There Are No Children Here (34 page)

“I will, Your Honor,” the boy assured him, his attention focused on the green carpet.

A clerk came up to the judge’s bench. The prisoners from the jail still hadn’t arrived. Mahan called for a short recess.

It gave Audrey Natcone some time to discuss Terence’s case with the prosecution. Because of the large number of cases both she and the prosecution handled, they had little if any time to talk or bargain outside the courtroom. She approached Casey Bartnik, the state’s attorney who was handling Terence’s charges. The two, within just a few feet of the spectators’ benches, began to negotiate the terms of the plea bargain.

“What did we offer last time?” Casey asked innocently.

“Ten,” replied Audrey.

“That sounds reasonable to me for two armed robberies.”

“I’m
not
serving ten.”

The mustachioed state’s attorney overheard her remark and laughed.
“You
don’t have to serve ten.” Audrey smiled weakly. She knew she identified with her clients too much. She had let her guard down.

“You get paid to do the right thing,” Casey needled.

“I’m doing the right thing,” Audrey insisted.

“You get paid more than me.”

“Rightfully so.” Audrey paused. “I haven’t even seen the photos. I’d like to see them before we make any decisions.” Audrey was still angry that the police had not honored her request for the line-up photos. She was increasingly suspicious that something was wrong.

The state’s attorney pulled from his briefcase a set of Polaroid shots the police had taken of Terence as well as two line-up photos. Ann Mitchell, the owner of the Longhorn Saloon, had identified Terence from the line-up pictures after first viewing the Polaroids. Audrey looked at the line-up photos, shaking her head. Terence stood at the end of the row of men, all of whom towered, by two to six inches, over him.

“Look at this!” Audrey said. “He’s the tiny shrimp at the end. Will you look at this? That’s my client. The tiny shrimp at the end. Of course she picked him out.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you eight,” Casey conceded.

“Can’t you give me six?” Natcone asked.

“Go to trial.”

Audrey reminded Casey that these were Terence’s first offenses as an adult and that he had a supportive home life, that his mother cared about her son. She had been to all his court hearings. But the conversation ended there. Casey wouldn’t come down from eight years. For three crimes, he felt, that was pretty reasonable. Besides, they had Terence’s fingerprints on the most recent armed robbery. Audrey wondered where LaJoe was this day.

Terence had asked LaJoe not to come. He didn’t want to put his mother through any more pain. He saw how worried she was each time she came to court.

“I let my family down,” Terence said. “I promised my little brothers, my mama, my father, and all of them that I would never come back to jail again. But things didn’t go my way. I just got caught up. I’m the one that’s supposed to be showing an example for them. And it seem like I just failed.”

On her last visit to the court, LaJoe had brought Pharoah with her. He had wanted to come. He was curious; he’d never been in a courtroom. He also was eager to see Terence. Lafeyette had wanted to come, too, but LaJoe wouldn’t take him. After each visit with Terence in the county jail, Lafeyette couldn’t sleep. He would daydream in school about Terence. Within a few days, he’d get bags under his eyes, not unlike his mother. He worries harder than me, LaJoe thought.

When LaJoe had entered the courthouse with Pharoah, he peppered her with questions. “How come there ain’t no jurors like in
Barney Miller?
 … Who them peoples? … Which room is Terence in?” It was all new for Pharoah. He had to know everything that was going on.

The two sat in the first row, listening to the proceedings. “What old boy mean he going to give him two years? What for?” he whispered. His mother shushed him. Pharoah, who was restless, had noticed the scheduling sheets outside the
courtroom and wandered out to look at them. He slid them from their glass case. LaJoe followed.

“Mama,” he said, reading from the sheets. “Lee Butler. Sexual. Lee Butler. Sexual. Lee Butler. Sexual. He got three cases. I know he be ashamed when he come into the courtroom.” He would later describe the accused rapist who appeared in court that day: “I won’t say he was dirty but he didn’t know how to dress. He had holes in his pants.”

That morning, Terence’s case was continued—court jargon for postponed—and he was given a new court date. But LaJoe and Pharoah were able to visit with him before he was bused back to the jail. They met in a small room behind the courtroom.

When Terence greeted LaJoe and Pharoah, he took off his shirt and flexed and posed, exposing a set of rippling new muscles. In jail, Terence had been lifting weights three hours a day. He could now curl 120 pounds. His muscles bulged so that he couldn’t button his gray Levi’s. Pharoah would later tell Lafeyette of his visit and, in an imitation of Terence, shuffled backward, flexing his biceps and puffing up his chest. “ ‘I’m strong,’ ” he told Lafeyette, relaying what Terence had told him. “ ‘I got it made in here. I don’t have nothing to worry about around here.’

“You should of seen his chest,” he told his brother. “He had huge muscles. They must be doing Terence all right ’cause he was skinny at home.”

Pharoah had decided before his visit with Terence that he would smile through the whole encounter no matter how sad he felt. To brighten Terence’s spirits. Just as he did with his father. And so, as Terence showed off his new body and talked to LaJoe, Pharoah kept up a look of good cheer, intent on making both his older brother and his mother happy. When they left, Terence gave Pharoah a thumbs-up. Pharoah signaled back in kind.

That was nearly two months ago. The visit had disturbed LaJoe. Terence had told her he wouldn’t take the ten years even if that meant going to trial. It was just too many years to be away from the family.

• • • •

A deputy sheriff led Terence and the two other defendants back into the courtroom. He glanced at neither the spectators nor the attorneys; he looked straight ahead. The three stood shoulder to shoulder facing the judge, their hands clasped behind their backs, as if they were still in handcuffs. Terence’s muscular body was popping out of his clothes. His blue V-neck sweater strained at the seams. His pants were so short, they exposed the red and yellow stripes on his sweat socks. He raised his head as the judge talked in a low whisper to the two attorneys, who stood before the bench. At their request, Judge Mahan agreed to a private conference. Before any plea bargain could be entered, the judge had to agree to it.

Before Audrey left the courtroom for the judge’s chambers, she pulled Terence aside. “I can get you eight years,” she said. Terence didn’t hesitate: “I want six.” Audrey told him they would talk later.

In the conference, Judge Mahan agreed to the plea bargain arrangements. If Terence pleaded guilty, he would sentence him to eight years. The prosecution could avoid a trial and Terence could eliminate the possibility of getting more time. Audrey now had to convince him.

The two met for fifteen minutes in a back room, where Audrey took out her legal pad and wrote four numbers—14, 12, 10, and 8. She circled the 14 and explained that if Terence were convicted of two armed robberies, he would in all likelihood get that many years. She then circled the 12. If he didn’t get 14, she explained, the judge would, at the very least, give him 12 if he were found guilty. She then circled the 10. That’s what the state’s attorney had first offered. And then she drew the 8. That’s what was currently being offered. She felt it was a pretty fair deal. It might, she told him, be the best she could get for him.

Terence remained silent through much of Audrey’s explanation, his eyes focused on the yellow legal pad. “Why don’t you try to get me seven years,” he muttered.

“I don’t think I can, Terence. The best deal they’re offering is eight,” Audrey patiently explained.

“I can’t even bear with eight years. Maaan.” He turned his head away from his attorney.

“What’s six months extra?” she asked. Many prisoners in Illinois
serve only half their sentence, since they’re given one day off for each day of good behavior. “Judge Mahan, he’ll punish defendants who turn down deals. He’s just that kind of judge.” Audrey noticed that Terence’s eyes were red. She thought he was about to cry.

Audrey couldn’t bring herself to urge him to take the eight years. “I can’t get excited for him,” she said shortly after Terence was led back to jail. “If he was being charged with murder and they were reducing it to armed robbery, that’d be something else.” Audrey looked downcast. She had seen Terence change in the year she had known him. He had hardened. The weight lifting made him look older and more menacing. He seemed more defiant. “When I first saw him he was a little kid. He was soft-looking and soft-spoken,” she said. She didn’t think a long stint in jail would do him any good. But she wished that he were older, a little more seasoned, so that he could see that it was in his best interests to take the eight years. She suspected that a fellow inmate in the county jail had convinced him that he’d be crazy to take more than seven.

She felt that Terence believed she was trying to trick him into something. Her clients generally mistrusted “the system,” even those who were intent on helping them. Audrey told Terence to talk with LaJoe about the offer. She felt his mother might give some sound advice. He agreed.

The judge granted Terence a two-week continuance so that he could talk to his mother about the eight-year offer.

LaJoe waited that day to hear from Terence, but he never called. She figured he’d taken the ten years. It demoralized her to think that her son might be locked up for so long. So it didn’t surprise her that day when she spun out of control.

There was a man, perhaps in his early forties, who had been coming on to her in recent weeks. She didn’t like it. She told him to stop, that she didn’t want to see him around her. The man, whom she knew only as Keith, frightened her. He was often high on PCP, or happy stick, a potent hallucinogen that could cause disorientation, schizophrenia, and psychotic violence.

Later that day, Keith beckoned LaJoe over to his car. “I’m
gonna bust your head,” he told her, clearly high on PCP and frustrated by LaJoe’s refusal to talk with him.

“Get out and bust my head now,” LaJoe goaded him. “Come on, get outta your car. Bust my head.” LaJoe concealed a nail file in her coat sleeve. “I was going to stab him dead in the eye,” she said later. Keith wouldn’t leave the safety of his car, but he continued to taunt LaJoe, telling her that if he got her alone, he would bust her head.

LaJoe hadn’t told anyone about Keith’s threats, but when she got back inside the house, she couldn’t contain herself. She confided in Rochelle, who was over visiting. Her son Weasel overheard her.

There are many things you can do and get away with at Horner, because people, fearful that retaliation may spiral out of control, keep their anger and fury to themselves. But when it comes to family, particularly mothers, nothing, no one, is beyond revenge. Pharoah would often say that “if I die, if someone shoots me, they’ll die. Someone in my family will kill them.” Such was the case with the threats against LaJoe.

Weasel, who was about to turn twenty-two, went looking for Keith. About ten minutes later, he dragged into the breezeway a man who cut a pitiful profile: sunken shoulders, unkempt hair, his eyes bloodshot and vacant. He looked too high to be scared. “Is this him?” he asked LaJoe. She nodded. Weasel began punching him with short, powerful blows to his face and body. The crushing sound of flesh against flesh echoed in the narrow hallway, giving the effect of a much fiercer fight than actually was taking place.

“No. No. Stop,” Keith pleaded. His was a high-pitched, almost childlike voice. Weasel stopped, and Keith, who stood about six feet, crawled on his hands and knees to the door. Blood ran from his nose. He got up and wobbled across the trampled lawn.

LaJoe wandered back into the apartment, herself shaky and dazed. She paced between the kitchen and the living room, her face twisted. “He told me he’d bust my head. Well, bust it. I ain’t going to put up with this.” Her voice started to rise as she raged at no one in particular. “
YOU HEAR ME? I AIN’T GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS
!”

The children filed home from school. They tried to enter unnoticed,
to stay out of their mother’s path. Tyisha and Pharoah set up a Monopoly game on the kitchen table and pretended to play. Lafeyette slumped down in the red lounge chair, sad and silent, his eyes focused intently on his mother.

LaJoe kept pacing, mumbling to herself. “Mama,” Lafeyette asked meekly, “can we get our Easter clothes?” LaJoe whirled toward her son. “Can’t you see I’m upset!” she snapped. Lafeyette sank deeper into the chair.

LaJoe continued to seethe. “What’s he trying to do to me?” she muttered. “What if Weasel wasn’t here? Then what? I should of hit him myself. I need a gun. I already lost two fingers trying to fight. I already lost two fingers.” Tears streaked down her smooth cheeks. “
I don’t need another man to ruin my life! I got my man! He ruined it!”

Now LaJoe sobbed uncontrollably. Weasel hugged her. “It be okay,” he assured her. “It be okay.” He rubbed her arched back as she buried her head in his shoulder. “No one got any reason to talk to you like that. No one.”

LaJoe pushed away. Her voice rose. “
I GOT TO GET OUT OF THIS GHETTO LIFE. WHO DO HE THINK HE IS? PEOPLE AROUND HERE ARE CRAZY
!” She caught her breath. Her posture softened. “What if Weasel wasn’t here? I should of kicked him.” And as she began sobbing again, those in the apartment came and hugged her. First Rochelle. Then a friend of Weasel’s. Then LaShawn. Then Weasel again.

Pharoah remained fixed in his seat, the Monopoly game untouched. His buck teeth seemed to hold his lips apart even farther as his eyes darted around the room in dismay. He didn’t want to hug his mother because, he explained later, “when my mama cry, sometime it make you cry. I was gonna cry.” But he didn’t. Nor did Lafeyette, who grabbed the broom and started sweeping.