Common Ground (118 page)

Several days later, Cassandra and Little Rachel appeared for scheduled interviews at the court’s probation department. Late for their appointments with Philippa Myers, the probation officer assigned to the case, they were seen by two student workers. Both girls complained that their mother made “unreasonable demands” on them for errands, household work, and other tasks. Both said that she often beat them with an electrical extension cord or a belt with a metal buckle. Cassandra showed the student worker scars which she said came from these beatings. Both girls said they were unwilling to return to their mother’s house and wanted to remain with Alva.

When their mother saw Mrs. Myers a week later, she said the girls flagrantly disobeyed her orders both in and out of the house, coming and going as they wished, spending much of their time with older men. But she vehemently denied that she beat the girls, claiming that her lupus didn’t leave her the stamina for such exertions. She no longer wanted the girls in her home, she said, but she didn’t want them with Alva either. She wanted them committed to the Department of Public Welfare for placement in an appropriate setting. The girls should come to the house and take everything that belonged to them, so they would know that a “clean break” had been made.

At a preliminary hearing before Judge George W. Cashman on December 13, Mrs. Myers reported that commitment to the Welfare Department seemed the only workable solution. Mrs. Twymon told the court she’d always insisted on obedience from her daughters; since they now refused to heed her, she had no alternative but to expel them from the house. Ruth Lewis of the Welfare Department said that a prolonged clinical evaluation was required before permanent placements could be made, and meanwhile the girls should remain with their aunt. After Sandy Brushart confirmed that the girls had no objection, Judge Cashman ordered them committed to the Welfare Department,
with temporary custody to Alva. But when he admonished them to obey their aunt, Cassandra angrily denied that they’d ever been rebellious. It was impossible to obey their mother, she claimed, because whatever you did, another task was always waiting. Well, let’s see how it goes with your aunt, the judge said, setting another hearing to review his order in six weeks.

Two weeks later, Cassandra entered the hospital for repair to her ovaries. The surgery revived her mother’s protective instincts, for almost immediately she began backing away from her position at the hearing, telling Mrs. Myers she hoped Cassandra would spend her convalescence at Methunion Manor. Once again she was wounded, as Cassandra decided to recuperate at Alva’s.

On December 28, Mrs. Twymon called the Welfare Department to have Cassandra and Rachel removed from her Aid to Families with Dependent Children budget, reducing the biweekly grant from $122.30 to $42.60, paving the way for the department to shift those monies to Alva. Yet on January 5 came further evidence of a softening in her position toward her daughters. In a letter to Ruth Lewis of the Welfare Department, she noted that on January 3 Little Rachel had paid an unexpected visit to Methunion Manor and expressed a desire to return home. “I explained to Rachel that she must speak to either yourself or Mrs. Myers before she could come home,” she wrote. Requesting that the department conduct a “suitability investigation” of Alva’s home, she said, “At the end of the six-week trial period I would hope that this case will be reviewed by the judge and all concerned parties. I would hope at that time the girls will be able to see where they are going and, perhaps more importantly, where they have been.”

Mrs. Twymon shifted ground several times that winter. To Mrs. Myers she seemed “so ambivalent about her daughters, it was difficult to get a consistent position from her.” One day she dropped hints that she wanted the girls back; the next she would talk again of a “clean break.” Not long after telling one social worker, “My door is open,” she changed the locks on her apartment so the girls couldn’t slip in and out undetected.

The one constant was implacable hostility between Mrs. Twymon and her sister. In conversation with third parties, each accused the other of breaking up the family and of setting a bad example to the girls. Alva denounced her sister as “a mean and evil person” who didn’t understand teenagers’ need for freedom. Rachel suggested that Alva led a dissolute life and was an inappropriate model for her daughters. While Little Rachel went on paying weekly visits to Methunion Manor, Cassandra kept her distance. Mrs. Twymon accused Alva of encouraging Cassandra’s hostility, while Alva claimed that her sister wouldn’t even let Cassandra collect her clothes and school books.

Through January and early February, mother and daughters were examined by social workers and psychologists who prepared evaluations for the court. Mrs. Twymon, one social worker wrote, “is a very depressed, angry and rigid woman who has been deprived and experienced losses because of her illnesses. She is unable to understand the adolescent needs of her children….
Mrs. Twymon’s inability to discuss her pain with us and her overwhelming hostility and resistance preclude the development of a therapeutic relationship through which the girls might be returned to her.”

The girls’ anger, the same social worker concluded, stemmed from “early separation anxiety” associated with their long stay in foster homes.

One psychiatrist described Cassandra as “distressed and petulant … rather surly and quick to take offense,” though “later friendly and spontaneous.” She concluded that Cassandra was “a rather defensive young lady who has strongly rebelled against an overly controlling mother.”

A psychologist described Little Rachel in much the same terms, as “a sullen, angry and somewhat depressed adolescent.”

On February 9, Judge Cashman held a second hearing to review the case. Alva and the two girls were not present, so Mrs. Twymon would have a full opportunity to make a case against her sister. Addressing the court that morning, she urged that the girls be removed from Alva’s house immediately. It was a “hostile home,” she said, where the girls were being encouraged to defy her. Moreover, she contended, Alva was living with a man not her husband (a reference to Alva’s new boyfriend, Sam Jones, who had moved in with her that winter).

Then Carol Cullen, a Welfare Department social worker, reported on her visit to the Debnam house. Ms. Cullen said she found no evidence of a man living in the house. Nor did she detect any reluctance on Alva’s part to let the girls see their mother. “Mrs. Debnam told the worker that the mother was welcome to call or visit her daughters in her home at any time and the girls may do the same if they wish.” In short, she found the Debnam home “most appropriate” for the two girls.

After hearing Ms. Cullen’s report, Judge Cashman turned to Rachel and asked if she considered her sister a “bad woman.”

“I go to church,” Rachel said. “But my sister leads a different kind of life. She has undermined my relationship with my girls.”

“Is there any other member of your family able and ready to take the children?” Judge Cashman asked.

“No,” she said.

The judge told Rachel he wasn’t going to involve himself in her dispute with her sister. His role was to serve “the best interests of the children.” After the girls’ attorney assured him they wished to remain with their aunt, the judge continued his December 13 order for three more months.

Alva accepted her foster-mother role with cheerful resignation. The house was overcrowded, but after months of living with vandals outside and sentinels inside, the Debnams found two teenage girls a minor inconvenience. But they
were
expensive. Even after Mrs. Twymon informed Welfare that the girls were no longer at home, Alva had difficulty getting the AFDC grant transferred to her. It took three official interviews before a check for $120 began arriving every two weeks. Meanwhile, she made room for the newcomers by moving out of her own room, sleeping with Sam Jones on the fold-down couch in the
living room. Young Otis took her room; Cassandra and Rachel moved into Otis’ room. For a time at least, the girls got along well with Alva’s daughters—Charlene and Maria—and the household settled into a pleasant routine.

The move to Alva’s did complicate the daily commute to school. Rachel had a relatively simple bus trip to Boston Tech, but Cassandra had to take the subway downtown to Park Street, then change for the South End, where she boarded a bus for Charlestown High. The tumultuous events of fall and winter took a toll on Cassandra’s scholastic performance. In the September–October marking period she did remarkably well (five B’s and one C+), but in November and December, as she ran away, went to court, and moved to Alva’s, her grades fell off precipitously (one B+, one B, two C’s, two C-’s, and a D). Only in art—where a talented teacher had captured her attention—did she consistently get good grades.

Outside class she found even less to engage her. Elected that fall as an alternate on the new Student Council, she attended only one meeting, when the white girl she backed up fell sick. All fall her friend Sandy Payne urged her to come out for girls’ basketball, but that meant staying late for practice. Cassandra had no intention of sticking around Charlestown any longer than she had to.

Only once that year did she join in a school activity. Even classmates who barely knew her had admired Cassandra’s strong voice. She never missed an opportunity to exercise it: in the corridors, in the ladies’ room, on the bus to and from school, she belted out rhythm-and-blues tunes from groups like Wild Cherry and Tavares. When the Student Council began organizing the March 4 “Gong Show,” Lisa McGoff urged her to enter. Afraid that the whites would ridicule her, Cassandra resisted for weeks, and only when Joe Strickland and Sandy Payne added their pressure did she capitulate. To her astonishment, her lively rendition of the Tavares song “You Are My Shining Star” brought her a round of applause and honorable mention in the show. Her prize: a foot-long green toothbrush, which a delighted Cassandra hung on her bedroom wall at Alva’s.

But one such achievement did little to ease the loneliness which ate at her all through that winter. Every day she spent in Room 415, its unremitting whiteness seemed more oppressive. There was nobody to jive with, nobody who knew what she was going through, nobody to give her back a sweet, warm communion. And when she sought out other blacks in the corridor or the ladies’ room, she was pulled up short by white administrators determined to avert racial collisions: no talking, no lingering, get out of the halls, go to your homeroom.

The more she was frustrated in other encounters, the more desperately she craved her friend Desiree’s company. In the morning the two girls talked in the corridors well past the final bell, at each class break they somehow found each other, and at lunch Cassandra invariably persuaded Jerry Sullivan to let her spend those twenty minutes with Desiree.

Then in early March, Desiree’s homeroom teacher told Jerry that too many
kids were drifting into her room at lunchtime. She’d appreciate it if he would keep Cassandra with him. When Jerry told this to Cassandra, she grew distraught. Those twenty minutes huddled alone on her side of the room were agony. She missed Desiree desperately, and she blamed Jerry Sullivan for this abrupt turnabout, a betrayal of their old relationship.

On March 21, Cassandra and Desiree came to school with tin whistles clamped between their teeth, emitting high-pitched trills that could be heard all through the school. Bob Jarvis, the school’s chief disciplinarian, stuck his head out his door and told the girls to shut up. Later, he told Jerry Sullivan, “Cassandra Twymon’s running a little wild. Every time I look up, she and this Desiree are out in the halls. I want you to get that girl under control. Keep her in the homeroom where she belongs.”

The next morning, as Cassandra and Desiree idled in the fourth-floor hallway, Sullivan hurried up to them. “That’s enough, Cassandra,” he said. “Let’s get in the room.”

“I’ve got plenty of time, Mr. Sullivan,” she said.

“No, you don’t Let’s go.”

When Cassandra declined to move, Jerry became so exasperated he stuck out a giant hand to nudge her toward the classroom door—a violation of school regulations prohibiting teachers from touching students except to break up violent confrontations.

“Get your hands off me!” Cassandra shouted, as she and Desiree flounced downstairs, ignoring the teacher’s remonstrances.

Jerry summoned Bob Jarvis, who commanded Cassandra to “get up those stairs!” When she entered Room 415, Jerry told her, “You know, I really don’t care what you do. But as long as Jarvis is on my back, I’m going to be on yours. If you’d just be where you’re supposed to be for once, maybe we could get on to other things.” But Cassandra put her head down on her desk, refusing to say a word.

Suddenly, all Jerry Sullivan’s frustration at court-ordered busing, at ill-prepared or insolent students, exploded in a torrent of emotion. “Okay, Cassandra,” he said. “If you’re going to treat me like a dog, I’ll treat you like a dog. So don’t look to me for favors anymore. No more passes to the lav. No more permission to see Desiree. I’m not bending the rules for you anymore.”

At lunch the next day, Cassandra asked for a pass to the lav. Jerry said no. She asked for a pass to the office. Jerry said no. So Cassandra simply walked to the office, where she asked to see Headmaster Murphy. An outraged Jerry Sullivan immediately reported the incident to Jarvis, who came to the doorway of his cubicle and called, “Cassandra, may I see you, please?”

Cassandra stood with arms folded, refusing to acknowledge him. Twice more he called. Twice more she refused to respond. “Okay,” snapped Jarvis. “That’ll be a five-day suspension.”

Eventually Murphy received Cassandra in his office, condemned her behavior, and told her to come back the next day with her mother. Mrs. Twymon was spending the week at a church conference in Arkansas, so Cassandra
promised to bring someone else, and the next morning she returned with her brother Richard, a shrewd negotiator. After an hour-long meeting with Murphy and Jarvis, the administrators agreed to reduce Cassandra’s suspension to one day if she would make a new effort to abide by school regulations. Cassandra, who still felt more victim than culprit, grudgingly agreed.