Chapter 9 - What Mom Wrote Down
That weekend I stayed at Daniel's but Mom asked for me to come home for a few hours on Saturday so she could wash my clothes and get the house ready. Daniel said that was okay as long as I brought Bunny and he could pick me up before dinner. I didn't want to go, but Ms. Rivera said it might help to see how Mom acted when Dad wasn't there.
The house smelled like laundry detergent and Pine-Sol when we walked in. Mom was in the kitchen where it had happened, wiping down the same white marble island. She'd taken down most of the Christmas decorations already, even though it was only the first week of January. The tree lights were off.
She hugged me tight and then let go fast, like she wasn't sure if she was supposed to. Daniel stayed by the front door with his keys in his hand.
"I'll be in the driveway," he said to me. "You okay for a bit?"
I nodded and held Bunny against my chest.
After he stepped out, Mom tried to act normal. She folded my red dress — the same one from that night — and put it in a drawer instead of hanging it back up. Then she sat at the kitchen table with her phone. I was on the living room floor, not really playing, just watching her.
She was scrolling through her camera roll. Her thumb stopped.
I heard her breath catch. She zoomed in on a photo from October. It was me at the pumpkin patch, wearing a long-sleeve orange shirt. My left sleeve had ridden up and you could see a faint purple mark on my forearm, in the same spot as the one Daniel had seen.
"Oh," she whispered to herself. Not to me.
She swiped to another one, a week later at a soccer game. Same arm, same place, a little yellow now as it healed. She'd put a sticker over it that day and told the other moms I'd fallen on the playground.
She didn't say anything to me then. She just locked her phone and pressed her hands over her mouth. Her shoulders shook once, but she didn't make a sound.
On Monday, Ms. Rivera said Mom had agreed to meet the victim advocate, Mrs. Chen, but Mom didn't want to go to the office. Mrs. Chen offered to meet at the church parking lot because Mom went there on Tuesdays to drop off food pantry boxes and it didn't look like an official meeting.
Daniel drove me because Mom was supposed to pick me up after. He parked two spaces away and said I could stay in the back seat with Bunny if I wanted, or I could wait inside the church with the secretary. I wanted to stay.
Mom pulled in ten minutes late in our old Honda. She was still in her work clothes. Mrs. Chen got out of her car with a folder and they stood between the cars, talking low. I could see them in the side mirror. The wind kept blowing Mom's hair.
I rolled my window down a crack because Daniel said it was okay to listen if I wanted to know what grown-ups were saying about me.
Mrs. Chen asked, "Has Sophia ever told you not to tell something because Daddy said not to?"
Mom looked at the asphalt. She twisted her hands together.
"Last month," she said, quiet. "He told her after bath time, 'This is our secret game, don't tell Mommy or you'll get in trouble.' I heard him through the bedroom door. I told myself he was just playing. I didn't want to... I didn't want to think what it meant."
Mrs. Chen didn't write that down right away. She just said, "Thank you for telling me that. That's important."
Mom started crying then, not loud. She said, "I kept explaining it away. Every mark. I said she was clumsy. I didn't want anyone to think we were that kind of family."
Mrs. Chen put her hand on Mom's arm for a second and then let go.
The next day we all went to the CPS office. It was a gray building near the highway with plastic chairs and a fish tank. I sat with Daniel in the waiting area with Bunny on my lap while Mom went into a small conference room with Ms. Rivera and Mrs. Chen.
I could hear the copy machine humming and the heater clicking. After about twenty minutes, the door opened. Ms. Rivera came out and asked Daniel to come in for a second, and Daniel squeezed my shoulder before he went.
Through the glass window I saw Mom leaning over a table, signing a paper. It was two pages, handwritten mostly. Mrs. Chen read it back softly, pointing to each line.
Mom's voice was steady when she read the last part out loud. "I support what Sophia said about how she got hurt and that her father told her to keep it secret."
Then she looked up at Ms. Rivera and said, "Do I have to say this in court? In front of everyone? He'll be there. His family will be there."
Ms. Rivera said the statement would be filed and would help keep me safe, but that the district attorney might still need her to testify later. Mom pressed her lips together and nodded once.
She added in the margin in her own handwriting, "Please don't subpoena me if possible. I'm scared."
She signed again under that.
When they came out, Mom knelt down to my level the way Daniel had in the kitchen that night, but slower. Her eyes were red.
"I wrote down what I should have said before," she said to me. "It's not all of it, but it's true now."
May you like
I didn't know what to say, so I just held Bunny out a little toward her. She touched its ear and then let go.
Daniel stood behind me with his hand on my back, and Ms. Rivera put the signed paper into a manila folder and closed it.
