We Are Called to Rise (27 page)

WHEN NATE WAS SIX, HE
found a stray dog at the park. He carried it over to me—its legs sticking out absurdly, his arms around its belly—where I sat on a bench.

“He’s lost, Mom. He can’t find his family.”

“Have you set him down? Maybe he knows right where to go.”

“No, Mom, look. He’s thirsty and he’s scared. And there’s branches and things in his fur.”

He was right. The dog did look the worse for wear, probably was lost.

“We can’t keep him, Nate. We can take him to the pound. They might know where he lives. His owners might be looking for him.”

“No, Mom, no. Not the pound. They’ll kill him. Luke says the pound kills dogs. Please, Mom, please don’t take him to the pound.”

“Nate, we can’t have a dog. I don’t even know if he’s well. He looks pretty dirty, and he might be sick.”

“Please, Mom.”

“Nate, we’re not taking that dog home.”

“Mom, I want to be a good man. I want to help the dog.”

I want to be a good man
. I still remember. Such a funny phrase from a little boy.

And we kept the dog. Years later, we buried him in the backyard. I wonder who will dig up his bones some day, who will buy our house, who will decide to plant a new tree and strike bone with her shovel. Will she be shocked when a skull appears in the dirt? Will she know that we loved the dog, that we cried when he died, that we couldn’t bear to throw him in the garbage or allow the vet to do it? Will she imagine that the dog slept on my son’s bed until he joined the Army? Will she know that he whimpered at the door for months after Nate left, that he barked when he heard Nate’s voice on the speaker, all the way from Baghdad? And will she intuit that the dog waited to die until my son was home on leave, that he dragged himself around, blind and crippled and covered with pink growths, and did not die until Nate came home and spent one last night with him, curled together on the floor because the dog was too old to jump on the bed? Will her shovel strike that skull, and will all those images waft up and into her imagination?

Nate wants to be a good man. Remember. He wanted to be a good man.

ON MONDAY I CALL LVPD
and leave a message for the chief of police that I need to meet with him, today if possible. He’s not available Monday, but his secretary makes an appointment for one thirty on Tuesday. I spend the day going through some of the boxes I moved from my house. I call Lauren, but she doesn’t answer, and I leave her a message letting her know that I’m worried. She doesn’t call back, but she sends a text and says that she’s feeling better. I don’t know what this means. So I call Nate, and he doesn’t answer, either. I leave a message asking him to call me, asking him to come over, telling him that I need to talk to him tonight. I don’t call Jim. I want to tell Jim what I’m going to do as well, but I can’t trust him not to stop me.

Nate doesn’t call, and he doesn’t come over. I leave one more message. I give him one more chance. Then I go to bed.

On Tuesday I wear a brown linen suit and a cream silk blouse. I tell the chief of police that my son has a problem and that he needs help—that he should not be using a weapon now. I tell him everything I know about his relationship with Lauren. I tell him that he hasn’t been the same since he came home from Iraq, and that there might be services available to him as a veteran. And finally, I tell him that if anything more happens, I will tell the media about our meeting.

Then I leave the chief of police’s office, and I call my son again, so that I can tell him what I have done. He’s my son, and something enormous has happened to him. But we will find a way through it. Whatever happened to Nate, however this has changed all of our lives,
is
. Now we go forward. We figure it out. We act with courage. We eye the felt, we size up the stickman, we call our bet, we roll our dice. Nate and I, Lauren, Jim, Rodney, Darcy, we’re still in the game. We play.

35

Bashkim

I GO TO THE
hearing with Mrs. Delain. She says that children don’t always come to these, that she’s only gone once before, but that Mrs. Miller wants Tirana and me to be there.

We drive in Mrs. Delain’s van all the way to the middle of Las Vegas, where I have never been. We park inside a building, under the ground, and I do not like how heavy it feels in there. There is a sign at the elevator that says we are on the orange level. The sign says to remember this, so I do. We get in the elevator, and Mrs. Delain straightens my sweater and looks at me to see if I am clean and everything. I guess I am, because she doesn’t do anything else to me.

The elevator lets us off in a big room, the biggest room I have ever been in. It echoes, and there are so many people walking back and forth, wearing shoes that click, that I think I am inside a drum. Mrs. Delain looks at a big sign that says the names of all the courtrooms and the judges, and then she says that we will have to wait in the line at the far end of the room.

We walk over there.
Tap, tap, tap
. People’s voices are echoing too, so I hear people speaking who are not near me. I can’t tell what they’re saying, but I listen just in case. It is so surprising to hear voices in that way.

When we get to the front of the line, there are policemen. One says I will have to take off my sweater, and a different one opens up Mrs. Delain’s purse. My stomach starts to hurt. I take my sweater off quick, because I don’t want the policeman to talk to me again. But he just waves his arm, and Mrs. Delain and I walk through the machine, one by one. When the man behind me goes through, the machine lights up and makes a terrible sound. Mrs. Delain and I both jump. Mrs. Delain explains that it is a metal detector, and that you can’t have any metal in your pockets or it will go off. They’re looking for guns. Thinking of that makes my heart go thump thump, and I take Mrs. Delain’s hand. Today the judge will decide where I am going to live, and Tirana. I’ve been trying not to think about this, because I can’t think of anything that will be good without Nene, but nothing could be worse than what has already happened anyway.

We take another elevator, which has carpet and mirrors, and a lot of people are in it, and we get off on the eighth floor. Mrs. Delain says hello to someone in the elevator, and she says, “Hello, you must be Bashkim” to me, but I am feeling sick, and I don’t say anything back. I want to leave. I wish Mrs. Delain would just take me back downstairs. I would like to be in the alone closet at her house now. I try to pretend that I am in a movie and that this is happening to another kid, not me, but it doesn’t really work this time.

The courtroom is big. There are lots of rows for people to sit in, and there’s a place for the judge at the front, which is above everyone else. I think Mrs. Delain and I are early, because there is only one other person in the room when we sit down. It’s Mrs. Weiss, who writes the letter to the judge. She smiles and waves hello from her seat on the other side of the room, but seeing her makes me feel really bad, and I don’t smile back. I am worried that I am going to throw up, and I can’t breathe right, and my eyes are seeing funny too. I slide closer to Mrs. Delain, and I put my head against her arm, just for a minute, because we have already talked about how it is important for me to be brave today, and I don’t want her to think I forgot. I just really need to smell her smell right then.

Mrs. Delain puts her arm around me and squeezes me just a little bit.

“You’re okay, Bashkim. You’ve been through worse than this. Everybody here wants to help you.”

Mrs. Delain always makes me feel better. She knows all about how kids have to do hard things, and she tells us that there aren’t any tougher kids in the world than her foster children. Mrs. Delain believes that people like me and Keyshah and Daniel are going to make the world better some day. She says that nothing makes a heart bigger like experience.

I see Mrs. Miller, our caseworker, come in. She doesn’t look at me or Mrs. Delain, though. Then Baba comes. He is with that big blonde woman from the Catholic place. He’s a lot smaller than she is, and when I see him, my heart gets fluttery and I need to breathe more. Baba looks sick, and small, and scared. I try not to think about him hugging me in the living room.

He comes right over to me and Mrs. Delain. I stand up, and he holds me for a long time.

“Bashkim, Bashkim,” he says. “My son, Bashkim.”

I hug him back as hard as I can. When we are done hugging, he and the lady sit next to us.

Now I am waiting for Tirana. I wonder what she will think about this big room. I wonder if she knows what is going to happen today. Baba’s lawyer comes over to us then. He asks Baba to come and sit at the table with him, and Baba looks a little nervous.

“That table? By the judge?”

I know that Baba went to prison, and I wonder if he also went to a judge. He has never told me that, but I know Baba, and he doesn’t want to sit at the lawyer’s table. I look over and see that there is a security guard standing at the front of the room too. Baba doesn’t like security guards either.

“Yes. The judge will want to direct some questions to you, and it is better if you are sitting with me.”

Baba nods. Looks at the security guard.

“It’s okay, Baba,” I say, and pat his arm a little bit. He looks at me with his wet eyes—they are always wet—and he says okay, he will go to the table.

So now it is me and Mrs. Delain and the woman with yellow hair. She says hi to me, and she says that she met me when I was only a year old, when we first came from Albania.

Finally, Tirana comes in. I almost don’t recognize her because she has on a fancy white dress and socks with lace at the ankles and pretty shoes. Her hair is longer, and it has a blue ribbon at the back. She looks taller, and different. She doesn’t look like a baby. She looks like a little girl. She is holding her foster mother’s hand, and she says something to her, and suddenly I really want Nene. I can’t stand that Tirana is holding that woman’s hand, and I think how bad Nene would feel, to see me and Tirana with different mothers.

Why did Nene say that?

That she and her children would be better off dead?

Why did Nene say things like that?

She didn’t mean them. Nobody ever understood about my nene and how she needed to say things like that sometimes.

Tirana seems so strange that I am a little afraid to call to her. But she looks over and sees me, and instantly she lets go of the lady’s hand and runs to me.

“Bashkim!”

She jumps right into me, in her dress and everything, and kisses me in front of everyone. Then she sees Baba, and wiggles out of my arms to go to him. I am afraid that Baba will not act right, but of course he holds his arms out, and Tirana kisses Baba too. We all watch her. She is so pretty. Then Tirana comes back to where I am sitting. She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her head in my sweater, and now she won’t look up, even when Mrs. Delain says hello and when her foster mother comes over and sits down. So that is how we sit. Mrs. Delain, then me, then Tirana half in my lap, then the Catholic lady, then Tirana’s foster mom.

Some other people come in the courtroom too. The woman who came to Mrs. Delain’s house that afternoon, the one who liked to make things, and a man walk over and sit near Mrs. Weiss. The caseworker stops and talks to them before she sits down at the table across from Baba and his lawyer. Then the judge comes in. The security guard says, “Please stand for the honorable judge Robert Kohler,” and we all stand, and the judge enters and sits down very quickly, and looks at the papers in front of him.

He’s not a scary judge, but I am feeling scared anyway.

“Mr. Ahmeti?” he says. And Baba stands up.

“I am sorry for the circumstances that bring us here. The court acknowledges your great loss.”

Baba stands a minute, nodding his head over and over.

“I know this day is hard for you. You had a very difficult decision to make, and I thank you for making that decision in time for our meeting today. Your decision shows courage. I know it took courage.”

Baba has a strange look on his face, but he sits down.

“Bashkim Ahmeti?”

Mrs. Delain motions for me to stand, and when I move Tirana over a bit, she stands up too.

“Tirana Ahmeti?”

We look at the judge, and he looks at us.

“Thank you for coming to this hearing, Bashkim, Tirana. Everyone tells me that you are very special children, and I am going to try hard to take care of you.”

Tirana turns and buries her face in my side, but I look at the judge. I think I should say something, but I don’t know what to say. I am thinking about how much I wish my nene were here, and how nothing the judge does can really help, but then I think about whether or not Tirana and I are going to live together, and whether we are going home with Baba, and how I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. I just look at him and then look down. I don’t know what I want.

“Mrs. Delain? Mrs. Stoddard?”

Our foster mothers stand up.

“Thank you for taking in these children, and for the thoughtfully written reports that you each submitted. They were very helpful to me. We are lucky to have people like you as foster mothers.”

Mrs. Delain and Mrs. Stoddard sit down. I see Mrs. Delain look at Tirana’s foster mother and smile, just a little, the way she does.

“Ms. Miller. You surprised me with your recommendation.”

The caseworker explains to the judge that she spent a lot of time thinking about it, and that she is confident it is the best option under the circumstances.

“Ms. Weiss.”

The lady from CASA stands up.

“Roberta, the court and the city of Las Vegas owe you and your fellow CASA volunteers a great debt. Thank you for the extraordinary commitment you made to this case, and the number of hours you put in. This is a system that could not protect children as well as it does without volunteers like you. I thank you profoundly.”

“Graciela Reyes?”

The woman who came to Mrs. Delain’s stands up.

“Luis Rodriguez-Reyes?”

I almost yell out,
Specialist Rodriguez? My soldier? Why is he here?

I look, and a man, not much older than Ricky or Jeff, stands up. It takes him a while, because he has a cane, and there is not quite enough room for it in front of his seat. He looks over at me, he looks right in my eyes, but I can’t tell what he is thinking. My heart goes thump thump.

I wrote him some lies.

And I told him that I wanted the president to say soldiers could not be policemen.

And he shot a boy.

Does the judge know he shot a boy?

I can’t sit still, and my heel thunks against the seat. Mrs. Delain puts her hand on my knee.

I look at Baba. Does he know who Specialist Rodriguez is? Is he going to yell at him? Are they going to fight?

I don’t hear what the judge says to the woman or my soldier. I see them sit down, and then I can’t stop thinking about them. I want to look at Luis, but I am afraid. I keep watching Baba, waiting for him to remember who Specialist Rodriguez is. I don’t know what he’ll do. I remember him in Dr. Moore’s office. That was such a long time ago. Nene was there too. Dr. Moore wanted Nene to talk to her without Baba. Nene could not do that.

I remember Baba and Nene fighting that night. It was the worst fighting ever. Even Tirana couldn’t stop crying. If Baba figures out who Specialist Rodriguez is, something really bad could happen. I see that the security guard is wearing a gun, and I can’t stand it anymore. I stand up, and I think that I am going to run out of the room. I can’t be brave anymore. I don’t want to be. I want my nene. I want my own house. I don’t know any of these people. I don’t want any of them to help me. I have to leave.

Mrs. Delain reaches out to pull me back in, but I jerk away. I don’t care. I don’t care how mad they get. I can’t do what they want anymore. I have to get away.

Just then, Tirana calls my name. I look over and she is sitting there on the bench, right next to where I was, and I can see that I’ve scared her, and that she’s starting to cry. Her foster mother trades places with the blonde woman, tries to get Tirana to look at her, but Tirana is looking at me. Her face is filled with fear. I can see that she knows I’m running away, that I’m leaving her there, and that it is the worst feeling she has ever had.

She feels like I felt when Nene slumped to the curb.

I stop. I look at Baba. He has turned around, to see what I am doing, and his face looks like Tirana’s. He looks just as scared as Tirana.

I look at them both.

I am so tired.

I want my nene so much.

And I step back in, past Mrs. Delain, and sit next to Tirana. She grabs hold of me even more tightly than before with her skinny little baby arms. I can’t leave. I can’t leave Tirana. And I can’t leave Baba. I am just going to have to stay here, even if I feel like I am going to burst.

“Bashkim.”

It is the judge. I look at him. His face is kind. He doesn’t look mad that I’ve interrupted him.

“Bashkim, this is a hard day. You have been very brave. We are proud of you. And your mother would be proud of you.”

I look at him, and I feel a little better. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me, me or Tirana or Baba. Mrs. Delain reaches over and puts her arm around me and Tirana both. She is not going to let anyone hurt me either. I breathe in, and I sit back against Mrs. Delain’s arm.

“I’ve been a judge for many years. In family court, and in criminal court. Before that, I was a lawyer. And I’m not a young man. So, like all of us, I’ve seen my share of tragic circumstances. I’ve seen the smallest error lead to the most painful outcome: the harried mother who forgets her baby in a hot car, the exuberant teenager who leaps into a too-shallow lake, the young driver who doesn’t see the child chasing a ball. And I’ve seen my share of cruelty, of violence, of criminal acts that sicken the heart.

“There are times when all this pain, all these misunderstandings, all this hatred, has made me wonder if we deserve this beautiful world; if we human beings should really be left in charge of it.