The Cradle Robbers

by Ayelet Waldman

  Ruby bounced into the car, tossed her backpack in the front passenger seat, and whacked her brother on the side of the head. He screamed, the baby woke up from her nursing stupor, and it took me a good ten minutes to get everybody calmed down and buckled into their car seats and boosters. I’m sure Ruby announced her presence in the car so violently because she was trying to make known her opposition to her booster seat. While I had many failings as a mother, God knows, I was not willing to add to them crippling my child in an automobile accident. I had already sworn she was going to sit in a booster seat until she was tall enough and heavy enough to be safe without one, or until she got a driver’s license, whichever came first.

  I realize that forcing Ruby and Isaac to change into their tae kwon do uniforms while we were in transit somewhat diminished the security of the ride, but they kept their seat belts on, and we were running late.

  I dropped Isaac in Mighty Mites and took Ruby up the stairs to the yellow and green belt class. She had just moved up to green, after struggling for quite some time with a mere green stripe on her yellow belt, and she was full of herself, swaggering onto the mat and giving the American and Korean flags a crisp bow. I scanned the assembled crowd, seeking out a mother I knew well enough to ask for a favor, but one whom I hadn’t imposed upon yet. There was one: a dark-haired woman with a shelf of a bosom and a roll of stretch-marked belly peeking out from between her tight T-shirt and her army-green, paint-spattered capri pants. She wore dark eye shadow and mascara and a slash of purple lipstick. Her hands were smudged with what looked like charcoal. She looked like an artist, or a Hollywood rendition of one. I recognized her from Isaac’s preschool—her son was a year ahead of mine.

  “Hi, Karen,” I said.

  “Karyan,” she said.

  So much for the favor.

  She said, “Remind me of your name? I know we’ve met at preschool, but when I’m working on a piece I get so distracted. I have a hard time remembering things.”

  All was not lost. “Oh, that’s totally fine. Really. I’m terrible with names myself. Juliet. Juliet Applebaum. And my son is Isaac. He’s a year below . . .”

  “Jirair.”

  “Jirair, of course. So, do you guys live around here?”

  Three minutes later, I was pulling the booster seats out of my car, dumping them into Karyan’s, and setting off for Canoga Park, having set up a tae kwon do car pool, commencing that afternoon. The only trick would be ensuring that Peter was home to greet the kids when Karyan dropped them off, because I was going to be stuck on the freeway heading out to pay a call on a woman named Sister.

  * * *

  Finding Sister Pauline was easier than finding a parking space outside the projects where she lived. It wasn’t that there wasn’t any place to leave my car. The problem was that someone had managed to break a bottle against nearly every available curb, and I didn’t relish the thought of changing a tire as the sun set over Canoga Park. Finally, I pulled the car into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven and offered the clerk two dollars to let me leave it there for longer than the allotted thirty minutes. We settled on five bucks, but I made him promise to keep an eye on the car. It wasn’t like I really thought anyone was going to take a joy ride in my minivan, but I’d only had it since Sadie was born, and despite the dent I’d already put in the bumper, I didn’t want it stolen. More because I didn’t want to have to cab it home from Canoga Park than because I had any special fondness for my car. It already smelled too weird for that.

  The kids playing double Dutch on the cracked asphalt driveway alongside the housing project not only knew where the tenants’ commission president lived, they knew her daughter Sister Pauline, and they knew that she was home.

  “She always home,” one little girl said, bobbing her head. Her hair was woven into a mass of braids, swirled into a pattern over her skull. I love braids, but whenever I attempt them on Ruby’s red curls I end up making her look like a circus clown.

  The little girl pointed me in the direction of a ground-level apartment. “You Sister Pauline’s parole officer?” she asked. “I never seen a parole officer with a baby before.”

  I had clicked Sadie’s car seat into the Snap N Go stroller—perhaps, in my opinion, the most important invention since the disposable diaper—and draped my diaper bag over the handlebars. The little girl was right—I did not look much like a parole officer, or an investigator, for that matter. I prefer it that way. Nine times out of ten, rather than impede my work, having a baby or child along ends up being helpful. Children act as a nice little smoke screen when I want to interrogate a witness—people are rarely defensive when questioned by a woman with a couple of kids hanging off her. Other women, in particular, are put at ease by it. A cute toddler has gained me access to homes whose thresholds, had I been on my own, I wouldn’t have been allowed even to cross, never mind been given a glass of milk and a plate of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies once inside. I’m careful not to put my kids in harm’s way, however, and if once or twice I’ve had to pierce a juice box and hand it into the backseat while tearing down Venice Boulevard in pursuit of a suspect, well, I do my best to exceed the speed limit by only what is reasonable under the circumstances. I’m very careful. Okay, so when I was pregnant with Isaac I did get shot, but I’ve learned a lot since then.

  The woman who answered the door was honey-skinned with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She wore her hair ironed into waves. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was carrying a young child on her hip. The little girl was about three or so, with eyes so round and wide she could have been a model for a Keene drawing, that is if the Keenes had ever painted African American children.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Sister Pauline?”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Can I help you?” she repeated.

  “My name is Juliet Applebaum, and I’m a private investigator representing a woman who is incarcerated in Dartmore. My client’s newborn baby is in foster care with the Lambs of the Lord, and she has some concerns about the organization. She thought you might have had experience with them.”

  “Who’s your client?” She held the door with her hand, not even allowing me to see into the apartment.

  I tried to size her up. I didn’t want to reveal Sandra Lorgeree’s identity if there was any chance of trouble. In prison, the web of debts owed and grudges held is very complicated. I needed to tread carefully. “I don’t think I’d better say, Ms. . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

  “Hubblebank.”

  “Ms. Hubblebank. I have to preserve my client’s privacy.”

  “What about my privacy? Why you think I should tell you anything if you won’t even tell me who you working for? How I know you not just working for the Lambs of the Lord, trying to set me up?”

  I paused and chewed thoughtfully on my lip. “You’re right. It’s not fair to expect you to give me information with nothing in exchange. How about this. You let me bring my baby in out of the sun, and we’ll sit down and talk. I’ll tell you all about what happened to my client, and if you feel comfortable, you can share your story with me.”

  Pauline looked at Sadie and her face softened. “How old is she?”

  “Four months.”

  “She big.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “This one big, too. She only twenty-two months old.”

  “She’s not even two yet? I was sure she was three!”

  Pauline shook her head, smiling. “No. Not even close. She big because I nursed her. All my friends thought I was crazy, but my mama put all us kids to her breast, and I knew I wanted that for my babies. Breast milk’s the best thing for them. You giving your baby breast milk?”

  I motioned toward my inflated chest. “Can’t you tell? This is not my normal look, I promise you. I nursed all three of my kids—my boy until he could talk. He was so hard to wean I was afraid I’d end up pumping bottles until he was in high school.”

/>   “I never did that. That pumping thing. They gave me one of them at WIC, but I’d squeeze and squeeze and nothing would come out.”

  “Oh, those hand pumps are terrible. I rent a monster electric one. It’s bright yellow and I feel like a Guernsey dairy cow hitched up to a milking machine, but it’s the only way. You could use a hand pump for a week and not get enough for even one feeding.”

  Pauline shook her head. “I just took her with me wherever I went. Until I went away. You can come in. You’ll want a glass of water before you nurse that baby.”

  Pauline, her mother, and Pauline’s young daughter shared a one-bedroom apartment that was designed around a shrine of photographs of a man in a police officer’s uniform. The pale blue velvet sofa and matching recliners all faced the altar; the television on its cart was angled toward it. Even the small dining table in the dining area had an empty place at its head, leaving a clear line of sight from every chair to the grouping of photographs, the framed officer’s badge, the parchment police academy graduation certificate, and the wall of award citations.

  I left the stroller wheels in the tiny front hall and brought the car seat and sleeping baby into the living room with me. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and put Sadie on the floor at my feet. The wall-to-wall carpet was thick piled shag, worn in places and covered in odd spots by woven throw rugs. I supposed that the rugs covered stains or tears.

  Pauline handed me a glass of ice water and placed a platter of corn chips and a small bowl of salsa on the table. “We don’t have any mild,” she said, sitting down on a recliner and settling her daughter in her lap. “And I don’t think the spicy’s too good for your milk. Maybe you should just have the chips plain.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Plain chips are great.”

  “My other baby, she a little older than yours.”

  “Your other baby?”

  “Not this one; not Dericia. Taniel, my younger baby. The one you asked about. The one the Lambs of the Lord took. Next week, on the eleventh, that’s her seven-month birthday.” Pauline rested her chin on Dericia’s head. The little girl wiggled off her mother’s thighs and ran to the television set.

  “Dora?” Dericia said, patting the TV screen. “Time for Dora?”

  “Okay, baby,” Pauline said. “But go watch in the bedroom.” Dericia ran out of the room and her mother turned to me. “I don’t like for her to see me cry, and I can’t think about Taniel without crying.”

  “She’s bright,” I said.

  “Just like her sister. I know my Taniel is smart like Dericia.”

  “You were pregnant with Taniel when you went inside?”

  She nodded. “Only just. I didn’t know for sure until after I got arrested. And then I thought for sure I’d be out before I had her. I didn’t expect no fifteen-month sentence, I’ll tell you that.”

  I knew enough not to ask what she had been convicted of. That’s a rule with prisoners and ex-prisoners. If they want you to know their offense, they’ll tell you. Otherwise, you mind your own business. But Pauline was willing to share.

  “I took fifteen months on a crack-cocaine charge. Pled to it, finally. My lawyer, he said if I went to trial I’d get lots more. Still, it seems like a long time away for just half a gram of crack, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “My mama, she nearly died, she was so ashamed. My daddy, he was a police officer. That’s him over there. He died when I was a girl. Just had a heart attack one day in bed. He wasn’t but thirty-six years old. Sometimes I think it’s better he died before he had to see me go to jail.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Pauline sighed and her eyes filled with tears. “Prison wasn’t even the worst part of it. Losing the baby. Losing my Taniel. That’s a life sentence.”

  I shifted forward in my seat, leaning toward her. “What happened, Pauline?”

  She wiped her eyes. “Call me Sister Pauline. That’s what people call me. My mama was all set to come up and get Taniel, but the problem was, you see, she don’t drive. She was going to have to wait for my uncle Daniel, the one I named the baby for, to take off work. Up in prison they only give you a day in the hospital and there just wasn’t going to be any way for Uncle Daniel and my mama to get up to Dartmore in time. The social worker”—Sister Pauline’s lip curled—“that evil woman, she arranged for the Lambs of the Lord man to come visit me. He told me they’d send a foster mother for my baby and she’d keep her until my own mama got up to Dartmore. I was so happy I found them.” She laughed bitterly. “I was so afraid that if DSS got hold of my baby they’d never let her go. I never thought that the Lambs would take her. Never for a minute.”

  By now she was weeping freely, tears streaming down her face. She rubbed the back of her hands on her cheeks. I wanted to get up and hug her, but there was no room for me on the recliner next to her, and there was something self-contained about this young woman in her grief.

  “What happened when your mother came up to get Taniel?”

  “She never got up to Dartmore. My uncle Daniel, he fell off a roof the week before Taniel was born, and he broke his back, so he couldn’t drive her nowhere. The family that took Taniel, they kept telling my mama when she called, ‘Oh take your time, she doing fine.’ Mama looked for someone else to drive her on up. Then she got sick. She lost her foot to the diabetes. Her friends on the tenants’ commission took up a collection to send her up to Dartmore, but it took almost six months before she was well enough to go get my baby. Right before she went up, I got this letter saying that there was a hearing scheduled to terminate my parental rights. My mama got herself to the hearing. She told the judge I was going be getting out in just three more months, but by then it was too late. The judge just gave my Taniel to that couple, the Lambs of the Lord people, saying that I’d abandoned her and that she’d be better off with them, that that woman was her mama now.”

  Sister Pauline’s story chilled me. Was that possible? Could a baby be signed over just like that?

  “Tell you something else,” Sister Pauline said. “I know why they wanted her; I know why they wanted my Taniel.”

  “Why?”

  “The social worker brought those people to the hospital room to pick up Taniel at the end of my day with her. I found out after that they weren’t supposed to be there, but they were there, right in my room. I had my baby girl to my breast, just to give her some little bit of milk before she had to go, and the woman, she gets this pinched look on her face when she sees that. The social worker tells the nurse to show them my baby, and then the nurse takes Taniel away from me and hands her to the foster mother. Taniel’s all wrapped up in a little striped blanket with her little pink hat on her head and the lady says to her husband, ‘Oh look! She so fair! She looks just like a little white baby.’ Those people stole my Taniel because she came out with my light skin. If only her daddy been dark, like Dericia’s daddy, I’d still have my little Taniel. I know I would.”

  At that moment Dericia ran into the room, squealing a line from her TV show, “Swiper no swiping!” at the top of her lungs.

  Sister Pauline leaned down to scoop her daughter into her lap and I stared at the pair. Taken separately, her story and Sandra’s could have, if not a benign explanation, then at least an understandable one. In Taniel’s case, if you closed your eyes to the chilling racism of the foster mother, you might argue that the family had simply fallen in love with their foster child, and after six months no longer wanted to turn her over. In Sandra’s case, if there even were a case, and not just a series of missed phone calls, the argument could be made that the foster parents were worried about the well-being of a child who would be taken from them after five years. Each case independently had its merits. However, when taken together, suddenly there seemed to be a terrible and troubling pattern. Were the Lambs of the Lord conspiring to take the babies of incarcerated women at Dartmore Prison?

  Five

  AL had his tie flipped over his shoulder and was h
olding not one but two chili dogs, one half eaten, grease soaking into the bun and dyeing it fluorescent orange.

  “I don’t understand how you can eat that at nine in the morning,” I said.

  “How is this different from huevos rancheros? Or bacon and eggs?”

  “It just is.”

  He shook his head balefully. Normally, I can follow Al on any of his culinary expeditions. Together we’ve eaten at canteens and dives from Santa Barbara down to La Jolla. But I cannot eat a Pink’s chili dog, no matter how crisp the skin on the thin sausage, no matter how fragrant the hot sauerkraut, no matter how crunchy the chopped onion, first thing in the morning. Even if I know that that is the only time of day you can count on the chili in the steam table not to settle into a pool of thick, orange grease. In three hours, or even two, I would have been right there with him, and I might even have been convinced to give the jalapeño dog a try. But all I want at 9 A.M. is a cup of coffee and a donut. Two donuts, maybe.

  Al unhinged his lower jaw and stuffed the remains of his first dog into it. Then he started in on the second. “So are you more inclined to believe Fidelia’s bunkie given what you learned from that Pauline woman?”

  I shrugged. “Filing for termination of parental rights isn’t exactly baby stealing, although it’s pretty damn close. And the way they went about it is worth investigating, that’s for sure. But not by us. This is something the Department of Social Services should be looking into. Or the U.S. Attorney’s office, if the agency is engaged in some kind of civil rights violation. I’m going to make some calls, see if I can’t motivate one of those agencies to take over the case. I’ll get in touch with some people at the U.S. Attorney’s office and call the Department of Corrections. I’ll file a report with DSS, too. And while I’m at it, I’m going to prepare a request for information from DSS and from family court for any information they have on Sandra’s baby’s foster care placement. The might have some record of the specific placement, even though it was contracted out through the Lambs of the Lord.”