Mike broke his silence in response to her argument. “Ciarra, I think you oughta cooperate with these folks.”
Her rage turned in the direction of her father. “What the fuck, Dad, now you’re on their side? They’re tryin’ to fucking take Aston away from me, don’t you see that? They’re trying to take Aston away.”
She directed the fight back toward the social worker. “Who the fuck told you he was getting abused? I want to know who called you.”
The social worker cocked an eyebrow. “Ma’am, I’m not allowed to tell you who gives us a referral. But we do need to take Aston to get a medical exam. The law allows us to take custody of a child in this situation.”
“No fuckin’ way. No fuckin’ way am I gonna let you take my son away.”
Ciarra started to walk toward Aston, intent on claiming him away from the man who was preoccupying him. One of the police officers, who had been standing like a guard statue, spoke up. “Ma’am, if you intervene, you may be lookin’ at arrest. I may have to arrest you.”
Ciarra yelled, “This is bullshit. This is such fucking bullshit.” Her anger gave way to uncontrollable sobbing.
Mike interjected. “Well, what if I take custody for a while? I’m his granddad.”
The woman shook her head regretfully. “We can’t let Aston stay in a place where we can’t be sure that he has access to running water or food. Whoever has custody of him has to be living in a suitable residence.”
Mike looked down at the floor, his hope expended by the grief that he dared not overtly show them.
“What the fuck about all those people down on Skid Row?” Ciarra asked. “They have fuckin’ kids. Why the fuck aren’t they getting their kids taken?”
The way they reacted to her question denoted that they had no explanation to offer her. Ciarra collected herself and tried, despite her despair, to make herself the victim. “We’ve had a hard time, that’s all. It’s just me and him, you know? His dad don’t give us any money. We don’t live here. We’re just here temporarily so my dad can watch him when I work.”
Ciarra was pacing up and down. The social worker thought about asking her about her work, but seeing as how she already knew the answer and knew that Ciarra would lie, she didn’t bother. “Ma’am, because of the hour right now, I’ll be taking Aston to the office. We are going to do Aston’s physical tomorrow morning. Unless for some reason the physical goes on all day long, which it shouldn’t, I’m going to pick him up from there and drop him off at school. Within five days, you can request a visit with him and we can have someone supervise that visit. During that visit, we are gonna need you to do a urine test just to make sure that there are no drugs in your system. I can update you any time if you want to call me. Do you have any questions before we take him with us?”
Ciarra’s rage took over her terror again. “I don’t appreciate these fucking allegations. How the fuck would you feel if someone just came into your house in the middle of the day and took your kid away? How the fuck would you feel? Yeah, I feel pretty shitty, obviously.”
Mike walked over to the purple van and put Aston’s toy cars into his little school backpack, along with a jacket and a toothbrush. “Can we at least say goodbye to ’im before you guys take ’im?” he asked, handing the backpack to the social worker.
“Yes, you can definitely do that,” she said.
Mike kneeled down in the dust in front of his grandson. “Hey Aston, you’re gonna go with these nice people for just a while, so Mommy and I can find you a house, would you like that?”
“No.” Aston shook his head.
“But if we could get a house, we could get a dog. Wouldn’tcha like that?”
The dejected look on Aston’s face brightened. “Can he be like Scooby Doo?” he asked.
“He may be a little different than Scooby Doo, but we can look for one the same color,” Mike said, uncharacteristic tears welling up in his eyes. “Go say bye to your mother,” he added, guiding his shoulder to turn toward Ciarra.
Ciarra gave a sigh of defeat and put a hand against her forehead, turning around to try to repress her tears. Aston jumped up on her, completely unaware of what was actually occurring. She picked him up and held his head flat against her neck. “Hey Mommy, Pop Pop said I could get a dog. Can you find a house soon?” Aston asked, suddenly more excited about the reason for needing to go with the strange people standing in the lot than apprehensive.
Hearing Aston use his pet name for her father made the burden she usually felt toward Aston vanish. All that was left was the torment of losing something she loved so much. She started crying. “I love you, buddy,” she said. “You be good, OK? Mommy’s gonna come get you as soon as I can, OK?”
Aston sat up to look at her. He put his fingers into the wet of the tears on her cheek. “Mommy, why are you crying?” he asked, confused at why such good news had made her act so sad.
“Mommy is just gonna miss you, that’s all,” she said.
“It’s OK, Mommy,” Aston reassured her naively. “You don’t have to miss me, you can see me every day.” His blatant innocence about what was going on made her cry even harder. He walked toward the man he had been playing with and let the man lead him out of the lot.
Everyone stood there watching him walk away willingly until the sight of the car door closing behind him restored Ciarra to her original state of uproar. The woman social worker handed her a piece of paper that she
