The Residue Years

by Mitchell Jackson

  (list name/s of child/ren involved)

  by administrative order docketed with the following court:____________________________, as case number____________________, located in___________________county, concerning the following child/ren:___________________________________________________________________________________________________

  (list name/s of child/ren involved)

  by judicial order entered in the following court:__________________________, as case number____________________, located in______________________county, concerning the following child/ren:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  (list name/s of child/ren involved)

  by another method:___________________ concerning the following child/ren:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  (list name/s of child/ren involved)

  PETITION FOR CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME - PAGE 1 of 8

  Unmarried Parents-3A: Petition3AVer11.doc (9/10)

  Chapter 29

  They’re all I got and you know it.

  —Grace

  They find you without fail, Godspeed, the creditor letters and bills for unpaid lights and heat. They find you without fail, reach your next forwarding address—dollars and dollars of bank overdrafts, parking fines with interest and penalty, Sallie Mae stalking you on a default loan. Bills that turn a simple trip for the mail into sad, sad business, a reason to check it once a week, if you check it at all.

  This morning, stuffed between secured credit offers and unmarked collection notices, is a letter from the Child Services Division. The letter says Kenny is suing for full custody, that I have to show in court in May. I rush inside and pick up the phone and punch his number. Kenny answers as if he’s been waiting for the call as long as he’s been living. This is a joke, right? Early April fool’s? I say.

  No, Grace, he says. It’s no mistake.

  So this is you now? I say. You itching to steal my boys?

  Nobody’s stealing your boys, he says. They’re our boys. Ours, and they’re settled. It makes good sense to keep it that way.

  Good sense to who? To you. Or you talking for her now?

  No more back-and-forth, he says. This is best.

  Won’t be any back-and-forth, I say. My boys will live with me and that’s that. Oh God, you’re dead set on causing me grief.

  This isn’t about you, he says.

  You black bastard. It won’t happen. God as my witness, nobody’s taking my boys. They’re all I got and you know it.

  I slam the phone and sit with my eyes dropped against the world.

  Faith without works is dead.

  Faith is spelled a-c-t-i-o-n.

  The task ahead is never as great as the power behind.

  Times like this, who to seek? Who shall I seek when I can’t do this alone? When I will not try.

  If you can catch my brother sober and on a break from bickering with one of his kids’ mothers, which when is that really, he’s about as reasonable a voice as to be found. His is the voice I need. Without a bus that runs the route I need—why oh why did I give him back the car?—I hike across town to the tavern. It’s blocks, but I don’t feel them. I am in it before I know how I got here, in the midst of this dimness, of a room that reeks of ammonia and whiskey. There’s a man at the bar and sparse bodies plunked around tables and what I know right off is this: This room’s too quiet for Pat to be anywhere in it. I ask after him anyway and the bartender tells me he hasn’t seen him in days. He don’t say how many, but I gather it’s been enough, that there’s a chance—if I can track him—of my brother being sober and keen. The man at the bar catches my sleeve, asks why I’m leaving so soon, and offers to buy me a drink, but I shake free and seethe. Didn’t mean no harm, he says.

  There are times when I can do it alone. There are times when doing it alone is the surest way to fall. And what now would happen if I so much as stumble? Pat, where is Pat? There isn’t another way. Anyone else.

  You count on this if you can’t nothing else: The bus never runs on time when you’re rushing.

  I stand and sit and troll my bag for who-knows-what and wade into the street and back to the curb, the whole time listening for the sound of the bus against the sound of my body reporting its dread. Cars slog past. Time ticks off and still there’s no sign of the bus—further chaos in my chest. I shoulder my bag and march off for Pat’s place, saying my boys’ names to myself block to block just because. This time I can feel it, every step. When I get to Pat’s woman’s place, his boys’ are out front roughhousing. I see his youngest take a gut blow and drop to a knee, see his oldest begin to laugh. Don’t I know, don’t I know, I say and help the youngest to his feet. Pat’s youngest, like my youngest, attracts trouble, is who you most hope to rescue before it’s too much of a charge. I stamp both boys with a kiss and climb the porch and find the front door cracked and knock to be polite. Pat’s woman tells me to hold on. She answers wearing a gown and slippers with a scarf tied to the front. I ask for my brother and she twists her lips. Ain’t seen his triflin ass for the better part of a week, she says. You check the tavern?

  That’s where I coming from now, I say.

  Well, shoot, she says. Then I don’t know. Maybe he’s locked up or been staying by one of those nasty heifers. You know how he do? she says. He’ll breeze on by when he gets good and ready—or flat broke, one of the two.

  She makes a comment about my face and asks if I’m thirsty or hungry and roves through a maze of clutter into the kitchen. While she’s gone, I swipe a finger of dust from the table and lift my foot from a sticky patch on the floor. She’s got a pure heart, as my brother has said himself, but she can’t keep a clean house—period.

  She carries out pops and snack bags of chips. So what’s the trouble? she says. You don’t seem yourself.

  You know, I say, if it ain’t this it’s that.

  Who you telling? she says. Your brother’s this and that combined.

  I wish I could laugh but I can’t.

  Is it money? she says. I don’t got much, but if you need it you can sure borrow. You family to me—brother or no brother.

  Oh, girl, you know I couldn’t, I say, but can I use the phone? She hunts a cordless from under a pile of clothes and hands it to me and leaves the room. This first place I call—I used to call for Kenny, and you never forget the number—is the Justice Center and lo and behold my brother’s in the system, held on one count trespassing and one count menacing. Pat’s woman strolls back in chomping a mouthful of chips. She asks if I found him and forgive me God this once but I lie. I tell her, Thanks and sorry to rush, and hotfoot out, hoping to catch the county’s last visiting session. My nephews are in the front yard, and I say good-byes and kiss them on the cheeks.

  It’s one bus and a second bus and a transfer, the everlasting story of my life.

  It’s scarce at the county check-in—a woman stuffing clothes into a locker, an old man searching his wallet, another female checking the placard of contraband items. I stow my bag and stuff the state letter in a pocket and breeze through the detector about as fast as they let me and flit down the hall to the room. There’s a deputy outside the room and he waves me in and I find a booth beside a girl who, by the face, is at the end of a bad run. The girl and me trade a glance and she goes right back conversing with a baby-faced twenty-something with a head of messy braids and script across his neck.

  Pat struts out as though all is right with the world. He plops in his seat and eyes me through the Plexiglas and leans back and leans forward and yanks the phone off the holster. Hey, sis, he says. Fancy seeing you here.

  Look who’s in good spirits, I say.

  Ain’t I always? he says.

  What you do this time? I say.

  Sis, you know how it is with us ladies’ men, he says. Either they can’t get enough or they’ve had too much, and it’s hard to know any given day whic
h is which. They gave me a court date the day after tomorrow but she ain’t gone show, so this ain’t no big old whoop-de-do. Be back shooting cupid arrows by the end of the week.

  Boy, you still a magnet for lightweight trouble, I say. You gone get enough of that.

  Nah, I’m a heavyweight, he says. That’s why this don’t count. But I know you didn’t come to lecture me on spending a petty few days in the county.

  What I came for is this, I say, and take out the letter and press it against the glass and leave it for him to read.

  Well, I’ll be damned, sis. That’s serious, he says. How you plan on playing it?

  That’s why I came, I say.

  Right, right. Hmm, well, I’d say you need a lawyer, he says. You got some dollars set aside? They ain’t cheap.

  Pat, I say. Let’s be real.

  Best call Nephew, then. Have him shell out some bucks. The boy buying cars and whatnot, he should have it.

  No, not Champ, I say. He’s not an option.

  Not an option? Now look, who ain’t being realistic? he says. Allbullshitaside, you gone need references too. Law-abiding, tax-paying, God-fearing citizens to speak on your behalf. And if you still fooling around in the church, you should see about the pastor, if not him a deacon. Plus, call Pops. I know you lifetime pissy with him, but you know like I know that Pops still got clout with them white folks. He pushes his face closer to the glass and asks to see the letter again.

  Okay, got it, got it. That date gone be here fore we know it. Barring any unforeseen female troubles, I’ll be free and present and ready if need be to speak on your behalf.

  The tears come on, little reservoirs in the cup of my lids that I dab at with my fist. I hate for him or anyone else to see me falter.

  Say, sis, keep your head up, he says. You got this. He presses his palm to the window and smiles. It’s Andrew’s smile, the smile of his sons, the smile from when he was a boy, those years the world tore us apart.

  Chapter 30

  I can only hope, beyond this, baby bro feels the same.

  —Champ

  A courthouse is an omen for a nigger like me, but I’m four-flats down for baby bro, so here I am, here we are (the we being Ms. H, the rest of his knucklehead class). Our tour guide is a jolly twenty-something short-cropped blond that, by the face, ain’t got a criminogenic bone in his body. He meets us at the building’s entrance and welcomes our group to the Multnomah County Courthouse. We’re at the midway of a line that winds out the door. What must be the usual sorts filing in, filling in swift-like too, though soon as I think that, our good fortune dies a fast death at the hands of the slow-moving or slow-witted or both, stalling progress with over-metaled belts, pounds of jewelry, pocketfuls of change, and way too much electronic shit for an earthling. But today’s our day. Our guide escorts us to the head of the clog and holds it while we amble through the detectors, while, on the other side of the machines, we fall into an oblong circle under the semi-circumspect gaze of stout sheriffs. And let me say this right here, right now: Whoever designed the sheriffs’ puke-green uniforms gave a rat’s ass about the stain they’d leave on your eyes, my eyes, or anybody else’s.

  Our chipper blond lodestar leads us to a conference room on the second floor and we pick seats at a massive oak desk that must be old as all of us added together. It takes a spate of shushing from Ms. H to coerce the boys out of fidgeting and talking and general unconcern, and in that tease of hush, our guide points at the enormous portraits of stern white men lining the walls and asks if anybody can name the name of a Supreme Court justice. Wouldn’t you know, the boys turn absolute mutes, search here and there for an innocuous spot to fix their eyes. I taunt baby bro into response. He guesses wrong, but give him credit. Not a single one of these nascent knuckleheads risks a next try.

  Our guide stands at the head of the table and asks another question. He waits. He waits in vain. Okay, well, let’s get started, he says. Our court system has three basic functions. To interpret laws, settle disputes, and strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution. He stops and rakes his hair—you know, that patented spread-finger white-boy rake. There are four types of courts: trial courts of limited jurisdiction, trial courts of general jurisdiction, intermediate appellate courts, and courts of last resort. This courthouse is a court of general jurisdiction. He explains how criminal courts are the body of law that preserves a person’s basic rights, that anyone that violates those rights has committed a crime against the people.

  And who the people posed to be? says one of the boys.

  You are, I am, we all are, the guide says, and flashes one of those halcyon smiles that could only be a birthright. Felonies, he says, are the more serious crimes and punishable by a year or more, while sentences for misdemeanors seldom run more than a year. Later today, he says, you’ll see criminal proceedings. He goes on and, no lie, to say the least, old green eyes is loquacious as they come.

  Canaan folds his arms on the desk, droops a few times into my fam’s famous somnolent nod, and lays his head in his crooked arms. Almost everyone else around the table has wandered off into never-never land. This I take (it’s why I’m here, right?) as my cue. I march around to baby bro’s seat, tell him he best not embarrass us, and joust a finger in his back. He straightens, jerks his arms off the table, a beacon for his boys, you’d hope, but hell nah, they carry on in the clouds. Towards the end of his spiel, our guide cites a long list of phenomenal stats, the last of which is how every day the courthouse produces a stack of papers tall as a full-grown man, what he calls the paper trail.

  Morning court. We’re some of the first inside the courtroom and take up an entire bench back in the back and part of the next row up. We’re the first, but a finger snap and the room is chock-ablock with all sorts: with attorney types carrying leather briefs, with dudes who look as though they ain’t bathed since the new year flipped, with chicks who’ve graffitti’d their faces in colors (stark mascara, layers of blush), with ladies who’ve pinned broaches to their lapels. On the other side of a waist-high wall sits two tables, bare minus a pair of angled microphones and yellow notepads. The jury box, the court reporter, the witness stand, it’s all there just like you see on TV. The bailiff asks the room to stand while His Honor strolls out to his bench, a throne of polished wood bedecked with a gavel and a life-sized bronze sculpture of our glorious state bird. He takes his seat beneath a huge replica of old Harvey Gordon’s (disclosure: our guide told us this in the intro) state seal.

  I clamp Canaan’s shoulder and give it a squeeze. I am here, it says. We are here, it says. And it counts.

  Once, when I was working for a summer program, we took a vanload of problem campers to the Justice Center for one of those scared-straight shock visits. The first stop of the visit was the booking room, where severe deputies fingerprinted the boys (never dawned on me till now they were entering them in the system forreal forreal), snapped their mug shots, printed the mug shots, and gifted the prints as souvenirs. Next, they dumped us in a holding cell supercharged in world-class funk, I’m talking a stench to make your respiratory system shut right the fuck down! But the holding-cell funk wasn’t the pinnacle. They escorted us past pods of inmates banging against thick glass and booming (See you when you get here! Top bunk’s all yours, baby boy. Look at the cutie pies!) to the cafeteria, where, after they fed us a jailhouse special: tuna fish on stale white bread, acerbic potato goop, and fruit cups with dubious expiration dates, they marched out a trio of lifetime felons to rant from a kissing distance on the pitfalls of crime. Can’t say for sure the effect the trip had on the boys, but what I can say is this: When we left, all I could think was, Not me, no way I could stand even a second locked up. And here’s the truth of the truth of the truth: I can only hope, beyond this, baby bro feels the same.

  We are not this, I whisper to Canaan. This is not for us.

  Watch enough TV and you’ll get to thinking, like me, that judges spend most of their days sentencing headline cases, but His
Honor (dude looks a little too affable for the job) presides over a lineup of anonymous business: a discovery status hearing, a preliminary hearing, a suppression hearing, a probate hearing, a show-cause hearing for an unpaid fine, a motion, an arraignment, an appeal, a criminal trespass charge, a charge of felon in possession of a firearm, and, of course, of course …

  The deputy escorts a dude dressed in county blues that I used to see out working the curb. He strolls in uncuffed, his arms behind his back anyhow. He glimpses me over his shoulder and gives me a dispirited what’s-up nod.

  Canaan peeps this and asks if I know him.

  Not really, I say.

  Dude’s lawyer (by his suit, he must’ve cost a few bucks) asks to approach the bench. You’d need bionic ears to hear the exchange between him and the judge, but whatever it is, they seem to agree. The judge trumpets dude’s charges, Distribution of a Controlled Substance and Possession of a Control Substance (the infamous DCS/PCS one-two punch), lists the conditions of homeboy’s plea (he won’t be home no time soon), launches into a soliloquy about how disappointed he is, how it bothers him to convict so many men who look like him, young black men for drugs, and so on. He asks dude’s lawyer if his client would like to speak.

  The lawyer announces his client wrote a statement.

  Ms. H glances down the row at us. I catch Canaan whispering across me to one of his boys, and give him a merciful elbow-jab.

  Dude stands and glances from side to side and back at us. He pulls his shoulders tight and sighs. Your Honor, I’d like apologize, he says. I’d like to apologize to you, my family, my community, to God. My actions were wrong and harmful and cannot be justified. He blathers another couple lines of canned contrition, then stops abrupt and balls his sheet to zilch. The move plunges the room into a Catholic hush. Fuck this! he says. You think this gone stop? It won’t. And whoever think so, need think again. Cause we out here neck-deep, he says. If one go down, one come up. If one go down, one come up. That’s the rule, he says. One down, one up is the only law that counts.