“Good afternoon. Please be seated.” My document from the county indicates that the Honorable Judge Lera Sutton will provide over my case. She didn’t waste a moment of time to distinguish her honorability. “We will begin our proceedings with a statement from Miss Harter.” She is shorter than I pictured, and emits no signs of arrogance despite her status. “Miss Harter, what do you request the county do with Miss Evelette Harter, now that you are eighteen years of age?”
What do I want them to do with my sister? Judge Sutton didn’t ask what home, or even residence, I thought would be best for her. It was a bit cold to ask it the way she did, but I understand that she hears cases like ours regularly. I also recognize that the system we live under is harsh and that home is a fleeting term for orphans. Those facts make ‘what do you ask we do with her’ just as an appropriate way to word it as any. I respect Judge Sutton’s no-nonsense disposition, and the direct tone with which she is speaking to me. Eighteen is in fact an important number to her. She intends to treat me as an adult.
“It is my request that Miles County grant me full guardianship of my sister.”
“Miss Harter, I have spent time looking over your case, but for the record,” Judge Sutton motions toward the device converting and storing our oral proceedings into Miles’ courthouse database, “why should the county grant you this right?” Judge Sutton turns and looks at me, really looks at me for the first time. “In other words, please explain why you are fit for this role,” she says with more attention and a softness I did not expect her to possess. “And do be detailed,” she adds with brevity and unfamiliarity again.
“I’ve been responsible for Evvie since before she was born. My father died before I turned four years old. My mother had just become pregnant with Evvie. She never recovered from his death, and was unfit to properly care for herself and the unborn Evvie during her pregnancy,” I state.
“Please elaborate on that, Miss Harter. How did she exhibit this unfitness?” Judge Sutton requires.
“My mother used to be normal. Loving. Functional.” I can’t help providing this seemingly irrelevant information, but I want the judge to see that my mother’s insanity was acute, and brought on by tragedy. It was not chronic. Chronic mental instability is often regarded as an inheritable trait. I don’t want the judge to entertain that thought.
“After my father died, my mother fell into a deep depression and suffered from mental illness. The doctors explained that she could not overcome the emotional pain of the loss of my father, and so she created and clung to alternate scenarios in order to blame someone for his death. She convinced herself of various conspiracies and could no longer perform the most elementary life functions for herself or her dependents.”
“Now, I understand that this mental illness wasn’t professionally diagnosed for eight years after your father’s passing. Are you sure your mother was mentally ill beforehand?”
I am overwhelmingly sure. If only Judge Sutton had seen her, even once, she’d have her proof. Prudently, I answer, “Yes Your Honor, I am sure. The symptoms of her mental illness were immediate. My mother talked about how the government had murdered my father and she spoke of a plan to run away from Miles. She was irrational, constantly panicked, and never conscious of how her actions were affecting her children.”
“You were awfully little to remember that clearly. About four years old, right?” Judge Sutton asks skeptically.
“I don’t remember details, but I do remember my mother fighting with my grandma all the time over these conversations. I remember that my mother would wake me up in the dead of night to tell me that we were running away. This happened about once a week during her first and second trimesters. I can clearly remember crying and begging her to wait until after the baby was born.”
“Okay, well enough. How about after Evvie was born?”
“Actually, my mother was a bit more stable for a while. I guess the demands of a newborn pulled her focus back. I suppose she was very sleep deprived, and when she had a spare moment, she learned to rest rather than scheme.”
“So she took care of you as well as the baby during this time?”
“Yes.”
“And how long did this period last?”
“The hysteria set in again when Evvie was about four months old. I remember the day I noticed it was back. We were pushing Evvie in the stroller around the perimeter in Sector Seven, when she left the stroller and ran toward the barrier. She reached out and let the barrier send shocks through her.” It was easy to relive this memory, vividly, as I relayed it to the judge.
“Momma! What are you doing?” I’m shouting at her.
“Sh!” she scolds. “Come here, Sydney,” she says as she pulls me in close. She squats down and takes my right arm in her two hands. “Listen, baby doll. You, Evelette, and I aren’t safe here. I listened to you, sweetheart. I waited until your sister was born. She has grown strong and healthy now. We can’t waste any more time here. Come here, Sydney.”
I continue to explain the memory to Judge Sutton. “With my arm still in her grasp, my mother began to pull me toward the barrier. I remember crying and protesting. I remember her shushing me and yelling at me to be quiet, but by then Evvie was wailing in the stroller behind us too. She dragged me to the barricade anyway, and without warning, thrust my arm and hers across the line.” I look up to see Judge Sutton listening carefully, but without empathy for the little girl whose insane mother abused her through electric shock.
“This happened time after time, and one day my mother slapped me for yelling for help beforehand. At my birthday party that year, I told my grandma and grandpa on my mother’s side. I told them what she had been doing and how she said she was preparing me to cross through the barrier.” I remember my grandma crying and holding me. I remember feeling so safe in her arms but also so bad for making her cry. I wonder if her tears were more for the daughter she had lost than for the pain that I had suffered by that daughter’s hand.
“Yet your grandparents chose not to report this abuse, or your mother’s insane and/or rebellious thoughts to the authorities,” Judge Sutton points out.
“No, ma’am. My grandparents did not want to see my sister and me orphaned.”
“And what do you think of this misstep, Sydney?”
That’s a loaded question, and leading. “I don’t challenge the decision they made. After my experience in the orphanage and with a foster, I’m glad they didn’t report my mother’s state.” Judge Sutton eyes me intently. “I can’t be held responsible for condoning their decision then, or even now, as it worked out to be truly best for my family. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t take mental illness, abuse, and perimeter breaching seriously,” I stress, lying about the last item.
“Thank you for your clarification, Miss Harter,” Judge Sutton says. She jots some quick markings on her tablet, making no indication that my words have convinced her. I hope I haven’t extinguished my chance of obtaining guardianship of Evvie. “You may continue, if you have more examples of how you were your sister’s primary caretaker while you both lived with your mother.”
“From 2020 through 2024, Evvie and I spent all of our hours at our grandma’s.”
“Miss Harter, are you referring to the forty hours per week that each individual is allowed away from their legal place of residence?”
“Yes,” I confirm. We stayed from early Friday morning until late Saturday night. I always called the piece of the duplex Grandma’s, because I only knew my grandpa for a short time. He was older than my grandma, and so his date came up when I was very little. “My grandma taught me how to cook, clean, change diapers, potty train, and anything else that I needed to know how to do in order to take care of my sister and myself while we were at home the rest of the week. My mother had also neglected her own needs, so I took care of her as well.”
“After my grandma’s euthanization in 2024, and as Evvie grew up, I took on other responsibilities that my grandmother had done for
us, like grocery shopping. I made sure Evvie put in her hours on EduWeb each week. Sometimes I would research home remedies if someone fell ill. We were too young to go to the doctor on our own, and we surely couldn’t bring our mother with. She had difficultly going minutes without garbling conspiracy theories. I became fully responsible for our family’s well-being. I didn’t do it all perfectly, but I did it well enough for us to make it.”
“While I uphold that your grandmother’s decision to teach you to hide and cheat was not in your best interest, I do acknowledge and respect your efforts in following what you believed to be right at the time.” Her emphasis heightens my worry that Judge Sutton has a way of seeing through me. She seems to sense my forbidden despise for the nation’s set-up and the leaders who made it this way.
“Miss Harter,” the judge continues, “when and how did this charade end?” I suppose this is when I have to explain my blunder, what led to the two of us always wondering where our next makeshift home would be, or more worrisome, who it would be shared with.
“In 2027, a light-rail driver missed my wrist when scanning for fares. We hit twenty miles per hour and I was found out. They took me home, assessed my mother, and took us all into custody.”
“Please summarize your role as Evelette’s caretaker, beginning in 2027 when your mother’s longtime illness was finally diagnosed and dealt with.”
Dealt with—another stab in wording delivered by Judge Sutton. I feel less forgiving about her choice of words this time, as she has read my case and knows exactly how my mother’s mental illness was dealt with. Poorly. She lived in cramped, eerie quarters amongst other ill patients who fed into her delusions. She saw a therapist only one day a week, though she was undoubtedly unstable for all seven, and was only allowed a visit from us once per month. Our mother was substantially worse the first time we went to see her. So much so, that Evvie refused to visit at the end of our mother’s second month. But for this I am glad, because that is when I alone found my mother dead on the tile floor of her living space, completely barren, except for the picture of our family that Evvie had drawn her the month before.
I take a few moments and a deep breath to forget that image and collect myself. “We were in the orphanage from December 2027 to January 2030. We were treated well, but I still felt most responsible for staying on top of, and attending to, Evvie’s schooling and behavior.”
“Was that difficult?”
“No. Evvie enjoys learning and most subjects come easily for her. She has always listened to me, so behavior was not a concern, but I suppose that’s because I enforced behaving so well.”
I can only think of two times in Evvie’s life when she did not do what I asked of her. She stayed behind at the orphanage when I went to visit our mom at the end of her second month in the institution. Then there was the time Evvie wouldn’t leave the orphanage with her new foster, Trista. That’s funny. Both of the times that she disobeyed me, it turned out for the better. I am the parental figure, but maybe her intuition is better than mine.
“Tell me about your stay with the foster,” Judge Sutton pushes the proceedings’ pace.
I see a flashback of Evvie’s tear-flooded face. She’s pulling at my shirt and begging the dark-haired stranger, not more than thirty, and me to listen to her. Those tears saved her from the damage that could have been caused when Trista adopted us after our first year in the orphanage.
Trista had two years left on her parenting account, and decided to adopt each of us for a year. She wasn’t the type to be doing this from the goodness of her heart, but rather for the tax cut—only I couldn’t tell that then. Her together and loving personality that day was a veneer hiding the destructive person she was. I had begged her to take Evvie only for two years instead of taking both of us for one. I wanted something better for Evvie, and misread that Trista could be it. But, like a blessing in disguise, Evvie wouldn’t comply with the separation. She cried and begged me not to leave her the same way that I had begged my grandma. But unlike my grandma, I had a choice in the matter. I hope I never have to see her cry like that again.
Trista was a dangerous, raging alcoholic—who never recovered from the loss of her son or the pain that caused her and her husband to split. What little money she did have, she spent on booze, not our necessities. But, again, I was there to protect and provide for Evvie. A year later instead of two, we were thrilled to be back in the orphanage, eating, bathing, and dressing properly. We liked having our own beds again too. We were much too grown to be sharing, and even after a full year, I still felt uncomfortable sleeping in her deceased son’s bed.
“We were both fostered for a year when I was fourteen and Evvie was ten,” I tell Judge Sutton. “We were less taken care of there than we were in the orphanage. In that situation, I also gained another responsibility that I hadn’t had before, even back when we were living with our mother. I was responsible for protecting Evvie. Our guardian, Trista, drank nonstop and was very unstable. It was typical for her to slam and throw things around the house, sometimes directed at nothing in particular, and sometimes at us.”
“I assume you stepped in to protect your sister in these instances.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And what did that mean for you, Sydney?” It’s the first time Judge Sutton addressed me by my first name. She didn’t make eye contact when she asked the question, as if she didn’t want to fully let in what she knew I was going to say.
“It meant getting hurt.”
“Go on,” Judge Sutton says, peeking above the rim of her eyeglasses. She gives me a look to encourage and comfort me, but I don’t need it. I don’t have difficulty talking about this, but it seems people have difficulty hearing it. I know I’m going to receive an unwanted shower of sympathy from Meredith, who I’m guessing hasn’t heard this before, unless Evvie has told her.
“Mostly just slapped. Evvie too, but never more than once. I would push, hit, or kick Trista until her anger was diverted from Evvie and focused on me. Those instances usually meant getting pushed to the ground, held down, slapped, hit, or pulled around.”
“Were there any severe beatings that you experienced?” Judge Sutton prods. I had hoped the application would save me from telling this part orally. This is somewhat difficult for me to tell, mostly because of the way people react. It needs to be on the record, and it may help me get Evvie back.
“One night Trista barged into her son’s old room where we slept. She was intoxicated. She discovered that Evvie had replaced a picture of her and her son that rested on the shelf with a doll that she got from a neighbor girl. She yanked both of us out of the bed that we shared, screaming about being ungrateful and disrespecting her in her house. I told her the doll was mine. She punched me in the face and shoved Evvie down for crying. She dragged Evvie out of the room and blocked the door with a chair. She hit me repeatedly. Everywhere. When she stopped hitting me, my face was a mess of blood coming from my nose and mouth.”
Merideth winces as her sorrow turns from silent tears to an audible whimper. I continue, “Then she made me apologize to her dead son in the photograph. She made Evvie go get one of her bottles of alcohol. She taunted me, saying that it would help take my pain away. She plugged my nose and forced me to drink gulp after gulp of it. The police arrived without a call about a half an hour later, when a large amount of alcohol was detected in a minor’s system. Evvie spent the night back at the orphanage while I was treated in the hospital. The case was tried less than a week later. Short of a fine, nothing was done about what happened. You know how it is with what fosters can get away with,” I say to at Judge Sutton.
“I’m sure I don’t, Miss Harter,” she scornfully shoots at me. Whether she admits to it or not, she knows. I’m not accusing Judge Sutton herself of the mistrial, but am looking for verbal acknowledgement of what her eyes suggested when she asked if any of the beatings were ever severe. She is just as afraid of the county as anyone else. Afraid to stand up to the expectation
that fosters should never lose their guardianship right. Afraid, like the judge was back when I was fourteen, to let the record show that she found credibility in my testimony of the crime. Instead, she verbally refutes the well-known truth that judges never find fosters guilty of subtle or grotesque injustices.
As if to escape the tension in the tight court conference room, Judge Sutton orders a ten-minute recess in which none of us are allowed to talk to each other. She and Merideth step out, leaving me to myself in this uneasy room. I elect to lay my head down on the oversized metal table, and regret my sharpness with the judge, who will soon determine Evvie’s fate.