by Aime Austin
“Set it for another pre-trial.” Gesturing to the stack again, the bailiff continued. “None of these files is complete. The prosecutor needs to finish the psych exams, the GALs need to see the kids,” she said, falling into court jargon and turning back to the behemoth of a computer on her desk.
Retreating to the hard wood benches lined up like church pews along the corridor, Casey looked at her watch. The court was already a half hour behind. Shifting uncomfortably between an overweight mother with a wiggling four year old on her lap and a sullen blue-haired teenager, Casey couldn’t help feeling like she didn’t belong here.
It had been nearly six years since she’d made the stupidest mistake of her life.
“I need you to represent me!” Casey had said, barging into Professor Sinclair’s office.
Richard Sinclair had jettisoned his reading glasses and smoothed his hands through his curly graying hair. Overlooking the vanity that had always annoyed her during class, Casey had tried to even out her breathing.
“Ms. Cort, right?” Professor Sinclair had asked, maintaining the silly formality that separated law school from high school.
“I was in two of your classes.”
He sat erect. “How can I help you?”
Casey took another deep breath. How could this be happening to her? If she could just convince someone as smart as Professor Sinclair to come to her aid, surely it would all be fixed.
“I’m being brought before the law school’s judicial board. You have to defend me.”
“What exactly did you do? Cheat? Sleep with one of my colleagues?” As if seeing her for the first time, his gaze traveled from her dishwater blond hair, down to her small breasts and larger hips. His eyes shifted to an ornate brass and wood clock on a credenza as if he’d found her wanting.
“No,” Casey said sharply. “I didn’t do anything.”
The professor sighed. “I have a half hour. Close the door and sit down,” he said, gesturing to the leather couch.
Relieved that he was going to hear her out, she closed the door, dropped her backpack, and made a space for herself on the paper-cluttered couch.
“I’m not sure—”
“Wait,” he said, eyes alight with recognition. “Did you rat out Ted Strohmeyer?”
She hated everyone calling her a rat, when it was Ted who’d done the sneaky, rat-fink thing. “I didn’t do anything.” Casey’s voice was a plea.
Professor Sinclair’s upturned hand urged her to continue.
“Last year I was named executive note editor for the law review.” He nodded. “I was looking for something to publish from a student in the fall issue. And Ted’s topic was interesting, and the writing was really good. Not boring or dry.”
Sinclair nodded.
“I was doing a search to make sure some other school hadn’t just published something similar, but there was an article just like it from Valparaiso. I started reading it to see if maybe I could figure a way to get Ted’s note in…”
“And?”
“Ted’s was the same, not just the idea but whole paragraphs and even footnotes.”
“Why didn’t you move on to someone else’s? No one would have faulted you for not publishing a plagiarized note.”
“You sound like my boyfriend. It didn’t seem right that he got to put law review on his resume, when he didn’t do the work. I looked at the honor code and reported it to Dean Condit.”
“Ms. Cort, can I call you by your first name?” Relief flooded Casey’s veins. If they were going to work together on her defense, he wouldn’t want to call her by her last name all the time. She nodded. “Casey is fine.”
“You knew the note was written by Ted Strohmeyer, right?”
“Why should that make a difference?” Casey was bewildered by the focus on who’d done the plagiarizing.
“Off the record. Ted Strohmeyer’s great-grandfather started the Strohmeyer Beer Company. You know, ‘You’ll be a high-flyer, when you drink Strohmeyer,’” he sang a jingle, as familiar as her own name. “His dad’s a modern day hero in Cleveland. He has naming rights to the stadium, and negotiated with the NFL to keep an expansion team in town.”
“What does that have to do with me? I did the right thing—outing plagiarism, saving the school embarrassment. Why am I being scapegoated?”
“That’s the way the world works, Casey,” Professor Sinclair said matter-of-factly. “Why do they want to remove you from the law review post? Losing that post could end your legal career before it even begins.”
Casey zipped open her backpack and handed him a wrinkled envelope. She’d torn open the letter, but couldn’t make heads or tails of it through the blur of tears.
“Bottom line: they’re saying you can’t do the job.”
She held her breath in check, trying not to whine, ‘why me’ like a seven year old. “I’ve worked really hard. I go to every meeting. I wanted us to be well-respected like Harvard.”
Professor Sinclair’s cough almost sounded like a laugh. He’d gone to Harvard. “Have you had conflicts with other students on the board?”
“No,” she said quickly.
He pounced. “Don’t rush to answer,” Sinclair said. “People are never brought down for the big stuff. It’s always the little things.”
It was such a small thing. “The editors were mad at me the first couple of weeks.”
“Why?”
Casey told him about how she wanted to solicit the best writing from students all over the country, and how the other editors had only wanted to publish their work. She knew she’d gone on too long when Professor Sinclair’s reclined. “Maybe you should resign.”
She shook her head vigorously. “I worked really hard these last two years. I was elected. I deserve this.”
“Do you have a job after graduation?” When she nodded, he continued. “You’re lucky. Coming from a lower tier school, most kids in your position would sit back and take it easy until the bar exam.”
Professor Sinclair’s chair still reclined. His level of outrage didn’t match hers. “Are you going to defend me before the board?” He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think I can do this on my own.” She hated the pleading tone in her voice.
His chair bolted upright with a large squeak. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll be fine.” Before she could get another word out, he rose and started gathering folders from his desk. “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to intervene,” he said.
Two weeks later, she had lost it all: her position on the law review, her job, and her well-connected boyfriend, Tom. Just like that, her dreams of living better than her parents, having sophisticated clients and the perfect husband had vanished. Instead she was here in juvenile court.
“Miss Casey, I’m here. I’m here!” Rosa yelled. She ran to Casey, crumpled papers in hand.
Casey heaved a sigh of relief. “They haven’t called the hearing yet. Let me check you in with the bailiff. Then I need to talk to you.”
Casey snagged the court’s file from the bailiff, and took Rosa to a couple of chairs in a corner. She shushed her client as she reviewed the facts the court had. At thirty years old, Rosa was the mother of five children, three to seventeen, and she’d been involved with Children and Family Services nearly all the years she’d had those kids. The county was going for permanent custody of the remainder of the kids in custody.
Though Rosa looked fine to her, albeit rough around the edges, she was supposedly an alcohol and drug addict prone to violence. Last year she’d threatened to stab the father of two of her children.
The hallways of juvenile court were as clogged as an artery after Thanksgiving because of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. To prevent what had been coined foster care drift, the new law shortened the period the parents had to work toward reunification. Of course, Rosa was running out of time.
“Where have you been? It’s nearly two o’clock. You were supposed to be here by one. Do you understand that they’re trying to
take away your kids permanently?” Rosa nodded, but Casey didn’t think her client had a proper sense of urgency. “I can’t do this by myself, Rosa. This is your case.”
“I’ve been doin’ my stuff, Miss Casey,” Rosa said, contrite. She proffered the crumpled papers from her hand. “These are my certificates, a letter showing I have an apartment, and a pay stub,” she said.
Casey smoothed out the wrinkled papers as best she could. If she’d had corporate clients they would be handing over crisp sheets of paper or sending her documents via e-mail. Sighing, Casey looked over them. There was a parenting class completion certificate, some kind of letter scrawled on notebook paper, and a handwritten pay stub. The only outward sign of her frustration were lips she couldn’t help compress.
“Did you get my letters Rosa? I need these kinds of things on official letterhead. We have to prove to a court that you’ve done all these things,” Casey said.
“I got some of your letters. My mom read ‘em to me. But why can’t the social worker just call to check? I can get her the phone numbers,” Rosa said.
Casey put the papers in the outside pocket of her leather case. “The time for that has passed, Rosa. The social workers are not on your side anymore. If they win, you will never see your kids again. Ever. No phone calls. No visits. Nothing.” She paused for dramatic effect. “The judge is not going to take your word for it.
“Like this letter you brought,” Casey said, trying not to tear the notebook paper she eased from the briefcase’s pocket. “This may well be from your landlord—but without letterhead—without it being notarized, we don’t have enough proof.”
Rosa pouted. “I wish I had me some money. If I could get Johnnie Cochran, I’d get my kids back for sure.”
She silently damned O.J. Simpson. If she had a penny for every time she’d heard that, Casey could easily pay off her student loans. Letting the insult roll off her back, Casey tried again. “Let’s look at this. Did you do the ninety-day inpatient drug treatment?” She flipped through the file again. “CFS referred you to the Clean Cleveland program.”
Rosa shook her head. “I couldn’t do no long thing like that. I couldn’t even get into that place. I went to A Better Start. It was a thirty-day program. I did real good there. Now I’m working with Margo on the outpatient thing.”
Casey clicked her pen, taking notes on her legal pad. “That’s good. Do you have Margo’s number, a certificate of satisfactory completion?”
“Call over there and ask for her. She knows me,” Rosa said with confidence. Casey rolled her eyes involuntarily, but made a note.
The rest of their short interview went the same way. This was why two hundred fifty dollars didn’t stretch far. When clients didn’t have to pay for their lawyers, they weren’t inspired to do any of the heavy lifting. Casey knew she’d spend at least an hour tracking down these folks, getting them to fax her letters on actual letterhead, and this was only if Rosa’s information was accurate.
“Coleman!” the clerk yelled. “The judge is ready. Are all parties here?” Casey rushed to the courtroom as fast has her weight would allow.
Prosecutor Dick Foster was permanently planted on the left side of Judge MacKinnon’s courtroom. A young woman, county ID badge dangling between her breasts, joined him at the table. Another, older woman—probably the guardian ad Litem stayed behind the bar.
Dorthea MacKinnon was a popular judge. She was reasonable, listened to all the facts, and tried to make the best rulings given the circumstances. Despite that, how she got to the bench was an open joke among the bar. One couldn’t walk more than a few steps in the courthouse without hearing tales of Judge MacKinnon’s many failed attempts at running for office. Most of the judges in the county had been on the bench forever or had come from judicial family legacies, where surname recognition had launched their careers.
Weatherbeaten billboards with the text, “Dorthea MacKinnon, Judge” had littered Cleveland for years . She’d won, most thought, because the billboards had been up so long that the voters had finally given into the constant visual assault. No matter a judge’s pedigree, everyone rose when they came to the courtroom.
MacKinnon plunked down her afternoon coffee before taking a seat. Attendance taken, the bailiff pressed record on the tape recorder that stood in for a court reporter and left the room.
“Good afternoon. Sorry we’re late today. Judge’s monthly luncheon ran over. I see we’re here on the Coleman/Andress children. Ms. Coleman, I remember you. On the record we have Prosecutor foster, Sonia Casiano. Are you the social worker?”
The young dark-haired woman at the prosecutor’s table nodded her head.
“I see Glenda Ober in the back. You’re the GAL?” Then she turned to Casey. “Now you, I don’t know.”
Casey brought herself to her full five foot height. “Good afternoon Your Honor. I’m Casey Cort. I was appointed a few months ago to represent Rosa during the disposition of her oldest daughter’s case. Now I’m here on the PC matter.” Casey used her best authoritative voice.
“Miss Cort. Nice to meet you. Now let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of this case. We’re here on a pre-trial hearing in the matter of Aliyah and Aaron Coleman, and Angel and Alexa Andress. In a previous hearing, Aliyah was committed to the permanent custody of her maternal grandmother. That case duly severed, we’re only going forward on the three youngest kids, right?
“Mr. Foster, what’s the story on the fathers in this case?” MacKinnon asked, looking at him over her reading glasses. Foster spoke softly to the social worker for a few seconds, then flipped through a thick manila folder. “Jimmy Coleman and Roy Andress,” MacKinnon prompted.
“We haven’t been able to find either Jimmy or Roy to administer paternity tests. Although Jimmy doesn’t need a test because he was married to Mom. I’ll stipulate on that one.”
Judge MacKinnon turned to Casey. “Do you have any further information? Are the dads going to be here? They face losing their kids.”
Casey turned to Rosa. Blank stare. “My client doesn’t have any further information.”
Judge MacKinnon made a note. “We’ll have them served at their last known address,” she said. “Absentee fathers,” MacKinnon muttered under her breath, her head shaking vigorously. “Well, Mom, at least you’re here. Let’s hear from the county and the guardian. How are the kids doing?”
Sonia Casiano stood. “Aliyah is going to school and doing real well with her grandmother.” She read from her notes. “Aaron and Angel are living in the same foster home, but they’re facing some challenges. Now that we’ve had the time to have them tested—they’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. But they’re on meds and responding. Their foster parents have been real good with training on meds and stuff.
“Alexa isn’t doing so well. She’s acting out with boys. We’re thinking a more restrictive setting like an all-girls group home would be good.” She turned toward Casey and Rosa. “Mom said that she’s completed parenting, drug treatment, that she has a suitable house, but I don’t have any certificates yet—”
“I got my papers right here!” Rosa interrupted, shooting her hand in the air like an eager grade-schooler. “I gave them to my lawyer—”
“Counselor!” Casey squirmed in her seat under the judge’s scrutiny. “Please instruct your client that she’s not to speak at this hearing. Please continue, Miss Casiano.”
“Anyways, I visited Mom’s new apartment. There’s enough rooms for all the kids, but there aren’t any appliances. The department wouldn’t send the kids home without a stove or refrigerator.”
“I’m getting my stuff next week. The guy promised to put it in,” Rosa said.
“Ms. Cort,” the judge warned. Heat stole up Casey cheeks. She laid a firm hand on Rosa’s bouncing knee. The judge turned back to the social worker. “These kids have some challenges. I’m sure the county will address that. Moving forward. Let’s set a date for the permanent custody hearing. One afternoon enough?”
Casey
opened her Filofax at the same time the guardian snapped the stylus from her Palm Pilot. The bailiff came into the room, judge’s calendar in hand. “How about December sixth? One o’clock? Good for everyone?”
“Works for me, Your Honor,” Casey said.
“I’m free Thursday afternoon as well,” the GAL said.
The judge rose from the bench and walked into her chambers, signaling the hearing was over.
“Miss Cort,” Rosa pleaded. “I’ve got to get my kids back. They belong with me. I’ll do right this time, get a job, make sure the bills are paid. I promise.”
“I hope you get that chance.” Casey wrapped a hand around Rosa’s emaciated arm, escorting her from the courtroom. In an alcove away from everyone, Casey willed Rosa to meet her eye to eye. “You need to work with me. We have to prove that you are ready to have your kids back.”
Rosa put on her coat, pulling a pager from her pocket. She casually scrolled through her messages. Casey jerked Rosa’s arm. The pager fell to the floor with a clatter, earning them a reproachful glance from the sheriff monitoring the hall.
“You need to listen to me. That prosecutor in there will have evidence and witnesses ready to tell the judge your kids are better off in the system. We need to be ready too. To win this, you’ll have to fight this.”
Rosa rescued the cherry red pager. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Ms. Cort. I promise.” Rosa was out the door before Casey could get in another word. She looked around for the guardian, but Glenda’s head was shaking, repelling her approach. With one big sigh, Casey readied herself for the cold long walk back to her office. She suspected she wouldn’t hear from Rosa until December.
Six
Home Fires
October 12, 2001
The brass keys rattled in Sheila’s shaking hand. Finding the lock, she pushed through the door. Olivia was lying on the couch as if there wasn’t a room needing cleaning or homework that needed doing. Cookie crumbs fell off her daughter’s belly spreading light and dark brown flecks all over the white couch when her daughter shot up, lowering the volume from blaring to annoying.
