by Rose Christo
15
A Child At Heart
"You sure that's legal, though?" Rafael asked.
I met up with Rafael on the ramp outside the reservation hospital. It's still surreal whenever I see him in those sea-green hospital scrubs, especially when his tattoos are poking out from under the collar and sleeves.
"It's not," I said. "Not at all. But if it works, we won't have to go to court. So at least let me try it."
He ran his hand through the back of his hair, something he only ever does when he's distracted. I couldn't remember whether his hair was clean. Hygiene's not his first priority, that Rafael.
"Could you get in trouble if it doesn't work?"
"No," I said. "Not if I choose my words carefully."
"Well," Rafael said, "you always choose your words carefully." He grunted. "Too carefully."
Maybe that's true. I try not to squander my words. For a long time, I didn't have any. I don't know that I'll ever just blurt out my thoughts the way so many people do. I'll always envy them for it, though.
I lifted my hand and waved goodbye. Rafael gave me a smile--rare as they are, they're always like a gift--and skulked inside the hospital.
I was taking Racine's car today, a squashed, neon green Buick way past its shelf life. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but Shoshone ideas about property and wealth are vastly different from the model the western world relies on. To Shoshone, it's completely outrageous to suggest ownership over something everyone's entitled to--like land, food, medicine, even transportation, now that we're living in the 21st century. Consequently you'll often run into Shoshone who don't own their own houses or cars, but share with their neighbors instead. I don't own a car. If I need one, I borrow one from someone else. It's not like I leave the reservation very often, anyway.
The ride to Maricopa County took a few hours--partially, I thought, because I was so terrible at directions. I'm surprised I didn't drive right out of the state. I pulled up to the penitentiary and tried to remind myself to fill up the tank before heading back to the reserve.
I don't know what to say about the women's prison complex. When I first saw it, I thought I was looking at a church. Maybe that's intentional; I can't say. I parked Racine's car by the curb. A walkway flanked by palm trees and benches led to the double glass doors; the roof was flat, but the triangular white eaves made me think of a steeple nonetheless. The main building was connected to what appeared to be some kind of health clinic. Later I would learn that the entire complex used to belong to a hospital until they revamped it in the 70's.
I headed tentatively through the visitors' entrance. The long reception desk stood to one side, unmanned. On the other side were booths with bulletproof windows. I smothered my discomfort. Maybe this wasn't a federal prison, but it sure wasn't a walk in the park, either.
At length the receptionist came back to her station. I guessed maybe I had caught her just around her lunch break. Her hair was very curly, very poofy--one of those retro beehive styles I hadn't seen in ages. She looked surprised to see me.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. She shuffled quickly through a stack of folders on her desk. "I didn't think we had any visitors scheduled today..."
Maybe it's silly of me, but I immediately felt sorry for the inmates. "I'm sorry," I apologized, "I didn't think to call ahead. I'm from the public defender's office. That's not a problem, is it?"
"No, not at all," she said. But she went on looking surprised. "Who did you say you were here for--?"
I hadn't. "Mrs. Morales?" I said. "DOC..." I pulled the list out of my pants pocket and read off the number. I always feel ridiculous when I wear pressed slacks. "17395-629?"
"Um..." said the woman. "Wait a minute." She picked up her telephone.
I sat down opposite her desk and smiled. A few minutes later and the door adjacent to us opened up. A prison administrator in a tan uniform squinted dizzily at me.
"C'mon," he said.
I followed him through a maze of drafty hallways, past rooms filled with filing cabinets and through another set of doorways. He led me to a glass partition alongside a big set of double doors not unlike those of a cafeteria. I knew what came next--he was going to pat me down and search me. I didn't like it--to some extent, I don't like anyone touching me, except for Rafael--but to get to Mrs. Morales, to get through to her, I knew it was necessary.
Not long later the prison guard led me through to a big, tiled room with hazy white windows and aluminum tables. He led me to a table on the opposite side of the room and I sat down. He nodded, taciturn; and then he walked over to the doors whence we came, his hands on his belt, and stood watch there all the while, ready for business.
The inmates' door gushed open. A second guard led a woman over to my table, a woman in a garish orange jumpsuit. And immediately my heart leapt into my throat, and my stomach froze over, and the blood in my veins boiled, then chilled.
"Noel?" I said.
The woman staring back at me was short and squat, her hair ridiculously curly, more so even than my own. Her nose was pierced, her eyes hard, flat; dead.
"You my lawyer or what?" she asked, her arms folded insecurely across her chest.
There was a time, when I was a teenager, that CPS placed me in foster care, far from my family and my home. The reasoning was ridiculous: My grandmother had taken me out of state to meet my cousin Marilu and CPS didn't like that she had done it without asking their permission. In foster care I'd met all sorts of colorful people. Janet, the Lambrusco addict. Mrs. Buthrop, the bottle blonde with a heart bigger than her brain.
"You don't remember me," I realized. "Skylar. Your foster brother?"
The dawning in Noel's eyes was slow. But there it was, clear as day.
Her whole disposition shifted. She unfolded her arms and relax. I almost thought she was about to smile.
"Damn," she said. "I ain't seen you in years. When did you start talking?"
"Not long ago," I said, foreign emotions pouring out of me. I don't even know how to describe what I felt. Whatever it was, I tried to smile through it. "I had a surgery. Morales... When did you get married?"
"2007. It wasn't a big deal, we just went down to the court house and signed a couple of papers. That way I didn't have to testify when he shot his brother."
"Oh," I said, and tried not to offend her with my discomfort.
"Damn, quiet boy," she said. "You packed on the pounds!"
I smiled again. "And you lost a few. I can't believe..."
"What? That I'm in jail?"
And then I remembered why I was here.
I stared at the familiar woman across the table from me. I could see her like it was yesterday, in those plaid and denim skirts she used to wear. Good-natured and nosy. Not my best friend on the planet, but when she likes you, she lets you know it.
She's Mickey's mother, I thought.
And then:
She nearly killed her own daughter.
"Noel," I said. I felt as though my sadness had lent weight to gravity; I felt as though gravity were smothering me alive. "What happened to you?"
The hardness returned to her eyes. It unsettled me when I realized I'd seen that same hardness in Mickey's eyes on so many different occasions.
"You got lucky," she said. "You got the good life. And I got bounced along until they forgot about me."
"How could anybody forget about you?" I asked, and smiled ruefully. "You leave quite the impression."
She folded her arms again, her eyes on the tabletop. She shrugged.
And then she said:
"So you my lawyer? You gonna help me get my kid back?"
I felt nauseous. Nauseous and sad.
"No," I said quietly. "I'm the one who wants to adopt her."
When she didn't respond, when she didn't even bat an eye, I thought, at first, that she must have misheard me.
I was wrong.
"The fuck are you talk
ing about? You can't adopt my kid. She's my kid."
"Noel," I said. I felt tired suddenly, aged a thousand years in a single moment. "You stabbed her three times in the chest."
"It was an accident!"
I looked over my shoulder, afraid that the guard would interrupt us. He didn't. I guess he didn't care. Yelling must be par for the course in a penitentiary.
"Get out," Noel said.
"Noel--"
"Get out!"
"No," I said. "I'm not leaving."
She must have seen that I wasn't lying. She slouched in her seat and shrugged her shoulders. She turned her head away from me.
"Like my kid's a damn charity case," she went on. "Like you gotta protect her from her own mom."
"You don't think she needs protecting?" I asked.
"Not from me! I took care of the bitch for six years!"
"Seven," I said. For a moment I felt that my eyes were as hard as hers were. "And don't call her a bitch in front of me."
Noel fell silent.
"What would you have done, Noel?" I pressed. "If your daughter died? What was your plan?"
"I called the cops, didn't I? I didn't want her to die!"
"But you stabbed her."
"Yeah, but she didn't die, so it doesn't matter!"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I stared at her, this woman, and tried to find a semblance of the girl I'd known when we were only children. But I couldn't. I didn't recognize her at all.
"She's afraid of you," I said, my voice steady, my voice low. "She has nightmares about you coming back for her."
"You're lying."
"She thinks you hate her."
"She took my man away! She made him go away!"
"Noel," I said. "No child on earth has that power."
"Don't you talk to me like you know better! She's my kid!"
"And you prayed for her to die," I said. "You prayed to the angel to kill her, and when he didn't, you named her after him."
It was one of the most bizarre, most twisted things I had ever heard. I reflected on that now.
"You..." Noel trailed off. "She told you that?"
I nodded. I felt oddly as though I had lockjaw, but I forced myself to reply: "And other things."
Noel drummed her fingertips on the table. She stared at the clipped edges of her nails.
"She must like you..."
"I like her, too." I love her. If I said that to Noel, I thought, she might fly off the handle, and then I'd never get her to agree to relinquishing custody.
"You're trying to take my kid away," Noel said. "Why? She's mine..."
We're talking in circles, I thought. My head was starting to hurt. "Because you hurt her very badly," I reasoned. "And I can't let you hurt her again."
"I won't!"
"Do you know that for sure?"
She didn't answer me. That was an answer in itself.
"We'll take good care of her," I said. "Rafael and I. We'll--" I couldn't help it. "--we'll love her. We'll give her a good home. Nobody will ever hurt her again. She'll be safe...happy..."
Noel slumped in her seat. I thought she was going to start crying.
I thought wrong. I should have known better. I'd seen what fifteen years of prison did to my father. A part of Noel was locked away now. I couldn't say for certain whether it would ever come back.
"Why doesn't anybody ever love me?" Noel asked.
She sounded so much like a child that I wanted to put my arms around her. I wasn't sure the guard on duty would appreciate that.
"You deserve to be loved," I told her. "You do, Noel--so very much. But that doesn't give you the right to kill your child."
She rubbed her broad hands across her face. I noticed she wasn't wearing shackles. This definitely wasn't a federal prison.
"If you love Michaela at all," I said, "then let her live with the people who can take care of her."
"Will I ever see her again?"
"When she's older," I said. "When she's not afraid anymore. But only if she wants to."
Noel dropped her hands to the table. She shrugged her shoulders, reminding me--achingly--of her daughter's feigned nonchalance.
"Didn't like her all that much anyway," she said, the bitter words of a child at heart.
