Gabriella swatted at the air clumsily. “Slap, baby, slap!”
“Slow down on the wine.”
She grabbed her swing’s chain links again. “But SLAP is good, right?”
“Wrong. I went there and told the lady I needed help, showed her my bills. Next thing I know, she’s talking to me like I needed every syllable spelled out. She basically said I don’t have enough money, my house is unsafe, and she’s going to send someone from Adult Protective Services to check things out.”
Gabriella’s eyes widened. “What. The. Total. Heck?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what her computer told her to do.” I mimicked the way Jennifer touched her monitor, as though it were an almighty wise adviser.
Gabriella’s head lolled to the side. “I…I totally know how you feel. When I was seven, I was taken into CPS custody for a little while.”
My mouth dropped open, and my heart fell, too. “Gabriella, I’m so sorry.”
“It was…temporary. Only a few days, while they confirmed my mother’s story about how I broke my arm when I fell off my bike. I had other bruises on my body. Did I tell you I was a beast when I was little?”
I could certainly imagine her as an athletic, curious child with a penchant for adventure. “Sounds about right.”
“Well, me and some other kids in the neighborhood were always playing rough. Riding, like, four people on a bicycle. Rolling in tires. Daring each other to see who could hold their breath the longest or stand the most pain before crying uncle. And I was always up for a dare.”
I nodded.
“So I was pretty rough. And the day I was trying to ride on the back tire of my bike, I fell and broke my arm. The nurses had me take off my shirt. When they finished with the cast, a social worker took me away.”
I gasped at this, but quickly realized I wasn’t helping the situation. Her eyes were rimmed with tears. “It was the scariest thing. I felt like I was being kidnapped.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“But the people who took me in were actually super nice. No horror story there.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m just saying,” Gabriella noted, “I know how it feels when ‘the man’ gets involved in your life. For better or for worse. But the truth comes out in the end, you know?”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
She asked, “So what are they saying will happen next?”
“Someone from APS will call or come by, I imagine.”
“Wow. Just wow.”
A sad silence spread over us, soft but all-encompassing. Then Gabriella said, “We’ll fight ’em, Ms. Joyce.”
“Thank you, Gabriella,” I said. My tears came again a few seconds later, so quickly it surprised me. I had cried in the car.Alone. But I hadn’t cried in front of anyone for years; not even at my father’s funeral when the soloist sang “Precious Lord.” That day, I had numbed myself, stepped outside of myself, and thought about practical things—Do we have enough food for the repast? Will my heels sink into the damp earth at the gravesite? Who sent those beautiful purple flowers?
Expecting a visit from APS should have been easy compared to seeing my father lying in a casket. Yet there I sat, fully in my emotions as tears trailed down my face again, feeling the sadness in a way that I didn’t allow myself to feel before—especially not around another person.
But swinging outside with Gabriella and sharing our lives, watching her sadness come, have its moment, and leave—crying in her company felt normal.
I poured more of the humanizing wine into my half-filled glass. The evening breeze picked up, weaving through us, lending a sense of calm to our shared moment of vulnerability. The squeak of our swings’ chains a sweet soundtrack of its own.
“We’ll formulate a plan. When we’re completely sober,” she qualified.
