Joyce Oates - Sourland

As the girl spoke vehemently, Adrienne happened to notice something astonishing and disturbing: about twelve feet behind the girl was a stroller pushed almost out of sight between the blank granite wall of the courthouse and a parked van marked MERCER CO. DETENTION and in this stroller was what appeared to be another child, no more than two years old.

“Oh! Is that your child?”

“Huh? Where?”

“In that stroller, there. Isn’t that a — child?”

“‘Child’ — what’s that? Might be just some rags-like, or some bags or somethin’, stuck there.”

But this was a joke — was it? The girl laughed a little wildly.

“Ma’am, you are right. Sure is a ‘child.’ You want her?”

Seeing the startled look in Adrienne’s face, the girl brayed with laughter. Her notched-looking teeth were bared in a wide smile. Adrienne tried to fall in with the joke, which didn’t seem to her funny. She said, “She’s very” — desperately trying to think of an appropriate and plausible word — “sweet-looking, pretty….”

“Ma’am, thanks! You sure you don’t want her?”

“Well, I — ”

“Just kiddin, ma’am. That’s my sweet li’l Lilith, she’d been a preemie would you b’lieve? — now she’s real healthy. And you’re right, she’s pretty. She is. ”

Two small children! The harried young mother had brought two small children with her to the courthouse on this miserable winter morning. The wind was bitter cold and smelled of creosote, across the ravaged parking lot sporadic hissing outbursts of rain mixed with sleet raced like machine-gun fire. Adrienne had the vague impression — the vague, uneasy impression — she didn’t want to stare openly — that there was something just subtly wrong with the toddler in the stroller, something stunted, deformed. The small face that should have been pretty was in fact too narrow, or asymmetrical; the eyes were lopsided, unfocused. As Adrienne stared the little girl began to whimper faintly and to make a halfhearted effort to fret against the restraint of a blanket wrapped tightly about her torso pinning her arms inside.

Yet the thought came to Adrienne, in rebuke No matter how miserable she is, yet she has them.

How miserable that girl’s soul, yet she is not alone.

Adrienne and her husband Tracy had had no children. Why this was, Adrienne hadn’t quite known. No decision had been made except elliptically, by omission.

Or maybe one of them had made a decision, and had neglected to inform the other.

In an aggrieved voice the girl was saying, “‘Probration’ — that’s just inside here. I know ‘County Probation’ — that’s the first floor. Half my family goes there — I ain’t, yet.” She laughed, as if this were a witticism. Adrienne didn’t quite get the joke, if it was a joke. “Ma’am, see, they got all these ‘departments’ — ‘county services’ — in this place. Some days, there’s so many people going through security you have to stand outdoors — in the cold — nobody gives a damn how the public is inconven’ced. My poor grandma and me, when we came back in January, there was just one fuckin elevator workin — three fuckin elevators were broke! — so we stand there waitin like a hour for the elevator ’cause my grandma couldn’t walk the stairs all the way to Family Court on the sixth floor. I never saw any ‘probrate court’ but there’s ‘parole’ — there’s ‘county pros’cutor’ — on the third floor — I’m s’posed to check in there. ‘Pros’cution witnesses’ — they’re waiting for me, I guess. They got my name. I was served a sup-pena . There’s some of them — ‘pros’cution lawyers’ — who know me by name and by my face. So if I go inside, and if they see me — I’m fucked. Except” — the girl paused, with a look of crude cunning, leaning close to Adrienne to speak in confidence — “I got to get a crucial message to somebody, that’s on the second floor — that’s ‘criminal court’ — if they brought him over from men’s detention like they were s’post to, 8 A.M. this morning. His name is Edro — Edro Hodge. You’d be seeing his picture in the papers, if you live around here — there’s been some things about him, independent of him and his family — that’s to say, me . Some things about ‘material witnesses’ — what the fuck that is. These shitheads that like disappeared. So who’d they blame? — Edro. Could be when you see him, he’s cuffed and his ankles shackled. Like some crazed bull they got him, to keep him ‘secured.’ Edro has got tats on his left cheek and back of his neck and up and down his arms and his hair is tied back in a rat-tail unless the lawyer made him cut it for the judge. They treat you like shit once they get you. This ain’t Family Court! He’d be in one of those freaky orange coveralls that says Mercer County Men’s Detention. The hope is to mock and ridicule a man, to break him. But Edro ain’t gonna be broke that easy.” The girl smiled, baring tea-colored notched teeth, then her smile grew wistful, and then stricken. “Oh Jesus! — I got to get a message to Edro — it’s urgent, ma’am. Please ma’am — you look like a kind lady — say you will help us?”

“‘Help you’ — how?”

Adrienne felt a sense of dread as the girl clutched at a sleeve of her black cashmere coat. It might have been a TV scene — a movie scene — the girl’s heavily made-up face thrust at Adrienne’s face. A sweetish-stale odor wafted from her — a smell of desperation, urgency — cigarettes, chewing gum, hair oil, soiled baby diapers. Her eyes widened: “ I don’t better go anywhere near him or on any floor they’d see me — ’cause I am a ‘prosecution witness’ — it’s warned of me, I could be arrested like Edro. Obsuction of justis — givin a false statement to police. Interferin with — whatever shit it is, they call it. Bastards get you to say what they want you to say — you don’t hardly know what shit you are saying but it’s taped . Then you’re fucked if you try to take it back.” Adrienne stared in astonishment as the girl flung open the faux -fur jacket and tugged at the waist of her purple sweater lifting it to reveal the flaccid flesh of her midriff that was covered in bruises the hue of rotted bananas; now Adrienne saw that the girl’s forehead was bruised as well, what she’d believed to be skin eruptions were in fact welts. Obviously, “Edro” had beat the hell out of her, she was lucky to be standing. In an anguished rush of words she said, “Yes ma’am, I turned Edro in — I mean, I caused Edro to be turned in — I freaked and ran into the street near-about naked and some damn neighbor called 911 — ‘domestic violence’ — ‘aggravated assault’ is what they’d arrested Edro for the other time — that time, I wasn’t to blame — it’s just some bullshit ’cause they want Edro for the ‘material witness’ shit — what happened to them, who knows? This time, see, we’d both been drinking — I was scared — I never make a sound judgment when I am scared — the cops asked me who’d been beating on me so I told them — my nose was near-about broke and all this blood on my front — and my front-clothes torn — I told them it was Edro hurting Lilith and the baby I was scared of but he’d never hurt them — they are his own blood he knows for a fact, he has vowed he would never hurt them . In my right mind I realized this. But that wasn’t right away. Ma’am, see, I have got to get this message to Edro before they take him in to the judge. His damn fuck lawyer told him to plead ‘guilty.’ They always tell you plead ‘guilty’ — makes it easy for them . They are such shitheads — ‘Office of the Public Defender.’ You wear out your ass waiting for them in those chairs, nobody gives a fuck how long you wait. Also this is the ‘second offense’ — ‘domestic violence’ — other things Edro did, the cops hold against him — they have a grudge against the Hodge family Edro says and give them a fucking hard time all they can. One thing he has got to know — Leisha is not going to swear any statement against him. If you could tell him this, ma’am — or pass him some note, I could write for you…”