Fresh Kills Read Free

own junkie mother. Not that Rojean was an addict—she’d seen enough of drugs in her childhood to keep her clean—but she’d never seen a healthy family, so how could she possibly raise one?
    How can you represent those people ?
    By understanding them. By seeing them as people, not monsters, no matter what they’ve done. By finding the whole story, the one that appears between the lines of the official records. By listening instead of talking.
    So why, two months into her counseling program, did Rojean listen to the voices that told her the kids were possessed by the devil and had to be cleansed in a scalding bath so they could enter the kingdom of heaven?
    And why didn’t I know it was going to happen? Why didn’t I see the schizophrenia as well as the poverty and ignorance? Why didn’t I prevent it?
    The newspapers blamed the judge. A few mentioned my name in the last paragraph of the story. But the truth was that if a less conscientious lawyer had represented Rojean, those kids would be alive. In a foster home, but alive.
    How can you represent those people ?
    I didn’t have any more good answers.
    I came back to attention, realizing I’d drifted away while Marla outlined the ridiculous ease with which I could handle an adoption.
    â€œI’ve got a horny white teenager about to pup. I’ve also got a desperate older couple who’d like to have a kid before they get their first Social Security check. So they’ve decided to bypass the adoption agency crap. They’re paying the girl’s medical expenses and a reasonable legal fee.”
    â€œWhere do I come in?” Marla wasn’t the only lawyer taking a smoke break. The air was blue and thick; I wanted this conversation over.
    â€œJudge Feinberg—a real pain in the ass—says the girl needs her own lawyer. That it’s a conflict of interest for me to represent both the kid and the parents. As though every lawyer in the city hasn’t done it that way since God was a teenager. So,” she went on, exhaling a stream of smoke that matched her silver silk, “I need someone to meet with the girl, get her consent, and file the papers in court. Easy, no?”
    â€œSounds easy enough,” I conceded. I thought back to the one or two things I knew about adoptions. “What if the girl changes her mind? Doesn’t she have—what, thirty days?”
    â€œGod, Cass.” A drag on another cigarette was exhaled in an elaborate sigh. “Talk about looking gift horses in the mouth. The last time we had lunch all you could talk about was that broad who killed her babies, and now you want to open Pandora’s box on this adoption before you even take the case. Trust me, this girl’s not changing her mind.”
    The holding pens at Brooklyn Criminal Court flashed before my eyes. Sitting eyeball to eyeball with Rojean, her head twitching, her voice guttural, her pupils needle points in her thin face. “Gotta get me out,” she mumbled, her hands working in her lap. “Gotta get me out to feed my babies.”
    I’d looked down at the complaint just to be sure I’d read it right the first time. “… did cause the deaths of Tonetta, Todd, and Trudine Glover by means of …”
    When we stood before the judge on the question of bail, she made her own plea directly to him: “Gotta get home, y’Honor. My babies alone, they need me.”
    â€œAnd besides,” Marla went on, jarring me back to the smoke-filled present, “if this works out, there could be more. I place a lot of babies out of this group home on Staten Island, and as long as Feinberg’s on the bench, the girls will need separate counsel. But I’d like to know I’m dealing with someone I can trust. I’d rather have you than some brother-in-law who questions everything and knows nothing. The last lawyer I had to deal with—God!”
    â€œHey,” I said,