Chapter 2
Still rattled from the deadly crash scene, the strange man with the scarf, and subsequent police report, Sharon was sitting opposite the Brewster family at 7:04 p.m. in a creaking office chair, trying to keep quiet while monitoring them.
She hoped her golden retriever didn’t mind a late night bath when she got home tonight. She had been busy this week and had forgotten the dog’s bath yesterday.
Cindy Brewster was holding two Barbie dolls very still in her lap. She had been on Sharon’s caseload for five months now. The foster girl had been as soft-spoken and even-tempered as an angel.
The mother clicked her tongue scornfully and complained, “Why aren’t you playing?”
The girl remained silent.
She tapped the girl on the back of the neck.
Cindy launched herself off the couch onto the orange carpeted floor of the visiting room, causing Barbie dolls to fly through the air. Her tortured screams wouldn’t stop.
Mary Brewster stood up, raised her right clenched fist behind her ear, and took two icy steps toward her daughter, crunching a bikini clad Barbie under her heeled foot.
Cindy rolled under the glass coffee table, arms and legs flailing about.
Unable to pursue her daughter, Mary looked at Sharon with a wiggling smile, which looked more like a worm stuck on a hook. She lowered her cocked fist, slowly unclenched it, but her body remained rigid.
Sharon felt a rush of inadequacy as the monitor of this family visit. How did things get so out of control so quickly? She rushed to the table, reached underneath, and pulled the girl into her arms, preventing the girl from hurting herself against the glass table or its metal legs.
Sharon glanced at the sole window in the room, which viewed the office hallway. Two agency guards busily conversed with another social worker. It gave her a sense of security knowing she could call upon them if the parents became violent.
“Don’t you see?” Cindy cried softly. “Can’t you see?”
“See what?” Sharon asked gently.
“Them.”
“Who?”
The girl’s head sank, blond bangs hanging into her face.
“The guards outside?”
She wouldn’t look up, but shook her head no.
Mary dropped back into the couch and scooted to her husband, Joe. Both of them grasped each other’s hands, eyes shifting uneasily around the room. From Joe’s knees all the way down to his dirty white tennis shoes blurred in nervous vibration.
Sharon whispered, “Your mother and father?”
The girl weakly replied, “Yes.”
Mary Brewster’s grip on her husband’s hand was so tight that her knuckles were bone white. Joe’s thick black mustache quivered on his upper lip. Their faces were ashen. To Sharon’s dismay, neither of them was making a move to help soothe their daughter.
She continued to hold the girl a while longer, helping to slow her diamond tears. Then Sharon reluctantly went back to her creaking chair. She had to. It was essential the parents learn to comfort their child themselves so they could repeat this in the seclusion of their home. Cindy would probably be going home at some point in the future, and Sharon would not be there to comfort Cindy or assist the parents in these types of situations.
Mary glared at her daughter sitting on the floor. Knots pulsed where her jaws connected. “What kind of foster home is she in? Just what’re they doing to my baby?”
“I assure you it’s a good—”
“The hell it is! Just look at her.”
Sharon felt herself shrink back and heard the chair creaking in response. She tried to take a deep breath to gather her strength, but it came only in quivers. She wondered how a nine-year-old girl would feel against this woman’s wrath.
“The state steals my kid and places her somewhere I don’t know about, and I’m supposed to be happy!” Her head rolled on her shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know what set her off, Mary, but I know she’s being treated well in her foster home. Maybe if you try to comfort her …”
The woman appeared horrified. A few moments of uncomfortable silence passed.
Joe patted Mary’s leg, snorted and stood. He tentatively walked towards his daughter. He paused six feet from her by two plastic shelves of colorful toys and looked at Sharon, appearing to ascertain whether she was serious.
She nodded to him for encouragement.
Cindy’s back was to Joe so that she couldn’t see him coming.
He took another step and stopped. With a tremulous voice, he said, “It’s okay, baby-doll. Everything’s all right.”
She jerked, smacking her head against a table leg and screeched. She threw herself at the wall, clawing at the paint trying to get further away from him. He took another step.
Sharon wanted to hug the girl again. She hated that the court was requiring these visits so soon.
Joe stretched his arm to reach Cindy’s shoulder. As soon as his first finger touched her, she sprang from the wall and crashed into his leg, making him lose balance and fall against the bookshelf, spilling five Dr. Seuss books, while the girl scampered to Sharon and wrapped her arms and legs around Sharon’s right leg. “Make them go away!”
That was it.
Even though only ten minutes had passed, Sharon had to stop this. She mustn’t allow the girl to be psychologically harmed, and this visit appeared to be worsening her emotional state. Perhaps Cindy was remembering the trauma she had suffered by her parents and was regressing. “Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, we are going to have to end the visit.”
“But we just began it,” Mary objected from the couch.
“Honey,” whined Joe, “don’t argue with the social worker.”
“I’m not arguing!” she spat with such venom that he flinched from across the room. “I just want to get what we’re entitled.”
Sharon could feel the girl’s arms and legs tighten around her leg, cutting the circulation and causing her foot to deaden. “We need to end the visit now.”
The mother sprang up from the couch. “But the visit is supposed to last an hour as ordered by the court.”
“I was delegated,” she asserted, almost losing her voice, “the monitor of this visit.”
As Mary walked to them, the girl whirled around Sharon’s leg to the rear, but didn’t let go. Mary’s stale breath smacked Sharon’s face. Her upper lip had the beginnings of a mustache, black like the hair on her head. She fixed both hands on her hips and used her two-inch height advantage to look down at Sharon. “But I’m entitled to my time with my child.”
Sharon had dealt with her share of difficult parents over the years, but something was different about these two. It was the way they made her feel, like she was nothing, worthless. She tried to sound confident. “We all signed a contract outlining the rules. You need to respect my decision.”
Mary exhaled, sending decaying meat stench over Sharon’s face. “To hell with your damn papers.” She could see the woman’s carotid arteries pulsing, blushing the cheeks. Lightning red veins broke through the whites of the eyes to the areolas of gray speckled black.
Joe came up behind his wife and rested his hand on her arm, perhaps more to hold her back than comfort her. “Okay, honey. Let’s not do anything rash here.”
Mary turned and almost slapped him, but at the last second checked herself. She plodded back to the couch, body stiff as a board, and retrieved her purse. She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose so hard some particles flew out. With the tissue still in hand, she walked to Cindy. “At least let me say goodbye to my daughter.” And without waiting for a reply, Mary squatted and grabbed Cindy’s back.
The girl screamed, tore away, and ran straight at the wall, steering away at the last second, running along it, rounding the corner, bumping toys off a shelf, stumbling into a plastic child’s chair.
“I will call security,” Sharon exclaimed, “if you do not leave now.”
The mother looked perturbed, but more satisfied with herself as though sending the girl into another fit was pleasurable. She took her husband by the arm, and they walked out the room.
Cindy was collapsed beside a plastic chair, hundreds of spilled Lego blocks, and three stuffed animals. Sharon felt horrible for her.
She gently lifted Cindy to sit and asked, “What happened?”
The girl continued to sob.
“Please, you have to talk to me or I can’t help. That’s what I’m here for.”
After a few moments, she cried, “I told you. They … my parents—” She gagged.
“I know they used to beat you, but that’s not going to happen again. You’re safe at your foster home until your parents get better.”
“They won’t get better. They never will!”
“Oh, sweetie, I know they’re still troubled, but we’re working with them to help them.”
“They won’t change. They’re evil.” Cindy began breathing faster, her blue eyes jerking about in their sockets.
It was hard for Sharon to continue defending the Brewsters. She didn’t like doing it, and it felt wrong. The mother had hit Cindy’s head with a hammer on the scalp so that no bruise would be seen. But the following day at school, her head began bleeding again, dripping down her neck, drawing the teacher’s attention. This led to DCFS removing her from the home. But it was part of Sharon’s job to prepare the girl for eventually returning. Whether Sharon liked it or not, family reunification was the direction the case was heading. So she said, “I understand they were terrible to you, but they’ve shown the court they’re trying. They’ve gone to parenting classes, they began individual and couple therapy, and they’re willing to visit you.”
Tears pulled down the girl’s cheeks. “They don’t care. They only want me back to hurt me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You don’t see them the way I see them.” She looked deep into Sharon’s eyes with a desperate pleading that shook her soul.
Sharon had to look away. She began picking up the spilled Lego blocks to put them back into the box. Without conviction, she said, “Maybe they aren’t ready now to have you back, but when they are, you might see them differently.”
The girl didn’t reply.
Putting the Lego box down, Sharon looked back at the girl.
Cindy had turned to the wall where two framed pictures hung. One was an unimpressive watercolor of a potted plant. The other was a large oil painting of an angel in bright white light hovering just behind and above a woman in rich velvet, purple robes sitting beside a black lake. The sky above held dark clouds and rain, brightened only by several bolts of lightening—all of which the angel seemed to protect the woman from. Cindy’s eyes locked onto this painting like a vice. “Do you believe in angels?” she asked.
“Angels? Like souls that watch over us?”
“Yes. Protect us.”
“Well ... I do believe that people watch over us.”
Without looking away from the oil painting, Cindy grabbed a white stuffed bear from the floor and hugged it fiercely. “I hope angels are real. I really do. I pray with all my heart.”
Sharon took a couple of tissues from the box on the table and wiped the girl’s face. “Come on. Let’s get ready. Your foster mother will be back any minute.”
She continued to hug the bear and stare at the painting. “There has to be angels. There just has to be. Someone has to be there.”