Four floors of courtrooms, each with dockets of, say, forty cases per day. Outside, families await the bailiff’s call — slovenly or nodding off, some incongruously overdressed (white chiffon and wedding lace) and overly made up; young moms’ flaunty tatts peeking from shoulderless black sheaths, the latter being all-purpose “special occasion”-wear donned at funerals, graduations or dance clubs. Before they can be heard, the unfortunates must pass through an anteroom of bustling, indifferent attorneys, then sit themselves down on hard pews. Posters ring the courtroom (102 Dalmatians, Muppets from Space, Toy Story 2), as do fuzzy animals perched on high like in carnival booths waiting to be dispensed. Lawyers pore through the contents of murrey-colored folders bound by industrial-strength rubber bands — no one ever seems to find what they’re looking for. Each towering packet (an eight-year-old in the system since birth might have a 275-page file) is eventually passed to bailiff, clerk, judge. When the music stops, the case is ruminated, then summarily ruled on; the band strikes up, packets again borne aloft and gravely scrutinized before coming to rest. Eager blackboard scrawlings and erasures chart the abbreviated pilgrim’s progress of FA (father), MO (Mother), MI (Minor), PGM (Paternal Grandmother), MGM (Maternal Grandmother) — as “contests” revolve around the room in ragged circles, we note the urgent shuttlecocking of stuffed animals, yapping of translators, wider suppression of tears and the bailiff’s squelching of some would-be guardian’s occasional tacky, tattered outburst. Like bad bones, dates are set, reset and set again, requests brokered and broken, patience lost and sagely regained. With closed eyes we hear the murmur of de facto mothers and decertifications by the FFA; of PRCs, dispos and adjudications; of demands for interviews concerning existence or identity of fathers; of failed grades in parenting classes and noncompliance with court-ordered neurological exams; of pleadings for monitored weekend visits with discretion to liberalize; of termination of parental rights …
The lawyers stand when ordered to identify themselves: “Tom Friedrich for the father, who is not present!” “Lisa Gutierrez for the mother, who is not present!” “Rebekah Levy-Soweto for the child, who is not present!”—either no one is present or everyone is. And because this is America, all parties have the right to counseclass="underline" each child and each parent — real, presumed, alleged, de facto or surrogate — has that sacred right, as does even the Department itself. There can be no conflict of interest, because with conflict of interest, justice is not served: if needed, there will be five attorneys present — for the de factos, presumeds, allegeds and illusorys — or seven, or ten, or twenty. Sometimes the child is brought from the pen too late and misses the hearing altogether. He’d been thinking he could go home! But the Court finds by a preponderance of evidence that continued jurisdiction is necessary, because conditions exist which justify jurisdiction under WIC300, WIC364(c); Return of the Minor to the custody of the parent would create a substantial risk of detriment to the physical/emotional well-being of the minor under WIC366.2(e); Court finds reasonable efforts to reunite Minor and parents have been made and such efforts were unsuccessful; Court finds that Minor cannot be returned to the physical custody of the parents and there exists no substantial probability the Minor will be returned in six months; Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that it is not likely that the Minor can or will be adopted and orders DCFS to continue long-term foster care—
Downstairs, Amaryllis watches a scalded boy play a video game. A pudgy volunteer comes to take her up. She follows, past teens and toddlers transfixed by The Tigger Movie on a big-screen TV (the security guard, too, is transfixed). Lani Mott is nowhere to be seen. Amaryllis asks after her, but the volunteer only belches.
When they finally get to the court’s fluorescent dugout, a lady shoves a stuffed animal into her chest. “Don’t you remember me?” she asks. It’s the emergency CSW who saw her at Mac when she was so sick; but today, another caseworker has been assigned. Amaryllis’s lawyer comes to talk before they enter court—not the one who represented her during the Woolery placement back in Tunga Canyon days (and not that Amaryllis would ever recall). This one sweetly asks the same: “Don’t you remember me?” The lawyer’s perfume and long chestnut hair are familiar, but she looks like she’s going to have a baby and Amaryllis doesn’t remember that. Both attorney and caseworker agree the girl looks so much “prettier” than before; true enough, but what they really mean is undiseased. They fuss over her gorgeous “mane” and say she looks just like a tiger cub. That makes the attorney du jour think to get her another stuffed animal, but the child already is clasping a bear and anyway there aren’t any close at hand. (Shocking as that might seem.) She resolves to get her one after the hearing — a kid can never have enough. Again Amaryllis asks where is Lani. Just then, the CASA enters from the wings, breathlessly apologizing for being late. Amaryllis asks about the babies, but a bailiff interrupts to invite them in. As the child is tugged into court, the pregnant attorney stuffs a business card into her pocket, insisting Amaryllis call collect if she ever needs to talk. “Here — I’ll give you two,” she says profligately, “so you won’t lose them.” She thrusts another devalued note into her tiny client’s vest. In this place (like stuffed animals), such currency is always in circulation.
The judge smiles kindly while ordering the happy-faced bailiff to hand Amaryllis a tiger. He says one grandfatherly thing or another, then: Wouldn’t it be nice to be back in school? Amaryllis nods without really listening. Now the grown-ups talk among themselves and she stares at people in the court. She doesn’t hear anything said except for when the judge snaps that he cannot understand why someone so “adoptable” is still at MacLaren. It seems that it costs a lot of money to stay at MacLaren. Amaryllis struggles to listen for talk of the babies, but everything’s going too fast. Lani starts in about the sibs and her efforts to launch a third world war when a man in a rumpled suit reading from a rumpled file says something about the dependent having a father who’s incarcerated though not a suspect at the current time. A father in Carcerated—what can he mean? And who is the dependent? The father, says the rumpled man, has been “noticed” but declined to be present. But who noticed him? wonders Amaryllis. Declined to be present … the present is a gift — yesterday is history, tomorrow is mys—… the father is incarcerated in Salinas Valley … — talk now of requesting ongoing therapy for the girl (Medi-Cal pays two sessions a month) so a TPR can be implemented. The CSW says that Amaryllis must deal with loss and grief as evidenced by severance of contact with biological mother (deceased) and father (incarcerated), with short- and long-term goals being to engage in the process of recognizing and working through grief-related issues leading toward resolution and reinvestment in life with joy, objectives being, a) to develop a trusting relationship with a therapist as evidenced by open communication of feelings and thoughts; b) to discuss loss(es) and explore and understand how they impact current behavior; c) to identify the feelings connected to the loss(es); and d) increase ability to verbalize and experience the feeling states of loss and grief. So much loss(es) in a life so young!