“I’m closed,” she said, and then grimaced at the realization he had no grocery cart or groceries to check out anyway. Keefer glanced at me and then pulled the pistol out of his jacket.
Betty Blue gasped.
“Just put the cash into a paper bag.”
Betty Blue froze. Keefer’s eyes registered a sense of panic. I was afraid of what would happen next if she didn’t move quickly, but she was in shock.
“Robin, do it,” he said, and I pushed her back and began to take out the cash and drop it in a bag.
“It’s all there,” I said.
“Let’s go,” he snapped.
I knelt down and grabbed Mother darling’s boots where I had hidden them under the counter.
“Hurry up, Robin,” he ordered.
A customer coming up saw the gun in Keefer’s hand and screamed. Mr. Ritter came around one of the aisles and dropped his jaw, his eyes nearly popping out.
Keefer and I ran to the exit and out, me clutching the bag with one hand and Mother darling’s boots in the other. We got into the SUV and he started away. I didn’t look back. I didn’t think I could move my head. I was that frozen.
“Count the money!” Keefer screamed. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
I nodded and then began. We had just a little over two thousand dollars. He was pleased.
“That’s great. It’ll be enough to start.” Then he smiled. “It was easy, easier than I thought, huh?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Hey, what’s with those boots?” he asked. I was clutching them again. I hadn’t even realized I was.
“They’re my mother’s,” I said.
“You’re the same size?”
“No,” I replied.
He shook his head, his lips twisted in confusion.
“Then… why did you take them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I looked at them. “I don’t know.”
“Forget about it. You’ll have a nice new pair that fit you soon.”
“I don’t care about boots.”
He laughed and shook his head. We were driving fast, slipping under streetlights before they turned red and weaving around slower traffic.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ve been planning carefully on this getaway.”
He let out a whoop.
“We’re outta here!” he cried.
I tried to smile. Were we? I looked ahead and relaxed a little. Maybe it would be wonderful. Maybe it would be great, I thought, and closed my eyes to wish hard.
Then I heard Keefer’s guttural cry and I opened my eyes to see a police patrol car ahead. At first I thought it was just there, waiting for speeders, but suddenly, it pulled out and planted itself right in our way, its bubble light going. Keefer hit the brakes and turned to back up, but there behind us, coming up fast, was another police patrol car. He started to turn and then stopped. A third patrol car was coming too fast down the other lane.
He turned to me.
“Bad luck,” he said, and shrugged. “They must have been just close enough to get the call and cut us off. And we were almost to the open highway. Damn.”
Blood drained from my face at the sight of two policemen, their guns drawn and pointing at us. They were crouched behind the doors of their vehicle. Another policeman screamed through a bullhorn behind us, ordering us to come out of the truck with our hands raised high.
“I’m sorry,” Keefer said.
I began to cry. With Mother darling’s boots still in my hands, I stepped out of the truck when Keefer did. His hands were up and so were mine.
It occurred to me as the police drew closer that Mother darling might still be sleeping.
We were separated almost immediately at the police station. I thought I would be placed in a prison cell, but I was brought to a room with a long table and two chairs. There was a mirror on one wall. I sat there for a long time, staring at myself and wondering what was going to happen to me next. Finally, a woman with very short dark hair, wearing a gray skirt suit, entered. She looked about thirty or thirty-five to me. She didn’t smile, but there was something warm about her soft brown eyes. She opened a briefcase and took out a long pad and a file.
“I’m Lou Ann Simmons from the district attorney’s office,” she began. “There is someone coming over from the public defender’s office. I guess it’s someone you know fairly well, Mr. Carson Meriweather. It’s not all that long since you and he were in court,” she added pointedly. Then she smiled again and continued. “You can wait for him to arrive, if you like, or you can tell me your side of this.”
“My side?”
“What was your role in the robbery exactly?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by exactly. I shrugged.
“I put the money in the paper bag. Is that what you mean?”
“You were in on the planning, too, weren’t you?” she followed, obviously pleased I was responding.
“Yes.”
“You were supposed to give a signal or something, which you did?”
“Yes.”
The door opened and Mr. Meriweather entered quickly. He looked at Lou Ann Simmons.
“Have you been questioning my client?”
“She was asked if she wanted to wait for you,” Lou Ann Simmons replied. The warmth in her eyes was gone. I had the feeling it was something she could turn on and off at will.
“She doesn’t understand what’s happening here. She’s a minor.”
“She was involved in an armed robbery. That status might be denied.”
“All the more reason for you not to have gone ahead without me,” he fired back.
I felt like I was an observer in an argument that involved someone else besides me.
“She’s confessed to her active participation in the event. I can ask her the same questions with you present.”
“I want to speak to my client alone,” he said sharply.
“I think the best thing you can do and convince her to do is cooperate with me. Keefer Dawson will not be tried as a minor, and he is responsible for bringing her into the act. I hope you’re not going to make this complicated,” she added, put her notebook and the file back in her briefcase, and left.
“I would have thought you would know enough not to speak to anyone without your attorney present,” Mr. Meriweather chastised before sitting in the seat she had taken.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“With your past record, I would have thought you would,” he said dryly. “Don’t you realize how serious this situation is? You were on probation.”
I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. All I could do was nod.
“She’s not bluffing. They could have you tried as an adult. You’ll go to a hard penitentiary. And for years!” he emphasized.
“Was my mother called yet?”
“Your mother can’t save you now,” he muttered. “This man, Keefer Dawson, talked you into participating in this robbery, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t talk me into it.”
“He talked you into it,” Mr. Meriweather insisted. “You didn’t have any idea he would have a gun?” he said, seemingly as a question, but more as an answer he wanted to shove down my throat.
“Yes, I did. I saw it before, but he told me there were no bullets in it.”
“That would make no difference. How would anyone being held up know there were no bullets in it, and how do you know for certain that there were no bullets in it?”
“He told me,” I said.
“Then you did not know for certain,” he concluded. “You see how complicated this can be and how much trouble you can be in?”
I nodded.
“All right. Just sit here and don’t—don’t—ever talk to anyone about this without my being present.”
He got up and left the room. To me it felt like nearly an hour had gone by before the door was opened again. This time it was Mother darling. She just
stood there for a few moments and looked in at me. I thought she was going to back up and close the door. Finally she entered. I saw her eyes were bloodshot from crying. She sucked in her breath and sat.
“There were many times,” she began, “when I thought my father was right. I didn’t know why it should be, but evil, like some pollution, seeped into me and then into you. That was a big reason why I wanted to leave home. I wanted to get away from his eyes, from his way of lookin‘ at us, remindin’ me all the time of the mistakes I had made.”
“Me, especially,” I said.
She stared.
“Yeah, I suppose I always thought of you that way, Robin. I’m not denyin‘ it. It’s no secret I never intended to be pregnant, but I really believed that somehow, some way, because of my music or through it, I’d make things right. I guess I never got that across to you, no matter how many times I tried gettin’ you to see it.”
“It’s your career, not mine,” I snapped back at her. “You’re the star, Mother darling.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t blame you for hatin‘ me, I guess.” She smiled. “Remember that song I wrote years ago: ’I want to love you but I can’t help hatin‘ myself for wantin’ that‘. ”
“I’m not the reason for a song, Mother darling. I’m a person,” I told her.
She nodded.
“Yep, I guess, but what sort of a person have you become? I’ll take as much blame as goes around, of course, but that’s not goin‘ to help us much now.”
She turned and looked at me.
“Mr. Meriweather says Keefer Dawson is tellin‘ the district attorney that he talked you into this, that you didn’t know he was goin’ to have a real gun.”
“It’s not true!”
“It’s somethin‘ that will help you, Robin. Mr. Meriweather sent me in here to convince you not to contradict Keefer. Keefer should do this. He had no business bringin’ you into it.”
“He didn’t bring me into anything. I wanted to do it,” I practically shouted back at her.
“You want to go to a real terrible prison where ugly things happen to girls your age and you want to go there for years and years? Is that what you want?”
“No, but—”
“But that’s what’s goin‘ to happen to you if you don’t shut your trap, Robin. You nod when you’re told to nod and you shake your head when you’re told to shake it, understand? Otherwise, there’s no tellin’ what that judge is goin‘ to do to you. Mr. Meriweather is tryin’ to work somethin‘ out with that assistant district attorney. If you will sign the statement agreeing with what Keefer Dawson is tellin’ them, she’ll consider a recommendation to the judge that will help you.”
“I don’t want Keefer taking all the blame,” I said.
“He would have done somethin‘ like this with or without you, wouldn’t he?” she asked.
I thought about it.
“Probably,” I said. “His mother just died—committed suicide—and his father hates him and he lost his job.”
“That’s all for his lawyer to tell, Robin. There’s no point tyin‘ yourself to someone else’s troubles.”
“It is if you care about him,” I told her. “That’s something you wouldn’t understand, Mother darling. You never cared about anyone more than you cared about yourself.”
“That’s not fair, Robin. I did care about you. I do.”
“Then how did you bring us—bring me—to live with that horrible Cory Lewis?” I cried.
She stared.
“I didn’t just come to Cory with you because he was involved in the music business, Robin. There was a chance—there is a chance,” she corrected, “that he is your real father.”
I felt as if lightning had snapped over my head.
“No,” I said. I shook my head vigorously to throw the words back out of my ears.
“As I told you, there was more than one, but he was there that night and we… we were lovers that night.”
“No,” I insisted.
“It doesn’t matter. Cory wanted to do somethin‘ for us because he thought it might be true.”
“If it is, I wish I was never born,” I said. “Almost as much as you wish it.”
“I don’t wish it anymore, Robin, but I don’t expect you to believe that. I really was hopin‘ you’d be part of my success and be happy.”
“Good title for a new song. Start writing it,” I snapped, and she bristled.
“I’m tellin‘ that lawyer you’ll do what he says, Robin. If you don’t, you’re goin’ to be one sorry girl.”
She rose.
“You don’t help him by hurtin‘ yourself,” she added.
I looked up at her. It was the first thing she had said that I thought made any sense at all.
And something I wished she would turn into a song.
13
Caged Birds Sing Sad Songs
“This is the story,” Mr. Meriweather said, with Mother darling sitting beside him. “We can keep you out of prison, keep you from being tried as an adult, even keep you out of a juvenile detention center.”
I held my breath and looked from him to Mother darling and then back to him.
“How?”
“There is a special school for young girls who, shall we say, have exhausted all the traditional means of correcting their behavior, or rather, their misbehavior. Their parents are totally defeated, as is your mother.”
I glanced at her, and she shifted her eyes guiltily away.
“What sort of special school?”
“It’s a school run by a specialist in behavior modification, and for many, a school of last resort. Now before I go any further in my explanation, let me make clear to you that once you go there, you do not have the privilege of deciding you don’t want to be there. You’re there until it is decided you can return and behave in a reasonable manner, and you would still be on a term of strict probation. Should you attempt to escape or run away from this school, you would be immediately returned to court and sentenced to a real prison—sentenced, in your case, as an adult. It’s part of the agreement we will sign.”
“But how long am I at this school?”
“You can be there months; you can be there years. It’s entirely up to you. That’s the beauty of it, if we can say there is any beauty. You’re in control of your own destiny. In a real prison, you’re lucky to be in control of your own bowel movements,” he said, his lips taut, his eyes ice-cold.
“It’s just another school?”
“No, I’m not saying it’s just another school. It’s a special school. There are different rules, different activities. Its purpose is to change your behavior, change your miscreant ways, and make you a productive member of society. You sign a contract to turn yourself over to the school. Your mother signs as well,” he added, looking at her.
Something in her face told me she wasn’t happy to be doing it, even though Mr. Meriweather had made it sound like a way out of a horrible prison experience. It made my heart flutter.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You can have a little while to discuss it with your mother. Then I have to inform the assistant district attorney, and together we will confer with the judge. This is the last breath of mercy you will find in this court,” he added, and rose. “One more thing. It’s normally very, very expensive to go to this special school. It’s privately run, but an anonymous benefactor has provided what we can best describe as scholarships for girls whose families cannot afford it, but who need it desperately nevertheless. That, for you, is another stroke of luck just when you need it the most.”
He looked at Mother darling.
“I’ll be back in a little while,” he said, and left us.
“What is this all about?” I asked.
“Just what he said. I didn’t even know it existed. Even though we said you would sign the statements, the judge was not persuaded to consider you a minor. The gun made all the difference. You’re headin‘ for some hard ti
me in a hard place with women who have done some terrible things and will see you as a ripe piece of fruit. Virgin fruit,” she added in practically a whisper.
“Do you know anything about the school?”
“Just what you heard.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“They don’t want the parents to know where it is. They don’t want parents to change their minds and go fetch their children.”
“But what if I call you and tell you where I am?”
“You can’t call anyone, Robin.”
“But… that’s worse than jail, isn’t it? Don’t prisoners get the right to call people?”
“Not right away. I think you can call after a while. I don’t know everything.”
I stared at her.
“You don’t know anything, do you, and you don’t care. It’s a way to get rid of me. That’s all you know.”
“That’s not true. I don’t want you goin‘ to a real prison and…”
“And what?”
“I haven’t been a good mother, and I probably won’t ever be,” she admitted. “It’s true what he said. I’m not capable of doin‘ what has to be done. I need help. Look at this,” she said, unfolding a paper. “I was asked to check off what applies to you.”
Does your teen struggle with basic family rules?
Has your teen ever been expelled? Been truant? Failed subjects?
Is your teen verbally abusive?
Does your teen associate with bad peers? Have problems with the law? Lack motivation?
Lack self-worth? Have problems with authority?
Has your teen been sexually promiscuous? Been manipulative and/or deceitful? Stolen money or other valuables from your home?
No matter what rules and consequences are established, does your teen defy them?
When dealing with your teen, do you often feel powerless?
I put the paper down.
“You see, I had to check everythin‘, Robin.”
“Big deal,” I said.
“Yes, it is a big deal. I’m signin‘ the paper.”