During her pregnancy, and until shortly before she had left her baby, Bebe had worked at a restaurant where one of the cooks had been arrested for dealing heroin. Prior to that time, several of the other staff members had suspected something between the two of them. There had been flirting. On at least one occasion, the cook in question had given Bebe a ride home at the end of the night. Was it not probable that Bebe, with such dubious associates, had also been involved in something illicit?
(The cook, Vinny, had indeed been dealing heroin. This cannot be denied. But his interest in Bebe had been purely platonic. He had pitied her, watching her belly swell, knowing that her rat of a boyfriend had taken off and left her high and dry. Ten months earlier, his sister had been in the same boat and every night, when he came home to the apartment they shared with their mother, Teresa looked grayer, the baby squalling across her lap or slumped on her shoulder like a little old man, the two of them there on the couch looking elderly and exhausted. Is it any wonder that every morning, when he saw Bebe, his heart would feel bruised? Was it wrong for him to joke with her, trying to make her smile as he could no longer make his sister smile, to give her a ride home when he saw her feet swelling until the laces of her shoes nearly split?
As for Bebe: she had found Vinny attractive, it is true. But her attraction came largely from his kindness to her, and the thought of a man—any man—touching her as the baby drummed her heels within filled her with repulsion. When Vinny was picked up by the cops, Bebe had felt a deep sadness for him, as if he had been a brother she would never see again.)
Bebe’s current job as a waitress paid her the state minimum for tipped employees: $2.35 per hour. At fifty hours per week plus tips, her average take-home pay each month was $317.50. Could she reasonably hope to support a child, and provide all its necessities, on that income? Would she not be forced to seek welfare, and food stamps, and school lunches, would she and her child not become a drain on the community’s resources?
(But there would be love, too, so much love. With that, you could get by with so little. It was enough for the basics: rent, food, clothes. How did you weigh a mother’s love against the cost of raising a child?)
Mark and Linda McCullough, it was quite clear, had all the necessary resources for raising a child. Mr. McCullough had a steady, well-paying job; Mrs. McCullough had, for the past fourteen months, been a full-time mother to the baby and planned to be so indefinitely. They owned their own home in a safe, affluent neighborhood. Overall they were in the ninety-sixth percentile financially. While in their care, the baby had been well clothed, well fed, and well cared for. She had had regular medical checkups, plenty of socialization, and plenty of enrichment: library storytime, infant swim, mommy-and-me music classes. The McCullough home had been rigorously checked and certified as lead free.
Furthermore, the McCulloughs had shown themselves to be exceptionally devoted to raising a child. Records showed that they had tried to conceive children of their own for ten years, and had been waiting to adopt for another four. They had sought the advice of every medical expert in the greater Cleveland area—including the best fertility doctors at the Cleveland Clinic—and then engaged the most reputable adoption agency in the state. Did this not suggest that they would give the baby the most loving possible care, along with every opportunity?
(But the baby already had a mother. Whose blood flowed in her veins. Who had carried her in her womb for months, who had felt her kicking and flipping within, who had labored for twenty-one hours as she made her way faceup and screaming into the bright light of the delivery room, who had burst into ecstatic tears at hearing her child’s voice for the first time, who had—even before the nurses had wiped the baby clean, even before they had cut the cord—touched every part of her child, her tiny flaring nostrils and the faint shadows of her eyebrows and the womb-slicked soles of her feet, making certain she was wholly present, learning her by heart.)
Should custody be returned to Bebe, she would, of course, be raising her child as a single, working mother. Who would care for her child while she was at work? Would not the child be better off in a home with two parents—one of whom did not work and would be home raising her full time—rather than in a day care for the majority of the day? And would not the child be better off in a home with a mother and a father, studies showing the importance of a strong male figure in a child’s life?
(It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?)
Back in the courtroom, Mr. Richardson was grateful that no one heard the last day, when Mrs. McCullough had been called to speak. She had come to the front—in family court, there was no witness box, just a chair, set to the side of the judge—and sat down, and he could see how nervous she was by the way she crossed and uncrossed her ankles, by the way she could not decide where to place her hands, on the arms of the chair or in the soft hammock of her skirt. It had not struck him before that the witness box in court, for all its formality and imposingness, hid you from the waist down: that at least the world would not see your feet fidgeting, that as much as you might be judged, at least your legs would not.
Ed Lim took his time in rising to question her. He was a tall man, especially for an Asian: six feet, lean and rangy, with the build of a basketball player—and indeed, he had played starting forward for Shaker’s varsity team back in the sixties. He and Mrs. McCullough had been only three years apart at school, lifelong Shaker residents and graduates, and before this case he had remembered her only as a shy, slightly plump freshman with long golden-brown hair. He’d been one of just two Asians in his class—the other had been Susie Chang; kids had teased that they would grow up and marry each other. They hadn’t, of course; Susie had gone off to Oregon right after graduation, but in the end Ed had indeed met and married a nice Chinese girl in college, a first-generation kid like him. Mrs. McCullough, however, remembered none of this, not even Susie Chang, who’d been a cheerleader for a year alongside her.
“Now, Mrs. McCullough,” Ed Lim said, setting his pen down at his table. “You’ve spent all your life here in Shaker, is that right?”
Mrs. McCullough acknowledged that it was.
“Shaker Heights High School, class of 1971. Did you go to Shaker schools all the way up?”
“From kindergarten. At Boulevard, back when it was still K to eight. And then the high school, of course.”
“And then you attended Ohio University?”
“Yes. Class of 1975.”
“And after that you moved back to Shaker Heights. Directly?”