I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate (20 page)

A few hours later I walked into a three-bedroom ranch house in a treeless new development. Cory came to the door, grinning. “Want to see my new pad?”

A slender woman was making ice tea in the kitchen, and without asking, poured a tall glass for me. “That’s Patty,” Cory said, then pointed out a stout woman on the couch, who had a baby in her arms. “And that’s Birdie. They’re my new mothers.” He lifted a blanket on the floor. “That’s Manuel. He’s blind.” My breath caught as I looked at a boy curled in the fetal position with his head on a plastic tape recorder. He was humming to the music accompanied by a gurgling noise that sounded like water running.

“Manuel needs suction,” Birdie called, “and I don’t want to put Sheila down.”

“Be right there,” Patty said as she rinsed her hands. Wheeling a medical suction pump over to Manuel, she stuck a tube into his tracheotomy opening and sucked mucus into a container. Then she gave him a kiss on the cheek and turned over the tape in the recorder.

“Cory,” I began awkwardly, “I realize you didn’t want to leave the MacDougals.”

“It was my fault. I broke the rules and she threw me out.”

Just then the baby startled and began to scream. Birdie altered the baby’s position so she could rub her back. “Sheila’s a cocaine baby and has fits like this every twenty minutes or so. My job is to sit here and cuddle her. Not bad, eh?” She gave me a broad smile that revealed tobacco-stained teeth. “We specialize in kids with medical problems.”

“Cory doesn’t have any that I know of.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. He just came from the MacDougals, right?” I nodded. “Well, this won’t be the first time we’ve picked up the pieces from there, will it, Patty?”

“You’ve had other kids from that home?”

“Sure. They always come in like zombies, but in a few days they bounce right back, right, Birdie?”

Patty had her car keys in hand. “Gotta go get the kids at the bus stop. Be right back.”

Realizing my car blocked the driveway, I reached for my purse, and took out my keys. Suddenly I had an idea. “Cory, would you mind moving my car out of the way?”

Cory’s eyes almost popped out. “Me?”

“Do you mind?” All he would have to do was put the Thunderbird in reverse and back in into the next lot, a vacant field, then pull it up beside the garage. How much damage could he do? But my method was more deliberate. I wanted Cory to know that I trusted him.

When he was outside, Birdie said, “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine here. Tomorrow he has checkups at the medical and dental clinic and we’ve got him on the list for the county mental health center.”

“But he’s only been here one night.”

“What’s the big deal? I just sit here and make phone calls all day. Patty does the running around.” Manuel made a choking sound. Birdie handed me the baby and turned on the suction.

“Nice car!” Cory came in and handed me the keys. “You know that I’m seeing Alicia this weekend, don’t you?”

“You spoke to her?”

“Sure, Patty told me to call her as soon as I got here so she would know where I was. It’s still long-distance, but I can call her anytime after six in the evening and talk for ten minutes.”

A knot in my chest began to loosen. I looked around this home that was more cluttered and much less substantial than the MacDougal farm, down at the twitching baby in my arms, across at Manuel’s erratic mewing, and for the first time, thought: Cory is going to be just fine.

One of my first forays to test the limits of a guardian’s scope came with my next meeting with Alicia. We had planned to go out to dinner together and do some shopping with her Christmas money. As soon as we were seated in the Mexican restaurant at the mall munching corn chips and guacamole, Alicia began to unload her complaints. The Levy foster home was so far from her old school that she never saw her best friend, Dawn. Ruth wouldn’t allow an overnight at Dawn’s because it was against foster care rules. Then Alicia became more animated as she told me about a new boyfriend, who meant more to her than “anything in the world.” They were making plans to give each other rings at Easter. As I watched her varied expressions, I tried to imagine what might become of her.

Just a few weeks past her fifteenth birthday, Alicia had her whole life in front of her. From her records I knew she had academic potential but was a mediocre student. Her fervor was reserved for attracting boys, but if she could learn to find satisfaction in accomplishing something through school or work, perhaps she would realize she didn’t need a man to validate her self-worth. On the other hand, the more common scenario of using a sexual liaison to get out of foster care—either by dropping out of school or getting pregnant—seemed likely. Worse, Alicia easily could fall for any man who showed her any attention, one who might use her, abuse her, turn her onto drugs, infect her with AIDS, or otherwise ruin her chances for a future with more possibilities. I knew she liked animals and computers, music and movies, children and photography, old boats and cars. I could see her working in a veterinary hospital (her stated choice) or doing accounting on a computer (she did well in math) or singing in a church choir, or restoring automobiles. Rapidly her image metamorphosed from her schoolgirl blouse to a white lab coat to a smart business suit to a pair of overalls.

As she babbled on, though, I noticed that the thick coating of makeup made her skin into something older, harsher. Her blouse was unbuttoned to reveal the tops of her breasts overfilling a lacy bra. When a guy in tight pants swaggered by, Alicia tossed her head, batted her eyes, and thrust her shoulder forward provocatively. Though I tried to block them, Alicia’s other possibilities loomed up in a series of images of her modeling for a sleazy photographer, hanging out in a seedy bar, selling her body on a street corner, wasting away in a hospice. I blinked back tears and tried to follow her patter without prejudice. Then Alicia asked a question that abruptly brought the present into focus.

“Do you think you could?”

“Could what?” I said, not certain I had heard her right.

“Could you find my missing mother?”

“I don’t know …,” I began slowly. “It might not be something that guardians are supposed to do. Also, nobody has heard from her for at least ten years.”

“That’s not true.”

“What do you mean?” I asked shakily.

“When I was in fifth grade, she drove up to the house. My father took the rifle from the wall and ran outside waving it. I heard her pleading to see us. My father called her a whore and warned her that if she ever came around again, she’d regret it. When she tried to get out of the car, he cocked the hammer. Rich was there then, he saw it too. He started to run out to stop Dad, but Dad pointed the gun at Rich and forced him back in the house. My mother gave up, got back in the car, and started to leave. When she passed by the front of the house, I saw her real close. She was crying so hard her face was shining.” Alicia leaned forward, knocking her soda cup forward. We both ignored the spill. “That means she wanted to see us … and that she really loved us. Only Dad wouldn’t let her and she was scared of him. Everyone was scared of him.” Alicia trembled, not with sadness, but rage.

Where was Tammy? What if she were in jail, or worse, dead? What if she was a prostitute or an addict? Wasn’t it better for Alicia to have some fond memories than to be slapped with the truth? No, I decided that only the truth would clear up her fantasies.

Alicia was waiting for my response, and when I did not answer at once, she lashed out at me. “You won’t help me either! I asked Mitzi and she said she didn’t have anything in the file and that was that. So what am I supposed to do? Forget I ever had a mother?”

“No, Alicia, no,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “You need to know what happened to her. I just am not sure how to do it. I’ve never tried to find a missing person before, so I don’t know how difficult it might be. Also, you might learn some things you’d rather not have known.”

“Like what?” Alicia asked challengingly.

I stated my fears about her mother turning out to be a disappointment. “Okay, that’s a possibility,” she admitted. “It’s also possible that Rich is right. He believes she died in an accident. I don’t know where he got that from, but if it is true, I’d want to know. It must be in the records somewhere, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so.”

“But isn’t there also a chance that she is alive and that she does still love me and wants me? I’m sure she doesn’t know where I am. Maybe she doesn’t know what happened with my father. Now that he’s out of the picture, maybe she’ll take me back.”

My chest expanded with the same immense hopes. “Let’s go home and talk to Ruth about this. I want her to know what we are doing because she might feel a little jealous.”

“Why should she do that?”

“Because she loves you, Ally-Oop, that’s why!”

Ruth was very quiet. She heard my explanation, then asked Alicia a few questions. Then she turned to me. “I was adopted by an aunt after my mother died, but I always wanted to find my father. When I was a little older than Alicia, I learned that they had known all along where he was. I became furious because I felt they had kept him from me all those years. My grandmother understood and took me to meet him.” Ruth turned to the wall of photographic portraits in her living room and waited a few seconds to compose herself. “I met him, and I am not sorry I did, but he was—to say the least—a disappointment. A real loser.”

“But you found some answers …” I said.

“Yes, so I understand why Alicia wants to do this.”

“There’s a good chance that we’ll never find her,” I added.

“But if nobody tries, I’ll never find her anyway,” Alicia said, her eyes staring off in the distance.

Nancy approved the plan to try to locate Tammy Stevenson. “As long as you think it is in the children’s best interests” was her only caveat.

I asked Lillian the best way to proceed.

“Start with the police records on every member of the family,” she suggested.

My court order gave me access to the criminal records of everyone connected with these children, but since I already had a substantial file on Red Stevenson I had not yet seen any reason to track any others down. I went to the sheriffs records department, handed over copies of my court orders on both the criminal and dependency cases, my identification card as a Guardian ad Litem, my driver’s license as a picture ID, and asked for anything pertaining to Richard Leroy Stevenson, Sr., Red Stevenson, Richard Leroy Hamburg, Red Hamburg, Jeremiah Stevenson, Tammy Stevenson, and Tammy Hamburg. My court order had another name I had not noticed at first: Sunny Rhodes. The night before I had called Alicia and asked if she knew that person.

“Oh, that was my stepsister, the one that had to move out when my father messed with her.”

So I added that name to my list, just in case there had been a complaint filed in that case.

The clerk mumbled something about it being a long list and it might “take some time.” I agreed to wait. Ten minutes later she unlocked the door to her office. “Some of these files are marked confidential. I don’t want you standing around reading them in the hallway. Come in, and I’ll give you an empty desk and start bringing you files.”

And bring them she did. Handwritten police reports, arrest sheets, investigative files, and more. The first pages referred to Red Stevenson’s arrest for molesting his daughter, but a second set looked almost the same except that the name of the victim was Dawn Leigh Pruitt. Dawn! Alicia’s best friend? There was a doctor’s report on Dawn’s gynecological examination that indicated penetration had taken place. Next there was also a report from a Mrs. Smiley about the suspected abuse of Alicia. I took down that name and phone number. I presumed that she was the person who had initially called the abuse hotline about Alicia’s molestation. Since her name was supposedly off-the-record, I was surprised to uncover it in the police paperwork, but I wrote it down anyway, and later would be glad that I had.

Farther down in the paperwork there was a complaint from the previous summer accusing Red of the “sexual maltreatment of Cindy, Hallie, and Katie Curry.” The report went on to describe how the girls traveled with Alicia Stevenson on the school bus and got off at the same stop. They were friends and sometimes they stayed overnight at the Stevensons’ house. Cindy, the oldest, reported that Mr. Stevenson forced her into a room and she had to struggle to get away. Concerned he was going to do something “nasty” to her, she spent the rest of the night on the front seat of his pickup truck with the doors locked. A worker in the groves reported seeing Red Stevenson playing tag with Hallie, and when he caught her, “he slipped his hands under the waistband of her shorts.” Another time Mr. Stevenson held Hallie upside down and wouldn’t put her down until she agreed to something. When the grove worker heard her screams, he came into view, and Red let her go. The youngest, Katie, reported that Mr. Stevenson liked to rub her in “funny” places. Although an official abuse report was filed by Mr. Curry, with the HRS investigation concluding the allegations were “indicated,” no legal action seemed to have been taken.

The next report was for a burglary by Richard Leroy Stevenson the previous January. After I read the summary, describing the perpetrator as “emotionally disturbed,” I realized this was a charge against Rich Jr. and not his father, although the incident had not shown up in his HRS file. I asked the clerk to search under Cory’s and Alicia’s names and in a few minutes she located the charges against Cory for stealing a tractor and vandalizing a field of watermelons. He had been given a sentence of a hundred hours of community service but had not completed any of them. Thankfully, Alicia had no criminal file of her own.

The clerk kept reappearing with additional assault reports against Mr. Stevenson, some as much as fifteen years old. At the bottom of the pile were incidents filed under the name of Hamburg. I leafed through them rapidly and there she was: Tamara Felice Stevenson Hamburg. I copied down her date of birth and a Social Security number, then noted a box that listed an FBI number.