Little Lost Angel (5 page)

“Shanda, you love sports,” Jacque said one night. “Why don’t you want to go out for anything?”

“I’m just not into it anymore,” Shanda said, then immediately changed the subject.

Jacque said later, “It was like I saw her dwindling. She went from this robust child that could never do enough, to this child that didn’t even want to talk. That would close the door to her room and not come out all night. She changed completely within a matter of a month. I tried to get her to go outside and meet the kids in the neighborhood, but she wouldn’t. It was like she was hiding from everything, like she was ashamed of everything. I can look back now and see that, but at the time I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what.”

Shanda seldom seemed to have much homework, explaining, in response to her mother’s questioning, that her teachers rarely gave take-home assignments. As the school year progressed, Jacque began to wonder why her daughter hadn’t yet received a progress report.

One day in late October, while Shanda was at school, Jacque’s worries got the best of her. She went into Shanda’s room and found a note written by Amanda, instructing Shanda how to forge her mother’s name on a detention slip. Jacque immediately called the school. She was told that Shanda had been placed in detention numerous times since her fight with Amanda, and each time she had turned in a note with Jacque’s signature.

“I drove down to the school and met with a school counselor,” Jacque said. “He showed me one detention slip after another where Shanda had been tardy to classes or had skipped classes with Amanda. Shanda had signed my name on every one of the slips. She’d even signed my name to her progress report. It was all
F
s.”

The counselor decided to get to the bottom of things and called Shanda to his office. When she saw her mother, Shanda collapsed into a chair and began crying.

“What is wrong?” Jacque asked, kneeling down in front of her daughter and touching her knee. “What is going on with you?”

Shanda wiped the tears from her face. “I’m so ashamed,”
she said. “I’ve been so bad. I’ve let you down. I lied to you.”

“Did you sign these notes?” Jacque asked.

“Yes,” Shanda answered, whimpering. “I wrote your name on all of them. I know I shouldn’t have done it. Please forgive me.”

“Shanda, I look at these notes, and every time you’ve gotten in trouble it had something to do with Amanda. Why are you continuing to hang around with her when I’ve asked you not to?”

“I’m afraid,” Shanda said softly.

“Afraid of what?”

“Some girls want to beat me up and Amanda won’t let them,” Shanda said.

“What girls?” Jacque demanded.

“Melinda and her friends,” Shanda said.

It was the first time that Jacque had heard Melinda’s name. The counselor intervened at this point and explained that Melinda Loveless and Amanda Heavrin had been in a series of problems over the past two years.

“He told Shanda that they were not the type of girls she should associate with,” Jacque said. “He said they had been in trouble before and would continue to get into trouble, and if Shanda kept hanging around with them she would find herself on a road to trouble and she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. He told her that she needed to get away from these people and that if they gave her any more problems she should come to him.”

Shanda promised her mother that she would stay away from Amanda and Melinda and would buckle down with her schoolwork.

“Shanda had always been in the popular group at St. Paul,” Jackie said later. “She had always been a leader. But these kids were older and rougher, and she got herself in a position where she was no longer a leader, she was a follower. I knew she was in a predicament that was difficult, but I wanted her to be strong enough to walk away from it. I think she honestly tried to do that, but I think the other girls were so overwhelming that she just didn’t know how to get away from it.”

The day after the meeting, Jacque hired a tutor to help Shanda with her schoolwork. Shanda had always been an above-average student, but she had fallen so far behind in her studies that the tutor had to spend three nights a week with her.

Although Shanda had promised her mother that she would have nothing more to do with Amanda, that didn’t prevent Amanda from calling Shanda at home. Amanda would disguise her voice, or she would have other girls call on a three-way connection.

“I’d catch her trying to disguise her voice to me,” Jacque said. “I’d tell her not to call back, but she didn’t know what it meant to listen to an adult when they told her something. I was aggravated with her.”

Fed up, Jacque drove to Amanda’s house and confronted her father, whom she’d talked to on the phone before but had never met personally.

“I told him that Shanda had been in a lot of trouble and that everything she had done had something to do with his daughter,” Jacque recalled. “I told him that I did not want Amanda to hang around with Shanda. He looked at me and said, ‘You know, it’s funny, but every girl that my daughter has ever been friends with, the parents ended up telling me that they didn’t want their daughter to have anything to do with mine.’ He said, ‘I just don’t understand it.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Well, Mr. Heavrin, it’s probably not my place to say this, but have you ever noticed how your daughter never dresses like a girl and always looks like a boy?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, you know, I’ve asked my daughter if she was a lesbian and she told me no, so I don’t know what else to do.’ I told him that maybe she needed to be around her mother more. I told him that she needed to dress like a little girl and act like a little girl. He said he’d tell Amanda to stay away from Shanda.”

The phone calls from Amanda stopped. With the help of her tutor, Shanda was getting good grades again. Jacque thought that everything was under control. Then while going through the mail one Saturday, she found a letter from Shanda to Amanda, which had been returned because there was no stamp on it. Jacque opened the envelope and found
one of Shanda’s school pictures. On the back her daughter had written a note: “Amanda, I miss you and I will always love you no matter what happens. I miss the touch of your soft body.”

“It was very obvious from what Shanda had written that there had been physical contact between her and Amanda,” Jacque said.

Jacque showed the note to her oldest daughter. “I don’t think Shanda’s a lesbian,” Paije said. “I think she’s just real confused.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Paije. I think we have a big problem here. I think something has happened between Shanda and Amanda.”

Shanda was spending the weekend with her father, but this was not something that could wait. Jacque called her ex-husband and told him about the writing on the back of the photograph. Shanda, overhearing Steve’s side of the conversation, slipped out of the room and pulled Sharon aside. In a whisper, she asked her stepmother, “If you mail a letter and don’t put a stamp on it, will it come back?”

“Yes,” Sharon said. “Why?”

“I think Mom found a letter I sent to Amanda,” Shanda said. “I sent Amanda a picture of me and I wrote a note on the back. It was written like it was from a boyfriend to a girlfriend. It was just a joke.”

Sharon initially believed Shanda’s story. “Shanda was not one to lie,” she said later. “But when Jacque told me what Shanda had actually written, I knew that it wasn’t just a joke.”

“We all need to sit down together and get to the bottom of this,” Jacque told Steve and Sharon, who agreed to bring Shanda back to Jacque’s townhouse that evening. Jacque then called Amanda’s father and told him about the note.

“I asked him to bring Amanda over to my house that evening, and he assured me that he would,” Jacque said. “Well, he and Amanda never showed up. When I tried to call him a few days later, I found out that he’d had his phone changed to an unlisted number.”

That night, Jacque gave much careful thought to what she would say to her daughter and the others.

“I could tell that Steve was devastated by my call, but I had told him over the phone that this was not a situation where we wanted to scream and get upset,” Jacque said. “It was apparent that Shanda was going through a difficult time emotionally and she needed our help. We needed to treat her with kid gloves. Suddenly I knew why the last month or two had been pure hell. This is what had been troubling this child.”

Jacque had always prided herself on her emotional strength, but now she was fraught with worry. “I had never in my life dreamed I would be in a situation where I would have to deal with something like this,” she said. “How do I do this so I don’t hurt her and let her know that I’m here for her, and no matter what she has done, it’s going to be okay?”

Shanda was crying when she came in with Steve and Sharon. Jacque took her daughter by the hand and sat down next to her on the living-room carpet.

“Shanda, you need to tell us what’s going on with you and Amanda,” Jacque said. “Shanda, we will always love you. Whatever you have done, it is not unforgivable. It’s nothing you should be ashamed of. You are only twelve years old. You are just a little girl. Shanda, you’ve got to tell us the truth. Has Amanda ever touched any part of your body in any way that she shouldn’t have touched you?”

“No, Mom,” Shanda said through her tears. “We’re just friends.”

“This note leads me to believe that you and Amanda have more than just a friendship.”

“No, Mom, it’s just that Amanda needed a friend and I wanted to be a good friend.”

Jacque handed the photograph to Shanda and told her to read the note to her father.

“That was the hardest thing I ever made her do because it was so degrading for her to read it,” Jacque said later. “You could tell that it just devastated her.”

When Shanda had finished reading, Jacque said, “Shanda, you told us that she never touched you, but this leads me to believe that she did. Now’s the time to tell the truth.”

“I don’t know why I wrote it, Mom,” Shanda insisted. “None of it’s true.”

Jacque tried again and again to draw out the truth, but Shanda would not open up.

“I held her in my arms and told her that I loved her and that whatever had happened it was nothing to be ashamed of,” Jacque said. “I told her that she was just a little girl, and even though she may think she was all grown up she wasn’t. I told her that the mere fact that she was sitting there in tears and couldn’t talk showed me that she was still a little girl and she didn’t know how to deal with this.”

For over an hour, Jacque, Steve, and Sharon questioned Shanda about her relationship with Amanda. And for over an hour, Shanda insisted that she and Amanda were just good friends. Finally Jacque took Shanda into the kitchen so they could talk privately. Shanda was still crying and her head was down. Jacque got down on her knees in front of her.

“Shanda, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done,” Jacque said. “I’m not ashamed of you and I love you and you can tell me whatever you need to tell me. Shanda, don’t you know I love you?”

Shanda looked in her mother’s eyes and replied, “No.”

“Shanda, how can you say that?”

“I’ve been so bad,” Shanda said. “I’ve done so many things I shouldn’t have done. I just don’t believe you love me anymore.”

Jacque reached up and lifted her daughter’s chin. “Shanda, you are my baby. I will love you forever, no matter what happens. You have to know that I will always love you.”

Mother and daughter held each other for a few minutes, then walked back into the living room. Steve and Sharon hugged Shanda and told her that they loved her too. After Shanda had gone to bed, the adults decided the first thing they had to do was transfer Shanda out of Hazelwood and into Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Steve said he would increase his child support to help cover the tuition.

The next day Jacque met with the principal of the
Catholic school and, without going into all the details, explained some of the problems Shanda was having at Hazelwood. The principal said that Shanda could start school there the following week.

“When Shanda realized that we were serious about switching schools she got mad,” Jacque said. “She couldn’t believe we were really going to do it.”

*  *  *

When Melinda heard about Shanda being transferred, she felt as if all her wishes had come true. Suddenly all her worries were over and she had Amanda to herself again. A note Melinda wrote to Amanda on November 18, a week after Shanda had left Hazelwood, reveals her happiness.

Across the top of the page, Melinda had written “Eat at Mel’s.” In the right-hand border were two other notations: “Melinda Loves_____. You fill in the blanks” and “I Love Myself.” The rest of the note, however, indicates that Melinda still harbored a lingering resentment:

Amanda,

Why did you write her fucking name on your folder! It hurt so much when I seen it! I didn’t think you would put her ugly name on your folder and you wrote it!! You must have liked her enough to write her name! Why? Well, I’m gone!

Melinda

P.S. Just tell me you liked her once cause I know!

But there was no mention of Shanda in a letter written the following day. Melinda’s thoughts were on Amanda and Amanda alone:

Amanda,

Thanks for my sweet and very neat letter. I liked how you joked and said cute things. I’m doing my best in trying to write this but the teacher is eyeing me down and trying to catch me in the act but I’m too damn slick. And I hate dick. Na! (I really do though.) You look so damn cute in the morning honey. In class I always day dream about you. I can’t help thinking
about you all the time. Yes, I would love to go to your game and see you play in your little shorts. And see you sweat. Hmmm! Makes me hot just thinking about it. And I’m always a good girl. You better keep being a good girl. And I’ll be good with Carrie East and I’ll do her good too! Na! You did like how I let you go last night? Well, I’ll do it more often then. Na! I don’t have any lunch money honey! My mom didn’t bother to give me any cause I forgot to ask her. (I guess that’s why she didn’t give me any.) Ha! Ha! Ha! Aren’t I so damn cute! Well I’ll write more later after you write me.