Reflections: People in our lives

It’s odd, but you never expect these calls when they come, which is invariably around 3 a.m. on a weeknight. You answer in a hushed voice that won’t wake your husband or your kids. As you draw the phone to your ear, you hear: “There is a victim in route to the children’s hospital via ambulance. Hispanic. Female. The victim’s mother has requested intervention.”

You tell the dispatcher that you will be there, and as you place the phone on the bedside table, it dawns on you that she said children’s hospital. You pull on sweats, tennis shoes without socks, run a comb through your hair. You don’t worry about makeup; you hover only at your children’s door for a moment. Then, like in a fire drill, you just go.

You hear her before you see her, on the crisis counselor’s couch. Her head lies in her mother’s lap, the tears dropping in a soft, staccato rhythm, punctuated only by sobs. You go to her because it is your job, but you go to her knowing full well that you will be of little help. You do what you can for her; you do what you can for now. She can’t reveal what happened; at eleven years old, she lacks the vocabulary to match the horrors at hand. You will have to piece her story together from her mother, the police, and the nurses. The mother runs her purple acrylic nails through her daughter’s hair, taking care not to touch the girl’s face that is green and yellow and still swelling. You notice the marks forming an arc over her eyebrows in the center of her forehead and think: steel-toed boots. You pull ten or so blank forms from a large manila envelope and begin to ask the questions, using only the appropriate and specific language so that a jury will some day find your documentation credible. You ask for a description of the perpetrator, and the mother stares at you, just past your left shoulder, and you see her struggle with the truth as she finally lets loose with: “It was my brother.”

Slowly and painfully the details begin to emerge, and as they do, you think it is a miracle that this girl survived this long. The girl’s uncle had been babysitting at night while the mother worked at the county jail. Yes, the mother eventually said, she knew he had been in jail before. He had been a Satanist and a drug-addict. Yes, she knew he wore a house arrest’ bracelet on one ankle. And yes, she knew he was a registered sex offender.

“But he became a Christian in prison,” she said. “He’s so good with the kids now.”

Later, at the court trial, you will discover along