Nevaeh looked at me with years in her eyes. She had the young, fresh face of a child, the kind that should always be suntanned, and dimpled, and kissed, but instead her eyes held all the years of a seriously damaged adult. I hated the world for her. I wished someone had seen the years in my eyes when I was her age, and loved me for them. I hate that her father didn’t claim her, not even when she went missing, and then only when he could get something out of it. I hate that nothing can be done about the suffering of children, and that most of the world blocks out their suffering to cope with their own inability to help. The few who carry the burden, like social workers and teachers, become weary, burning out after only a few short years, forced to carry the weight that should be shared by a society. Children are vastly overlooked. Their importance underestimated by their size.
In my eighteen years I’ve heard the phrase children are resilient in passing, half a dozen times. But in books they tell you that a child’s personality is set by the time he is four years old. That gives parents a four-year window to mold and love accordingly. And thank God that my mother still loved me when I was four, that she only kept her distance later in my life, with the sum of who I was already set like a wobbly Jell-O mold. I can be shaken; I can have a mother reject me over and over, and still I remain someone who is accustomed to love, enough to still seek it out. I desire a deep connection because I have had a deep connection. Reject me, and I’ll look elsewhere. I’ll just cast less and less of my pearls before swine each time.
THE POLICE ARREST LYNDEE ANTHONY on December 27th. Delaney saw it all go down. She says that when they brought Lyndee out of the house—handcuffed and in a T-shirt with her daughter’s photo on it—her face was as peaceful as if they were escorting her to Sunday lunch. Her arrest sent the Bone into a rage. Lyndee had already lost her child, now the police were bringing murder charges against the bereaving mother. The Bone was sick of the persecution of the poor. Sick of not being seen, then being seen for the wrong thing.
Within hours of her arrest, someone had graffiti’d the side of the Wal-Mart that faces the highway with ‘Lyndee is innocint!’ I cringe when I see it. I have my doubts about her innocence, though no one else seems to. I remember what Knick Knack told me about the sleeping pills. And there’s something about her face when no one is watching. But to everyone else, she is a representation of the system trying to hurt you, and all of those who have been hurt rally behind her. Sometimes I wonder if half of her supporters even know what she is being accused of, or if they are just looking for a reason to be mad. Either way, T-shirts pop up all over the Bone. Green ones that say ‘Lyndee is Innocent!’ I am relieved that someone got the spelling right this time.
But you can’t convict a woman based on her facial expressions, and the police seem to have found evidence enough to arrest her. To keep up to date on the case, I buy a small television from the Rag and put it on the kitchen counter. It only gets three channels, but one of them is the news. I watch, like everyone else, as one news station then another picks up the story: Little girl murdered, her body burned and left in a field.
It makes us sick all over again, especially when the photos begin to emerge. The police are building a case against Lyndee, the news says. Their evidence is a footprint that matches Lyndee’s left in the mud near Nevaeh’s body. They found a sneaker in her closet with the same dirt crusted on its sole. The news has been showing a picture of the sneaker in an evidence bag. Different angles of the same shoe, so we know how important it is. It is purple and white, and I wonder if they are making a big deal about the shoe because it is all they have.
We are all on the edge of our seats, waiting. Lyndee’s boyfriend provides her with an alibi, as do two other people—their roommates—who saw the couple that night. They release Lyndee on insufficient evidence, and the Bone rejoices. She is innocint! And who could blame anyone for believing that with her sweet, childlike face. All across the nation, people make fun of Bone Harbor’s shit poor police work. The handling of the crime scene was a joke; they didn’t even bag the evidence correctly. The media focuses its attention for a little while on her boyfriend, Steve, who disappeared for a bit and now is back. But since his alibi is Lyndee, they come up empty-handed. This is a case with no evidence.
A little girl went missing on her way home from school, and was murdered, and all they have is a sneaker in a plastic evidence bag. I wonder if the rain had something to do with it—if it washed away something the police could have used.