There Are No Children Here (40 page)

“We were told to be in court today,” LaJoe insisted. The gray-haired lady told LaJoe to go to the clerk’s office. They, too, had nothing. So they sent LaJoe and Lafeyette to yet a third person who, like the others, flipped through a pile of papers. Nothing. LaJoe went back to the gray-haired lady.

“I know we got a court date today,” LaJoe insisted. “I know it.”

The woman sifted through her piles of paper again. “Lafeyette Rivers?” she asked, her finger resting on Lafeyette’s name. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “It was my fault. Just have a seat over there until Mr. Smith gets back from lunch.”

LaJoe and Lafeyette joined the four other accused boys and their mothers on a marble bench in the lobby. Lafeyette took some ribbing for his T-shirt, which hailed the Detroit Pistons as the NBA champions. He had let his hair grow long and combed it straight back, so that now it almost reached his shoulders. Usually well groomed, he looked a bit ragged, though he had pressed his black Levi’s and the T-shirt for the occasion. LaJoe wished she had gotten his hair trimmed.

Two of the boys were called into a nearby office. A few minutes later, the woman who was interviewing them peered out the door. “Were both those boys with you?” she asked of the remaining three children sitting nervously on the marble bench. Nobody answered. LaJoe was about to tell Lafeyette and the others not to respond. If they did, they might incriminate themselves, she thought. But before she could say anything one of the boys spoke up. “Yeah,” Curtis told the woman. A bit ashamed at having put his friends at the scene of the crime, Curtis bowed his head. “They’re only kids,” LaJoe muttered to one of the other mothers. “She shouldn’t do them like that.” Though nobody explained it to the parents, such statements couldn’t be used in court.

Lafeyette was called next. Each child who comes to juvenile court goes through an initial screening process in which a court official interviews the child to ascertain whether there is a real
case. No statements made in the interview can be used in court. It is a way to weed out cases that do not have to go to trial. Children who have been arrested for stealing candy or toilet paper, for example, may just get a lecture and be sent home.

Lafeyette sat next to LaJoe across the desk from Mr. Smith, the court official. Lafeyette’s eyes focused on the wall behind his inquisitor. He had admitted to LaJoe just before they walked into the room that he was scared.

“What’s your name?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Lafeyette.” His voice was barely audible.

“Where do you live?”

“Nineteen-twenty West Washington.”

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“LaJoe Rivers.”

“Your father’s?”

“Paul Rivers.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“Suder.”

The questions were quick and impersonal. Lafeyette responded in kind. His hollow voice didn’t carry. He refused to look at Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith straightened a piece of paper in front of him and read it through quickly before reading it to Lafeyette and LaJoe. It was the allegation that he, with four others, had broken into a car and stolen over $300 worth of goods. “Did you do it?” Mr. Smith asked.

“No,” Lafeyette replied and then proceeded to tell his version of the story. It was what he had told his mother. He and Curtis had been at the stadium to view the players after getting something to eat at a nearby store. When they were leaving, they saw a boy smash the window of the Toyota. Worried that the police might show up and blame them, they ran toward home. Lafeyette told it without any trace of emotion. He had insisted from the start that he was innocent.

Mr. Smith paused. It was clear that he didn’t believe Lafeyette. He didn’t seem even to have listened to his explanation. “You know better,” Mr. Smith proceeded to lecture. “If one of your buddies is breaking into a car, leave.”

“We did,” insisted Lafeyette, his eyes still focused on the wall.
Mr. Smith continued, talking as much to himself as to LaJoe and Lafeyette.

“It’s called extortion. They ask to watch your car. If you don’t let them, they’ll break into it. That’s extortion. I’m smart. When I go to the stadium I give the kids a couple of bucks. Nothing will happen to it. If you don’t give them any money, you know you better watch out. You just might have a window smashed. I’m smarter than that.” And on he went, lecturing LaJoe and Lafeyette about all that he took into consideration when parking by the stadium. LaJoe shifted restlessly in her chair. Lafeyette continued to stare, his thoughts far away from Mr. Smith’s reproof.

Finished, Mr. Smith handed LaJoe a copy of the complaint. He told her that the man whose car the boys had robbed had identified some of them. “It could be a problem,” he said. He directed them to Calendar 7. Calendar 14, where the cases from Horner were usually heard, was closed down for the afternoon.

The waiting rooms are the size of racquetball courts. On each side are five rows of wooden benches. The courtroom is sealed off. Outsiders aren’t allowed to view the proceedings, as they are in adult courts. People may wait hours for their cases to be called. Women have given birth in these waiting rooms, and gangs have brawled.

LaJoe gave her name to the deputy sheriff in charge of this courtroom. He told her he’d call them when their name came up. That was at two-thirty. Lafeyette and LaJoe sat. Occasionally, LaJoe would go out into the hallway for a smoke or would strike up a conversation with another mother. Lafeyette remained silent. He slumped on a bench next to Curtis. Curtis’s name was called around three-thirty, and he left with his mother. Lafeyette sat and waited. He ran his fingers along the carvings on the bench. A dollar sign. A six-pointed star. The numeral four with a C and an H, for Four Corner Hustlers. He wondered what they’d been carved with. A screwdriver? A knife? A key? How did they get a tool through the metal detectors? His mind wandered. He wanted to go home.

A woman sitting next to LaJoe was close to tears. She’d been late to court that morning, so they had taken her son into custody. If a child missed his case when it was called, a warrant was issued, and when he arrived, he was placed in lock-up for
the day. She worried that they might keep him overnight. LaJoe panicked. She didn’t want them to take Lafeyette. She wondered if because of the switch in courtrooms she had somehow missed Lafeyette’s case. She beckoned to Lafeyette, and half walked, half ran to the front desk to make sure. She was okay. The case hadn’t been called. They returned to the waiting room.

At five-thirty, four cases remained to be heard. The deputy sheriff asked LaJoe her name again. “Rivers,” she replied, holding back her exasperation. He flipped through his pile of papers.

“What’s the name again?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he said, “I’ll take care of it.” It was clear to LaJoe that somewhere along the way they’d misplaced Lafeyette’s name. She and Lafeyette had been here for over four hours.

Twenty minutes later, the deputy sheriff called the last case. “Walter Helgo. Walter Helgo.” LaJoe and Lafeyette were the only ones left on the benches. There was no Walter Helgo. “What’s your name?” the deputy sheriff asked Lafeyette for the fourth time that afternoon. “Rivers. Lafeyette Rivers.” The deputy sheriff disappeared into the courtroom.

Finally, at six o’clock, Lafeyette’s case was called.

The courtroom held only the judge, the court reporter, the state’s attorney, the public defender, and the deputy sheriff. Judge Robert E. Woolridge, a gray-haired man, had his head buried in papers. He never looked up. He never so much as glanced at Lafeyette. The questions started coming faster than Lafeyette could think, faster than even Mr. Smith could manage. “What’s your name? When were you born? What’s your address? Where does your father live? When did you last see him?” By the last question, Lafeyette was so flustered that LaJoe had to answer. “Three days ago,” she said. The judge handed out the trial date: September 8.

As LaJoe and Lafeyette left the courtroom, LaJoe realized that the judge had given them a different court date from that of the other four boys, all of whom had since gone home. Had he made a mistake? Should she say something? She told the deputy sheriff. He told them to go back into the courtroom. They did. LaJoe explained the situation to the judge. She didn’t want to
cause him any problem, but she worried that he might have given them the wrong court date. Judge Woolridge looked up from his papers. “What’s the name again?” he asked of Lafeyette, who had been before him only minutes earlier. “Lafeyette Rivers.”

The judge looked bewildered. “Did we have a case by that name?” Someone in the courtroom stifled a giggle. Three minutes had passed and he didn’t even remember Lafeyette. LaJoe felt as if no one cared. It was as if they were invisible. No one saw them or heard them or cared enough to treat them like human beings.

Lafeyette, though, was relieved. At least, he thought, he was going home. He could take his clothes out of the box. His case wouldn’t be heard until the fall.

August 9

Dear Mom,

How are you and the family doing? Fine I hope. Well I’m fine, but I could be better if I was at home taking care of you, but it just got to be this way for now. You no what I’m saying but I no it’s just a momentary thing so I don’t let it get to me because only the strong shell survive. I no this a bad situation I’m in but I can handle myself because I’m only me. You understand. I’m just letting you no, mom, because your son is cooling … So mom how are my grandmother. Is she feeling better or what. Send me the address so I can write her because I haven’t heard from her in 11 month and I’m worry about her. So mom when you write me send me the address okay. Mom tell cameo [Weasel’s other nickname] and lashawn I said hi and dad, okay. Well mom I really don’t got to much to say but tell everyone to take of they self …

So mom I guess I’m going to end this short brief but not never my love for you. From your son, Terence R. Rivers for sho!!

P.S. When are you coming out here to see me. Write back soon.

LaJoe read the letter to Lafeyette and Pharoah. Both boys liked to hear their brother’s letters. But they didn’t ask about
him as they used to. They knew he would be away for a while. Their visits to him at the county jail had reassured them that he was okay. He always seemed happy then. “I can tell,” Pharoah told LaJoe. “I know he okay. I can see it in his face.”

“I don’t like to see him in that predicament,” Lafeyette said. “But now he can get his time over with. Then he’ll be home with us again.” LaJoe had told both boys that she was going to try to move so that Terence wouldn’t have to come back to Horner.

Twenty-nine

   
EARLIER IN THE SUMMER, Weasel had brought home two pit bull puppies for Pharoah and Lafeyette. The boys kept them locked up in one of the bathrooms. Pharoah lost interest in his and eventually gave it away. But Lafeyette took a liking to his dog. Ever since his time with Bird Leg, he relished the thought of owning his own. He called his Blondie.

One July afternoon, Lafeyette came inside after hanging out on the porch with some friends. He went straight to the bathroom to say hi to Blondie and to take her out for a walk. The
puppy wasn’t there. “Anybody seen my dog? Where she at?” Lafeyette yelled out to no one in particular. He walked up and down the apartment’s long, narrow hallway, poking his head into each of the four bedrooms, calling, “Blondie, Blondie, Blondie.” He whistled for her, too, but got no response. “If my dog don’t show up, I’m gonna snap,” he muttered to himself, loud enough for his mother and father to hear. His father was sitting on the couch, watching a show on public television; his mother was sitting at the kitchen table. “Somebody took my dog.”

“Laf, there’s nobody in here but me and and your father. Who you talking to?” LaJoe asked.

“Mama, I ain’t talking to you,” Lafeyette said, politely.

Paul knew what was going through his son’s mind. Lafeyette, Paul thought, suspected him of selling the puppy for drug money. He got up from the couch.

“Son, if you continue to talk like that, to suspect me, I’m going to put you in your place.” Lafeyette sat down at the kitchen table and gulped down a glass of milk. He ignored his father’s protestations. It was a familiar scene. Lafeyette just pretended his father wasn’t there.