Unprotected (11 page)

The steps up to the trailer door were cement blocks. Amanda walked up carefully and knocked on the screen door. There was the sound of ferocious barking, followed by, “Shut up, Gomer! Shut UP, Gomer!”

LaToya peeked around the door. “Sweetie, you’re gonna have to get back in your car for a second,” LaToya said. “I need to get Gomer to his kennel in back, but he’ll lunge for you if he thinks you’re gonna go inside.”

Amanda nodded silently and gladly went back to her car. LaToya came out, holding Gomer by his frayed collar. Both she and the dog were an interesting sight. LaToya looked like Marlys, with a similar build and sense of style. She wore a gold velour one-piece jumpsuit with a zipper that went from her neck to her crotch. It was at least three sizes too small, so LaToya’s belly squished in rolls down the front of the suit. She wore braids of artificial hair that were so full of beads that Amanda thought her hair must have weighed fifteen pounds. LaToya’s glasses were enormous, with gold-gilded rims and rhinestones along the bows.

Gomer was an ugly Doberman with some other breed mixed in. LaToya could barely hold on to his collar when he saw Amanda’s car, and he howled uncontrollably trying to get out of her grasp. She kicked him hard with the side of her foot, wrestled him into an orange pet carrier that barely contained his girth. “Don’t make me hose you,” LaToya yelled. To Amanda’s surprise, LaToya actually picked up a garden hose and motioned to turn on the water. Gomer settled a little and looked like he was trying to turn around to lie down.

LaToya turned around, smoothed her jumpsuit over her rolls of belly, and waved to Amanda. “Okay, sweetheart, come on in now.”

Amanda felt uneasy getting out of her car, eyeing the carrier, but she obediently followed LaToya. “Watch your step, sugar,” LaToya said. She carefully went back up the cement blocks and went inside the trailer.

Amanda had accompanied other social workers on at least half a dozen home visits, but never had seen a home quite like this one. The trailer was typical in that the living room was at the front, with a kitchen in the middle, and a narrow hallway in the back that led to small bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen was piled with dishes in both sides of the sink and along the counters. There was a gigantic dog dish and dog bed in the kitchen with water spilled and dog food scattered around the dishes. In the corner was a small table with two old kitchen chairs, and a fuzzy plaid dog bed coated with Gomer’s hair.

“Let’s go in the living room, sugar,” LaToya said, motioning her to the fake leather couch. Amanda couldn’t keep back a smile when she walked into the living room. On the wall above the vinyl couch was the largest velveteen blanket-wall hanging she had ever seen, and Aretha Franklin’s head and torso were emblazoned on the velvet in shimmery paint. LaToya moved a large electronic keyboard away from the vinyl recliner and flopped into the chair with a plastic-y poof. “Can I get you a coke?” LaToya asked, leaning her bulk forward in preparation to get back out of her chair.

“No, no,” Amanda said quickly. “I’m fine. I don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“That’s okay, honey. I want to do anything I can for my sister,” LaToya said nodding. Amanda noted that she wore large, square tipped, gold, press-on nails that clicked softly while she stroked a dog statuette perched on the end table next to her. Amanda couldn’t imagine how she could play her keyboard with those dagger-nails.

Amanda dragged her eyes away from the nails back to her notebook. She had written some questions on her pad of paper and was trying to get up the nerve to start asking her personal questions. “Maybe we should start with a little history about you,” Amanda said.

“Why, sugar?” LaToya asked, her eyes narrowing. “What difference does my life make?”

“Because the kids are in foster care, and I can’t just … I mean there’s liability and I have to make sure … they’re just so little and I’m wondering …” Amanda was panicking and she knew it. Questioning a total stranger was harder than she thought it would be.

“You have to check me out? Is that what you’re saying,” LaToya found her cigarettes and lit one expertly. She took a long drag, leaning forward and staring at Amanda. “I ain’t got nothin’ to hide. Did Marlys tell you about the guns?”

Amanda’s heart started beating fast, and her eyes darted to the end table where there was an old cigar box that easily could have contained a handgun. She was alone in a stranger’s house and had no way to escape if she would have pulled a gun. This was beyond stupid.

“I used to work for Zigger T,” LaToya said with a swagger. “You know, the record producer.” LaToya inhaled on her cigarette deeply to allow Amanda time to digest LaToya’s importance. “Turns out Zigs was dealing guns. I went down with him cuz I loved Zigger. I done forty-four months in Shakopee.” Shakopee was a women’s prison. Alone in a trailer with a felon who sold guns.

“Um, okay,” Amanda said haltingly, not sure what to do next. “I guess I should write down when you were arrested. We’ll have to look into the criminal stuff pretty thoroughly.”

“You know Lana James? I love Lana. She’s my PO, but we had to be sisters in another life,” LaToya ground out her cigarette in a black plastic ashtray, and Amanda could see LaToya’s gold lipstick on the butt. “Lana can tell you about how I turned my life around in prison. I got my GED and worked on my singing. I started a gospel choir at Shakopee that’s still going strong. Most important, sweetness, is that I discovered our Lord Jesus Christ,” LaToya said with a proud smile, and sat back in her chair with her hand on her ample chest.

Amanda relaxed at the news that LaToya had found her lord, assuming that meant she was probably safe.

“Do you have any kids, LaToya?” Amanda asked, looking around and noticing no evidence of children.

LaToya’s head dropped to her chest, and the beads clicked and swished. “I guess my sister didn’t tell you nothin’.” She heaved a large sigh and reached for another cigarette. “I lost my baby, JaMarquis, when he was still a baby,” LaToya said, pulling off her glasses and rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “I knew I was gonna have to talk about this, but that don’t make it no easier,” LaToya cried. Tears streamed down her face, and Amanda sat in complete awkward silence. “He was sleeping with me in my waterbed,” she wailed. “I just didn’t know, sugar. I didn’t know babies could die that way! Oh, I’m sorry, sugar.” LaToya heaved out of her chair and went to her entertainment center, opened the top cabinet and pulled out picture after picture of her son, JaMarquis. She brought Amanda a framed eleven-by-fourteen picture of a fat, smiling little boy in a blue train conductor suit, complete with hat and red kerchief around his neck.

“He’s really sweet,” Amanda said. “I love his little outfit.”

“His daddy worked for the railroad, so when he met JaMarquis, he brought him that suit.” Amanda assumed that meant that JaMarquis’s daddy wasn’t around much, so LaToya was a single mom.

“Did your family support you?” Amanda asked.

“Oh, that Marlys was so strung out on the crack that she didn’t know what happened. We had our babies at the same time and lost them at the same time,” LaToya said, kissing each picture before putting them back in the cabinet.

“What do you mean lost them?” Amanda asked, suddenly confused. Marlys had two young children, but she had never heard that Marlys had a baby die.

“Oh, honey you really don’t know nothin’ do you?” LaToya sat back down and hoisted her plump ankle on her other knee. “When Marlys was still livin’ at home with our daddy, she started getting herself in real trouble with the gangbangers. She got initiated in by a whole mess of them who all raped her. She got pregnant.” LaToya shook her head and rubbed her hand on her ankle. “Marlys was sixteen, and I was nineteen and pregnant too. I had a real good job working in the WIC office as a secretary. You know what WIC is?”

Amanda nodded. Though she didn’t know what it stood for, Amanda knew that WIC was a federal program that provided milk and formula for low-income women.

“Those nurses at the WIC told me to get Marlys to a doctor right now and get her to quit doing drugs. She quit everything and moved in with me right after I had JaMarquis. She had to quit school to help pay rent, but she was doing real good at the Cub store bagging groceries and babysitting. Then the GDs came down here one day pissed at Marly cuz she was supposed to be their dealer, and she wasn’t sellin’ nothin’. She tried to tell them she was havin’ a baby and wanted out. Them dealers beat her so bad she lost her baby. Was a little boy. She was so far along they had to birth the baby dead.”

“Oh, my god,” Amanda said. “What happened to the guys who did it to her?”

LaToya shook her head at her. “Oh, sweetness, ain’t nothin’ happened to them. Marly didn’t know who got her, and even if she did she wasn’t tellin’ no one.” LaToya stared out the window and lit another cigarette.

Amanda sat incredulous. She had never heard such awful stories. Even with her own childhood as bad as it was, Amanda never really feared for her safety the way Marlys must have. She had been through a lot, but for the first time in her life, Amanda had met someone who had been through so much more.

“Marlys wasn’t never the same after that,” LaToya continued. “Marly left my house cuz she couldn’t stand seeing my baby. She went up to the cities and hooked up with some Asian gang for a while, then went back to the GDs. She didn’t come to JaMarquis’s funeral. We couldn’t even find her. After I lost my baby, I decided to focus on my singing, but you know where that got me. Then Marly started prostituting herself and got pregnant again.”

Amanda, who had been chewing on her pen cap, choked. “Are you telling me that Tyler’s father is a john?”

“Oh, yes,” LaToya said. Amanda found herself liking LaToya, gold jumpsuit and all. She was big hearted, tough and resilient. They talked for over an hour about Marlys’s life, almost all of it tragic and sad. A part of her wondered why Marlys never went to anyone to ask for help. The other part of her knew just how stupid that was.

“Well, LaToya, we need to figure out if it makes sense to move the boys here, and if we even can with your, um, background issues. Marlys should be done with treatment in a few weeks. Is it still your plan to have her stay with you?” Amanda tried to get back on track and figure out a visitation schedule for the kids.

LaToya laughed, shaking her head and clucking her tongue. “My sister is coming here. I’ll do anything for her. I’d lie down on those tracks right now if you thought it’d help her. But let’s be real, sugar. My sister ain’t never getting any better.”

“She’s doing pretty well in treatment,” Amanda said, wanting suddenly to defend her.

“I know she is. But, honey, people don’t change who they are. My sister ain’t never going to quit doing her crack and her johns.”

Amanda’s mouth dropped open. “You said you’d do anything for her. Why, if you don’t think she’s ever going to get any better? Why even try? You must have some hope.”

“Honey, I got hope I’m gonna see my JaMarquis when the good lord brings me home. I got hope I’ll make it on the big stage someday. But there’s no hope for my sister. You better try your hardest for her, but I tell you right now: I’ll be elected president of the United States before my sister becomes a good citizen.”

“But you changed! Why not believe your sister can too?” Amanda couldn’t figure this woman out.

“Honey, when you was little, did you play in the neighborhood with all the kids?”

Amanda didn’t want to tell her that her neighborhood when she was growing up was much like the one they were in at that moment. “What are you getting at, LaToya?”

“Kids play doctor, right? Or they play house and the two bigger kids go off and be the parents, you know what I’m saying?”

Mikey Quam was the resident doctor in Amanda’s neighborhood. “Yeah, I know what you’re saying.”

“Marly would play hooker. She’d do favors for boys, suck their weenies and stuff, when she was six-years old. It’s who she is, baby. There ain’t no changin’ that.”

Chapter Eight

Amanda felt like she had learned more in her ninety minute interview with LaToya than she had learned in five years of college. She found she couldn’t do much more than stare at her computer monitor, and her tropical fish screensaver. A message popped up telling her she had email. Amanda clicked on the
open now
box.

“When you get back from your visit with Marlys’s sister, please bring me the background check forms and let me know if you want me to send the rest of the stuff or if you’ll be doing it. Zoe.”

Crap,
Amanda thought.

Zoe was the foster care licensor who gave her a pile of paperwork that needed to be signed by LaToya. Zoe had reviewed some of it with her, but she said it was pretty self-explanatory so she should be fine. Amanda had forgotten about it completely. Once again, she felt like the clueless new girl.

Max stood outside her cube and knocked on the metal frame.

“Hey, Amanda, did you get my message?” he asked.

She stared blankly at him.

“Guess that’s a no,” he said, unfazed, sitting down across from her in her lone chair for visitors. “I want to talk to you about heading up a new program. I just came from a meeting at the superintendent’s office, and she is asking for a social worker to help with a truancy thing they’re doing.”

“Truancy,” she said stupidly.

“Everyone’s favorite thing. But you know how the governor set the new mandate for school attendance, so the school has to demonstrate that they are trying to keep kids in school or they could lose funding.” Max sat back in his chair, squirming. “Geez, these chairs are terrible.”

“Watch out for the crack on the seat,” Amanda warned him, pointing at the seat of the chair.

“Yikes, I will. Crappy government furniture. Anyway, they have a new EBD teacher who used to work at Outward Bound, so she wants to do some hiking and rafting with some of the kids as a motivator to stay in school. I thought you’d be great at something like that.”

“Thanks,” Amanda said, flattered that he thought enough of her to assign her to a new program.