Daughter's Keeper (15 page)

“Your honor, Amanda Steele on behalf of the United States. The government will defer to pretrial services, but doesn't feel that bail is appropriate, given the defendant's criminal history and the seriousness of the charges.”

Izaya started to speak, obviously angry, but the judge raised his hand. “Let's hear from pretrial services.”

Miss Watts-Thompson leapt to her feet. “Good morning, your honor. I've made a very thorough investigation of this case, and my recommendation is in accordance with Miss Steele's view. I might have suggested a secured surety bond, however Miss Goodman's mother told me quite certainly that she is not comfortable with using her home as security.”

Elaine was astonished. She had been sure that the flirtatious little woman would do whatever Izaya asked. She flushed angrily at the mischaracterization of her statements. Olivia turned her head to her mother, and Elaine was horrified to see how shocked she looked, the tears spilling from her eyes. Elaine shook her head, silenced by the enforced hush of the courtroom but wanting desperately to explain to Olivia, and to the entire court, that she
was
willing to help her daughter. Olivia turned away.

The pretrial services officer continued, “This individual has a history of political agitation and criminal conduct. She's been arrested on numerous occasions and has been found guilty of two misdemeanors. Her mother informed me that she is engaging in illegal union-organizing conduct here in Oakland.” Elaine flushed, horrified at the woman's words. She averted her eyes from Olivia's anguished stare. The woman continued, “Her employers tell me that this behavior has prompted them to consider terminating her. Her ties to the community are tenuous—she has only recently returned from extended travels in Mexico. It is my firm belief that should she be released she would immediately go underground, using her political connections to engineer an escape to Mexico or even Cuba.”

“Cuba? Oh, for God's sake,” Izaya interjected. “This is ridiculous, your honor. Olivia Goodman isn't a member of the Weather Underground. She's a mixed-up kid with a lousy boyfriend. I don't know what her mother is talking about, but despite what Cru—Miss Watts-Thompson seems to imagine, labor organizing is not illegal. It is, in fact, a time-honored American tradition. Moreover, none of those baseless allegations have any bearing on…”

“Counsel,” the judge interrupted, “you will have your time to respond. Miss Watts-Thompson, have you anything further?”

“No, that's all, Judge,” she said with a flutter of her sticky eyelashes.

“Is it in fact the case that the mother is unwilling to post bond?”

Elaine rose to her feet in protest, but sat down again under the stern eye of the courtroom deputy.

Miss Watts-Thompson said, “The mother is willing to sign for her daughter, however she does not feel sufficiently confident to put up her house as surety.”

Izaya started to object, but the judge hushed him with a raised hand. “Well, if her own mother doesn't trust her, I can't imagine why I should.”

Elaine could bear it no longer. She stood up and walked forward. She cleared her throat nervously. Before she could speak, she heard Izaya's voice. “Olivia's mother is perfectly willing to act as a surety for her daughter, your honor. The only problem is the house. She is in the process of getting a second mortgage in order to buy a vacation home. The surety bond would preclude that.”

“Ah. A vacation home,” the judge said, his eyebrows raised.

By now, Elaine stood at the little wooden gate directly behind the podium. Olivia's back was rigid, and she refused to look at her mother.

“Excuse me,” Elaine whispered, tugging on Izaya's jacket.

“Are you Miss Goodman's mother?” the judge asked.

Elaine looked up. Her throat and mouth felt dry and thick. “Yes,” she croaked.

“Is this true? Are you unwilling to use your home as security for your daughter's release?”

“No, sir. I mean, no, it's not true. I didn't realize…I mean, yes, I'll put up my house.”

Izaya, looking over his shoulder, smiled at her.

“Your honor,” he said, “it's my impression that Mrs. Goodman was simply not aware of the seriousness of this case. She was under the impression that a simple signature would be enough. Now that she understands what's going on, it appears that she's willing to act as a surety and use her home as security.”

The judge looked at Miss Watts-Thompson, his eyebrows raised.

The little woman's breast heaved with indignation, and she shot Elaine a dirty look. “I fully explained all this to the mother, and she wasn't interested.”

“Well, she seems to be interested now,” said the judge. “Does that influence your recommendation?”

She shook her head, her bouffant trembling, one of the clips holding it perilously close to falling out. “Not at all. Not at all. There's still the criminal history, the lack of ties to the community.”

The judge looked back at Izaya who said, “Olivia was a student activist. A
non-violent
student activist. This supposed criminal history consists of getting arrested for sitting in at the dean's office. Hugging trees. She's lived her entire life in Berkeley and Oakland. Her mother lives here. What more ties to the community could Miss Watts-Thompson possibly require?”

“If I might, your honor?” the prosecutor spoke in a quiet, reasonable voice.

“By all means, Ms. Steele,” the judge said.

“The government might be satisfied with a surety bond secured by Mrs. Goodman's house if there were some further limitations placed on the defendant to ensure her compliance with the requirements of pretrial services and her presence in court.”

“Continue.”

“We might consider a bond if the defendant were compelled to reside with her mother.”

“Would that be possible, Mrs. Goodman?” the judge asked.

Elaine looked away from the judge, down at her hands knotted in front of her. “Yes,” she whispered, and then, embarrassed at the tentative sound of her voice, she said it again, more firmly. “Yes, of course Olivia can live with me.”

“If the court is considering bond against the specific recommendation of pretrial services,” said Miss Watts-Thompson, her voice tight with anger, “we ask that at the very least the defendant be placed in an inpatient drug-treatment facility.”

“That's absurd, your honor,” Izaya interjected, shaking his head, “There's no reason whatsoever to think Miss Goodman is addicted to drugs.”

“She's charged with drug dealing!” said Miss Watts-Thompson.

“First of all, she's been
charged
, not found guilty, and second of all, that doesn't mean she's a drug user.”

The prosecutor's voice was again calm and reasonable, and somehow more dangerous for all that. “The government would be satisfied with drug testing.”

“Fine,” the judge said. “I'm going to order a surety bond of one hundred thousand dollars, secured by fifty thousand dollars in real property, with the further condition that the defendant reside with her mother and undergo periodic, random drug testing.”

Izaya thanked the court and led Olivia back to her seat. As she passed by her mother, Olivia scowled and looked away. Elaine stood for a moment, facing her daughter, then turned and walked quickly down the aisle, back to her own seat.

Neither Jorge nor the other man were granted bail. Their appearances lasted no more than a minute or two, and then the judge left the courtroom. The officer who had escorted Olivia led her back up the aisle. As she passed, Elaine called, “I'll have you out in a minute, honey. Don't worry.” Olivia said nothing.

Elaine went up to the front of the courtroom and found Izaya. “Can I sign the papers now and take her home?”

“I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that. Come up to my office and I'll have a paralegal give you all the forms you'll need to fill out. It's going to take a couple of days to get it all together.”

Elaine was stunned. “A couple of
days
?” she said.

***

Olivia stood in the hallway outside the courtroom, tears of rage dripping down her cheeks, into the neck of her shirt. She reached up with her handcuffed hands and wiped her nose on her wrist. She tried to slow her breathing down, convinced she was beginning to hyperventilate. Why had she ever expected her mother to save her? Clearly, Elaine didn't trust her. She didn't want to put up the bail because she was afraid Olivia would abscond. And God knew the last thing Elaine wanted was to have her fuck-up of a daughter living in her house again.

Olivia wiped her tear-dampened wrists on her jeans and looked up to find Jorge being led out of the courtroom by two men in navy suits.

“Jorge!” she shouted. She'd never seen him look like this. His face was bloodless and one of his eyes looked puffy, as if he'd been punched. His hair, usually so meticulously tended, hung in greasy strings down his cheeks. His jeans were torn at the knee, and Olivia imagined that she could see blood staining the ragged fabric. She had tried to talk to him in the courtroom, but the guard shook his head at her in warning, and Jorge refused even to look at her. She assumed he was simply terrified. He had to be. The
federales
in Mexico would just as soon rob, beat, or kill you as arrest you. How was Jorge to know that things were different in the United States?

“Jorge, are you okay?”

“No talking!” said one of the blue-suited men, jerking Jorge's arm and shoving him away down the hall. Jorge turned back to look at Olivia and mouthed something. She couldn't make out what he said. She shook her head frantically to show him that she hadn't understood, but by then he'd turned back around. Olivia's own escort came over now, took her arm again, and led her down the hall in the opposite direction.

Olivia tried to figure out what it was that Jorge had been trying to say to her. Had he attempted to communicate something about what she should or should not tell the cops or her lawyer? Or had it been an apology, a simple “
lo siento
”? She was desperate to speak to him, and at the same time she wanted to slap him in the face for his stupidity. The nightmare into which his ridiculous
machismo
had forced them both enraged her. Why hadn't he been satisfied with letting her work for the both of them? Why had he put them both in this terrifying position?

Olivia turned to her guard. “Where am I going now? When do I get out?”

He looked at her, his kindly face belying the gruffness in his tone. “It usually takes a couple of days to set up the bond. There are papers your mother's going to have to collect and file with the court. Then the judge has to review everything. While you're waiting, you'll be transferred over to the county jail in Martinez with the other female federal prisoners awaiting trial.”

Olivia nodded. She wasn't surprised at the delay. In fact, it wouldn't surprise her if her mother never came through at all. Doubtless, Elaine thought that it would teach Olivia a lesson to sit in jail until Izaya could get the charges against her dismissed.

Olivia told herself that she didn't care; she could handle county jail. She'd done it before. She could do it again.

She had not counted, however, on the smell. She had remembered the interminable noise of several hundred women, all talking and fighting and breathing, of the guards' boots clomping on the floor, of their keys jangling and the doors clanging. She had remembered the misery of trying to sleep in a cell that never got even remotely dark, the lights in the hallway intruding like the persistent reproach of a guilty conscience. She had remembered the suppressed fear that the woman in front of you might suddenly decide you'd ­disrespected her in some way and needed a schooling. But she had forgotten all about the smell. Or maybe, back in Santa Cruz and up in Humboldt, it hadn't been so unbearably foul. Maybe there the vile stench of poorly washed bodies, of sewage and sour food, had been better concealed by the acrid fumes of disinfectant. She spent her first morning of confinement at the women's facility in Martinez hunched over a reeking toilet, vomiting, until her dry heaves brought up nothing but a trickle of hot, yellow bile.

“Disgusting bitch. What's your problem?” a groggy voice asked, not entirely unpleasantly.

Olivia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up, leaning a palm against the sticky white tile wall to steady herself.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It's the smell, I guess.”

The woman snorted. “Get used to it, girl.” She was lying on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands, a large woman with dark brown, heavily freckled skin. Her kinky hair was dyed a bright maroon and hung over one of her shoulders—a mass of braids tied with black thread. Her lips were thick and perfectly shaped, her broad nose was pierced with a tiny gold stud, and her manicured fingernails were painted metallic blue with flecks of silver—all except the right index finger, which was torn and ragged. As she gazed at Olivia she chewed on the cuticle of that finger. She licked away the bead of dark red blood that appeared at the corner of the nail.

Olivia gagged again and ran for the bowl.

“Tell you what,” the woman laughed. “You pregnant.”

“No!” Olivia said, almost in a shout. “It's just the smell. It makes me sick.”

“You pregnant, girl.” She nodded. “That why you so sensitive to the smell. It might smell like a sack of granddaddies in here, but if you puking, you pregnant.”

Could it be true? When had she last gotten her period? Olivia started doing frantic calculations in her head and realized with a sinking feeling that she'd missed it altogether this month. But she and Jorge had been careful—the few times they'd failed to use birth control she'd been sure it was safe. She couldn't be pregnant.