Page 48 of And Still Her Voice
He treated me like a stupid little girl. I could feel Grandma itching to say something. I dropped my bag, but it was too late to slap my hand over my mouth and stop her. “Oh my, we are in the presence of a comedian, a regular Groucho Marx.”Grandma, no!“This must only be your day job,” Grandma added.
I smiled through clamped teeth as the clerk pushed his glasses to the top of his head studying me. “What’s he in for—this Mr. Smith? And what is your relationship to him?”
I should have been more prepared as I stood there staring into his rheumy eyes. I suddenly lost the courage to turn myself in for the murder of Dilbert Moss, especially to this clown of a cop. “I’m not sure. He’s just a friend.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Anna Jones.”
He jotted something into his notepad. “Levi Smith,” he muttered, looking up over his glasses. “Anna Jones. Sit down over there. I’ll let you know.”
I turned to see a line of people forming behind me. A giant clock on the wall read four-ten p.m. This sure was a busy place for this time of day. I wondered who and what they were all here for. I took a seat and tried to push the bloody image of Dilbert Moss out of my mind: the hole through his neck, his eyesthat would haunt me forever as he stared at me before he died. Maybe if I squeezed my eyes hard enough, I could shut out the memory—imagine it didn’t happen.
Someone shouted and I opened my eyes to see a woman pound a fist on the counter in front of the clerk. She had matted black hair and wore pink slippers. What sort of emergency had prompted her to forget her shoes? As she turned sideways, I saw a baby slung in her other arm. The baby had a bruise on his forehead. I trembled, and remembered waiting for my father and how my eye had been swollen shut and in the early stages of dark blue violet. No one at the station had asked about my puffy face. I wished they’d kept him there forever. Sure, he’d acted all sorry and was on his best behavior, promising it would never happen again. Still, I was afraid of him coming home, but I was even more afraid of upsetting Mom.
Damn it! Why did all of my memories have to be about them? And why did I think I needed to go home? I needed to make new memories, happy ones. But first, I needed to find River and come clean to the cops about the death of Dilbert Moss.
The baby cried, and the mother slapped her hand over his little face. The clerk stood up, clearly frustrated, and then the young woman shoved a bottle into the baby’s mouth. Poor little thing hadn’t yet learned that children were to be seen and not heard.
I looked around the station. Above a bulletin board spackled with pictures of missing children and already-chewed gum, a round clock read four-fifty p.m. as the sun disappeared behind the buildings. A scruffy dressed young person wearing a crown of dried leaves and little sticks walked in spewing Bible quotations about the “fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters.”
A short cop came rushing out from a back room to handcuff the man who wouldn’t shut up. “A second death all in the lake of fire and brimstone.” Another burly cop came out to help escort the screeching man away.
I remembered the time Dad saw the Virgin Mary in the backyard. What was it about crazy people that turned them to religion? He’d been arrested for public intoxication, never mind what he’d done in private intoxication. Mom had tried to convince the police that we couldn’t bring Dad home, that he was sick—suicidal—and he needed to go to the hospital. And so, after ushering him into a small room, they asked Mom to go in to ask some questions. She refused, pushing me forward. “Mija, go on. You talk.” So, all of a sudden, I was not to ‘shut up’ or mind my ‘own business,’ even though most of the time it was Grandma Phoebe pissing Dad off with her preaching. So, all of a sudden, it was okay for a kid to be heard.
By five-thirty, there’d been a shift change and a new clerk sat behind the desk. I got back in line to make sure I hadn’t been forgotten. When I reached the counter, the new clerk looked up. “There’s no record of Levi Smith,” he said. “What’s he in for again?”
“I think it was because—there was a—a man was stabbed over at Steinway’s,” I said, and the clerk’s eyebrow lifted. “That’s not in our jurisdiction.” He then picked up the phone and dialed. After a short conversation, he looked up and said, “He’s not at Northern. He might have been booked and transferred over to Central.” I felt the air in my heart leaking out and then I pushed my luck by asking him to please call there for me, too. He hesitated but then he did. River wasn’t at Central either.
I didn’t know what else to do, where else to try. I schlepped back to the station to wait for the bus leaving for Los Angeles. I’d be that proverbial dog returning home with my tail between my legs. I sat down on a hard bench and when I curled up to tryand get comfortable, I recalled another time I sat in a cold steel chair at a table across from Dad in a tiny, windowless interview room at a jail on the Tijuana border.
He’d been gone for months to we didn’t know where until the call came in from the Tijuana jail. He sounded crazy like he’d been having another of his manic episodes. The authorities would only release him to family. I drove Mom down to the border to try and convince them not to release him and to help us get him into the VA hospital. He needed help. A couple of male cops stood behind him as if he were a violent criminal, ready to pounce. Unshaven and gaunt, he was missing a front tooth. My tears wanted to escape the bars of my eyelashes. I felt powerless and hopeless; a good-for-nothing, bueno para nada. It hurt me to see my dad looking so desperate, and yet I took comfort knowing he was no longer a danger to anyone, including himself. He quieted for a few moments and as I backed away to leave, he looked at me and shouted, “When I get out, I’m putting your mother into the blender.” Within moments of making the threat, I was shepherded out of the room, and as I walked down the short hallway back to my mother, it shocked me to hear him pleading, “Anna, tell them to let me go! I’m sorry. Don’t leave me here.”
I hadn’t been able to help Dad then and now I couldn’t help River, either. Physically exhausted and emotionally drained, I cried myself to sleep in the cold hard truth of my failures.
I sprang up in darkness. I’d been dreaming that Mother Mary had answers for me about River. I knew I’d be waking everyone up back at the house in the Haight, but I didn’t care. I hurried over to the phone booth.
“Hello?” a welcome, familiar voice asked.
“River,” I screamed. “You’re back.”
“Girl, you okay?” he whispered.
“Me? How about you?”
“I’m good.” I could hear him smiling.
“I called earlier to say goodbye, but then—”
“You can tell me in person,” River said. “I’ve got the best news.”
What could be better than River being out of jail? Better news would be that the cops had dropped the case of Dilbert Moss. “What news?”
“It can wait ’til you get back.”
“But, that’s why I’m calling. I’m not coming back. I can’t get hold of my family and I’m worried. I’m going home.”
“Wait. Where are you?”
