by Amy Hatvany
I raced over next to her and squatted down. “Are you okay, honey?” I asked, pushing back the fine hair of her bangs from her sweet face. She was whimpering and tearful, though not loudly. I glanced over at her mother, and saw that her back was to us; she was busy talking with her friends. She hadn’t seen the fall. “Did you hurt yourself?” I asked the girl, and she nodded, pushing out her tiny and pink, chubby lower lip.
I gathered her into my arms and lifted her up. Her skin was warmed by the sun. She smelled sweet, like strawberries, tinged with just a touch of summer sweat. I squeezed her to my body, then started to feel dizzy, and my heart began to race. I closed my eyes and felt as though I’d been sucked through the dark vacuum of a black hole, back to that small room with my babies, holding them for the last time.
No, I thought. No, no, no.
The child struggled against my embrace, pushing at my chest with her small hands, but not with enough strength to break free. I held her tighter. “Shh,” I murmured. “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you.”
This time, when the little girl cried out the word “Mama!” all I could hear was Brooke’s voice. All I could think of was getting away, saving my daughter, not letting anyone take her. Blinking fast, I shifted my eyes toward the blond-haired woman, and at the same moment, she turned and saw me. “Hey!” she called out. She strode in my direction, arms swinging at her sides. “Hey!” she said again, louder this time, and with more urgency.
A river of discordant noises raged inside my head—a jarring, crashing cacophony of sound. I can’t let them take her. I can’t.
Before I knew what I was doing, I spun around, the little girl still safe in my arms, and headed toward the woods, running as fast as I could.
“Mama, Mama, Mama!”
“Shh, honey, shh,” I said. I had one arm wrapped around her body, holding her to me. With my other hand, I cupped her head, pushing her face into the curve of my neck as I ran, trying to protect it from the whip-sharp sting of the branches that scratched at my bare arms. I felt the heat of her tears on my skin, her tiny rib cage heaving against mine.
We’ll be okay. We just have to get away. Then no one can take her.
Each step I took crunched atop the pine needles covering the ground. There was no path. No easy way to snake through the trees. But I didn’t think. I didn’t stop. I had no idea where I was going or how far I’d already gone. The only thing I could do was run.
“I want my mama!” the girl cried, and a chunk of her straight brown hair flew up and blinded me.
Wait. Brooke’s hair is curly, like mine.
I wasn’t carrying my daughter. The realization reverberated through me, like a church bell being struck inside my head.
It took only this brief moment of distraction for the tip of my toe to catch on a thick root. My foot twisted, sending a sharp spike of pain from my ankle, up my shin, and into my knee. Both of us tumbled, and the girl flew out of my arms, landing hard against the trunk of a tall evergreen a couple of yards away.
Her cries got louder then, and despite having the air knocked out of me from hitting the ground, I managed to crawl over to her. She had a large cut on her forehead; it gushed bright red blood down the left side of her face. Oh, god, I thought as I took in her unfamiliar features. What did I do?
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, managing to sit up. I ripped off the bottom of my shirt and pressed it as hard as I could over the wound on her head. I heard people shouting behind me, though I couldn’t make out what they said. “I’m so sorry,” I told her. “Let me take you to your mama, okay?”
She was hysterical, screeching so loudly I couldn’t be sure that she’d heard what I said. I stood up, and the piercing agony in my right ankle almost took me down again. Ignoring my own injuries, I helped her stand so I could inspect hers. Her hair was a mess, and her legs and arms looked as though they’d been attacked by an angry cat; no matter how much I’d tried to protect her skin, the razor-tip ends of the tree branches had had their way with her, too. A river of tears ran through the mess of grime and blood on her face as I put more pressure on the cut on her head. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth was open wide. Her sundress was dirty and torn.
Seeing all of this—knowing I was responsible for her injuries and her tears—I started to cry, too. I heard a dog bark and knew I had to get her back to her mother just as quickly as I could. I felt dizzy and sick, bells going off inside my head, but I picked her up, keeping the makeshift bandage pressed against her forehead as I limped in what I hoped was the direction of the play area. My ankle screamed at me with every step. After only a moment, I saw her mother and several other adults charging toward me.
The girl’s mother sped up until she reached us. She yanked her daughter from my arms and held her close. “Shh, shh, baby,” she said. “I’ve got you. You’re all right. Everything’s going to be fine.” She gave me a fierce glare. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I took a step backward, almost stumbling again because of the pain in my ankle. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.” My eyes widened as two men—fathers who had been playing with their children at the park—pushed past the woman. Each of them grabbed one of my arms and squeezed them, tightly. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m so sorry, but she’s okay. We fell. I don’t know what happened.”
“My wife called the police,” one of them said to the woman.
“Wait,” I said, feeling panic rise in a wave inside my chest. “You don’t understand. It was a mistake. I thought . . . I saw her fall and heard her crying and I thought she was mine.” A sob tore at my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Please. I’m so sorry.”
The woman said nothing. She simply held on to her daughter, whipped around, and walked away. The men who held me led me back through the woods, never letting up on their grip.
The gravity of what I’d just done sank down deep in my body, melting into a dark, rancid ink, staining my insides black. Before I knew it, my stomach heaved and emptied its contents on the ground. I straightened and tried to wipe my mouth as the two men still moved us forward.
I saw the red and blue flash of police lights as we exited the woods. The woman and her daughter were already with the paramedics, and when the officers saw the two men holding me, they marched in our direction. When they reached us, the two men finally let go, only to have one of the officers tell me to put my hands behind my back.
“Wait, please,” I begged. “Let me explain.”
The officer took my arms and forced them behind my back, securing my wrists together with handcuffs. “There’s nothing for you to explain,” he said. He was a muscular black man with a strong jaw and a bald head. “We have multiple eyewitness accounts that describe how you grabbed the child from the playground and ran into the woods.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, choking on my tears. “It was a mistake. I thought she was my daughter. I didn’t realize what I was doing.”
“Tell it to your lawyer,” said the other officer, a stocky woman with pale skin and black hair, shorn short against her head. “Right now, you’re being placed under arrest for attempted kidnapping.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the male officer began, and as he continued reading me my rights, my mind went blank, and I didn’t hear anything else. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the mother as she stood next to her little girl, who the paramedics had now placed on a gurney. The mother had her hand on top of her daughter’s head as she also held one of her small hands. She only glanced up at me once, and it was with so much bitterness, so much hate in her eyes, I looked at the ground. I wondered if there was something really wrong with me. There had to be, for me to do something so unthinkable. Why else would I have grabbed that little girl and run? Why else would I have thought I was holding Brooke?
After the officer finished speaking, he asked if I had any identification. “In my back pocket,” I said, and he reached for my wallet, pulling out my driver’s licens
e, which had expired two years before. He took it and walked over to his vehicle, then climbed inside the driver’s seat. A couple of minutes later he returned and spoke to the female officer as though I wasn’t standing right there.
“Jennifer Walker,” he said. “Just out last week from Skagit Correctional.”
“Really,” the female officer replied. “What was she in for?”
“Several counts of petty theft and child endangerment and neglect.” The officer looked at me and frowned. “Guess they let you go too soon.”
I didn’t respond. To him, I was just a criminal. A repeat offender. Nothing else. Maybe that’s the truth, I thought. Maybe I’ll be better off in jail. I’ll never get my daughters back anyway, so what does it matter?
The female officer held me by my elbow and led me to the police car. I was still limping— my ankle felt like it was on fire—but I didn’t care. I deserved whatever pain I was in. The officer opened the back door and helped me turn so I could get inside. She kept her hand on top of my head so I wouldn’t knock it into the roof as I sat down.
Once the door was closed, I looked over one final time and saw the little girl sit up and hug her mother. She had finally stopped crying and had a clean white bandage on her forehead. I leaned my own head against the window, trying not to be sick again, hoping she would be okay. I hoped I hadn’t traumatized her too much.
I waited a long while for the officers to finish taking more statements from the other people in the park, and when they both finally climbed into the seats in front of me, I was more than ready to leave. At least I know where I’m going, I thought as we drove out of the parking lot and onto the street. At least now, I have a place to stay.
• • •
The next day, after hearing my side of what happened, my public defender, a short, heavy man with dark pouches of skin under his brown eyes and a thick, Tom Selleck–style mustache, suggested I enter a not-guilty plea. “You had just found out you can’t get your children back,” he said, as we sat together in a small room in the King County jail. “The judge might feel sorry for you.”
“No,” I said. I’d picked up the girl and run away with her into the woods. I was guilty. There was no point in trying to make excuses.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug.
Later that afternoon at my hearing, I pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and reckless endangerment of a child, for which the judge issued me a sentence of ten years. It could have been much worse, he told me, if I’d used a weapon or tried to put the little girl in a car and drive away. He cited my past offenses of theft and neglecting my children as adding weight to his decision to put me away for as long as he did. I didn’t argue. I simply stood in the courtroom and listened to the litany of things I’d done wrong. Each word was like a jagged nail pounded into my body, confirmation of how broken and useless I was.
After the sentencing, I spent four weeks in King County jail, waiting to be assigned to a prison. It was only dumb luck that returned me to the women’s facility in Mt. Vernon and the regimented life to which I’d become accustomed over the previous year.
“Well, well, look who’s back!” O’Brien said as she walked into the small space on the cellblock that held my bed and one other. “What happened, Walker? You miss us or something?”
“Something like that,” I said, not wanting to relive what I’d done in the park. I’d tried several times to write my daughters another note after the few sentences I’d written my last morning in the motel, but was only able to get down two words: I’m sorry. I wrote them over and over again, filling page after page, knowing that tiny sentence would never be enough to express just how deeply the roots of my regret were planted inside my heart.
“You get your work assignment yet?” O’Brien asked as she dropped down to sit on my bunk with me. She smelled like grease and bleach.
“No,” I said. “I just got here this morning.” It was late afternoon, and I’d spent the entire day lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting them, trying not to think about anything at all.
She put a hand on top of my thigh. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you back in the kitchen, okay?” She smiled. “It’ll be like old times.”
“Thanks,” I said, grateful she wasn’t pushing me to tell her what I’d done to land back there so quickly. The old hollow sensation had returned and taken over my body, ever since the moment in the woods when I saw the blood rushing down that little girl’s face. It felt as though I were hovering just outside of my skin—me, but not me. There, but not part of anything going on around me. My soul tethered to my body by only a thin wisp of thread.
The next morning after breakfast, my counselor, Myer, called me into his office. I sat down in the same metal chair I’d been in just a month before and folded my hands together in my lap. I stared at the floor.
“So,” he said, leaning back in his own chair. “I guess you didn’t listen to my advice.” I kept my eyes cast downward and didn’t respond, so he sighed, then continued. “You’re being assigned to the vet program. You’ll need to report to the community room for orientation this afternoon at two o’clock.”
“Vet?” I said. “As in war vets?”
“No, Walker. You’ll be working with dogs. Learning how to train them to be guides for people with disabilities. It’s a pilot program, led by a local veterinarian.”
“But I don’t know anything about dogs,” I said. “I’ve never even had one.” Of course, I’d wanted a puppy when I was a little girl. My dad had even brought one home as a surprise for my seventh birthday, but after three nights of the sweet little mutt whining and chewing up the edges of my mother’s couch, she insisted that my father take it back to the pound.
“He’ll teach you,” Myer said. “That’s the point. Now go on. And don’t give me any flak over this. I know your friend in the kitchen wants you there, but the warden’s on my ass to get more inmates into the antirecidivism programs.” He pushed a brochure across his desk. “Take this, too.”
“What is it?” I asked as I stood up and reached for what he was giving me.
“Information on getting your GED. Now that you’re here a while longer, you should do it.”
A “while” longer, I thought. As in ten times longer. I’ll be thirty-one when I get out. I took the brochure and thanked him before I left his office and headed toward the kitchen, where I told O’Brien about my new assignment.
“That fucker,” she said, pressing the bottom edge of a clipboard against her stomach. “What the hell do you know about dogs?”
“Not much,” I said. “But I guess I’m going to learn.”
“Hey,” O’Brien said, reaching out one of her long arms to pull me into a side hug. “Glad you’re back, bitch.”
I nodded and gave her a perfunctory smile before I went back to my bunk to wait until I needed to be at the orientation. At noon, I went to the cafeteria, but only because not showing up at meals was against the rules unless you were in the infirmary. I didn’t eat, though. Since the day in the park, I seemed to have lost my taste buds. Everything I put in my mouth had the texture of sawdust. It took a huge amount of effort to chew, and the only way I managed to eat anything at all was to wash down each bite with large swallows of water.
After an hour of sitting alone at a table with an untouched tray of mushy spaghetti and limp, slightly browning iceberg lettuce in front of me, I returned to my bunk until the clock read a quarter to two. I didn’t want to go learn about this stupid program; I didn’t want to go anywhere. I only wanted to stay in my bed, counting my breaths, counting each minute until a decade was done. But not wanting to incur Myer’s wrath, which could include ending up in solitary for refusing to follow an order, I forced myself to wander toward the community room. Looking through the windows, I saw a short, stocky man with a bright shock of thick, red hair sitting at one of the tables. He wore blue slacks and a long-sleeve, pink button-down, which I couldn’t help but think was an unfortu
nate choice with his coloring. It made him look like an overripe strawberry.
I opened the door and entered the room. There was no one else there; it was just the two of us. Myer must have made it off-limits to anyone else during this meeting. The man looked up and smiled, then rose from the table. “Jennifer?” he asked, and I nodded, then made my way to the table, as well.
He held out his hand, and I took it in my own limp grasp for less than a second. His fingers were warm and a little sweaty. Is he nervous?
“I’m Randy Stewart,” he said. “And this is Bella.”
I glanced down next to his feet, noticing for the first time there was a dog in the room. It looked like a yellow Lab, and its snout rested on top of its outstretched front legs. It wore a red-and-black harness over its back, which had some kind of writing on the side, but I couldn’t read it from where I stood. I’d never encountered a dog who didn’t freak out the minute someone new entered the room, demanding to be petted, but this one hadn’t even raised its head.
“Have a seat,” Randy said, gesturing to the chair across the table from him. He sat down, and I joined him. “So,” he continued. “How much do you know about our program?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Okay, then!” he said, with so much cheer it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. You’re inside a prison, you idiot, I thought. What the hell is there to be so happy about? Then it hit me. He got to leave. He had a life outside of these walls. I looked at his left hand and saw a gold band. He probably had a family, too. Kids, even. He wasn’t anything like me.
He reached down inside a black leather bag next to his chair and pulled out a large blue binder, then pushed it toward me on the table. “This will be your bible,” he said. “Everything you need to know about how to raise and train a guide dog, like Bella here.”
