Where Nobody Dies (27 page)

She also found herself pregnant with the twins. Enter the agency. Even though she'd been reinstated as the custodial parent, Arnette was now under direct supervision by social workers who offered plenty of criticism and little support. I read from the records I'd seen in the agency office to make my case. Black marks went onto Arnette's record whenever she ran out of food between welfare checks, but no help in increasing her grant or dealing with Social Services was ever forthcoming. She was turned down in every request she ever made to the agency, yet she was constantly under pressure to do better by her children. Her challenges to the agency, her demands for more help, were counted against her in the agency's reports.

I took the court on a verbal tour of the agency's visiting rooms—the one-way mirrors through which Arnette was studied like a bug on a slide, the foster mother's competitive ploys to capture the children's attention during Arnette's visiting time, the subtle disapproval of Arnette's lifestyle that surfaced in little digs that went into her record. No wonder, I concluded, that the visits slowed and then ceased. Was this, I asked rhetorically, the agency's idea of “strengthening the bonds of the natural family,” which was what the law mandated?

I ended with a plea for time—the only thing we could realistically walk away with. I asked for a six-month adjournment during which Arnette could visit and plan, and re-cement the bonds between herself and her kids.

I sat down knowing we'd lost. Glenda Shute's face as she turned to the agency lawyer said that
now
she was ready to hear something that made sense.

What she heard was the standard agency line. Whatever the agency had done or failed to do in the past, the only question before the court was, what was the best interests of the children
now
. She started in on her glowing account of the benefits of adoption.

I jumped to my feet and interrupted, risking the court's wrath. Angry, I exposed the truth about the three older children: that there was no hope of adoption for them, that they were on the verge of removal from their present foster home, and that the only reason they were still together in that home was to impress the court. I finished with a point Mickey and I had argued about. I asked the court to enter separate orders—one for Kwame and Kwaku, releasing them for adoption, and one for Tanika, Jomo, and Kamisha, granting the adjournment.

It was a legal impossibility, and I knew it. How could the court rule that Arnette was an unfit mother as to two kids but fit as to the other three? And yet, watching the whole loaf slip away, I had to reach out to grab a half if I possibly could. I owed it to Arnette and to the social worker who followed my words with anguished intensity.

We lost. It took a lot more words and a few supercilious looks from Glenda Shute, who seemed to blame me for daring to make the effort to stop the agency's well-intentioned plans for the Pearson kids. When the words were pronounced, I felt the hand in mine squeeze so hard I thought my own hand would come off. Then Arnette abruptly cut the connection, flinging my arm against my side. She stalked out of the courtroom with a door-slamming bang that reminded me forcibly of Brad Ritchie.

Her hallway performance continued the parallel. Squaring off at me, Arnette raked me up and down with contempt blazing in her eyes.

“Shoulda had me a
black
lawyer,” she said. “The Black United Front, that's who I need now. I gotta
do
something behind all this racist bullshit, you dig?”

“We did everything we could,” I said, stepping in front of my client. It was an instinctive movement to shield the social worker, who was brushing away a furtive tear. Despite my efforts, Arnette saw the gesture. “What
you
got to cry for?” she taunted Mickey. “It's
my
kids they done stole.”

I'd been where Mickey was. I knew the pain of wanting to help, of knowing what to do to help, but of being unable, sometimes forbidden, to do it.

I looked straight into Arnette's angry eyes. “God knows,” I said, “you've seen a lot of people in your life who said they were going to help you and then gave you the shaft instead. But Mickey isn't one of them. She risked her job to get me into this case. I think you owe her an apology.”

Arnette was ready to walk. I could see it in her eyes, hot with fury. But I knew the anger was a mask, that deep underneath was a hurt so big it couldn't be expressed without tearing her apart. Rage was safer than grief. She looked at the ground. “I'm sorry,” she mumbled grudgingly.

Mickey nodded her acceptance, but her face still held a vulnerability that bothered me. She was taking our loss far too hard.

I turned back to my client. “The three older kids,” I began, my tone deliberately businesslike, “do they know how to reach you?”

She nodded. “They got my mama's number. They call once in a while.”

“Good. Because I know for a fact they're leaving the foster home they're in now. Maybe the new foster mothers will let you visit them or let them visit you, even if it is against the rules.”

“Best I can hope for, I guess,” Arnette conceded. Then her face brightened into a near-smile. “Hey,” she said, “they their mama's kids. They don't hold by the rules too much.”

That had been the easy part. “But the twins”—I swallowed as I said the words—“I'm afraid they're gone forever. Those parents will never let you see them.”

“I know,” she sighed. “Sometime it seem like a dream that I ever had them. They been gone so long, it's like they never was part of me noway. I be used to it.”

I wished her luck and watched her walk down the hallway toward the elevators, then I turned toward Mickey. “It's a tough business,” I said. She managed a wan smile but no answer.

As we walked toward the ladies' room, I asked her the question uppermost in my mind. “How can you do it? If it kills you this much—”

“I can't.” She shook her head. “Not anymore. It gets worse and worse the more I do it. I can't separate my clients from Loretta and Holly Ann and little Michaeline—”

“Michaeline?” I must have missed something, I thought. “Who's Michaeline?”

“Me,” she replied with a small smile. “I didn't get to be Mickey till I went to college and my friends told me Michaeline was a white-trash name. I tried to tell 'em I
was
white trash, but …”

We walked into the lavatory. After we each used the facility, we stood in silence for a minute, each leaning against a sink. I surveyed the graffiti. A gang calling itself the Real Home Girls had done a major decorating job. First they'd spray-painted their names: Sweet Apple, Shaqueen, Brown Sugar, Honey Dee, Cookie T., Diamond Lou, and Lady Love. Then came their motto:
We all about love, sex, and puttin' bitches in check
.

My thoughts flashed to Arnette Pearson. She had the same gritty tenacity I'd seen in so many of my clients over the years. She'd need it through the lonely nights and doubtful days of her bleak future.

On the opposite wall, also done by the Real Home Girls, was the following ghetto haiku:

Million Dollar Girls

Chillin' Hard

In a Zillion Dollar World

I was about to call Mickey's attention to the lines when she asked, “Did you ever see that movie,
King of Hearts?”

“Sure,” I replied, startled. “It's a classic antiwar film.” In the story, inmates from a mental asylum take on the roles of villagers driven out by German bombs during World War I. The crazies turn out to be a lot saner, and certainly more human, than the rest of us.

“Do you remember the part where the inmates are going back to the asylum?” she asked. There was an intent look on her face that told me we were talking about a lot more than movies.

“As they approach the gates,” she went on dreamily, not waiting for an answer, “each of them begins to drop pieces of clothing. The beauty leaves her picture hat, the general drops his sword, the bishop his mitre, until they're all just lunatics again.” She turned and faced me, pain in her eyes. “That's how I'm starting to feel when I come to work in the mornings,” she confessed. “As though on the way I have to leave pieces of myself behind. I'm less and less human every day.”

Ira Bellfield. Duncan Pitt. Todd Lessek. Elliott Pilcher. Art Lucenti. Especially Art Lucenti. Hadn't each of them done the same? Cutting off parts of themselves in the name of profit or advancement until there was nothing left? They must have left some trail, I thought, borrowing Mickey's metaphor and picturing a road littered with the virtues and qualities each man had left behind as he turned himself into a success.

Mickey was talking again. “I met this woman,” she said, “when I was working at Willowbrook. You know Willowbrook?”

I nodded. The treatment of mentally retarded patients there had become a national scandal.

“Well, this woman and I were busy signing patients out so they could get community-based care,” Mickey explained, lapsing momentarily into jargon. “But then I noticed a funny thing. This woman I was working with, who'd been a social worker for thirty years, had actually signed some of the same patients
in
twenty years earlier.” Her face wore a look of intense conviction that reminded me of a few antiwar marches I'd been on. “In, out, it was all the same to her.” She fixed me with her warm brown eyes and said in a low voice: “I'm ready to leave social work if that happens to me.”

“God,” I said at last, “I feel as though I'm listening to a record of myself.” My thoughts traveled back to the long, soul-searching conversations I'd had with Nathan. The ones in which I'd threatened to quit law and go into photography full-time.

“You?” Mickey's voice was skeptical. “You seem so gungho.”

“I bounced back,” I replied wryly. “Having my own practice, not to mention my own mortgage payments to make, gave me a new perspective.

“I'm not sure that would work for me,” she said wistfully, looking away. “Adding responsibilities to the ones I've already got.”

“Responsibility,” I echoed, “but without authority. That's the real problem, isn't it? Knowing what needs to be done, but not being able to do it either because you haven't got the resources or it's against policy.”

“True,” Mickey agreed, a rueful smile of recognition on her face. “It makes me doubt myself as a social worker when the fact is I'm damned good when I'm allowed to be.” She was silent a minute, and I had the feeling she was trying to decide whether to share a secret.

“I've been taking classes,” she confided at last, “in divorce mediation. That's—”

“I know what it is!” I exclaimed. “I just finished a bar association seminar on alternatives to litigation.”

Mickey laughed. “I thought lawyers didn't believe in alternatives to litigation.”

“This lawyer does,” I replied firmly. “Especially in Family Court. There's a lot to be said for working things out instead going for the jugular in court. Particularly when kids are involved.”

“The only thing that bothers me,” Mickey confessed, “is whether I know enough about the law to be a good mediator. I mean, I know people. I know how to help them get in touch with their feelings without letting their emotions take over. But I don't know the tax laws, or—” She broke off and smiled apologetically. “Why are you lettin' me run off at the mouth like this?”

I smiled one answer and gave another. “Because I've got an extra office to rent,” I said. While she digested that, I added, “And I do know the tax laws and the estate-planning implications of divorce. In fact, I think that together you and I would make one hell of a good divorce mediator. Plus,” I went on, “we'd each have our own clients apart from the mediation practice. That way we'll have something to fall back on if everyone in Brooklyn suddenly decides to stay married.”

Helping felt good. I liked the warmth of her answering smile, the sparkle in her brown eyes as she began to plan with me. We stood in the ladies' room a good half hour, building our caseload, setting our priorities. The prospect of sharing had me as excited as the prospect of independence had her.

Finally, Mickey stopped, looked at her watch, and said, “I have to run. I was due in Part 5 an hour ago.”

A sudden doubt assailed me. “You really think we can do it? Work together?”

She looked toward the graffiti-sprayed wall. “What the hell,” she replied. “Aren't we million-dollar girls?”

I laughed, and walked into the hall with my new partner.

22

“Why in the name of God,” Detective Button exploded, “didn't that damned kid tell me this before?”

“She was afraid,” I said, quiet in the face of Button's anger. “Afraid you'd think it was another motive for her father.”

“Isn't it?” he challenged. “You're the one who told me Brad Ritchie flipped out when he heard his ex-wife was making it with the congressman.”

“I'm not so sure,” I said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean, you're not sure?” Button snorted. “You were in the courthouse when it happened, weren't you?”

I shook my head. “That's not what I mean. I'm not sure Linda was telling the truth. I'm not sure there was an affair.”

“You mean because of the blackmail.”

“How the hell did you know—”

Button leaned back in his chair and let out a rich chuckle. “Because you just told me,” he said, enjoying his cunning. “But, hey, it wasn't so hard to figure. We already know the deceased was putting the squeeze on half the people in New York—”

“Not to mention Brooklyn,” I murmured.

“—so now you come to me talkin' 'bout Congressman Lucenti and I got to wonder what busy little Linda had on him, don't I?” His shrewd, hard eyes told me he expected the whole story and he expected it yesterday.