“Why? Well, let’s see,” Inez says sarcastically. “Could it be because his home has been turned into a crime scene?”
“But it’s been a week! Surely by now…”
She looks at me with a mixture of panic and guilt. “Things have been crazy every day—police questioning me, reporters hounding me. And then there’s trying to get you out of jail!” She is pacing. “It was just better for us to be at Shirley’s, and it seemed like Leo was starting to adjust, so I thought he could stay a little longer….”
Her voice trails off. “He was in the backyard,” she says finally. “Yesterday morning. He was playing in a sandbox.”
I’m surprised she’s actually explaining and defending herself to me this way, like I matter. But then I realize she isn’t really talking to me. She’s blabbering on because she’s so scared and she knows it’s her fault.
Pretty soon her fear triggers my own and I realize this is real. “Oh my God!” I yell. “This is so stupid! It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. You can’t just put a kid like Leo in a house with people he barely knows!”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she says, glaring at me.
“Well, then, what are you doing here? If Leo is out there lost, you need to go find him. The police need to look for him!” I want to push her out the door.
“Don’t you think we’re looking, Venus? Everywhere!” She spreads her arms dramatically. “The cops are looking but they say he’s not officially a missing person until he’s been gone seventy-two hours. Can you believe that? He’s seven years old! We’ve already checked Jimmy’s and all the neighbors’ and everyone we know.”
Jimmy is a weird nineteen-year-old kid who lives nearby and keeps tons of hamsters. Sometimes he watches Leo if Raymond is at the shop and Inez has to leave for work before I get home from school. I think he smokes pot, but Inez doesn’t know that.
“At least Leo knows his address,” I tell her. “Since I taught him that.” It took me a long time to teach Leo to say our street address if you asked him. Inez has always left it to me to teach Leo stuff, acted like she’s too busy, when really she just doesn’t have the patience for it.
“So what about his phone number?” Inez asks hopefully. “Did you teach him that?”
I haven’t. Leo doesn’t exactly carry on conversations, and so I never pictured him using a phone or needing to call home. It just didn’t occur to me.
“Aren’t you his mother?” I shoot back. “Why didn’t you teach him his phone number?”
Inez covers her face with her hands, and her shoulders start to shudder. But I am too scared to cry. I keep trying to picture Leo out there, lost, wandering around looking for us. “Someone must have seen him by now,” I announce firmly. “It’s not like he’s going to blend in. A little kid like Leo…”
I feel a stinging in my eyes, and my left cheek starts twitching.
“Oh, Venus,” Inez says in a softer tone. She dares to reach out as if to touch me, and I slap her hand away.
“No!” I yell. “Don’t you touch me! This is all your fault!”
She gives me a wounded look. “No, Venus. If something has happened to Leo, it’s because of what you did.”
After she’s gone, I sit on my bed, shivering. I wrap my arms around myself as hard as I can, like I’m freezing. I shut my eyes and talk to Leo, wherever he is. Go home, I tell him. Go home, Leo. Go home!
Then I remember what happened there, and I realize he might be too scared to come home.
I can’t sleep at all that night, terrified of what I will dream if I do. Every time I start to drift off, I hear Leo crying out for me. And then I hear Inez saying, over and over: It’s because of what you did….
I wake up Monday in a panic about Leo, adrenaline shooting through my body. I go down to use the communal shower, hoping I didn’t sleep too late. I always make sure I’m the first one there, so I’m alone. I’m modest that way. My friends used to make fun of the way I dressed for gym class, maneuvering inside my clothes so no one could see anything.
This morning, I have so much excess energy that I decide to go to the trouble to wash my hair, even though it always takes quite a while, because it is so thick and long. Then I have to untangle it and use a hair pick to comb it out, which is always embarrassing if people see me.
By lunch, when I still haven’t heard any more about Leo, I break down and get permission to call Inez. I can’t believe it when the phone rings and rings. How many times have I told her we need a stupid answering machine? What if I was someone calling about Leo?
I want to scream at the top of my lungs. What if a car hits him? He doesn’t even know how to look both ways. What if he’s hiding under someone’s porch, afraid to come out? What if he only needs to hear my voice calling for him around the neighborhood?
I have to get out and help look for him. I know if I do, he’ll come home. I beg the guards, my caseworker, and anyone who will listen. “You have to let me out. Leo will come to me! He knows my voice! He’s probably just scared and hiding under a porch and he’ll hear me and come out.”
I try to imagine some stranger trying to help Leo—and how Leo would scream if they touched him. I think of the time I was at the kitchen table, working on a school project that involved Popsicle sticks, when Leo joined me. He watched for a few minutes, and then he picked up two sticks and used the glue to make a cross. He must have made ten of them. I was so surprised and proud of him. But when it was time to clean up, every time I tried to pick up one of his crosses, he started to wail like it hurt him.
It took me a while to realize that to his mind they weren’t crosses; they were people. And in his mind, they were just like him and so they couldn’t bear to be touched. I had to wait to clear the table until he was in another room, and for some reason that made me want to cry. The memory stings now, reminds me how sensitive Leo is.
That afternoon, the police come to talk to me. At first I think it’s good news. But, no, they’re actually there to grill me. They even have the gall to suggest I was somehow involved. They say maybe I was so angry at Inez that I asked friends to steal Leo….
“But I didn’t know where he was staying!” I screech. “And I can’t talk to my friends because their parents won’t let them, which is probably because of you guys.”
It’s true that when I was finally allowed to call Jackie, Mrs. Newton sounded cold and weird on the phone. She acted like I was some stranger and told me Jackie wasn’t home. But I know she was—because I know her exact schedule, and I could hear The Brady Bunch in the background, which she watches after school.
* * *
—
WITH LEO MISSING for more than two days, the hours feel like torture. It feels like time is going so slow that I might as well be living on the planet Venus, where it takes 243 Earth days for a single day to pass. That means you get up in the morning with the sun and it won’t set again for thousands of hours.
It’s weird to think how for regular people, time is just time. But if you’re locked up, time is your enemy. Maybe that’s why they call it “doing time.” They use time’s passing—and seemingly not passing—to punish you. You wouldn’t think it could hurt so much, but it does. And with Leo out there lost, it’s excruciating.
Leo would do great at being locked up, because he doesn’t really care about time. Sure, he knows that when the hands on his yellow plastic watch point to a certain number, he gets to eat lunch or watch Gilligan’s Island or whatever. But when Inez gives him a time-out in his room, he doesn’t care for how long, he just starts stacking blocks or spinning the wheels of a toy car.
And then there’s the loneliness. Leo doesn’t mind being alone for long stretches. And if he’s upset, he doesn’t need or want someone to hug him. If I’m not around to pat his back and count, he simply curls up on his bed and rocks himself until he feels better.
At
Denney that night, when I can’t sleep and I feel like screaming, I turn on my side, wrap my arms around my knees, and decide to give Leo’s rocking thing a try. At first I’m embarrassed even in front of myself. But after a while it starts to feel good, like someone is actually comforting me, even if it’s just me.
It gives me hope that someday I really can become more like Leo—unafraid of time, unchanged by my punishment.
When I meet with Betty Tuesday morning, I can tell she’s worried for me or angry or something. I start out begging her to get me out so I can look for Leo. But her voice takes on a briskness that shuts me down. “I’m really sorry about Leo,” she tells me. “But we have to talk about your case. I haven’t wanted to push you, Venus. But it’s been more than a week now…” She pauses to take a breath, like she doesn’t like what she has to say. “And, unfortunately, the prosecutor is being pressured to move your case to adult court.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means you would be tried as an adult in front of a regular jury. Which is ridiculous. I don’t think it will happen. But if it does, you could get sentenced to a lot more time. At eighteen, you’d be transferred from Echo Glen to an adult facility to serve out the rest of your sentence.”
I’m confused. “What is Echo Glen?”
“I’m sorry. It’s a juvenile facility in Issaquah, where most Snohomish County teens end up serving their time. It’s kind of like a school, though. It’s really not a terrible place….”
Now she’s scaring me. I’d been picturing staying here at Denney. I figured I’d get privileges for being good, so I could get out early.
“I don’t want you to worry, Venus,” she assures me, as if she’s read my mind. “You’re way, way too young to be tried as an adult. You’re only thirteen!” She bangs her fist on her desk for emphasis, but it doesn’t even make me jump like on TV.
“Plus, you’re a good student,” she continues. “You have no prior arrests, and you’re unlikely to re-offend. And since Washington uses specific sentencing standards for juveniles, you’re already guaranteed an appropriate sentence.”
“So what is appropriate?” I ask. “I wouldn’t want to be inappropriate.” I know I’m joking to hide my fear.
“I can’t say for sure, Venus,” Betty admits. “Depending on your disposition—what you’re convicted of—at worst, you could be incarcerated anywhere from three and a half years up to when you reach the age of twenty-one, which for you would be more than seven years. If you got convicted in adult court,” she adds, “it would mean a longer sentence.”
Longer? She must see the confusion and alarm on my face. I feel like my whole body is going numb with novocaine from the dentist.
“But I didn’t even mean to do it!” I exclaim.
“It’s going to be okay, Venus,” she says in a hushed voice. “Given the evidence, I know enough about what happened to know that, at the very least, your case presents a good amount of mitigating circumstances that can help us.”
“What does mitigating mean?” My brain is still frantically trying to make sense of how any of those numbers—years!—could apply to me. Did she just say I could go to juvenile prison until I’m twenty-one? I’m not even sure where Issaquah is, but it has to be pretty far away and a Podunk town, since I’ve barely heard of it. I can’t bear being grounded for a month, so how would I ever survive being locked up for so long?
“Mitigating means we’ll try to show that there are extenuating circumstances that should be considered,” Betty explains. “The most important one is probably going to be whatever drove you to do this, Venus. For example, if your stepfather sexually abused you, that would be a serious mitigating circumstance.”
“But he didn’t sexually abuse me!” I exclaim.
By now I’m distraught and terrified. Maybe I should just lie? Tell her what she and everyone want to hear. But I can’t bring myself to.
Before I leave Betty’s office, she asks if I want to hurt myself.
I tell her no. “Not yet,” I add. That’s when she mentions that I was on suicide watch my first three days of detention. She explains to me that every fifteen minutes someone was looking in at me through that small glass window in my door.
The news totally freaks me out. “It’s a really good thing I didn’t know that was happening,” I tell her. “It might have had the opposite effect. Did anyone think about that?”
Honestly, suicide hasn’t crossed my mind since I got to Denney. And now I feel kind of bad, like I failed to meet expectations. I didn’t realize I was supposed to feel so guilty about what happened that it should make me want to die.
This must be the reason for the cheap plastic sneakers with Velcro straps they make us wear—duh. They don’t want us to hang ourselves with the shoelaces. Same with taking the erasers off the pencils, so we won’t use the metal part to slit our wrists. I’m pretty sure no one would have thought of doing these things…but it’s like they’re determined to convince you that you want to kill yourself.
I hate to disappoint everybody, but I’m just not there yet. Maybe down the road if things get bad enough…but it’s harder than people think to get in the mood to kill yourself.
I know, because I’ve tried. It was just last week, and here I am, alive.
After my latest session with Betty, I don’t know who I’m more worried about—Leo or myself. I can’t imagine going to a real prison. And I can’t just sit here while my little brother is lost and needs me.
By dinner, my mind is made up. I sit by that girl named Truly again. I overheard her brag once that she’d escaped Denney twice. Something about hospitals trying to kill her.
Since I can tell she’s not one for small talk, I dive right in. “My brother’s gone missing. I might be the only one who can find him. Did you really break out of here before?”
“Yeah,” she says casually. “So did your brother run away?”
“No,” I tell her. “It’s not like that. He’s only seven, but it’s more like he’s three or so, because he has developmental problems. He’s not retarded, but close.” I want Truly to get the point fast. “It sounds like he is lost or he was taken away from the house where he was staying with a friend of my mom’s….”
“Shit, I’m really sorry,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“Leo. Like the constellation.”
“I get it. Your mom’s a space freak.”
“Actually, she’s dumb about space,” I tell her, impatient and annoyed.
“This is just shit,” says Truly, shoving her plate away. It takes me a second to realize she means the food, not what I’m saying.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree. The Salisbury steak sucks, but in an irrational moment I’m tempted to ask Truly if I can have her green peas. Maybe because they remind me of the way Leo always carefully arranges them in a swirl on his plate. He also likes that they are the “right” green.
“I want to break out tonight,” I tell Truly. I can’t believe I just said that.
“Yeah?” she answers, like no big deal. “Tonight? I could do tonight. I’m pretty much ready to go again. There’s lots of ways to get out of here.”
And then she outlines an escape plan that makes me want to burst into tears. Truly will ask a girl named Belinda, who works in the kitchen, to jimmy the kitchen door so we can escape out a back entrance in there. We’ll climb over the chain-link fence, she says. But since there’s barbed wire at the top, we’ll use the big bath mats from the girls’ showers so we can get over it without cutting ourselves.
Bath mats? Her plan sounds stupid, scary, and dangerous. What if we can’t get the mats and ourselves to the top? What if they shoot at us? How bad of a crime is it to try to escape, anyway?
I still haven’t totally agreed for sure before a buzzer signals the end of dinner. “You better be ready,” she says. “I’ll meet you outside the kitche
n at eight P.M.”
I nod, trembling.
I know Truly can tell I’m scared to do this, because she leans into my ear and says in her husky voice, “You’re the one who’s looking at years behind bars. Plus, don’t forget Leo.”
Like I ever would. It’s for him that I’m about to do the second-worst thing of my life.
* * *
—
I AM THERE early, a black rubber shower mat rolled up under one arm. Just around the corner, six girls are watching TV and another two are playing poker, using ripped-up pieces of paper as money.
When Truly shows up with her own bath mat, she hisses, “What’s wrong? You look scared, but you should be smiling. We’re about to be free. I’m mainly doing this for you, you know.”
I shrug my shoulders and try to look relaxed. “Thank you. I really am grateful,” I tell her. “I just hate doing stuff where you could get caught—”
“Are you serious? You’re in the biggest trouble of anyone in this building! And you’re afraid to skip out of juvie? Are you going to bag out on me?”
“No,” I say defensively. I can hear the TV in the community room and the other girls talking. This plan seems so stupid, like we aren’t being sneaky enough, like we’re escaping in broad daylight, even though I know it’s dark outside. In Denney, you never get a sense of day or night, because of the lack of windows and all the fluorescent lights.
Truly signals me and then opens the kitchen door, pointing out the latch where Belinda has taped a nickel so it wouldn’t automatically lock when the cook left. As we enter the kitchen, I instinctively grip Truly’s knobby elbow and she knocks my arm away. “Don’t be a sissy!” she hisses.
As we quickly cross the big kitchen, I catch whiffs of tonight’s dinner along with the scent of something sour, maybe the dishrags. After we pass the enormous sinks, we come to a huge walk-in pantry.
We drop our mats and hurriedly empty the cupboard of all the dried goods and cans. On the count of three we pull the shelf away, and sure enough, there’s an old wooden set of doors back there, secured only by a metal latch. All we have to do is slide a lever and the door swings open.
My Name Is Venus Black Page 4
