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Mrs. Johnston sat in the courtroom, waiting for the judge to return from lunch. He almost always took longer than everyone else. As she sat there, she wished she had chosen a cooler dress on this hot Alabama afternoon. Even the breeze from the large opened windows was warm. She fanned herself with some papers from her briefcase, and noticed the door in the back of the courtroom open. It was Susan and her attorney. Susan was the reason they were here in this stifling courtroom.

As Susan walked in and took her seat at the nearby table, Mrs. Johnston couldn’t help thinking, “Look at her. She’s probably high as a kite right now. She tested positive the last two times we did random checks. Why doesn’t the judge just end this nightmare for Cassandra? Little Cassie needs to be in a stable, loving home, where she is safe from the danger of accidentally getting drugs into her system. Not to mention the fact that her mom stays high most of the time, and is more likely than not to let something terrible happen to her.”

It was obvious to her that parental rights need to be terminated. “Just get it over with, so Cassie could begin her new life. Put all this chaos behind her and forget about it. She’s just a baby; she’ll adjust fine to the Pattersons. They are good people, and they want a baby so badly.”

Badly in need of a new coat of paint, the walls of the courtroom reminded her of Susan’s apartment. “What can she offer? A run-down, roach-filled apartment. A mother who has to fight every day to stay clean and sober. She’ll be lucky if she can make minimum wage. No father—he skipped out as soon as she got pregnant, and we had no trouble getting HIM to sign away his parental rights. He was thrilled to get out of paying child support for the next 19 years.”

At that moment, Miranda, Susan’s social worker, came into the courtroom, running late, as usual. She had been Miranda’s supervisor for seven years, and she knew Miranda sometimes had a soft spot for the parents of the children in foster care. It was irritating to her, and often a source of contention between them. She also knew Miranda was hesitant about asking the court to terminate Susan's parental rights. She just didn’t know why. “I just don’t see what Miranda sees in Susan,” she thought, “to make her hang on so stubbornly to her efforts to rehabilitate her.” Mrs. Johnston saw the tremendous love the Pattersons had for Cassie, and had often reminded Miranda, “They will give her a loving home, with all the luxuries any child could ask for.”

How angry she had been, one day, when Miranda, obviously in a bad mood, retorted, “Yeah, everything but her roots and her past.”

“What in the world did she mean by that?” Mrs. Johnston had wondered.

Miranda knew she was running late, and hoped she had, at least, beat the judge back, who was known for his tardiness. She hurried to her seat beside her supervisor. She had worn the coolest dress she could find, but it did little to alleviate the waves of heat in the courtroom.

She glanced over at Susan and thought, “Look at her. She's like a germ under a microscope. No wonder she seems antsy and uncomfortable.” She had tried so hard to convince Mrs. Johnston that Susan was more than just a junkie who didn’t deserve to be a mother. She saw her as a mother who was struggling to stay clean so she could get the joy of her life back. Of course she herself had been furious with her for testing positive the last two times they had done random drug tests. It seemed to her that every time it looked like Susan was finally getting her act together, she would blow it again. Miranda understood that it was hard to break an addiction, and the dealers don’t want to lose a customer either.

But her gut told her that Susan had what it took to beat the drugs and get Cassie back. “When you think about it,” she thought, “she has done pretty well at times. That dirt bag, Joey, couldn’t get out fast enough when he found out she was pregnant. I could have slapped that smile off his face, when we told him that he would not have to pay child support if he signed his parental rights away. In reality, though, he was doing everyone a favor—especially Cassie,” she admitted.

But even Miranda wasn’t absolutely sure about Susan’s future. She often worried about what would happen to Cassie if she were wrong about Susan. “After all,” she reminded herself, “I'm not a fortune teller. Even though I think Susan has what it takes to beat the drugs and get Cassie back, how long is it going to take her? If she would just do the rehab, and the other steps we have outlined for her, she would have a lot better chance for success.”

She had seen this so many times over the years. Mothers would be so anxious to get their children back, they would try to tough it out, take shortcuts, and in her observations, that had rarely worked. Too often, by the time the mother figured that out, the agency would be pushing the deadline to make the child’s life stable, to give him or her permanency. Then the courts would be looking at terminating parental rights.

Miranda was really glad the decision was not up to her. Her job was to help Susan understand what she needed to do to get Cassie back. If she couldn’t do what it took to get her back, then the judge would be the one who must make that determination—not her, thank goodness.

She wasn’t about to pressure Susan into doing something that would affect the rest of her life—and Cassie’s too, for that matter. She’d seen it so many times. Adoptive parents think that they are going to “save” a child from a terrible life, by giving her every opportunity possible.

But, as Miranda had come to realize, it's just not that simple. Even with adoption, all is not happy for the child or the mother who lost the child. It's complicated, and Miranda often got frustrated working with someone like Susan, who could be doing so much better than she was.

Susan was hot, but that wasn’t the reason she was miserable in this sweltering heat. She knew the seriousness of this hearing. It might not have seemed that way, considering she had tested positive twice recently for Cocaine. She loved Cassie, though, and her heart ached at the thought of losing her forever. She prayed that the judge would give her just one more chance to prove that she could be a good momma.

She wondered if Cassie even realized she WAS her momma. The supervised visits were so awkward. She knew Cassie had begun to call them “momma and daddy". She felt so much rage when that woman would bring her for the visits. All she could do was glare at her. She didn’t dare show her anger any further, for fear of doing something to cause the judge to take Cassie away forever.

Her mind wandered back to the first time she held her in her arms. She had named her “Cassandra” because it was the prettiest name she had ever heard, and her precious little girl deserved the prettiest and best of everything. “So why,” she wondered, “am I even sittin’ here in this hellish-hot courtroom, tryin' to get her back? The judge probly won’t let me anyway.”

“I shoulda never got mixed up with that asshole, Joey. He was just so freakin' cute and sweet—at first. I didn’t know about the drugs until I had done fell in love with him.”

Joey had gotten Miranda hooked on the Cocaine, and then couldn’t get out the door fast enough when she told him she was pregnant. She was jolted back to the present when Miranda walked in. She remembered how angry she had been when she found out about the positive random drug tests.

She thought, “I don't even know why I done it. It's just I miss my baby so much. But Cassandra deserves better than that! Maybe I SHOULD just sign that damn paper the social worker keeps shovin' at me."

“Mrs. Johnston says I ain't a good mother, and that she deserves to have a mother and a father who can give her a good home.” Susan couldn’t argue with that. Still, she thought, “I can’t give her up. No matter what that bitch says.”

“How can I let them just cut her out of my life—out of ME. They might just as well cut out my heart! I couldn’t live without her. Thay wouldn't be a day that went by that I didn't think about her and wonder how she is, what she's doin', how she looks. It just plain breaks my heart thinkin' about that!”

It was just at that moment she realized how desperately she wanted some Coke. She quickly reminded herself that getting Cassandra back was going to be hard at best. She had to stay clean and sober, or she wouldn’t stand a chance. More than anything, she wanted to prove to that Mrs. Johnston that she WAS a good momma. She just hoped and prayed she could do that.

Pat Nelson
June 10, 2008
1647 words