Tracie Peterson (10 page)

“Sherry, you know very well that the Holmes residence is an emergency site.” The judge looked at her with one of those stares that was supposed to intimidate, but Sherry thought it almost amusing. Why were adults always trying to push their weight around with looks like that? Did they really think it mattered to a kid what kind of face they made?

“You’ll be moved into detention this afternoon,” the judge continued. “Your possessions will be taken from you and put into storage until such time when your permanent location is decided. You’ll be issued a uniform and treated as the other girls are treated. You’ll have no special privileges. Do you understand?”

The weight of the punishment was starting to sink in even more. Sherry tried to mask her fears, but she’d heard such hideous stories in school and elsewhere that she couldn’t help being afraid.

“What about my abortion?” Sherry asked almost hesitantly. She kept thinking that maybe there was a chance she could be placed somewhere else. “Won’t I have to be in the hospital?”

“We’ve set up an appointment for you with a local clinic. You’ll go in, have the abortion, and leave in the afternoon. You’ll then be taken to the detention center infirmary where you’ll recover.”

Defeated, Sherry sunk lower in the chair. “Why can’t I just be emancipated?” She’d heard the term from one of her friends at school.

“Can you support yourself?” the judge asked seriously.

“As well as I need to,” Sherry replied.

“How?”

“Well, I could work. I don’t need a lot of stuff and I don’t eat much. I could work just about any place and have more than enough money for everything I need.”

“Sherry, you’re fourteen years old. You aren’t legally old enough to work more than a few hours a week. Especially while you’re attending school.”

“So I’ll drop out.”

“That would be illegal without the court’s permission and we aren’t about to give it.” The judge removed her reading glasses and shook her head. “Sherry, don’t you care at all? Don’t you see the severity of this decision?”

She did, but why should she acknowledge anything to this woman? What did it matter? She’d spent so much time being bounced from place to place that no place felt like home. Sherry honestly doubted she would ever find a place that did.

Finally Sherry spoke. “You don’t have to give me your song and dance about how hard this decision was or how worried you are about my welfare. I’m just one more kid on the books to you.”

The woman actually looked stunned at Sherry’s words and it surprised the fourteen-year-old. Why shouldn’t she accept that statement as truth? The judges in this state were overwhelmed with teenage hoodlums. Sherry couldn’t imagine that anyone even gave her a second thought after the files were closed.

And for reasons that Sherry wished didn’t exist, that bothered her more than anything else. No one cared. No one even knew she was alive, except for when that thick folder was brought out of the cabinet and opened for review.

“Sherry, you’re wrong. I do care and you’re not just one more kid on the books. Not to me. What I don’t understand is how I can care, and yet you don’t. You haven’t got the slightest understanding of what you’re up against, and yet from what you’ve already endured, I would think you would be doing everything in your power to change.”

“Change into what?” Sherry asked without thinking.
Great, now I’ve done it. I’ve shown interest in what she’s saying. Now I’ll have to listen to a three-hour lecture on the legal system and all its benefits and downfalls
.

“Change into a productive human being. Into a useful, loving adult who can go into society and make the world a better place.”

Sherry said nothing. She didn’t want to encourage a continued conversation.

Seeing that Sherry had clammed up again, the judge looked back to the file. “I’ve arranged for an officer to escort you to detention.” She closed the file and took off her glasses. “I’m sure we’ll find her waiting for us.”

“For me, you mean,” Sherry said rather snidely. She got up from the chair and folded her arms across her chest. “At least you’ll be rid of me now.”

The judge eyed her for a moment before coming around from behind her desk and crossing to the door.

Sure enough, outside in the small waiting area, a uniformed guard sat waiting for Sherry. The woman was tough looking.
She looked Sherry up and down as if to decide how much trouble it would take to keep her in line. She looked Sherry straight in the eyes and scowled. Sherry immediately hated the woman and scowled back.

“This is Sherry Macomber,” the judge announced. “Has my secretary given you her papers?”

“Yes, I have them,” the woman assured her.

Sherry tried her best to remain indifferent, but the truth was, she was scared and growing more so by the minute. They were taking her to jail. Always before she’d been headed to someone’s foster care. That care might be new and even a bit frightening, but it wasn’t jail.

“Sherry, I wish you the very best. If you ever need me,” Judge Woodsby said, “don’t forget where I’m at.”

I won’t need you
, Sherry thought to herself.
I don’t need anybody
.

****

As a five-minute warning was called for lights out, Sherry tried to come to terms with her environment. Just as she had feared, the girls around her were hard as nails and twice as mean.

“What’d you do?” a heavyset girl with dirty blond hair questioned.

Sherry shrugged, not wanting to acknowledge the girl and yet not wanting to ignore her either.

Without warning, the girl slammed her against the end of the bunk bed. “I asked you a question. What are you in here for?”

Sherry pushed the heavier girl back, knowing the importance of asserting herself as not accepting such behavior. “It’s none of your business,” she retorted.

The girl looked surprised by Sherry’s actions but stood her ground. “You better never do that again.”

“The same goes for you,” Sherry said, hands on hips.

“You gonna beat her up, Joleen?” one of the other girls asked.

“I wouldn’t waste my time,” Joleen replied.

Sherry breathed a momentary sigh of relief. Maybe she wouldn’t have to prove herself any further. At least not tonight.

“Two minutes,” a uniformed guard called from the door.

“You know where you can put your two minutes,” Joleen countered before turning to walk away from Sherry.

“You’d better watch her,” a slender girl about Sherry’s same height said. Standing not two feet away, the girl barely whispered the words. “She’ll take you out when you least expect it.”

Sherry eyed the girl for moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

Eyeing the bunk bed with some distaste, Sherry put her foot onto the rail and hoisted herself topside. The bed felt like a lumpy board and the blanket was itchy.

Having discarded the uniform pants and pullover shirt of navy blue, Sherry was dressed like every other girl in the place, in a simple white nightgown. They’d taken her personal effects along with her purse and its contents, but Sherry was good at concealing things and so had managed to slip a few things into her pants and bra when the guards weren’t looking. Those things were carefully hidden inside her pillowcase, but tomorrow she’d have to find a better hiding place. For the time being, it would probably be best just to keep them on her person.

Quietly, so as not to draw attention to herself, Sherry pulled out a picture of Joey. She rolled onto her side and studied the photograph. She had really thought he loved her. He said he did. She sure wouldn’t have slept with him if he hadn’t said that he loved her.

The picture was her only link to her baby’s father. The family had made it clear they wanted nothing to do with her or the child. Worse still, Joey hadn’t been willing to talk to her when she’d managed to sneak in a phone call from the
emergency foster home. He said they were better off going their separate ways and that he couldn’t do anything more to jeopardize his future and college. Never mind that he’d gotten her pregnant and had totally ruined Sherry’s chances at a decent home.

“Lights out!” The lights clicked off in rhythmic cessation.

Sherry put the picture safely back inside the pillowcase, but not before pressing it to her lips. Tears that she hadn’t allowed earlier began to fall in silent, hot streams.

You said you loved me
, Sherry thought sadly.
You promised we’d be together forever. You promised me a home and a life that would be just like the movies. You said we’d be happy. Oh, Joey, we could have been happy. I would have made you happy
.

CHAPTER 10

Sherry was relieved to find that the guard escorting her to the abortion clinic was a different, more amiable woman than the one who had brought her into detention.

Officer Riley actually smiled and made polite conversation with Sherry, even going so far as to compliment her long blond hair.

“Great,” the woman said as she turned onto their destination street. “The holy rollers are here again.”

“What?” Sherry asked, noting the crowd of picketers across the street.

“Oh, those are the holier-than-thou types who think they have a right to impose their views on the rest of us. They picket the abortion clinic as often as they can get a group together.”

“Why should they care what I do?” Sherry questioned. She saw at least a dozen women, some with small children, standing with signs that declared abortion to be murder.

“They consider themselves to be lifesavers. You know, keep women from exercising their right to choice by telling them what to do. Just ignore them. They have to stay at least a hundred feet away from the clinic.”

Sherry nodded. The scene was not something she’d expected. All she wanted to do was be rid of this horrible reminder that she’d been gullible once again. She wanted to get rid of the pregnancy and then figure out how to escape her current situation.

Officer Riley parked the car in the small clinic parking lot and motioned for Sherry to get out. She hadn’t used any type of restraints on the girl, and for this Sherry was relieved. She wasn’t a criminal and she didn’t want to be treated like one.

“They’re going to have plenty to say to you,” Officer Riley announced, “so just keep your head down and keep moving
to the door. For pity’s sake, don’t strike up a conversation or answer any of their questions.”

Sherry nodded, but she couldn’t help but wonder why they would be asking her any questions. She opened the door hesitantly. “They won’t like . . . throw rocks or anything, will they?” Sherry couldn’t help but ask.

The guard laughed. “No, don’t worry about them. They’d have to get through me to hurt you.”

Sherry felt only a moderate amount of relief. After all, there were at least twelve women across the street and only one officer.

Just as Riley had warned, the tirade began as soon as Sherry stepped foot from the car.

“Please don’t kill your baby!”

“Let us help you. We know people who would be happy to adopt!”

“You can’t be very far along,” one woman called, “but do you know that at nine weeks, your baby already has fingers?”

Sherry faltered in her steps. Fingers? Somehow she had imagined nothing more than a lump of forming tissue. Something that would someday be a baby, but for now was just this mass of blood and veins and nothing more.

“Come on,” Officer Riley said, giving Sherry a gentle nudge. “Don’t pay any attention to them.”

“You’re taking the life of an innocent baby,” another person called. “Think about what you’re doing. A life is growing inside of you and those butchers are going to rip your child from limb to limb.”

Sherry grimaced and kept her head down. Surely they were wrong. They didn’t know everything. They were just regular people. Holy rollers, as her guard had put it. What did they know?

“Please listen to us. Please don’t kill your baby. I’d be happy to adopt your child. Please don’t kill him.”

The voice tore at Sherry, but it was the next statement that got to her.

“Your mother could have killed you, but she didn’t. She gave you life—now won’t you please give this baby life?”

Sherry stopped in her tracks. Her mother had been killed in a drug deal gone bad. Sherry had only been a few months old when she became a ward of the state. No one knew who her father was. But she knew her baby’s father. Had the circumstances been different, she might have relished this condition. Had Joey been honest about his love for her, they might have even married. So what if they were young, very young?

“What’s the matter, kid?”

“I want to go back,” Sherry replied. “I want to go back to the detention center. I don’t feel very good.”

“Oh, don’t let them get to you.”

“Is it true? Does my baby really have fingers?” Sherry asked, looking into Officer Riley’s face. She’d know if the woman was lying by whether she’d look her in the eye.

The woman shrugged and looked away. “What if it does? It’s not like you want it. You’re fourteen years old! What would you do with a baby?”

“Just take me back,” Sherry told the woman again. “I need to think about this.”

Cheers from the women across the street caught Sherry’s attention as she moved back to the car. Officer Riley started the engine as soon as they were both belted in.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just sit here and think about this for a moment?” the guard asked her seriously.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Sherry said.

They pulled out of the parking lot and Sherry could see the smiling faces of the women. One woman actually had tears streaming down her face. She blew Sherry a kiss and called out, “God loves you. He loves your baby. Seek Him.”

****

“So why didn’t you go through with it?” The question came from the same girl who’d warned Sherry about Joleen
the night before. Her name was April and she was only about Sherry’s height, though nearly seventeen years old.

Sherry shook her head. “I don’t know. Guess I didn’t feel like it.”

“I couldn’t figure out why you were doing it anyway,” April said, sitting down beside Sherry. “You’re going about this all wrong.”