no one would feel threatened. Even the house was okay in the daytime. There were no rages, no twisted, hopeless talks. His grandparents greeted him politely, cooked him three meals a day, spoke in measured tones about neutral topics, like sports or the weather. Everything was orderly and quiet, as muffled as Jared’s own footsteps on the thickly carpeted floors.

  He did his best to play along—do what they did, say only things they might say—and, in this way, he managed to skim through the days. But at night, as he lay awake in his grandparents’ spare bed, this cardboard, daylight self would fall away, and a cold tide of fear would flood him. He did not belong; he was rattling, like a broken satellite, through the limitless dark.

  As a child, when he was upset, Jared had made himself feel better by building things—planes, models of famous buildings, Star Wars ships. He would study the plan on its thin, cheaply printed paper, thinking through each step. This was pure pleasure, once he could calm down and focus—his mind was good at converting the flat diagrams into three-dimensions, seeing the reason and sense behind the tiny, cryptic words. At first, the construction would look pathetic, even shameful, one more thing his father could deride him for. But if he kept going, if he made his decisions with care, he could build something that withstood all that—a form, marvelously complete and sufficient unto itself.

  One night, as he lay in bed, stiff with fear, it occurred to him that a life might be built, too. But what plan could he follow? He didn’t know anyone like himself, with a black, failed writer father and a mentally ill mother. The next evening, watching football with his grandfather, he swallowed his pride and spoke into the hard-packed silence.

  “How do you become a success?” he asked. The question sounded childish, laughable.

  “A success, huh?” his grandfather said, and though his tone was gruff, perhaps even mocking, something in his expression told Jared he was pleased. The answer he gave was simple enough: get into a good college; join a fraternity; choose a respectable profession and stick to it.

  His grandfather had gone to Amherst, so that was the name Jared dropped when he went to see the college counselor at school the next day. To his surprise, the counselor, a middle-aged white man, was encouraging, though when Jared got out a pad and pen and asked what steps he should take, he saw the man suppress a smile. But Jared was too scared to be self-conscious. He asked his question again, and the plan, as written that morning in the counselor’s office, went up on the wall above his desk. By his senior year, he had checked off everything on that list, from the 4.0 GPA through the three years of Latin and the not-too-popular sport (fencing). The acceptance letter from Amherst affected him like a revelation: He had decided what course his life should take, and lo and behold, it had taken that course.

  In the first flush of his triumph, Jared requested a room in the African American “theme dorm.” Why not? He certainly qualified. But on the first day of school, when he arrived at the base of the building’s grand entryway, his heart sank. A small crowd of students was gathered on the porch, gesturing and talking over each other, some of them standing, some sitting, all of them a shade of brown.

  A mistake, he saw, a foolish overreach. He’d never fit in.

  One of the girls cried out, “Muh!” and the argument dissolved into laughter. Then she looked over and saw him, frozen on the bottom stair.

  “Hi,” she said, rising, “I’m Jacqui.” She was freckled and latte-pale, but she belonged, Jared could see it in the comfortable way she turned and scolded the others: “Y’all got no manners, you know that? Get off your butts and say hello.”

  “Chill, girl. We’re coming,” a boy said, and then they all stood up and wandered over to meet him, jostling and teasing and laughing.

  Jared had never wanted anything the way he wanted to be part of that.

  He had brought all the wrong clothes, knew all the wrong music, could not for the life of him think of anything to say. Over time, though, the house worked its magic on him. The conversations and laughter, the casual brilliance with which his
dorm mates spun out jokes and coined new words (“Muh,” was one of these), blew like a current of fresh air through all the shut places in him. He learned what to wear, relaxed enough to speak, began to see what might be of value in himself—his memory, a certain precision of thought, even, for the first time in his life, the way he looked.

  He went back to his grandparents’ house less and less—his mother was living there now, and seeing him seemed to set her off. And so the old, bitter trap of his childhood began to recede, and he found to his amazement that he was free to choose his own path.

  That path was already clear to him: law school, marriage, a judgeship, if he played his cards right. So why did he put it off to work at DCF? If anyone asked him, he always said he’d wanted to “give back” and left it at that. The real reason was something he couldn’t put into words—a nagging, embarrassed feeling, as though he’d screwed up all those years ago in New Haven, needed to go back, set the record straight. What record, and for whom, he never got around to figuring out. He rented an apartment, took the job at DCF, settled in.

  * * *

  Jared knew that the Porsche thing had to resurface. Still, he was taken by surprise when Will’s email arrived. It was another hot day, one of a string of them, which the weatherpeople were now saying would continue at least through the end of the week. The kids in the neighborhood had begun busting open fire hydrants, and the sheets of water pulsing across the street looked nearly as tempting to Jared now as they had when he was a child, sweltering in their little living room while the other kids shrieked and splashed outside. He was doing all right, though. He’d gotten straight to work that morning, made a few phone calls, written up a case summary. Now, as a reward, he began to let himself think about the new condo. He pulled out a pad of graph paper and looked again at the sketch he’d made of its three rooms.