One Child (24 page)

Then we were all asked to leave the courtroom while the lawyers and the judge finished up the case. I was so proud of Chad. Despite our long, enduring relationship, I had never seen him work professionally. Now in front of me I saw a different man from the one I knew lounging on the bed in front of the TV. He seemed so sure of himself, so at ease in the court surroundings. I was so proud of him for taking on the hassle of a case he knew would never earn him any money and for taking my bewildered queries and turning them into a real chance to keep Sheila with us.

Down the hallway the boy's parents sat. The strain showed on their faces. Mouths pulled tight and grim. Eyes staring without seeing. I wondered what they were thinking. I could not tell from their faces. Did they have the compassion to forgive Sheila for what she had done? Or were their hearts still too burdened with grief and with fear? Were they still nursing in deep, unspeakable recesses the hope that her life would be as crippled as they feared she had made their son's? I could not tell from looking at them.

The father turned his head and met my eyes briefly. Both of us looked away. They were not bad people. Not the kind I could work up a hate for. When they had testified, their voices had been soft without detectable anger. If anything, they spoke sadly. Unhappy to have the issue reopened. To be in court a second time. To have their lives once more disrupted by this child. In a way I wished I could have hated them; it would have made the decision either way easier for me to accept. But I could not. They had only done what they thought best. Their fault, if anything, was nothing more than ignorance of mental illness. And fear. Now a judge, a man who did not know either of us, nor either of the children, would be the one to decide - on an issue that had no black or white. I wondered how they felt. I wished I had the courage to get up and go to them and ask. I wished there were a way it could be different.

Sheila was sitting on my lap. She had been drawing a picture when we had come out and was now trying to tell me about it. My self-absorption was annoying her. She put a hand up and physically moved my head to look at her. "Look at my picture, Tor. It be a picture of Susannah Joy. See, she gots on that dress she wears to school so much."

I looked down. Sheila had long been envious of Susannah Joy. Susie was the only child in our classroom to come from an affluent family. She was always immaculately dressed and had a splendid wardrobe of frilly little frocks. Sheila was inelegantly envious. She longed for a dress, just one dress like Susannah had. Day after day, she would page through catalogues and pick out dresses she would like to have. Time and again would come entries on the subject into her journal. Only the week before I had found in the correction basket Sheila's creative writing paper.

I do my best writing for you Torey from now on I do be a gooder girl and do my best work I promise. I want to tell you what I do last night. I go down and wait for my father he be at the opptomrix who fistes eye glasses. So I got to walk around for a while and I look in them windows sometimes. Some times I wish I could by the things in them windows. Some times they be so prety. I seen a dress that be red and blue and be white too and it gots lace on it and be long and beautiful. I ain't never had a dress like that and it was prety torey. I sort of wish I could have it. It be my size to I think. I ask my pa if I could by it but he sad "no". That be too bad cos it be so nice and I aint never had a real dress. And I could a wored it to school like Susannah Joy do. She gots lots of dresses. But I couldnt so we went home and my pa he by me some M&Ms instead and toled me "to go to bed Sheila" so I did.

That little essay had hurt me in a funny, unidentifiable way. It seemed one of the saddest things she had ever written. But Sheila went on, knowing she could not have a dress, accepting it and continuing to dream.

Sheila prattled on about the picture she was holding, showing me intricacies in the drawing. Yet she noticed my mind was wandering. She hadn't been called in, which I took as a good sign, but she was aware of the tension among us.

Then at last the doors to the judge's chambers opened. From the minute I saw Chad's face, I knew what the ruling had been. He stopped about eight feet from us, a crisp smile tight on his face. Then he grinned. "We won."

Noise erupted in the hallway and we danced about hugging one another. "We won! We won! We won!" Sheila shrieked, bouncing midst everyone's legs. We all laughed at her jubilance although I doubted she knew the impact of what she was saying.

"I think this calls for a celebration, don't you?" Chad asked. He was pulling on his trench coat. "What do you say we go down to Shakey's and order the biggest pizza they have?"

The others were beginning to leave. I glanced briefly down the hallway toward the boy's parents, who were putting on their coats. Once again I wished I had the courage to walk those twenty feet down the corridor and speak to them. Chad was talking to me about pizza, Sheila was jumping around my legs, scrabbling at my belt to be acknowledged, school people were yelling good-byes.

"Well, what do you say?" Chad asked again. "You want to go or are you going to stand there all evening?" He gave me a playful nudge.

I turned back to him and nodded.

"What about you?" Chad said to Sheila. "You want to come with Torey and me to get pizza?"

Her eyes widened and she nodded. I bent down and picked her up to bring her up to our level of the conversation.

Apart from us stood Sheila's father. Alone. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his ill-fitting suit. He stared at the floor. He seemed lonely to me, lonely and forgotten. This had not been his battle we had just won and it was not to him Sheila had gone. She had waited with us in the hallway and now she celebrated with us. It was our victory. He had not been a part of it. Courts had only been bad places for him in the past; they were frightening places. In his tattered suit and cheap after-shave lotion, he made a strange and striking contrast to the school district and government people. I realized with great sadness that even his daughter was not his own. She was one of us; he was not.

Chad must have perceived the same loneliness I did. "Do you want to join us?"

For a moment I thought I saw a flicker of pleasure on his face. But he shook his head. "No, I have to be going."

"It is all right if Sheila comes with us, isn't it?" Chad asked. "We'll bring her home later."

He nodded, a soft smile on his lips as he regarded his daughter. She was still in my arms, still wiggling with excitement, mindless of her father.

"You're sure you won't come with us?"

"No."

For a long moment we looked at each other, the universe between us never bridging. Then Chad reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. Pulling out a twenty-dollar bill, he handed it to Sheila's father. "Here. Here's your share of the fun."

He hesitated and I did not think he would accept it, knowing his disdain for charity. But uncertainly he extended his hand and took the bill. He mumbled a thank you, then he turned and walked away down the long corridor.

Sheila, Chad and I all piled into Chad's little foreign car and sped off to the pizza parlor. "Hey, Sheila, what kind of pizza do you like?" Chad asked over his shoulder to Sheila in the back seat.

"I don't know. I ain't never had no pizza." "Never had pizza?" Chad exclaimed. "Well, we might have to do this more often, huh?"

If she never had pizza before, one would never have known it from Sheila's behavior. Her eyes were wide and shiny when the pizza arrived and she grabbed for it like a pro. Chad ordered the biggest, fullest-topped pizza he could find on the menu as well as a pitcher of soda pop. It was a magical moment. Sheila was alive and animated, talking constantly. She was intrigued by Chad and ended up sitting on his lap while we listened to the piano player entertain us. Chad commented that he had never seen a little kid eat so much food in one sitting in his life. Teasingly, Sheila told him she could eat at least a hundred pizzas if he had money to buy them and burped loudly to prove it.

Except for having seen her briefly the night we had gone to visit her father, Chad had never met Sheila. Early in the evening it was clear he thought she was one special person. Obviously the feeling was mutual. They laughed and kidded each other throughout the stay at the pizza place.

Night had fallen and the evening crowd was beginning to drift in. We had eaten the entire gigantic pizza, plus the pop, plus a round of soft ice cream. We had listened to the piano player so long that he coaxed Chad up to play "Heart and Soul" with him. But it was apparent that Chad and Sheila were not ready to part company.

Chad leaned way over the table to look at Sheila. "What's the thing you'd like best in the world, if you could have it?" he asked. My heart flinched because I knew Sheila would answer that she wanted her Mama and Jimmie back and that would dampen our mood.

Sheila pondered the question a long moment. "Real or pretend?"

"Real."

Again she sat pensively. "A dress, I think."

"What kind of dress?"

"Like Susannah Joy gots. One that gots lace on it."

"You mean all you'd want in the whole world is just a dress?" Chad's eyes wandered above Sheila's head to me.

Sheila nodded. "I ain't never had a dress before. Once a lady from a church bringed us out some clothes and there be this dress in it. But my Pa, he don't even let me try it on. He says we don't 'cept no charity from no one." She frowned. "I didn't think it would hurt just to try it on, but my Pa, he said I'd get a pounding if I did, so I didn't."

Chad looked at his watch. "It's almost seven o'clock. I don't think the stores in the Mall close until nine." He looked from me to Sheila. "What if I told you this is your lucky day?"

Sheila regarded him quizzically. She still did not know what was going on. "What do you mean?"

"What if I told you that in a few minutes we were going out to the car and go buy you a dress? Any dress you want."

Sheila's eyes got so big I thought they would break her face. Her mouth dropped and she looked at me. Then suddenly she was crestfallen. "My Pa, he wouldn't let me keep it."

"I think he would. We'll just tell him that's your share of the fun. I'll go in with you when we take you home. I'll tell him."

Sheila was beside herself. She leaped from her chair and danced in the aisle, colliding with unsuspecting patrons. She hugged me. She hugged Chad. Surely she would have exploded then and there if we hadn't left.

The next hour was a giddy one. We walked the aisles of the two big department stores in the Mall, Sheila holding on to our hands and swinging between us. Once we found the little girls' dresses, she turned unexpectedly shy and would not even look at them, instead shoving her face into my leg. Dreams close up can be quite hard to handle.

Finally I selected a few that were pretty and had lace and I dragged Sheila into a fitting room to try them on. Once we were alone she came back to life. Stripping off the overalls and shirt until she stood naked except for her underpants, Sheila lifted the dresses up to inspect them carefully. She was such a scrawny little thing with a sway back and a little kid's fat stomach that only emphasized her skinniness. Now alone with the dresses she became too excited to try them on and danced around the small room in circles. I captured her around the waist and shoved her into one dress. What a magic moment. Sheila preened herself in front of the three-way mirror and then ran out to show Chad. We must have spent a half hour closeted in that little room while Sheila tried to decide among three dresses. She tried each of them on at least four times. At last she chose one, a red-and-white dress with lace at the neck and around the sleeves.

"I'm gonna wear it every day to school," she said enthusiastically.

"You look so pretty."

She was watching me in the mirror. "Can I wear it home?"

"If you want."

"I do!" Her sudden smile faded and she turned to me. She climbed onto my lap, touching my face softly with one hand. "You know what I wish?"

"That you could have all three dresses?"

She shook her head. "I wish you was my Mama and Chad was my Daddy."