But like all case files, this one revealed truth to me in layers. In subsequent investigator reports, I was able, finally, to see beyond the broken windows, patched up with cardboard and duct tape, into Tina Last’s house. The front sitting room was a Dumpster where garbage bags filled to bulging were piled halfway up the walls. Fruit flies congregated in slow-moving hordes, wafting about like schools of baby fish on the air. Beyond that, in the kitchen freezer, lumps of frozen indistinguishable meat without packaging gathered ice fuzz. For years, Irie had been telling Dickensian tales of what happens to naughty children—“You’d better listen, Leo,” Irie had warned—and all the while, she’d been conjuring up the horrors of Tina Last’s house.
Three varieties of feces had hardened in the corners of all the first-floor rooms, the broom cupboard, and the sink: cat poop, dog poop, and human poop, shaken free from dirty diapers. Missing ceiling tiles were like punched-out teeth, plumbing and electrical fixtures exposed and dangling. Upstairs in the bedrooms, the mattresses looked the same, springs having popped through the upholstery like sharp tendrils of hair. Worst of all was the free flow of pills, scattered like shrapnel on makeshift nightstands, mattresses, and shit-splattered carpeting—guanfacine, Metadate, lamotrigine. The marijuana was the least of Tina Last’s problems. By her own admission, she had been overdosing her son on his ADHD medicine, hoping to drug him into submission.
Perhaps a mother like Tina Last is grateful to be exposed. When authorities become involved, maybe she even feels relieved. An entourage of responsible adults will decide, by law, in the best interest of her children. Hundreds of years ago, mothers lacking in resources were the most likely to drop their children into the safety deposits of foundling homes. Was neglect a cry for help, I wondered, not so different from my mother’s and brother’s suicide attempts years earlier, a small price to pay for rapid intervention?
“What was she like in person?” I asked Ryan. “Did she seem upset?”
“She was completely vacant,” he told me. “She’s like a shell of a person.”
“But she must have shown some emotion,” I persisted.
“It’s not that she didn’t show emotion,” he said. “She just didn’t appreciate the seriousness of the situation. She had a really hard time pleading to child neglect, even though she admitted to everything in the criminal complaint. The kids had a roof over their heads. She got them to school every day, and I think she thought ‘neglect’ meant that she didn’t love them.”
I had just begun to wonder how Tina Last could even afford her rent, albeit in the most run-down corridor of town, on the fringes of our neighborhood, and that was when I found the answer, buried at the bottom of her case file. Years earlier, Tina Last had filed a wrongful death lawsuit, seeking compensation for the death of her three-month-old son who died in foster care. She was awarded enough money to purchase the home, which would end up condemned in the months after she ultimately pleaded guilty to child neglect. She was losing children left and right.
In the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, just like at Ulrich Law Office, attorneys are like ER docs working triage. They learn to repress their emotions and to cope humorously with scandal and trauma. Twenty-eight years after Brenda Lund murdered her daughter, some of Ryan’s colleagues still remember Dr. Ralph Baker’s testimony and Brenda Lund’s murder charges. “Of course I remember the case of Bucket Baby,” one of them recently said. If Tina Last made even the smallest impression, how might they nutshell her efforts at motherhood? I wondered. Would she become the mom who lived in the Brick Shithouse or the Dumpster Dwelling?
Becoming something of an armchair lawyer myself, I’d argue Tina Last suffered from an ongoing, unrelenting form of dissociative disorder. The only mystery, for me, was how far back one might trace her mental collapse. Was she ill-equipped to become a mother in the first place, or did motherhood sabotage her delicate health, fanning the flames of her ineptitude? Whenever I’d fall into bed without enforcing our toothbrushing routine or put off dishes until morning and wake to a small cloud of fruit flies over my sink, I’d think, I can do this. I can be a good mom today. Most of the time, I was able and counted myself lucky, part of a prayer for continued strength. Tina Last would remain imprinted on my brain forever.
In spite of my miscarriage, I’d always refer to this pregnancy—the one that “took”—as my fifth, unless I was in a doctor’s office, answering questions about my health history. And this, the fifth time around, was the charm. I’d figured out how to endure sickness. Fountain soda on ice would carry me through mornings, followed by a huge meal at lunch—soup or chili, crackers, cheese, and sometimes eggs. By midafternoon, I’d be too sick to eat again and would fast until the following morning. I felt as though I’d earned a degree in dietary science and could meticulously measure my intake to maintain my weight, avoid vomiting, and continue teaching and parenting. In fact, I was eating a more well-rounded diet with my fifth pregnancy than during any of my previous ones, even taking prenatal vitamins, which I’d been unable to stomach the first four times around.
As always, we endlessly brainstormed names. I felt nostalgic about names from my grandmother’s social circles. The name I most remembered was the ultrafeminine and diminutive Bunny; another gal she talked of was Sweetie, such that all names in this spirit appealed to me in a romantic but ironic way—Kitty, Foxy, Fawn, and Wren. My great-grandmother, whose bangle bracelet and dishes I’d inherited, was Nellie, a name equally possessed of daintiness. I imagined these kinds of names, alluding to animals or nature, being assigned to strong, modern daughters.
Our boy’s name, quite decidedly, as no other contenders
