D.D. got it: “Disguises.”
“She’s smart. Smarter than me, to tell you the truth. But she’s also been talking to my friend for the past hour—”
“Another vigilante?”
“Another survivor helping a survivor. Sarah’s good. And honest. Meaning if she’s been with Roxy—”
“Roxy couldn’t have been the shooter. She has an alibi. All right.” D.D. made her decision. “Normally, I’d take someone like Roxy straight downtown for questioning. But in a situation like this, that probably guarantees her clamming up. So let’s go to the theater. Question her together. Because she has to start talking. There are too many dead bodies for her to still be keeping quiet.”
“Not the theater,” Flora said. “Too public. My friend has a place.”
“Deal. Bring the dogs.”
“Trying to soften her up?”
“You have your strategies, I have mine.”
“She’s not the shooter,” Flora insisted.
D.D. merely shrugged. “Which should worry all of us even more. Because if not Roxy, then who? And how much time do we have before our mystery gunman strikes again?”
Chapter 31
Name: Roxanna Baez
Grade: 11
Teacher: Mrs. Chula
Category: Personal Narrative
What Is the Perfect Family? Part VI
Permanency Planning Hearing. Today, we are all returning to family court to meet with the judge who’d let us plant pansies in the children’s garden a year ago. This is it, Mrs. Howe, the CASA volunteer, is explaining to us. The judge will assess our mother’s progress against the requirements set forth at the Dispositional Hearing. Then, he’ll render a verdict.
Basically, depending on requirements we barely understand and definitely have no control over, Lola and I may find ourselves staying for additional weeks, months, years at Mother Del’s. Or we may go home today. Did we have any questions?
We don’t talk. Lola packs her bag. I put my schoolbooks in my backpack. Mother Del gave us a single black garbage bag for our clothes, personal possessions. We still have plenty of space left over.
Lola doesn’t ask me what I think will happen today, and I don’t volunteer any opinions. She rubs a baby’s back. We stand and wait in silence.
? ? ?
Anya and Roberto appear in the doorway. Even from five feet away, I can feel their rage. But also something else. Envy. White-hot jealousy.
“You’ll come back,” Anya snarls now, as if to prove her point. “Even if the judge says you can go home, how long do you really think that’s gonna last? Your mom’s a drunk. Only a matter of time before she loses herself in another bottle.”
I don’t respond. Neither does Lola. Anya isn’t telling us anything we haven’t already figured out for ourselves.
“You think you’re better than us,” Anya continues now. Her voice is thick with tears. I watch her swipe at her eyes, smearing her mascara. “Stop it! Stop staring at me!”
What’s that line? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I wonder if that applies to parents. That at least Lola and I once had a mother, whereas Anya, Roberto, this room of sad babies . . .
Mrs. Howe appears in the hallway behind them. She looks from Roberto and Anya to us and back again. She has a way of seeing things. But no matter how many times she’s asked, Lola and I have never answered her questions. She doesn’t have to live with the consequences of telling the truth. We do.
“Do you need help with your luggage?” she questions now.
I heft the trash bag, shake my head.
And that’s that. We head down the stairs, Anya and Roberto trailing behind us, other kids eyeing us curiously. Would we be back in a matter of hours? Last week, our mom assured us everything was going great. Her lawyer was so optimistic. She babbled and babbled and babbled, Manny nodding along to things he clearly didn’t understand, while Lola and I remained quiet.
Sometimes, you have to have hope. And sometimes, it is just too painful.
Outside, Mike stands on the front porch. For a change, he isn’t bouncing, isn’t drumming his fingers. He looks at me, doesn’t say a word. If we never come back, where will that leave him? Alone in a house of enemies? Where Roberto and Anya have no one else to torture but him?
If our positions had been reversed, if it had been his long-lost mother about to take him away . . . I don’t think I could’ve taken it. I think I would’ve thrown my arms around him, begged him, promised him anything to make him stay.
Mrs. Howe walks down the steps. Lola follows. I remain rooted, clutching my garbage bag.
“Don’t come back,” he whispers suddenly, fiercely. “Promise me. We’ll never see each other again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“In the diaper bag, the last of the supplies . . .”
He doesn’t say anything more. I remember the very first day, the butter knife he’d tucked in my hands. I recall the theater, sitting together on the lighting catwalk, swinging our feet in midair. I think he’s the best friend I’ve ever had. And the only person who’s truly seen me, truly put me first.
Then I think I’m much more like my mother than I’d realized, because I still turn and walk away from him.
Manny is waiting outside the courthouse. His foster parents have dressed him for the big event in a white collared shirt and khaki pants. He races over to us. Throws his arms around Lola. Throws his arms around me. I notice his foster parents standing off to one side. They have luggage at their feet, two brand-new suitcases, clearly purchased just for Manny.
His foster mother is crying quietly, and even as I watch, she reaches up to wipe away tears.
Then my mother is there. Except not the mom I’ve known for most of my life. But a bright, shiny, glossy creature with filled-out cheeks and thickly plaited hair and a red-flowered summer dress that shows off golden limbs.
“I love you,” she’s saying, crying, to everyone, to no one. Immediately, I think: That’s it, she’s drunk. Except then I realize she’s not slurring or stumbling. She’s simply giddy. Happy. In love with us.
She grabs me. Hugs me so tight. And for just a moment, the familiar smell of her shampoo, the feel of her cheek pressed against mine . . .
My eyes burn. My chest hurts. My arms move, my hands clench. I hug my mother back for the first time in a year. I cling to her, and I think, I hope, I pray . . .
Then she’s grabbing Lola and tickling Manny and kissing the top of all our heads.
“I have this great apartment. Wait till you see your new rooms! It’s tiny—and girls, you’ll have to share—but don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the couch, and there’s a park just around the corner and just wait till you see it. You’ll love it. I know you will!”
Then we’re inside the courthouse and standing before the judge. He says he wants to talk to us, the kids, beforehand, hear what we have to say as our opinions are very important to him. Did we want to see the pansies we’d planted last year? They’d come back. Seeded themselves. So we traipse out, following the judge. Manny giggles and pokes at the dark purple blooms, then wipes his dirty hands on his clean white shirt.
I can’t talk. I can’t breathe. Inside the courtroom, outside next to the pansies. It doesn’t matter. Beside me, I feel Lola struggling the same. While Mrs. Howe keeps regarding us with her schoolteacher gaze. Waiting for us to collapse in tears? Scream in pent-up rage?
Or howl once and for all at the judge for all he’d done to us, for all our mother had done to us, for all they had done to us, then told us it was for our own good?
Back inside the courthouse now. The judge rattles off the original findings from twelve months ago. Has my mother completed mandatory rehab? She has. Is she working with a licensed addiction counselor? She is. Does she have stable employment, and has she found suitable lodging? What about school enrollment for her children, childcare arrangements for when she was away, i’s dotted, t’s crossed, her alcoholism under control?