“Letitia is my wife.”
“And you knew exactly who I meant. Didn’t you?” Sarah turned her back on James and questioned the officers. “Don’t you see what is going on here?” She appealed to the social worker. “You’ve seen my house. How can he say I’m unfit? Have you seen where he lives?”
“That is not necessary, Mrs. Devlin. You will have a chance to defend yourself in court.”
The officers pummeled Sarah with words. Child endangerment. Possession of illegal substances with intent to sell. Abandonment. Child abuse.
“First I’m smoking pot and now I’m planning to sell it. Better get your story straight.”
“We’ll have time to sort all this out down at the station, ma’am,” one of the officers said.
“I wish to call my lawyer.”
“You’ll get a phone call when you get downtown.”
James reached for Jasmine and she shrank back crying.
“Don’t you touch her, James. I’m warning you.”
“I’m warning you. You should’ve signed those papers, Sarah, and this could have been avoided. You think you’re so smart. Who’s the smart one now, Sarah?”
The door opened and a female officer urged Veronica through the door. Her face was wet with tears and snot. She started to run to her mother when James stuck out his leg to stop her. The officer scooped her up in one arm and put her down by the door. The little girl cried harder.
“It’s all right, Nikki. Mommy’s here.” She glared at James and started toward her daughter. The officer standing behind Sarah grabbed her shoulder again and pushed her toward the staircase. She wrenched out of his grasp and was dragged back and taken to the floor. Cold steel snapped closed around her wrists.
It was obvious to her James had arranged it all. She was sure the sneaky bastard had watched the house waiting for her to make a mistake. He had always been patient, as patient as a weasel sniffing around a hen house. When she left Jasmine asleep in her crib and walked Veronica to school, he had everything he needed. How could he have known? How did he get the police and the social worker here so quickly?
The teacher, Mrs. Fornier. She said So that’s how he did it. “This is not over, James. Those are my children.”
“Not for long, Sarah. I told you I’d win. I always win.”
Sarah struggled toward him, wrenching out of the officer’s grasp and kneed James in the groin. He doubled over. “You bitch!”
Both officers yanked Sarah back and nearly off her feet. She stumbled against them only to be hauled upright, her arms cramped in the vise of the officer’s crushing grip.
James sidled closer and leaned down. A slow smirking grin twisted his lips. “That’s assault. Keep it up. You’ll be gone for a long time and you’ll never see my children again.”
Head up and chin out, Sarah stood up even straighter. One eyebrow cocked, she nodded once at James. “Not while I’m alive.” Her voice was quiet. Danger was written into every syllable.
James scuttled backward. He knew that tone. Sarah was most dangerous when she was quiet. He shivered. “Your choice,” he said with false bravado.
“You have the right to remain silent"
Twenty-Six
Pearl didn’t know what to say, except to ask the obvious. “How could anyone mistake oregano for marijuana?”
“If the bag was used for pot before, it still smells like it. It has a strong odor.”
“I know. When I first got married, we lived in a second floor apartment and the people downstairs smoked it. I smelled it every time I went to the bathroom. There was an old air vent by the toilet and the smoke came up through there.”
“Did you ever get high?”
“Not then. I usually held my breath whenever someone lit up, especially after I found out what it was. I didn’t know anything about it except for talk at school. So-and-so was caught smoking pot in the boy’s bathroom or someone else knew here to buy a lid. I didn’t know what people meant at first and I wasn’t curious enough to find out.”
“James used to smoke all the time. When he came home from the club, he reeked of pot and perfume.”
“It couldn’t have taken long before the police figured out it wasn’t pot.”
“That’s not the only reason I’m here. Criminal endangerment of a minor and abandonment. And assault and battery. They all saw that.”
“Well, if that’s the case, my parents should have been put in jail a long time ago. I used to watch my baby sister alone when I was about ten and both my parents worked. I took care of my brother and both sisters, and they’re all younger.”
“Things are different now. I left my sick baby at home to take Veronica to school. There’s no way to get around that.” Sarah’s eyes glittered with tears. “I do not want that man to have my children. He doesn’t want them. He wants to hurt me for divorcing him. I took away his safety net and now he’s stuck raising children when he’d rather run around with tramps and whores and be a playboy. If anyone gets my girls, it will be his mother.” Sarah got up and started to leave.
“I can help get your stories out, but I need you to write my story. They have lost my files, or so the deputy told me when they brought me upstairs. I cannot get word to my attorney and my family doesn’t know what’s happened. I need help or there’s no telling how long I’ll be stuck in here. I can’t post bail or talk to my attorney until someone knows what’s happened. That teacher, Mrs. Fornier, won’t tell anyone. James already got to her.” Sarah took Pearl’s hand. “Will you help me and let me help you?”
“As much as I can.”
Pearl went back to the cell and started taking notes. The whole situation baffled her. How could people use a woman’s children against her like that? Because it was the easiest way to get to a woman. Children were a woman’s Achilles heel, just as her boys had been hers.
Blaming social services solved nothing. It wasn’t their fault; they had to check out every call in case a child was being abused. How stunned Pearl had been when a social worker showed up at her door when Beau was a baby. The woman had been polite, but it made no difference. She was there to judge Pearl and the way she cared—or didn’t care—for her son.
What horrible charges had been laid out that day: keeping her son in a closet, strangling him, picking him up by the back of his neck, sores on his bottom, malnourished and bruised from being beaten.
As each incident was detailed, the shock gave way to laughter. The social worker told Pearl she had enemies. "There's nothing here to warrant a call. It's amazing how you have made such a small space work so well."
"We don’t have much space and I didn't see any other options. The closets are big enough to be rooms."
The social worker, Helen, marveled at how Pearl kept her son in a closet, a rather large closet that contained a crib, night stand, hanging mobile, books, toys, night light and some of Beau's toys. "It's ingenious," Helen said.
Even when she had Pearl take off Beau's diaper to show there were no sores on his bottom, and when she demonstrated how she picked him up by the crossed straps on the back of his overalls, Helen laughed. “I used to do the same thing to the girls when they were crawling. It was the quickest way to pull them up short.” She reached over and took Pearl’s hand. "Please be careful," the social worker warned, "someone hated you enough to call social services. We don't keep records of anonymous callers' names, just the complaint. It's an imperfect system, but it is all we have."
She gathered her notebook and papers and shoved them in her briefcase. “I see nothing to warrant another visit and will make a note of it in your file. In the meantime, watch your back,” she said.
Pearl wondered how anyone in their right mind could believe such garbage. Someone with too much time and a major grudge. Pearl had had no idea who could have made the call, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Pearl had proven Beau was not mistreated and was a happy, well adjusted child of ten months, and the social worker never returned. The inc
ident had left a residue of anger and shock. That one of her neighbors, someone she knew and trusted, had called child welfare on her was unbelievable. After all the work she did on the apartment to make it nice, she felt she could no longer live there and Pearl was forced to move. She couldn’t stand knowing someone had it in for her. There was no doubt in Pearl’s mind how Sarah felt. She knew. What made it worse for Sarah was losing her girls to a slimy piece of work like her ex-husband James. Of course, she would help Sarah. No one deserved to be treated that way.
When it was time for dinner, Pearl was writing. She heard nothing except the scritch-scratch of the pen on the paper. A shadow in the hallway lurking just outside the door went unnoticed. The pen flew across the pages fueled by anger and memories of pain and humiliation.
A change in the silence alerted Pearl to someone watching over her shoulder. She spun around and confronted Joy.
“Yore writing is purty.” She picked up a page. Pearl resisted the urge to snatch it back.
“Thank you. May I have that back? I need to check something.”
“You let me read it when you done?”
A lie sprang to her mind and Pearl shoved it back down again. “I’ll have to ask permission. It’s someone else’s story.” She stacked all the pages and got up, hoping her greater height would give her an advantage. “How about we go upstairs?”
Joy moved closer. Pearl took a step back. “Why don’t we sit and talk.”
“I don’t want to get into any trouble.”
“No one say nothin’. Won’t take long.”
Pearl swallowed bile and struggled not to wince. “I appreciate the offer and I’m flattered, but…”
“Ain’t no mens in here and ‘nother ice storm coming.”
Lainie appeared at the door just as Joy reached out and fingered the buttons on Pearl’s shirt.
“Martha’s got some questions for you.”
“Be right there.”
Joy jerked around, a stifled snarl on her curled lips, the skin of her face pulled taut, hands curved like claws at her side. Pearl strode past her determined not to show weakness or the swelling panic. Although Pearl was taller and heavier than Joy, she did not want to underestimate the girl. She had a suspicion that Joy was behind quite of the few of the disappearances and surprise room checks. The smile that showed suddenly on the girl’s freckled face was decidedly not pleasant. It was the kind of smile Pearl imagined on jackals, if they could smile.
“You be sorry, girlie. Keep avoiding me and you find out just how sorry. There be people wanting you in here for a long time.”
Chills crawled along Pearl’s skin like slimy snails. She resisted the urge to turn around and ask what Joy meant. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Lainie lingered, left hand clenched as Pearl went upstairs. Pearl didn’t want to get in the middle between the two or be a bone of contention between either of them so she kept on walking. There had to be a way to keep the girl at a distance and not antagonize her.
Caught up in the dilemma, she bumped into the mumbling wanderer. Pearl stumbled and, as the woman brushed past her, she heard a little more of the muttered story. All thoughts of Joy and Lainie and inherent danger disappeared as she tuned in.
She was talking about herself, repeating her grievances over and over, as she paced the quad from one end to the other in bare feet. Her shirt was buttoned wrong and one tail stuck out of the waistband. Crumbs of tobacco and food dusted the front of her shirt and she ran her fingers through greasy strings of hair curtaining her face. The tops and sides of both feet beneath the ragged hem of the pants were spotted with dirt, and the spaces between the toes filled with black filth.
Pearl tried to remember what Betty called her—Carla, no, Darla—and hop-skipped to catch her. “I apologize for nearly running you down.”
If Darla heard or understood, she gave no sign.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
Darla kept moving, turning when she reached the far wall like a child’s robot hitting a barrier. She touched the wall with one hand, turned and went the other way. Pearl followed her as far as Betty’s table and sat down.
“The nasty red-headed girl got her eye on you.”
Nothing got past Betty. “I don’t know what to do. How do I get her to leave me alone?”
“Boo, yo’ only hep be if someone new come in and catch that ho’s eye. Best you do yo’ writin up here so she ain’t got no way to get you alone.”
“I almost wish Tamara was still here. Joy kept her distance from her.”
“She sho do. Tamara not ‘fraida nobody. She nearly snatched that one bald one time.”
“Joy said she knew something about me, that someone was determined to keep me in here.”
Betty sucked her teeth and small bark of derisive laughter sounded. “That ugly ho’ do know some things right enough. Best not get too close. Don’ go pokin’ around. Might finds out somethin’ you don’ wants to know.”
“Do you think she does know something about me?”
“Don’ bear askin’.”
If Joy was in with the guards, or was a snitch, what was the possibility that she did know something? Curiosity warred with common sense.
When she looked down into the lower hall, she could no longer see Lainie or Joy. Maybe they decided to take it elsewhere. She hoped they had decided not to fight, especially not over her. It was nice that Lainie felt protective of her, but she doubted it was altruistic. As much as she was getting used to the different currents and snags on the quad, she was still baffled by most of it.
Darla wandered by again, angling toward the table, and nearly bumped into Pearl. “I’ll be all right. Didn’t hurt me,” she mumbled before wandering back into her usual track.
Pearl wondered if she had heard the girl correctly. Did she just accept my apology? She started to go after Darla and thought better of it. Turning to a clean sheet of paper on the tablet, she transcribed some of the Darla’s mumblings, filling in the blanks with a reasonable estimation of events. Darla wouldn’t help—if she could. So many of Darla’s mannerisms reminded Pearl of her own aunt who had been institutionalized most of her life. Her aunt had terrorized her as a child by pretending to have an epileptic fit. Those were not fun times.
Neither she nor her siblings knew what a fit looked like. Their imaginations, fueled by fear and ignorance, fixated on tales of at the mouth, biting, snapping and rolling around on the floor. How silly and young they had been. Epileptics did not swallow their tongues and a seizure was not nearly as bad as their young and overactive imaginations had conjured.
Darla did not have epilepsy, but she did act vague, except when she ran her litany of hurts and slights over like a broken record. There was coherence in the mumblings that Pearl thought carried some germ of truth. Putting pen to paper, she began with snatches of Darla’s ranting and mumbling and let the words lead her.
It all started with Darla’s money and a bar, and suddenly Joy and the threat were forgotten. All that remained was the story.
Twenty-Seven: DARLA
All chatter stopped abruptly and everyone turned toward the bar. Frank Morgan, the owner, continued to wipe down the mahogany bar with a wet rag, ignoring the chubby, disheveled woman beating her fist on the rail.
“All.”
“I gave you enough.” Frank dropped the rag and gathered up the glasses draining on the board, placing them on the shelf in neat stacks.
“All.”
Frank shook his head. “Take what I give you and be happy. Don’t want to be broke before the month is over.”
Darla climbed up onto a stool. Her fist lashed out at Frank. He side-stepped and continued stacking glasses. “Now. All.”
Frank poured two fingers of the house whiskey and placed it in front of Darla. “I cash your check and you get a bit of it every day. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. Bet there are lots of people just lining up to provide an address so you can get your disability che
ck.” He opened the till and counted out twenties and tens and onto the counter. “Two bucks for the whiskey.”
Darla carefully separated the bills into piles, licked her fingers, counted and recounted two ones off the top. She smacked them down on the bar one at a time, glaring up at Frank, rolled up the rest of the bills, secured them with a rubber band and stuck them in her pocket. Finishing her drink, she made a face, shook her head and turned the empty glass upside down.
As she walked out the door into the pallid sunlight, Frank yelled after her, “You’re welcome,” swiped the bar towel across the spreading ring of whiskey and dropped the glass into the sink. “Stupid retard doesn’t know how good she got it.” He scooped up the bills. “She’ll be back next month same as always.”
Darla O’Brien stumbled and fell headlong on the damp grass. It felt so cool against her cheek, soothing the pounding in her head. From deep inside, her bowels and stomach cramped. She curled up, moaning as her guts rebelled. Vomit exploded from between her lips and burned a caustic path along the inside of her nose. She heaved until a thin string of saliva and yellow-green bile dribbled from nose and lips. Darla lay still and silent in the amorphous steaming puddle reeking of alcohol too weak to move.
A red sun welled up like molten copper on the hazy horizon; Darla reached blindly for her pants and pushed at them, sighing as she relieved her bladder. She signed and turned on her side and fell back to sleep.
Darla woke to voices arguing. "Shut up," she mumbled. The voices got louder. "Too early." She turned over onto her stomach covering her head and ears with her arms.
Someone prodded her with a stick and she kicked out with one bare foot, a phlegm-choked growl rumbling in her throat. She was jerked to her feet and came up swinging, screaming incoherently. One hand slipped free. Her fist struck out and connected. Then stars spangled the blurry veil over her eyes. Darla reached for the sparkling lights. “Beautiful. So beautiful.” She dropped through the glittering darkness, reaching for the starry lights and pulled them down with her.
Among Women Page 22
