Lemon Reef (3 page)

Todd said, “We're not asking for child support.”

Sanders laughed-blurted, “They
will
be.”

My court reporter's tape ran out. While she took a few minutes to change it, the lawyers huddled with their clients, and I thought about what I would say next. I already knew coming into this hearing how it was likely to turn out based on the pleadings. Unless Ms. Flint could offer some information to support her most recent claim of domestic violence, she was continuing to interfere with this baby's right to see her father and to form a relationship with him. Since less drastic measures had been exhausted, the remedy was to place the child with the parent most likely to support a relationship with the other parent—in this case, the father.

*

What I was about to rule would fly in the face of convention, surprise this father, and leave this mother indignant. When it comes to parenting, especially of babies, a lot of people think fathers are less competent than mothers. But what I valued most about the law was the opportunity it provided for calling basic beliefs, like that women are inherently better parents, into question, turning ideas inside out, exposing the underlying prejudices and flaws in logic that prevent us from seeing individuals for who they are and looking at each situation as unique. I went to law school because of what it had been like for me and my friends as adolescents at the mercy of unreasonable, sometimes quite cruel, parents. Striving for fairness was the way I felt safe and sane in the world.

I figured this out in my last year of college. Until than, I'd stayed the course I'd set upon with Del in middle school. Del had wanted me to be a writer. We first noticed each other in English class in eighth grade. The class had been divided into small groups, and we were going around in a circle reading poems we had written. Mine was about seeing my father hit my older brother, the experience as ordinary as if I were describing a family dinner conversation.

After I finished reading it, I noticed Del staring at me. We had been in school together since elementary school, but I was an athlete and a book nerd. Del was popular and seemed inaccessible to me as a friend. She ran with older crowds and always had a boyfriend. When I finished reading my poem was the first time I really saw Del's face. It—she—was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Her raised brows, solemn eyes, and softened cheeks expressed a mixture of awe and confusion and utter sadness. When I realized her reaction was in response to my words, I brimmed with pride and potency and purpose. My idea of myself as someone who could have an effect on others was born in that moment, in the light cast from Del's recognition of me.

During lunch period, I was sitting on the ground in the courtyard, book open on my lap, waiting for my group of friends to gather. A shadow fell upon the page I was reading, and I looked up expecting it to be Gail or Katie. Del was standing there, hugging her books, hips tilted from casually leaning more on one leg, soft hair falling forward around her face. Her plump, freshly glossed lips caught the sunlight.

“Hi, Jenna.”

“Oh,” my heart held a beat, “hi.”

“I just wanted to tell you I liked your poem.”

I thought how serious Del seemed, which surprised me, because she was one of the beautiful girls for whom things appear to come easily, and seriousness implied effort. Well, that, and Katie and Gail, my two best friends, hated her and were always talking about what a superficial slut Del was. She stood searching around me for a moment as I waited to see what she would say next. I felt shy and confused—on the one hand glad for her attention, on the other hand made acutely uncomfortable by it. Then she asked the oddest question. “Does your father really hit you?”

My brows pinched and my face twisted a little. “Sometimes. If I talk back.” Del was quiet, her expression pensive. “Does yours?” I asked.

Del slid her weight to her other leg, swung her hair around, and adjusted her books against her body. “No. My father doesn't hit us.” Her head turned. She had noticed her boyfriend, Joel Bishop, enter the courtyard. Joel was already at Miami Shores Senior High School, and he was coming to have lunch with Del. “My mother hits us.” Now preoccupied with Joel, she concluded the conversation by saying, “I'm
never
gonna hit my kids.” As Joel approached, Del straightened, fixed her smile, and pushed her chest out. “Bye, Jenna.” Without waiting for me to respond, she walked away.

We didn't become friends until Del joined the soccer team that summer, but I had already begun to write short stories and poems. All I wanted was for Del to look at me again the way she had in English that day. I created stories the whole time we were together, writing first toward her, then to her—and then about us. Stacks of stories scribbled in pen or pencil on pages or in the margins of class notes, reading aloud to her at night stories of a heroine named Khila, basking in Del's delight and encouragement. I realized now, with Del dead, that the only remnant of those long-ago-destroyed writings was Del's living daughter. Khila.

*

The court reporter indicated she was ready to resume.

“Back on record,” I said and faced the parties. “I've read the paperwork that both of you have submitted. It does confirm much of what you're saying, Mr. Sanders.”

Sanders seemed surprised. He had expected me to retaliate, twist this, make it come out a certain way for one party because I didn't like the other party's attorney or because I was a white gay woman and his client was a black heterosexual man.

“It sounds like the only new information is the allegations of abuse.” Both attorneys nodded. I looked to Margaret Todd, her glasses perched on her head, a pen in hand and poised for writing. “I'm denying the request for a restraining order.” Catching Todd's glare, I said, “Too speculative.” Now I turned to Ms. Flint, a woman small in stature, with severe eyes and stern posture. My tone was matter-of-fact and straightforward. “I'm granting the petitioner's request for physical custody of Angie,
temporarily
.”

Flint's face hardened and then wrinkled in pain. “What does that mean?” She grabbed Todd's arm. “What does that mean?” Ms. Todd leaned in and began to whisper. “You can't do that,” Flint said to me. “I'm breast-feeding.”

Ms. Todd's head pivoted in my direction. “Your Honor, Angie is still breast-feeding. And,” she continued, “I fail to see how a change in custody is in this baby's best interest. You're removing her from the parent she has been with since birth and placing her with someone she doesn't know at all.”

“I understand. Hopefully,” I said, “Ms. Flint can and will provide Mr. Baxter with breast milk.”

Todd said, “Your Honor, you're disrupting a well-established mother-infant bond, which is a known recipe for later psychopathology in the child.”

Sanders intercepted. “Keeping the child away from her other parent is also known to throw a wrench in healthy development. Ms. Flint has made it impossible for Angie to have a relationship with anybody else. How can that be good for the child? My client”—Sanders put his hand on Mr. Baxter's shoulder—“will make sure Angie sees her mother all the time.”

“Well,” I said, “what
is
your plan for visitation?”

“Mr. Baxter works during the day, and Angie is going to be with her paternal grandmother. Ms. Flint can be there while he's working, and she doesn't have to see Mr. Baxter.”

I jotted down what Sanders was saying. “I'm ordering a minimum of thirty hours of weekly contact to mother, with details to be worked out between her and paternal grandmother. I'm also appointing minor's counsel,” I said toward Sanders. For the record, I added, “To ensure that Angie is safe and to enforce visitation.”

“Your Honor,” Todd said in barbed tones, “my client is not going to visit at paternal grandmother's house.”

“Neither of these parents can afford professional supervised visitation. I've got a family member willing to help Ms. Todd. I'm going to take advantage of that.”

“This is a domestic violence matter. Need I remind you, intimate partner violence is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States”—she spat out the talking points over Sanders's loud objections and my attempts to stop her—“and that's
proven
murders. For women in general, it's number one after car accidents. There were a reported five million physical assaults and rapes last year. A women is killed—”

I interrupted more forcefully. “This is an argument more appropriately addressed to the legislature, Ms. Todd.”

“It's not a legislative argument at all, Your Honor. This case brings these statistics right to our doorstep. You are making an order to turn a nine-month-old baby over to an alleged abuser. Are you sure you want to do that?”

It was a warning. Margaret Todd's program, the Family Violence Center, had just led a successful campaign to oust a long-seated judge in favor of a new judge who was, in their estimation, more sensitive to issues of domestic violence. She was letting me know that if something happened to this mother or this baby, I would have hell to pay.

Flint was standing with tears flooding down her cheeks, glowering at me.

I met her glare. “This is a temporary order, and I'm setting a one-month review date. Get yourself situated in stable housing, cooperate with the visitation, start counseling, and we'll revisit this”—I looked to my clerk for a time—“September thirteenth, nine a.m. That gives you four weeks.”

“Four weeks?” Flint fell forward a little and then steadied herself by placing her hands on the table. “Who is going to take care of my baby? How do we know she'll be safe?”

I thought about Khila. “It can't be good for her,” Gail had said, “to be raised by that man.” Gail had called me because she knew Del's family wouldn't stand a chance representing themselves in a custody dispute. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to regain my focus. “I've made my orders,” I said, ignoring Sanders's grin.

Before moving on to the next case, I turned to my clerk and said, “Let Judge McVee know I'll be out the rest of the week.”

My workday over, I sat on my bedroom floor tussling through the clean laundry pile seeking clothes I wanted to take with me to Miami. Madison came into the room, my favorite sweats in hand. She presented them to me, a show of conquest over the current state of our laundry.

“So, what did Norma have to say about Del's death?” Madison asked.

“‘So what? She was trash anyway.'”

A slight shake of her head followed, as if she wasn't sure she'd heard me correctly.
“Okay.”
Madison held up socks to see if they matched. She put one down and reached for another.

I patted Puck, our seven-month-old black Dane-pit mix—a miniature Dane on steroids. He raised his lazy eyes at me and wagged his tail. I reached over him and grabbed a shirt to fold. Suddenly remembering, I said, “I have to charge my cell phone.”

“It's already charging.” Madison's dark hair fell softly from a part off to the side. Her blue eyes were trained on me, and she grinned at her successful performance of wifedom. Her grin drew me in, and I was taken aback by my shyness in remembering the sex we'd had the night before. I studied her, my tenderness toward her palpable, the sudden reminder of her a pleasure and a relief.

My eyes drifted to the window, and I noticed the thinning daylight.

“We ended so badly,” I said. “I don't even know what I'm doing going to this funeral.” I decided to leave out the part about how I was fifteen when Del's mother met me on the porch with a shotgun, her eyes bloodshot, her breath beer-drenched, her accent a mix of Canadian French and Cuban Spanish. “If you come here again,” she said, “I'll kill you.”

The phone rang and Madison left to answer it. I continued to fold, remembering the years after Del and I broke up, and how every time I ran into her it was like putting my finger in an electric socket—except for on the night before I left for California. As I thought about that night when we did finally talk, the gnawing ache in my chest sharpened around my heart, causing my head to dip forward and my eyes to close.

*

The night before I left for California, I ran into Del at a gas station on Miami Beach. It was 1989, we were both twenty, and Del was about to marry Talon. She was driving a run-down blood-orange Chevy with then two-month-old Khila tucked away in the backseat. I looked past Talon's name brandished in capital gold letters on the Chevy plate and approached, the surprise of Del making me feel hopeful. The feeling shattered against the impermeability of her grudge. It had been like this since our breakup five years earlier. Whenever we ran into each other, she would be icy and I would retreat. On this night I refused to retreat. I stood there remembering us at fourteen and fifteen, her hips sliding over mine, my tongue skirting her nipple, her finger etching my ribs, my cheek resting against her moist inner thigh after she came.

“I'm moving away tomorrow.”

That did get her attention, did momentarily melt her enough for her expression to change slightly in the direction of something I thought might be sadness. But it was only momentary. Del continued to look past me when we spoke, showed no interest in introducing me to her current life or to her new baby.

That our paths crossed on that night in particular seemed poignant. I was moving to San Francisco the next morning. I had not laid eyes on Del in nearly a year. She was standing right there, further away than ever, eating-disordered thin (despite having just had a baby), with soft gold hair falling casually past her shoulders, tight blue jeans, a sheer black shirt hanging open over a fitted black silk-and-lace camisole. Feeling betrayed by my own senses, I helplessly traced the shape of her slender arms against her narrow torso, the slope and peak of her breasts.