“I’m not supposed to release that information.”
“Yeah, but it has to do with her stepmother’s murder.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” She took a bite out of her Snickers. “Frankly, the kid’s better off. Her stepmom was worthless.”
“Has Shony been in class?”
“I’m not supposed to say, but no she hasn’t.” She picked up her magazine. “You know how they are. They have no sense of responsibility. I’ve been here for twenty-seven years and I see it all the time.”
“They?”
“Oh please. Look, I don’t know who you are and I’m sure you want to believe all these wonderful things about these people but face it, there’s no mistake why they wind up like this.”
“Aren’t you supposed to alert someone when a kid’s absent?”
“I sent the letters.” She exhaled impatiently. “They just ignore them anyway.”
“Who did you send them to?”
“I don’t know. Whoever is the legal guardian.”
“That’s her father and he’s an addict who changes addresses weekly.”
“Not my problem. I have thirty of these animals to look after. The letter definitely went out.”
She chewed her Snickers, leaned back in her desk chair, and picked up her magazine. Without a word she went back to reading, ignoring me like the chalkboard erasers behind her.
“Uh… Miss Hippofucker?” I said.
“What did you say?” She looked down her nose at me and put her magazine down.
“Have a nice day.” There was something about being back in high school that made me do it.
Next, I headed down to the school psychologist’s office on the chance that the shrink might have had a relationship with Shony. The office was on the first floor but at the opposite end far away from the administrative offices. The placard on the office door read, Dr. Nancy Madison-Riverchild, School Psychologist. The name scared me.
I knocked on the door lightly and waited. I tried again and waited some more. I thought she might be in session, but there was no evidence of a sign to not disturb, so I checked the knob and let myself in. Dr. Madison-Riverchild was sitting cross-legged on a tattered Persian rug starring at a candle. The room reeked of patchouli and though her eyes were open, she made no motion to acknowledge my presence.
She looked about fifty, she had wavy gray hair down to her ass, and she wore a hemp peasant top and baggy pants that gathered around her ankles like a TV gypsy would wear. She was painfully pale, had crooked teeth, and was very thin. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her tits hung down around her belt line. It was one of those moments that you know is real but there’s part of your mind that wants it to be a dream. I was deciding whether I should split when Dr. Riverchild spoke.
“One moment, please,” she said without changing her position or diverting her attention.
I folded my hands in the same sort of way that I do when I’m in line at a wake. I was trying to be reverent and I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.
The doctor stood up and walked over to me.
“I’m Dr. Madison-Riverchild,” she said. She had amazingly good posture and the absolute worst halitosis I’ve ever experienced. “I’m sorry to have made you wait, I was getting centered. How may I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Duffy Dombrowski.” For the first time in my life, I felt like I needed a hyphened name in my title to be on equal footing with someone. “I’m a counselor at Jewish Unified Services and I was hoping to discuss Shony Wright.”
“Shony is a terribly troubled child.” She didn’t ask for a release or if I had any permission to speak to her. Apparently, if you’re centered enough, regulations are trivial. “She has been parentified from a very early age, and it has forced her into an untenable heroic identity.”
“Uh… I’m not sure I understand.”
“She comes from a most dysfunctional environment.” The breath was worse than anything that ever came out of Al’s ass. “She parented her parents more than they parented her.”
“I had heard she was a pretty solid kid.”
“Mr. Duffy,” she gave me an incredibly patronizing smile, which was fine with me as long as she didn’t breathe in my direction. “That’s what you see on the outside. Inside you have an inner child struggling against that external self-induced parent. She is the best example of a most dysfunctional teenager.”
“Her grades were great, she sang in the choir, volunteered, and seemed to be pretty popular?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Doctor Riverbreath said with a sigh that nearly made me lose my own center.
“Well, Doctor, you have been a great help.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Duffy,” she said. “Mr. Duffy, may I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Are you in therapy yourself? You seem to have your own internal conflicts.”
“I think I’m going to need some real soon,” I said.
“My private practice has openings,” she smiled. “We take most insurances.”
“Good to know,” I said, and I was never happier to leave a room.
I was heading out of the school when I heard the bells ring for lunch. Kids rushed out from behind doors at a crazy pace. After the last two hours that I had experienced in their school, I couldn’t say I blamed them. I fell in the throng of kids rushing to the doors and not a single one paid any attention to me. There’s something about being a teenager that gives you the uncanny ability to focus on the right-now and how it happens to pertain to yourself at that particular moment. A strange adult, out of place in their usual environment, meant nothing to them.
On my way to the car, I stopped to talk to four young black girls. They were all talking at once, snapping gum, and shouting over each other’s voices. It took awhile for them to notice me.
“Excuse me, girls?”
They didn’t say anything, they just stopped talking and looked me up and down.
“You guys know Shony Wright?”
“Why you asking?” the girl in the middle asked.
“I’m a counselor and I’m looking for her.”
“She in trouble?” the girl closest to me asked.
“Nah, I’m trying to find her. Anyone know where she went?”
“She stopped coming to school last week but sometime she do that when she go with her father,” the middle girl said. She was clearly the leader and I only expected her and the one closest to me to say anything.
“Was she doing okay? Was Shony a happy kid?”
“She’s okay. Her family is wack and her mother a crackhead.”
“That embarrass Shony?”
“What you think, mister?” She scowled at me. “Shony has it goin’ on, though. She smart, she pretty, and that girl can sing.”
The other three girls gave a series of “uh-huhs” and “Word!” at the notion that Shony could sing.
“She seem happy to you guys?”
“Mister, who you know who happy all the time?” Again with the scowl. “She happy as anybody else around here.”
I thanked the kids and they went right back to talking and yelling and snapping their gum. It was the most intelligent conversation I had all morning.
17
The news about the beatings in the park started to get some attention in the local media. The Crawford Union Star carried a story on the front page of its local section about the assaults and suggested that the beatings were hate crimes because several of the victims were gay. Channel 13 ran it as its second lead story on the six o’clock news and MetroCrawford, the local alternative newspaper, ran it as a cover story.
The attention would bring more of a police involvement, at least at first, which was a good thing. I found it a little disturbing that before the victims were identified as gay no one was really up in arms about the situation. Eli wasn’t gay, but he was beaten just as badly as if he were, and it didn’t seem right that when it was alcoholic street bums getting beaten there wasn’t a single reporter interested. Then again, there wasn’t a united front of street alcoholics in Crawford like there was a united organized front of gays and lesbians.