The Courtroom

She didn’t tell me exactly what I have to wear, she just said to “dress my ass up,” Char tells Stephan. The three dust-topped round bulbs over the bathroom mirror whiten her face to stark, a finger of pewter shadows like chalk drawings under her eyes as she leans in close, paints in tiny pointillism black eye pencil a trace line along her eyelashes. In the heavy Wisconsin dampness, her breath fogs the glass while she draws with the certain hand of a practiced child.

“That’s absurd. Your mother is ridiculous.” Stephan leans back, his hip bone juts above his low and sagging belt as he rests against the door frame; his grandmother’s bathroom has a pink tub, pink toilet, pink sink, and handrails are installed at angles on the walls. The boy is over six feet three in his platforms; spikes of his hair nearly brush the top of the thick-coated doorway.

“No jeans. No holes,” Char says.

“What does she think, you’re an idiot?”

“I’ve told her to leave me alone with the fashion. I warned her.”

“She has no idea.”

“I’ve told her so many times.”

“Did you bring that black velvet shirt?”

“It’s on your bed. With the fuzzy skirt. Remember the Goodwill one?”

Stephan finds it, the shirt flops in his hand like an overfed kitten; he spreads it out against his chest and looks in the mirror. Miniature onyx buttons close the front up to a V neckline laced with tiny black looped stitches and where he stretches it it slowly slinks back down to Extra Small.

“The sleeves have to go. Walk in there sleeveless,” he tells her.

“Do we have time?”

“When’s the hearing?”

“Two. And we have to ride bikes there.” Char puts down the eyeliner. She blinks at herself in the mirror. Distortion, camera-ready, eyes in animation, her black-caked lashes emphatic like flags for calling things home. “You’re coming with?”

“Of course.” He holds the shirt up to Char’s chest and it droops there formless. “I’m chopping the sleeves; they’re low on the sides so it’ll work.”

“Is it nympho-teenage-slut enough?”

“It will be. See, you have no tits. I have nothing else to work with.”

“The skirt. We have the skirt. It’s total fake animal-skin whore.”

Stephan has orange-handled scissors and he snips the sleeves off slowly in the lint-specked light, precise, within thread widths of seams. Moisture from the growth of mildew along his grandmother’s tile grout lines at the bottom edge of her water-trailing plastic shower curtain rises misty in the heat. It smells like algae and rain and something eroding.

“It’s Rhonda’s shirt. She will be so pissed,” Char says.

“I can’t believe you’re wearing your mom’s hacked up shirt to her DUI hearing.”

“No one tells me what to wear.”

Incense burns in Stephan’s room, Charlotte unbuttons her shorts, drops them on the floor next to his bed where CDs are stacked and sliding in a broken mosaic on the carpet. She pulls on the secondhand and sleek furred skirt, a faded velour like calico cat inbred with silver glitter. It zips up the side. She sits and pulls white socks up to her knees. Her legs inside the cotton hang sticklike where she sits, her heels dangling against the dust ruffle.

“You got my shirt?”

“One sec.”

Charlotte opens a brown lunch bag, she empties it onto the orange and green frayed afghan at the foot of the bed, chains and rings and scraps of leather and beads drop into the holes and weaves of the blanket.

“Here. Try it.” Stephan holds out the shirt, now sleek, a lank vest. “Want me to do the buttons?”

“I’ll pull it over.”

Char gets up, pulls her T-shirt over her head and holds her arms up as she leans toward him, a hunched entreaty of slim bones and naked shoulders. Stephan drops the shirt bottom over her hands and she stands. The V neckline hits her midchest. The thin spread of her ribcage shows fanlike above the buttons.

“You really have absolutely no tits, do you?”

“I’m not even fifteen yet; give me a few weeks.”

“Well, you have jewelry. That will help.”

Charlotte strings her wrists with rawhide bands, rubber circles, a wide leather strap with scuffed studs that snaps closed. “What are you gonna wear?” she asks.

“I was thinking yellow.”

“Toss me that shoe.” Char points. The shoes are black with stacked four-inch heels and a wide strap below her ankle, deranged maryjanes on a gin run. She clips silver hoops into her earlobes and stands up. “What do you think?”

“Jesus. You are almost scary.”

“Psycho child slut?”

“The judge is going to freak.”

“I want him to cry.”

“It’s Bombed-a who’s going to cry.”

“Nobody tells me what to wear.”

“What if it’s a woman judge?”

“Whatever.”

“What have you decided for drugs?”

Char goes to the bathroom to check the mirror.

“Oh my god. I look like a music video gone thrift store trash.” She walks back into the bedroom, sifts through the rest of the jewelry on the bed. A black cameo missing its pin. Screw back earring that looks like a wad of chewed gum.

“I have the usual Valiums, some new Percocets from Grandma’s elbow thing last week,” Stephan says. “What do you want? Dope? I got vodka.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Hour.”

“I have to be able to maintain, right? Nothing sloppy. I want that like droopy eye, sleazy porn girl kind of thing.”

“No drinking then. It’s court.” Stephan looks at her, raises a finger. “A couple Valium now and one more when we get there.”

“I won’t fall down or anything?”

“What are you putting on? Dear god.”

Charlotte laughs and turns to show him, a choke chain for a large-breed dog. Unruly around her neck, its throttling ring lies against her collarbone; heavy links pull it down as she moves, tethered baubles of discipline, industrial against her skin.

“That is so perfect,” Stephan says. “You are too much. Bombed-a is going to lose her freaking mind.”

“Is that the worst?” Char goes back out to the bathroom mirror and laughs again. “Should I put the leash on, too?” she calls to him.

“I don’t know. What color is it?”

 

Stephan and Char hold hands when they walk into the hearing room at the courthouse. The air conditioner clatters in the window and the linoleum is scuffed and bootblacked from years of heavy treads and weak cleansers. The humid weight of leftover smoke in the walls. A desk sits at the front of the room with an unplugged lamp and foam coffee cup on it and a few rows of folding chairs are lined up with a pathway down the center of them, like a jagged wedding aisle of the shotgunned. Rhonda is sitting in front and she looks back and spies them and glares. Char sees the twin lines between her mother’s eyebrows, parallel creases of rage and terror. A purse with a looped braid handle on her lap. A woman in a dark blue jacket sits next to Rhonda with a very straight back and Rhonda is so tiny that two of her would not be as wide as the woman. A man in a gray suit sits alone across the aisle from Rhonda and he stares ahead at the concrete block wall.

“This is the sorriest. Is this really even a courtroom?” Stephan says.

“There is like nobody here.”

“I guess Bombed-a did not rate the big room. No camera crew for her.”

“This room is too depressing. It’s like capacity 50.”

“Are you sure this is even legal? Is this in the Constitution?”

They sit in the back away from the aisle, the side farthest from Rhonda. The blue jacket woman looks over at them and then at Rhonda, who nods. The judge comes in and sits up front at the desk like a teacher starting class and a woman goes to a small desk to his right, the court reporter. The judge starts talking to Rhonda, Stephan reaches over with his hand cupped low at his lap and Char, taking the Valium from him without moving her eyes off the judge, palms the pill into her mouth. The adults talk on, reviewing and summarizing. Char has seen this downcast head of her mother before, from back seats and tavern doorways, in the kitchens of the concerned, through the glass that separates principals’ offices, her remorse false and ominous. Charlotte can almost feel the beating undercurrent coming now in waves from that exposed neck, her mother’s furies simmering and coiled and constant.

“What is your mother wearing?” Stephan whispers. “Is that an actual Peter Pan collar?”

“I can’t see.” Char leans forward and stretches. “Jesus. She’s wearing my dress.”

“Good god. That is yours?”

“She went into my closet and took out that dress.”

“Seriously. Honey.”

“That bitch.”

“You cannot honestly resent her wearing that thing. Look at her. She looks like a shrunkenhead baby Jane doll.”

“My Aunt Linda gave me that dress.”

“Let Bombed-a have it. Forever.”

“I got it in seventh grade. I can’t believe she would take that.”

“Ms. Basler,” the judge says from the desk. “You understand that this is your fourth conviction for Operating While Intoxicated? Do you not understand this? I don’t see that you’ve made any serious attempts at all.”

“Give me one of your rings,” Char says.

“Which.”

“Any one. Something clear.”

Stephan has collections of rhinestones on his fingers. He holds out a deep red crystal solitaire, it glows laser infused. Char shakes her head no.

“Like topaz even,” she whispers.

“Here’s my poison potion holder.”

The crystal is shaped into a faceted box and hinged; the lid opens and clips into place.

“There’s a couple Vicodins in there,” Stephan tells her. “They’re old.”

“That’s good. This will work.” Char puts it on her left ring finger.

“And is this the minor child?” the judge says and looks at Char.

Char stands up. She curls the toe of one of her shoes under her other foot, her hip dips down and she leans forward. “I’m the minor child.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Charlotte Basler. Sir.”

“And you are how old?”

Char holds her hand out to Stephan seated next to her, she flips her hair and looks down at him. She sees he is holding back his laugh.

“I’m fourteen years old, your judge. Judging.”

“All right.”

“I’ll be fifteen at the end of the month.”

“Who’s that with your daughter, Ms. Basler?” the judge says to Rhonda.

“He’s my fiancé,” Charlotte answers. She sees her mother turn and look at her but Char doesn’t look back. She holds out the gigantic ring toward the judge.

“What’s your name, son?”

Stephan gets to his feet, his trousers are neon yellow and he’s wound ties around the ankles at the tops of his platform boots. The boy bends sideways into Char, his tie-dye shirt looks like it’s burst into flames.

“Stephan Harrison, sir. We’re in love.”

“All right, that’s fine,” the judge says. “Ms. Basler, do you know this boy?”

“Yes.”

“Are these children engaged to be married?”

“No,” Rhonda says. “They’re. Don’t. Whatever.”

“Your judge?” Charlotte says. “Your judgeship?”

“Yes, miss.”

“We are too engaged. I don’t know what my mother is talking about.”

“She may be thinking that you’re too young to be engaged.”

“That boy is gay,” Rhonda says. Charlotte gasps and pushes out her lower lip. She reaches down to scratch her thigh.

“I beg your pardon,” Stephan announces to the room.

“Not everyone is against gay marriage,” Charlotte says and pushes her shoulder into Stephan. He curls his arm around her, the two of them a mascara-smudged couple atop the wedding cake of the damaged. Char stares at the judge and puts her finger on her lip, she feels Stephan laughing, his ribs hard against her side.

“Please have a seat,” the judge tells them. “Sit down.”

“Can you feel the rage?” Stephan whispers in Char’s ear. “Bombed-a is going to blow up into tiny pieces and turn into rain.”

“Here’s me, the minor child,” Char whispers.

“And I think you’re homeless now.”

They are laughing harder, her shoulders hurt from it, the judge talks on and Char has her hand tight over her mouth.

“Let’s go. Let’s go. I am dying,” Char says.

They stand up and Char really feels the Valiums now, she trips over the leg of the heavy aluminum chair next to the aisle, it clangs like a BB shot in the stuffy room and they stumble out the door at the back and no one calls to them to stop. In the corridor the cackle of their laughing echoes, and they slump into each other as they go, arm in arm past the vending machines and a man reading a newspaper in a T-shirt that says Bud Light.

“Goodbye, mister judge,” Char calls back behind them when Stephan opens the door at the entrance. The hot air settles on them like a soggy quilt. “Did you see blue jacket look at me? She wanted to kill me.”

“I will never get over your mother in that dress. That will haunt me for the rest of my life. Was that like gingham?”

“I hope they put her in jail.”

“They won’t.”

“Minor child.”

“They never will. You’ll have to ride her around to the bars on your bike.”

They are tall in their platforms and weave as they walk to the bike rack at the side of the lot. Stephan has the key, he takes off his U-lock where it’s clamped both their bikes to the steel bars and Charlotte’s laughing still. He stops her a second in the sunlight; a tiny black thread dangles on her shoulder from the clipped shirt seam and he reaches to pull it away.