Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. and I am awake, yanking open the stubborn doors of the Des Moines City Courthouse to testify against my mother for child neglect—a kickass start to the weekend. I hold my seven-year-old brother’s hand because he asks me to. Not with words, but his eyes. Steven and I could both be classified as unintentional children. Heck, one of the random men in the courtroom pews today could be my father or Steven’s father for all we know
I can tell Steven is frightened. The last time we saw our mother was three months ago. She was in the midst of a psychotic break after my Aunt Pierson and I went to the police station to turn her in. She pounded on the doors of her sister’s house—where Steven and I were placed in those months before the trial— begging for a chance to fix a pretty screwed-up-beyond-repair situation.
“Kaitlyn, where’s mommy?” Steven asks.
God, if I got paid for the number of times I’ve heard that or thought that myself, I’d be living somewhere pretty badass; certainly not the corn-infested state of Iowa.
I turn eighteen this upcoming summer, freeing myself from the custody of my mother. Steven’s fate falls in the words of my testimony this morning; he is the reason I’ve finally decided to address the neglect. So whatever I say today will decide whether or not he is taken out of our mother’s custody. If I play the neglect off like it’s nothing, maybe nothing will change, but if I tell things how they are Steven will likely go to live with my Aunt Pierson. My words have never had to carry so much weight in my life, and nothing in the future could possibly surmount to the pressure I feel pounding in my head at this moment. Talk about reality hitting you in the face like a cold, slimy-ass fish.
I’ve practically raised Steven these past five years when my mother’s absence has been a shit ton more common than her presence. My aunt Pierson always kept a watchful eye on us, but she’s kept from blabbing until now. She knows as well as I do that my cooperation is what carries this case. I guess my aunt had deeper fear too; that Steven and I could have been separated in foster care if she wasn’t granted our custody.
Giant support beams line the courtroom like some columns from ancient Egyptian times, or wait, maybe Roman. Something of that sort. The room is something like a white Catholic cathedral without any statues of Jesus. Some pretty classy shit if you ask me.
Steven sits beside me at the outstretched table, tugging at the pastel blue tie I adjusted pitifully around his neck this morning. Even with the YouTube tutorial, I felt like a caveman trying to tie that shit. I suppress a chuckle looking at how pathetically it lays, crooked across his tiny, wrinkled suit.
In the chair beside me sits this nerdy-ass prosecuting attorney with his year-round Thanksgiving belly and a bald-spot on his head that perfectly resembles Mr. Clean.
One aisle over, at a different table, sits my mother. While she is a basket-case, her defense attorney is the opposite: calm and confident. His suit fits so flawlessly, you’d think he was going to a photo shoot rather than a courthouse. He’s clean-cut and fit enough to be a classified as one of those crazy gym-rats too.
I notice my mother’s nails, bitten down to the nub, her tongue and fingers wrestling in her mouth with the nail she has bitten off. I remember she’d do this when taxes or bills were due. Looking at her is like looking at an older reflection of me (minus the fact that my mascara isn’t giving me raccoon eyes): silky, long black hair, lengthy tan legs and beautifully bright brown eyes. Although her once perfectly curvy body now reveals all the alcohol she’s poisoned herself with over the years.
I wriggle in my seat and feel my heart throb in my throat. My light blue dress—which I bought from Goodwill three years ago because I had to for school—hugs my thin waist securely and flares out just above my knees. The Nerdy Lawyer Man, Mr. Walter, told me that this look was modest, sweet and innocent. Basically saying that by giving the jury the impression that I’m a lovely little school girl, I will win their sympathy. The thought makes me gag and dresses irritate the shit out of me. I could equally win their sympathy in sweats. But Mr. Walter would probably keel over dead from a heart attack if that happened. The poor guy already has a lot working against him, beyond his washed-up, 50-year-old-man-with-a-bossy-
The entire time I’ve been sitting here, the judge and lawyers and other random people have been going through these weird pre-trail routines or something like that. I tune them all out just as easily as my teachers who blabber endlessly about highly unnecessary subject matter. I’m sorry but where on earth will the quadratic formula, Napoleon, and Ernest Hemingway get me? But of course when I say this in class my smart-ass teachers are happy to reply, “You won’t need it in your McDonald’s training.”
I pull away from the back of my chair and press my lips to both of my fisted, white-knuckled hands. My eyes find my tightly crossed legs as a tense pain wrenches in my gut.
Finally, after an ungodly amount of time, Mr. Walter stands, attentive to the judge. “Thank you, your honor,” he begins. “I would like to call Kaitlyn Dockson to the stand.”
“For the love of God, I was starting to think they forgot me,” I mumble to Mr. Walter, surely irritating the hell out of him.
The courtroom seems vaster from the front: high ceilings, open space and the overall emptiness of the room seem to swallow me.
Get your shit together, Kaitlyn, I coach myself.
I sit upon what feels like a pedestal with the jury to my left. The few people filling in the church-like pews include Aunt Pierson, my nosy neighbor Mrs. Stephen, strangers, and some of those awkward distant relatives. You know, the ones that blabber on and on about how you’ve grown and say crap like, “Do you remember me? Probably not. Last time I saw you, you were itty bitty.”
As an officer approaches with the Bible, my heart, still beating in my throat, grows heavy enough to tear down my chest, through my stomach and straight into the bottom of the stupid heels Mr. Walter made me wear. As the officer swears me under oath, the pit of my stomach drops, my head pulsing. I refuse to look at my mother, who was blubbering when I came in. Yes, she’s a screw-up, she knows nothing about me, she’s hardly ever around, but she’s my mom, no matter what the judge will say.
“Ms. Dockson,” Mr. Walter says, “tell the jury about your experience with Mrs. Mellissa Dockson? How often is she around the home or around you?”
I heave a heavy sigh. “She was there when she needed to be,” I say, pausing to recollect my memories.
***
The first ten years of my life, my mother only came around as needed to keep me from going hungry or stinking too much. I powered-through until I could care mostly for myself, so I think she felt accomplished. Heck, she even showed up to my Kindergarten graduation. Sure, she was in a tight black skirt and a busty pink top with her boyfriend of one week, but she came. I even remember on some mornings when I woke up alone, she would still leave me a packed lunch in a plastic grocery bag: a peanut butter and marshmallow cream sandwich on white with the crust cut off, Scooby-Doo fruit snacks and a beyond ripe banana, how I liked them. But when her gut started swelling beyond her belt with Steven, any small act of endearment stopped. She was around more often, but she wasn’t the same. Going out to bars was off of her agenda, so she spent most of her time curled up in bed watching re-runs of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Sometimes I’d crawl in bed with her, but then she’d freak out even more, so I stopped. She went off the deep end when Steven came around, trying to raise the both of us. Four days after his second birthday is when shit got real.
I had woken up the morning of that fourth day, as an 11-year-old, listening to the eerie, creepy-ass silence of the old house. The wooden floorboards seemed constantly irritated: moaning, soon coupled by Steven’s irritated cries. I’d be pretty ticked too if I’d been sitting in my own shit all night.
I forced myself from my warm bed, the rest of my body instantly chilled to the bone. I didn’t remember the last time that god forsaken house was heated and in the dead of a mid-western winter, it made each morning hell. Slipping on some socks, I snuck past Steven’s room, but of course the snitchy floorboards made it apparent to him that I was awake. So naturally his cries grew louder. I raced downstairs and searched each room with a timid, “Mom?” Each room I checked left me more disheartened than the last. Then finally, nothing.
That’s when it struck me. In my upbringing, two days was the longest she’d taken to return (without calling my aunt to watch me) and that was when she took one of her bullshit-boyfriends—as I called them—on a spontaneous, romantic trip to Detroit. This time, I sensed she wasn’t coming back.
So I tore through that ancient, crappy, moldy house and by some miracle found a space heater. I first moved Steven downstairs, taking off my socks for friction, and approaching each step with great care. Once I had secured him, I brought down his crib. The heavy thing was stubborn as ever but with patience, and only a couple bruises, I got that son-of-a-bitch downstairs too. I took several breaks to thaw my freezing fingers, each bright red like a gross newborn baby. Once make-shift Camp-Kaitlyn—as I called it—was established, I scoured that rickety house like a rat in a Cheeto factory, my fingers collecting dust in the pantry and my nostrils burning from the dry and grimy air. Expired and stale food became my dear friend for that first week.
***
The image of my mattress, the crib, and the mountain of blankets piled in the corner by that tiny space heater, snow flurrying in the window behind, fades. I don’t know how long I’ve been rambling, or what exactly I’ve said to answer Mr. Walter’s question, but at this point the eyes of the jury have all grown wide and sad from my sorry-ass sob-story. My gaze wanders back to Mr. Walter.
“So after Steven’s big two-year birthday, I didn’t see her very much,” I say, my words finding traction again. “I only saw her every once in a while.”
“Every once in a while,” he repeats. “Can you please elaborate what you mean by ‘every once in a while?’”
I know it’s Mr. Walter’s job to ask these questions and to keep asking and prying and digging to win his case, which is ultimately what I want too, but I can’t help but to feel irritated.
“Yea, sure,” I say.
The truth is my mother came around the house only a couple times during the weeks. She was usually in and out as quickly as rotten chicken in your guts. Sometimes she’d drop off some diapers and baby crap or groceries. The food tasted like ass: usually bread, eggs, cereal, peanut butter, and some Rice-a-Roni. It was the cheap stuff and Steven and I got sick of it real fast, but it was food nonetheless. Learning how to cook was a damn joy. I still have a c-shaped burn on my arm from the first time I made eggs. They turned out more brown than white and stunk up the house more than Steven’s poopy diapers. But getting Steven to eat what I cooked was a nightmare spawned by Satan himself.
Another time my mother stopped by, she left me an overly modest, floral print dress fit for a Granny. No note or anything but I knew she meant for me to wear it to my eighth grade achievement night. I did, despite my distaste for the hideous thing, hoping I’d see her out in the crowd. A couple times I thought I may have spotted her, but I’m still not sure.
The first time she came back after taking off that winter, when Steven was two and I was eleven, was in the middle of the night. By some godly mercy, I was passed out on my mattress by the space heater, the warm breeze making my bundle of blankets feel like a tropical beach. Steven was out cold too. That little snot was fussy a lot, but that night, we were both exhausted to the point of drooling. But adrenaline is a pretty harsh wake-up call; woke me up from my puddle of drool because I heard the front door squawk open. The floorboards alerted me of every step this person was taking. My body buzzed with electricity. I have never felt more alive at my limbs, yet all I could do was lay there. I heard the downstairs bedroom door open (no doors opened unannounced in that house, let me tell you). My brain talked to me at a rate that I still can’t wrap my mind around. In a minute, a thousand different explanations or scenarios racked my mind. Standing up from my tropical bed was easily the bravest decision of my childhood. The douchey floors tattled on me when I neared the bedroom. Since whoever was in there surely heard me, I pulled out one of those cool tricks I remembered from the re-runs of Law and Order and kicked the door open, flicking the light switch as I did. Expecting to see a ski-mask and chainsaw and instead seeing my mother brought instant relief. She sat on the edge of the bed, slouchy posture, swollen bags under her eyes; empty. Like she wasn’t even inside of herself and something or someone else was.
“Mom?” I said through a mixture of relief, fear and whatever other emotion grabs your guts by the hand and twists them to no relent.
“Yes, sweetie,” she said.
“What happened?”
Her head tilted to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, where’ve you been?” I say, unmoving from my spot in the doorway, my hand grasping the door frame.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, in the same position on the foot of the bed as she was when I flicked the light switch.
“You’ve been gone,” I said, “for over a week now, mom. Don’t you remember?”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. She had never sounded this motherly. Yet, for some reason it terrified me. None of it fit.
“You’re scaring me, mom,” I said through the tears I felt coming.
“It’s fine, honey. Everything’s fine,” she said, like I was the one being unreasonable.
If it wasn’t for her eyes, I just might have believed her. But her eyes didn’t belong to her. They felt wrong on her, just like that granny dress felt shamefully wrong on me.
I don’t remember what happened after that. She went to her closet and I stood in that doorway, delirious, for an unhealthy amount of time.
“Go to bed, sweetie, it’s late,” she told me. Even those words felt wrong coming out of her, but I listened. I cocooned myself in my blankets with my eyes unblinking until dawn. Eventually I conked out again, waking to the hellish ringing of those ancient tick-tock clocks, which I hated. But missing the bus meant missing school altogether, so I had to find something to wake me up. To my distaste I had to wake up extra early to get Steven ready for daycare and myself ready for school.
But that morning, Steven’s diaper wasn’t oozing with crap and I wasn’t forced to burn another breakfast for the two of us. On the counter sat two peanut butter and marshmallow cream sandwiches on white, crusts cut off. In the garage, no car.
***
Behind my eyes, these memories reveal themselves to me and me only. But Mr. Walter and the jury need them to be audible; spoken. The truth, which I’ve sworn to tell, would win this case for me. But winning is a shitty term to use. I didn’t come here to win. I came to do what is right. But staring at my mother’s empty eyes knowing she loves me and Steven more than she is capable of expressing, makes me question what right is.
“She was just around every once in a while,” I repeat. “She gave us groceries and things we needed and she stopped by. I just didn’t see her that much.”
Mr. Walter’s eyes narrow. “How many hours a day would Mrs. Mellissa Dockson be home?” he asks.
I notice my short thumbnail being gritted between my teeth. I pull it away. “Some days she wasn’t there at all,” I say sadly. My head drops like a pathetic puppy by a window waiting for his owners to return. “Other days she was there for a few hours…three maybe.”
This response seems to satisfy Mr. Walter. He starts hammering a shit ton of questions my way. Short-response ones to keep me answering quickly. My eyes find Steven, who has left his seat at the front table and found Aunt Pierson in the pews. He holds tight to her, her arm securely around him. He needs her, not mom, I convince myself. I know it’s the truth though. I don’t need the convincing.
Mr. Walter begins to speak again.
“So how did Mrs. Dockson’s absence affect you and Steven’s upbringing?”
In my head, I want to say, her absence affected me a fricken ton. Her not being around is the reason I am who I am. It defines me as a person, for good and bad reasons. But I can’t seem to make those words audible.
You see, not having a mother around, along with the task of raising a two-year-old is some crazy shit. A two-year-old alone is some crazy shit. So when my mom left me and Steven, all I could think was: so I have to raise this little snot—I mean I love him and all, but he’s a handful—and raise myself, make food and go to school to learn about Napoleon and crap too? This made finding friends and being, quote on quote, normal, a priority that I didn’t have. Steven and I both made acquaintances in school but we could never go to birthday parties or have people over to the house. And anyway, the house was embarrassing; overgrown with weeds and tall grass in the yard. It was always best to keep my friends distant and Steven close.
I take in all the memories that talk to my brain and start comprising them into words. “Well, Mr. Walter,” I say with yet another sigh. “My mother not being around taught me to be selfless, resourceful and to put family first. I couldn’t have friends over because Steven had to rely on me. I had to learn to cook and clean instead of learning history or geometry. If I was stressed to the point of yanking my hair out and Steven got a scrape, I had to get him a spider-man Band-Aid and just get over my own shit.” I stop talking abruptly, but that’s all I have to say. “Is that good enough?” I ask.
The one second of silence after I ask this seems to last for eternity.
“No further questions,” Mr. Walter says.
I hop down from the witness stand and only allow myself a moment’s glance at my mom, her eyes as haunting as that first night she came back; lifeless, liked what I’ve said sucked the life she had inside. I sit in my seat, zoned out for the rest of the trial, my fists tightly clenched in my lap. I’ve done my job and that’s it. The judge eventually says something about standing by, which my ears pick up. To the right of me, the jury filled with average-Joes deliberates. I look behind me at my brother, nestled under Aunt Pierson’s arm. She kisses his forehead and sends a reassuring nod my way. But her gesture can’t resolve the emotions shredding my brain like its thin paper because all I can do is hope and pray that I actually did the right thing.
