Young Wives (31 page)

Jada had to bend to look into the car. A light-skinned black woman, her hair pulled back tightly and hanging behind her in braids, looked through the glass at her, eyes already narrowed in assessment. Jada decided not to smile. Angie Romazzano had explained how important this meeting was, not that Jada needed that reminder, but Jada felt that kissing-up would only make things worse. Neither of them moved. Finally Jada raised her brows and, reluctantly it seemed, the woman got out of the car. She was short and dumpy.

She looked up at Jada and held her hand out. “I’m Mrs. Elroy,” she announced in a voice that made it clear she was from the islands, but which ones? “Department of Social Services,” the woman continued. “You must be Jada Jackson.”

Jada nodded, placing the light accent and disturbed to hear the woman’s Jamaican lilt. It was funny about islanders. You would think that people from the Caribbean would feel they had something in common, but they usually didn’t. Jada decided immediately it was best to keep her background as quiet as she could.

“It’s raw out here,” she said. “Shall we go into the house?”

“Well, you’d have to invite me in, raw or not,” Mrs. Elroy said. “I’m state-appointed to inspect the house.”

As if she didn’t know, Jada thought bitterly. It was going to be one of those. Jada knew she would have to stand it, but she almost couldn’t bear the idea. “Well, let’s go in the kitchen door,” she said as brightly as she could manage. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee or tea.”

“I don’t drink while I’m on duty,” Mrs. Elroy said, as if she were some kind of police officer and Jada had offered her a double malt whiskey. They entered the kitchen and Jada took off her coat, hanging it on one of the hooks beside the door. She held out her hand for Mrs. Elroy’s coat, but the woman shook her head until her braids wiggle-waggled. She didn’t put her bag down, nor her briefcase.

“Why don’t we start with an examination of the house,” she said. “Then we can move on to the interview.”

Jada just nodded. She’d been up half the night straightening, dusting, and vacuuming, but she knew already that it was most unlikely her housekeeping would measure up.

Mrs. Elroy took copious notes as she toured the house. Jada was very tempted to look over the short woman’s shoulder at the clipboard she held, but knew it was best not to try. She wanted to explain about the plywood floor in the kitchen, the boarded window in the hall, and the tiles left stacked but not installed in both bathrooms.
See how lazy he is
? she wanted to ask.
See how he never put up my bookshelves or finished my kitchen floor
? But Jada kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Elroy—in between note taking—asked only a few questions about the house and the children’s rooms, then led Jada back downstairs as if it were her house and Jada was an unwelcome guest. Jada silently took a deep breath and decided that she simply had to turn this thing around.

She excused herself for a moment and took another half of the little orange pills that Michelle had given her. She could do it, she told herself, and returned to ask Mrs. Elroy if she would like to sit in the living room; she almost repeated her offer of a drink, but stopped in time. Mrs. Elroy merely shook her head again and moved to one of the dining room chairs—the one at the head of the table.

“We’ll sit here,” she said, making it clear who was, and was going to stay, the boss.

Jada took the seat beside her. She noticed her hands had started fluttering again, so she pulled the chair as close to the table as she could and tried her best to smile at the social worker. Mrs. Elroy, however, didn’t look up. She was busy sorting through some papers and finally pulled a printed sheet out of a file and placed it on top of her note-taking clipboard.

“I have some basic questions I need you to answer,” she said, as if Jada didn’t know that either. The woman must have been a first-grade teacher at some time in her life. That, or a passive-aggressive sadist in a house of pain. Madame Elroy, Queen of Discipline. “After that, I will have some more specific ones, ones relating both to the current situation of the children and to your fitness in the past.”

Fitness? Jada said a silent prayer for strength and merely nodded. With a woman like this, it was best to be as submissive as she could manage. Jada wasn’t good at submissive, but to save her children she’d do whatever it took.

They went fairly speedily through a lot of the basic information—full names, birth dates, school and grades, as well as information about Jada herself: her education, her work history, her salary. Mrs. Elroy raised her brows when Jada named her annual compensation. Instead of being proud of what she had achieved, for some reason Jada felt like hanging her head. She also wondered what Mrs. Elroy made, and knew it was significantly less. How angry was she about that?

“So, Mrs. Jackson, you began your career as a teller when the children were how old?” Mrs. Elroy asked.

Jada told her. “And of course, I wasn’t even pregnant yet with Sherrilee,” she added.

“And what hours were you working on your business career while your older two were at school and home without you?”

Jada didn’t like the way the question was phrased. “Mrs. Elroy, I
had
to work. It wasn’t a career. It was a minimum-paying job. I didn’t want it. But my husband wasn’t bringing in a dime. We were in debt. We had maxed out our MasterCard on groceries. I was afraid we might lose the house. It wasn’t that I
wanted
to work. I just
had
to work.”

Mrs. Elroy didn’t take a single note. “And you
had
to move up from teller to branch manager?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s just stick to the questions, to my key questions, shall we?”

Jada wanted to do more than talk back. She wanted to slap the woman up-side her head. She was sure her hands would stop shaking if she did that. But this was too important to mess up.

“I only worked until three o’clock when I was a teller,” Jada said. “After my promotion to head teller, I had to work a little later, but Clinton was always home.” Jada paused for a moment. She didn’t want to make it sound as if Clinton had been a house-husband. “He never did much with them, but at least the children were being supervised. And I took the promotion because the extra money was so important. Our tax returns would prove that.”

“So when did you get your
next
promotion?” the woman asked, but to Jada it sounded more like “When did you get your next conviction?”

Jada went through her job history calmly, though she felt anything but calm herself. She was careful not to sound as if she were bragging. When Jada finished, Mrs. Elroy summarized it. “So in the last two years, despite your pregnancy and after the birth of your third child, you were working fifty to sixty hours a week.” Jada had to nod. It did sound like a conviction.

“
And
doing the cooking and most of the grocery shopping and
all
of the cleaning,” Jada added. “
I
was the one who supervised the children’s homework.
I
supervised their television—or lack of it. I attended the parent-teacher conferences. I was the responsible parent.”

Mrs. Elroy didn’t take any notes and didn’t respond to that. “With all of the difficulties you seemed already to be having,” she said, “why did you have a third child—one you couldn’t possibly be home to raise?”

Jada drew her breath in and hoped the woman hadn’t heard her gasp. Was it legal for the social worker to pry like this? Wasn’t that a question too much like “When did you stop beating your wife?” How could she—
why
would she—possibly explain about the way she and Clinton had avoided sex until that New Year’s night? That she had been drunk. That she had agonized about having the baby, once she knew about the pregnancy. That, without telling Clinton, she’d made an appointment for an abortion. And that she hadn’t shown up. Nor had she ever—even when she was exhausted from night feedings and returning to work—ever regretted her decision. Sherrilee was an easy, loving, happy baby. She felt like a reward to Jada. What had Clinton already told her to poison the woman’s mind? Jada, who never cried, felt her eyes fill with tears.

“I love my baby,” she told Mrs. Elroy. “I love all my babies. And if you talk to them, you’ll know that they love me. I’ve been a good mother. They need me.”

“I
have
spoken to them, Mrs. Jackson, as well as their baby-sitter. I know how to do my job. And I have also spoken to your husband and your mother-in-law. I know your children are living in inadequate space, while you have seven empty rooms around you.”

“But I want them here. I
want
them in these rooms.”

“But you won’t give up the house to them and your husband.”

“What?” Jada imagined all the poison that Clinton, her mother-in-law, and God knows who else had poured into this woman’s head. “Why shouldn’t they be here with me?” Jada asked.

“Is it true that you consort with a known drug pusher? And that you let your children visit their home?”

“No, it’s not true. My best friend has kids almost the ages of my children. They’ve been friends for years. Recently her husband was indicted—
not
convicted—for drugs. Anyway, my children have not seen them since he was indicted. And I believe he’s innocent. And his wife, my girlfriend, certainly is.”

“You yourself don’t take drugs?” Mrs. Elroy asked.

“What?” Jada questioned. “Of course not.”

“You wouldn’t mind submitting to a urine analysis, would you?” Mrs. Elroy continued.

“Yes! I mean, no.” Jada still didn’t know what she meant: yes, she would mind, or no, she wouldn’t submit—or yes, she would? She was too shocked by the question to say anything else except, “Is that what this is about? Is that what Clinton told you? That I’m a drug addict?”

“I’ll do the questioning, Mrs. Jackson. So, you will submit a urine specimen.”

“Yes. I guess so.”

Mrs. Elroy checked a box on her form and nodded her head. “Also how long have you been under psychiatric care?”

“Psychiatric care?” Jada echoed. “Never.”

“You
never
consulted a psychiatrist?”

Jada stopped and thought Clinton couldn’t be saying all this. It was madness. It was so, so very mean—and clever. “I once went to a counselor—I think he was a psychologist—and he was a
marriage
counselor. It was years ago. I wanted Clinton to come. He wouldn’t.” Jada tried not to sound defensive, as if she’d been caught in a lie. “But I only went to the man two or three times, until it became clear that Clinton wouldn’t participate.”

Mrs. Elroy raised her bushy brows and made another note. She asked for the counselor’s name and address. “I don’t remember,” Jada admitted. “It was years ago.”

“So you refuse to give me his name.”

“I don’t remember,” Jada repeated. “But I’ll look for it.”

“Fine,” Mrs. Elroy said. Then she bent over, went into her canvas tote, and pulled out a small plastic container in a Ziploc bag. Calmly she handed it to Jada. “Just write your name on the side of the receptacle. Sign this release, fill the specimen jar, and return this to me in the bag, please.”

“Now?” Jada asked, totally at a loss.

“No time like the present,” Mrs. Elroy said, and rose. Jada reluctantly took the bag and stood up. She started to move out of the dining room.

“Where are you going?” Mrs. Elroy asked, her voice sharp.

“To the bathroom.”

“That’s not the way we do this. Which bathroom will you be using?”

“I guess the one off the kitchen,” Jada said, now mystified.

“I’ll have to tape the faucet,” Mrs. Elroy told her, and took out a roll of bandage adhesive along with scissors. She followed Jada through the kitchen. Jada stopped for a moment to fix the paper towels. “Don’t touch anything,” Mrs. Elroy said sharply. “Not until we’re finished.”

She went into the bathroom first, and Jada watched from the doorway as she checked the room and the medicine cabinet, then taped the faucet and checked the toilet. “Please don’t flush until you’ve returned the bag to me. Please don’t touch anything until after you’ve capped the plastic bottle and sealed the bag.”

Jada looked directly at the woman. “Why don’t you just stay in her with me until I’m finished,” she said bitterly.

“That won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Elroy told her. She passed Jada and waited while Jada went into the bathroom. Mrs. Elroy shut the door. It was only then that Jada thought about the Xanax that she had taken. My God, she thought, would that show up in her urine? And what did it show up
as
? She didn’t know exactly what it was, and she sure didn’t have a prescription for it. Did that make it illegal? She could imagine herself explaining to Mrs. Elroy, or to some judge, that her girlfriend, the one whose husband was accused of being a drug lord, had given her pills. Jada’s hands began shaking so badly that the bag rattled, sounding as if she’d set a small crackling fire in her own lavatory. “I’m right outside the door,” Mrs. Elroy said. It was all too much. Way too much.

Jada opened the door and handed the unopened bag to Mrs. Elroy.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I’m just too nervous.”

“I can wait,” Mrs. Elroy said, and smiled for the first time since she’d arrived.

“No, you can’t,” Jada told her. “Our meeting is finished.”

“I think I really fucked up,” Jada said to Angie Romazzano. She’d gotten her on the phone immediately after that horror left the house.

“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think,” the lawyer said. “I mean, you’re bound to feel uncomfortable in these circumstances. Mrs. Jackson—Jada—you’re a good mom and we can document that.”

“He said, I
think
he said, that Tonya Green is a babysitter. And she believes it. Can
you
believe it?”

“Well, he wouldn’t be the first man to be sleeping with his baby-sitter,” Angie said. “Baby-sitters, best friends, sisters. Please, don’t get too upset. We’ll get everything in deposition that we need.”

“But…but there was the drug test,” Jada said, and her hands began to shake again. They shook so badly, the receiver of the phone actually bumped against one of her teeth.