“Please, let me go with you,” I said, trying not to cry as I dug into my front pocket, then handed the keys to him. I imagined Brooke seeing the officer opening the car door, her screams as she realized it was anyone other than me. She had a real fear of strangers; for her own safety, living the way we did, I’d done my best to teach her not to trust anyone but me.
The young officer took off without a word, and I couldn’t help it—the tears I’d been holding back began to fall. “Please,” I said again, my entire body starting to shake. “Let me at least tell them it’s going to be okay.” Another lie, but one I hoped my little girl might believe.
“What’s your name, young lady?” the older officer asked. His voice was stern, unyielding. His thick, gray mustache reminded me of my grandfather who’d died of a heart attack when I was ten. The way my grandma had cried at his funeral sounded like a howling wolf; my mother, a woman whose idea of showing emotion was a pat on the back, had been mortified. Three years later, when my grandma passed away, too, my mother didn’t shed one tear.
My chin trembled. “Jennifer Walker.”
“And what am I going to find when I punch your name into the system, Jennifer? Have you done this dance before?”
I held his gaze for a moment, thinking of all the decisions I’d made over the past four years, so many of them like tonight, knowing what the consequences might be, but still, thinking I knew best, deciding to take the risk.
“Yes,” I told the officer, and then dropped my eyes to the floor. There was no sense trying to hide it; he would find out everything soon enough.
? ? ?
“This makes your fourth count of petty theft,” my social worker, Gina Ortiz, said, looking at the thick file on the table between us. It was the morning after my arrest, and my public defender had left the small interview room in the police station just moments ago, after he informed me there was no way I was going to get out of spending at least a couple months in jail. “Up to two years,” he’d said. “Maybe more, if things don’t go your way.”
But the girls, I wanted to scream. What about my girls? I’d been in trouble before; I’d even been put in a jail cell a time or two—only for a few hours, never overnight, and I’d always managed to get off with a warning or a fine. Now, here I was, contemplating the possibility that Natalie might learn to walk without me there to hold her hand.
The fact that I had children wasn’t the lawyer’s problem; it was Gina’s. I’d met her two years ago, when CPS was called in after I’d been caught shoplifting for the first time, before I got pregnant with Natalie. She’d kept Brooke with her in the lobby while I went through processing at the police station, and then, when I was released with a warning because the store decided to not press charges, she told me I had to attend parenting classes, starting the following week. I’d blown them off, of course, and seeing her now, I felt a stinging pang of regret.
Gina was a heavier woman, thick around the middle with skinny legs, which I imagined probably made it difficult to find pants. Today, she wore a black pencil skirt and a red blouse with a big bow at the base of her neck. The color flattered her toffee-toned skin. “Not only that,” she continued, “it’s your second charge of child endangerment and neglect.” She paused, and looked at me over the top of her glasses, which were perched on the tip of her slender nose. “Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head, pressing my lips together so I wouldn’t cry. I dug the fingernails into my opposite arm until I drew blood; I’d already bitten my nails down to the quick. Could she really be talking about me, endangering my children? Sure, leaving them alone in the car wasn’t the best decision I’d ever made, but it wasn’t like I gave Brooke knives to play with while I was gone. I wasn’t cooking crack in a kitchen while they sat on the floor.
“It means that while you go to jail, the girls go into foster care.”
“No,” I said. “Maybe the lawyer was wrong. Maybe the judge will understand I was just trying to feed them.” A couple of fat tears rolled down my cheeks. I didn’t bother wiping them away. “Please? Can you just wait and see what the judge says?”
Gina sighed, removed her glasses, and closed the folder in front of her. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head with a few pieces hanging around her round face; she tucked the loose strands behind both her ears and looked at me. “It won’t make a difference. It’s almost certain you’ll be convicted of theft and abuse. The girls are being removed from your care. When you get out, we can talk about a plan to get them back, but at this point, I’m sorry, Jennifer. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I don’t abuse my children!” I cried, feeling as though she’d just hit my chest with a hammer; pain crackled along my ribs. “I’ve never even spanked Brooke! I just . . . made a mistake.”