“What..?” I followed her gaze.
Along the huge entry hallway were the usual newspaper vending machines, the ones with the top front page displayed in the windows. The headlines were very similar and they fairly screamed out at us.
Bloodcurdling headlines and one grainy photograph repeated over and over. It was one I hadn’t seen before. It was a close up that must have been taken as rescuers were attempting to remove the bodies from the bloody I-13 accident three days ago.
Abigail floated toward them and stood reading. I joined her, my heart sinking.
“Pinto Springs Five Die in Night of Drugs/Sex,” she read aloud.
“Five Dead, One Barely Clinging,” she read another.
“Abby…” She pushed my hand off her arm.
“Mexican Drugs KILL Five American Sons,” screamed a third. “They can’t get enough of it can they. They’re vultures. They’re bloodthirsty. Look at this picture!”
There was nothing I could do or say, so I just stepped back and waited for her to move on. Finally she turned and rejoined me on our walk into the mall. The gaiety had evaporated. I saw an opportunity.
“Why do I think it all started with this, Abby?”
I wanted to test the waters, see if we were going to talk about what really mattered today.
“Maybe it did,” the tall, thin girl said mysteriously. It was a start.
Have you any special store you want to visit?”
“Well Neiman’s would be nice, but I’ll settle for Old Navy.”
Interesting, her being aware of the difference. We headed toward that section of the mall where other teen stores were also available.
We shopped for about an hour, not attempting to focus on serious conversation. Abigail bought three gauzy shirts and a pair of hip riders. Then she bought some pretty underwear, tiny panties and even smaller bras. She blushed at me twice, so to make her feel better I bought a couple of bikini style for myself.
Then she found some humorous socks and again we both bought a pair, hers aqua and lavender, mine orange sherbet and raspberry red. I made a private plan to wear them to bed with Matt tonight, with the blueberry bikini panties.
Finally by mutual agreement we headed for the Grub Gallery to grab a bite of lunch. We went for the SaladBarSoup. As we munched and slurped, I waited for Abigail to begin to talk to me about why we were really here. Something had moved her to call me, and it wasn’t just new clothes.
Finally she went there. “You think my mom will accept my decision?”
I had no idea. I sat back, thinking.
“Tell me, Abigail, had you been trying to involve your mother in this process before?”
“For months. I told you….okay, it was only twice over a period of two months. But both times she just exploded.”
“Just exploded….”
She sighed. “I’m a nurse’s child, Rachel. I know about interviewing techniques. She just blew up, angry and yelling and telling me she couldn’t think about it then.”
“When was ‘then’?”
She put down her spoon. “Okay, fair enough. I first let her know I wanted to try public school out about a week ago. Before the accident. Frankly I’d been wanted to bring it up before that, but I was afraid. She was so adamant, and so negative about public education.”
“Uh-huh. So when was the second time?”
“Wednesday morning.”
“Before or after you both learned about the car accident?”
She fussed with her soup.
“After.”
“And her reaction the second time?”
“More angry. More reactive. She actually said she thought the accident was demonstrative of how public schools can destroy a young person’s life.”
“What was your reaction to that comment.”
She probably knew where I was trying to go.
“Worse than hers. She made me positively furious.”
“Were you positively furious the first time she refused to consider your wishes?”
She sipped some diet coke.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Okay, fine, because…because I wanted more than ever to go to Pinto Springs after the accident. But it isn’t what you think?”
I waited.
She waited, ate a little soup. Wouldn’t make eye contact.
I said, “Did you know any of the boys in the accident?”
Finally she looked at me again.
“No. But I know about one of them.”
That was when the simmering kitchen fire in the Barbie-Q Delight decided to kick it up a notch and set off the fire alarms. One of the Grub Gallery’s cooks needed to return to chef school.
We were hustled out the side doors and our shopping trip came to an abrupt end.
Chapter 21
I was out in the yard seriously kicking some weed butt and fantasizing about beating up tabloid editors when the phone rang. I dashed inside, pulled my dirty garden gloves off, and answered on the fourth ring.
I listened, waiting silently.
“Hello, is anyone there?” Uh-oh. Latisha Harper’s voice.
“Hi, Latisha, what’s up?” I asked the Social Services woman cheerily. But I wasn’t feeling cheery. Harper’s call could only mean trouble.
“Hi Rachel. I’m sorry but I’ve talked myself blue in the face with this principal and he’s determined to keep your student on campus.”
They’ve been working on a Saturday?
“A meeting has been set up for early Monday morning with a pretty tenacious guy I know named William Gould. He’s from the ACLU. It’ll take place in Forsythe’s office and he won’t accept you as a stand in for Abigail’s parent. In fact I hear they are looking for the girl’s father big time.”
I wasn’t surprised. She’d already warned me about the ACLU, and frankly I knew this was the normal course of action with these kinds of conflicts. I’d just hoped Gloria and Abigail could have enough time to work this out.
I wasn’t looking forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with the Communist Dictator.
“Wonderful. I’ll call Gloria Pustovoytenko as soon as possible. She’s working a double shift again today. I’ll see what her schedule is on Monday, Latisha. Let’s hope she’s off.”
I knew Gloria’s weekend schedule because Abigail had told me her mom was working a double shift this weekend so she could take next Saturday off. Next Saturday was the November Quilted Secrets bee, and this time it was to be Abigail’s quilt we would sew, at her house.
She told me the time of the meeting and apologized again. We said our goodbyes. The warmth was necessarily gone.
At three thirty I called Gloria hoping to catch her during a break. She answered on the third ring. Unfortunately she was still in CCICU.
“Hi Gloria, it’s…”
“I know, Rachel, I have your number on my phone.” At least I thought that was what she said.
“I’m sorry to bother you at work, Gloria, but I know you will need time to think about how to proceed. I just got a call from the Social Services gal, Latisha Harper. The school principal has set up a meeting for early Monday to talk about Abigail’s attendance at the school.”
“There will be no attendance. Abigail is in complete agreement with me.”
I paused. Took a breath.
“Actually, I don’t hear that from Abigail…yet…Gloria. Maybe in time…”
“No time! Now. She cannot go to that school without my permission. I am her mother. I say where she goes.”
I dropped one of the bombs. “The ACLU will have a representative at the meeting.”
“You can handle it.”
I dropped another bomb. “The principal won’t accept me as a substitute, but of course if you want me to accompany you I’ll be glad to…”
“Fine! I be there!” She stopped. I heard her breathing rapidly, trying to control herself. “Do I…should I get a lawyer?”
“Not yet.”
“I’m right, right Rac
hel? I am the legal guardian. I am the mother. They must do as I say. Abigail must not attend that school—she will go to the home school because I say so!”
I dropped a third bomb. “Except for Monday. I’m afraid on Monday Abigail must come with us.”
I didn’t add that she would be ushered off to class as soon as we arrived.
“Why? She has no say. I am her guardian…”
My turn to interrupt with yet another bomb.
“Was that agreed to by the courts Gloria? I mean when you and your husband separated….”
“Divorced. Yes.”
“Because, well, they’re looking for him. And they might find him. If they do, he’ll still agree that you are the only legal guardian, correct?”
I heard a sudden cry in the background, and realized it was Gloria, choking back her emotions and holding the phone away from her hoping I wouldn’t hear.
“This is not right! This is not fair, Rachel.”
“I know, Gloria.”
“I know the public schools. I tell you Abigail will be hurt.”
I tried to mollify. “I don’t think American schools are as bad as your high schools may have…”
“I’m talking about American schools! Who do you think I see in here in ICU? Just old people waiting for their hearts to stop? I see children! I see high school children mangled and bloodied from campus fights…and, and overdosing on drugs. These schools are worse than the Communist schools.”
I began to worry that her voice might be heard by a few of those waiting-to-die seniors.
“Gloria, maybe we should talk more later.”
“Right now, Rachel! Right now outside my office door is a boy who is a product of the American schools, clinging by a thread to his earthly existence. I don’t want my daughter destroyed by this public education like he has been.”
Shit!
She was shouting about Jimmy Winters. I shouldn’t have called during her double shift. I decided to end the call.
“My other phone line is ringing, Gloria. I’m going to have to call you back. What would be a good time?”
This hadn’t worked out the way I wanted at all. I was hoping to give her time to quietly think over what was coming her way before meeting with her rebellious daughter, while she was busy working and had to control her emotions--but she wasn’t quietly thinking anything over.
Now I was afraid she would get fired if I didn’t get her off the phone.
“What? I am not being loud, no… Tomorrow, Rachel. We talk more tomorrow.”
And she hung up suddenly, leaving me wondering who she had been talking to.
Good grief, Gloria was a cyclone of anger and fear—one that I’d just ramped up.
My stomach churned at the thoughts of Monday’s meeting. I needed to talk to someone who might give me more help with how to handle this.
Hannah was busy right now, and besides she didn’t have children in the schools. Then it came to me who I could call next.
Chapter 22
I called Geraldine Patrone because her brother was Detective Tom Beardsley. He worked with the Cleveland County Sheriff’s, and was an invaluable contact for our private investigation business. And, as I’ve said, Gerry was like Hannah in that I’d hired her on as a consultant to help me with the investigation into Ada’s death.
But more pertinent to the moment, Gerry had been a school teacher before she’d begun her family.
“Hi Rachel.”
This actually unnerved me a little, that people knew who I was when I called, I mean even before I’d spoken. It was in some way a sinister reminder of just how little privacy we had anymore, thanks to modern technology.
Then again I could make it a private call, an unknown. But nobody ever answered those.
“How’s your neck? Will you make it to the bee next week?”
“Oh sure, I’m almost healed,” I lied. “Really feeling just fine.”
“So, you’re able to make it to the bank?”
“What? Sure, why?”
“Because you haven’t cashed my check, Rachel. I need you to do that so I can balance my accounts.”
Gerry was referring to the check she’d given me to cover our expenses as we investigated Ada Stowall’s death. I was reluctant to do so, as I had come to think of myself as their friend, but after what Matt and I went through during our research, maybe Gerry was right.
“You and Matt earned that money, Rachel.”
“Okay, Gerry. I’ll deposit it today. Sorry about the delay. Now to what I’m calling about, it’s Abigail. Have you heard that she’s enrolled herself at Pinto Springs High School?”
She hadn’t, so I took a few minutes to bring her up to date. Then she began analyzing as I hoped she would.
“Gloria seems a toughie but she’s really very frightened, Rachel. She has a lot on her plate, not the least of which is that she really isn’t all that comfortable with America’s rules, how slippery they can be. People from former communist block countries may have left because they hated the restrictions, but they often come to feel like they’re adrift in this anything goes world of America.”
“You saw this when you worked? How difficult it is for immigrants?”
“Of course, but in my case we’re talking about Mexican immigrants mostly. Because I taught Spanish I had a lot of kids in my classes who saw taking high school Spanish as an easy way to get a good grade. And I did a kind of case work with many of them.
“But through those cases I saw the children of an immigrant group and how difficult it was for them to communicate with their parents. Imagine, Rachel, having two very different nationalities within your family. Because that’s what it is for first generation kids--especially when the parents have basically fled their native lands.
“Mexicans flee their country as a way to get away from poverty. But in Gloria’s case, fleeing from a changing Communist country and all its repression and conflict, it could only be harder.”
“Right. So did you ever have experience communicating with those parents and their children, as in mediation?”
“Oh yes. But I can’t say I was a neutral person in those mediations. I sided with the kids, maybe a little too much. That was my job, to act as an advocate for my students even with their parents.
“Still, I wasn’t unmindful of the fact that foreign born parents have terrible trouble adjusting to our way of life. They’re so fearful that at times they regress back to the thinking in their old country and the way things were done there. I understand how they could have second thoughts, you know? But if the kids are born and raised here, well, there is no going back. You see?”
I thought I did. But how would this help me with Gloria?
“Can you give me an example?”
“Well, yes. I remember a Muslim family I became very involved with. The boy was my second student from the family. The girl had already graduated high school, and the boy was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back, no pun intended.
“The parents were from Turkey, a Muslim state you might think of as more modern. A country that you might think people who emigrated from would have an easier time of adjusting. They are a democracy. They have essentially a capitalist economy. But they are also very religious, and their religion supports a very rigid view of the father’s role in the family. The simple summary is that both children were completely Americanized, and the son was a rebel and a failing student, which is why I became involved.
“All the boy could think about day and night was surfing. It was his escape from his own failure—and his dictatorial father. Finally he announced he was dropping out.
“His father was adamant that he stay in school. This is an opposite situation from the one with Abigail on the surface, but the difficulties would probably be the same. In my case the father wanted the school to call the police and round him up and bring him back into the classroom. Of course that’s not our job in schools. We are not police—not any more. He was almost seventeen.”
“What happened?”
“Well, the boy and his father drifted further apart. The older daughter became the boy’s excuse to stray even more. She had her own apartment, her own job. Finally, in a fit of rage the father took his wife--against her wishes I think—and reversed their decision of almost twenty years before. They flew back to Turkey, abandoning their children to this evil country. A terrible experience when you think about it. There were no winners in this.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. I lost contact with them once the family disintegrated. The boy never returned to school, at least not to mine.”
“So you think what--that I should side with Abigail?”
“Well, I can’t say that, Rachel. No. You can’t go there. Remember, Abigail has the school on her side now—and God help them, the ACLU. It’s Gloria that is feeling alone and threatened. I mean, she hired you to be on her side.
“So maybe that’s mostly what you need to do. Sit next to her; explain her thinking to the others when she loses her composure. And use your more moderate voice to help Gloria turn her thinking around a little. Maybe that will slow down the train wreck, because that’s what she’s heading straight into, you know. A train wreck.
“The school will win, Rachel. Gloria needs to get on board that bullet train, not stand directly in front of it. You need to turn her around and help her run fast so she can catch up to it. I think you can do it.”
In the end, I asked after her hubby and four boys, and how her ALS charity ball had gone.
“Oh, wonderful, Rachel. We raised half a million dollars for them. But even more importantly we have all on board to help spread the good word about ALS research.”
Finally we said our goodbyes and I poured a glass of red and meandered out to peer at the final rays of sunlight glowing in the west. Wisdom was already there, waiting for me, listening to his wild friends.
Chapter 23
Six pm and I was completely frazzled. Wisdom was listening for the hyenas. I needed to hear some wild beast talk too, something with answers as how I should proceed. The glass of wine helped.
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