Those Children Are Ours Page 6

  “We are sure that you will be fair to all parties, Your Honor,” Kimi said.

  “We have no objection to your hearing the case,” Alice added.

  “Do you have an opening statement, Ms. Green?”

  “I do, Your Honor. Before I make it, however, I note that Ms. Carson has supplied a list of at least a dozen witnesses who she intends to call, presumably as character witnesses. We will be willing to agree that Ms. Bateman’s former husband is of good moral character and a good father if Ms. Carson will agree not to subject us to what will undoubtedly be repetitive testimony to that very effect.”

  “Ms. Carson?”

  “Given Ms. Green’s stipulation, we will agree to not call the witnesses to whom she refers, with the exception of Ms. Emma Coleman. We do plan to call Ms. Coleman.”

  “That will be fine, Your Honor.” Alice’s face bore a puzzled expression.

  “Proceed, Ms. Green.”

  “Your Honor, Jennie Bateman and her former husband were married seventeen years ago, just after they graduated from college. After five years of marriage and the birth of two children, Ms. Bateman was suffering from what was later diagnosed as a bipolar disorder. Her husband was a full-time student and she worked at a restaurant near the apartment where they lived. The stress of her marriage, her job, and caring for her two children proved to be more than she could cope with, given her disorder.”

  She placed a hand on Jennie’s shoulder. “As a result, she made some mistakes, some very bad choices, but, since that time, she has turned her life around. She is receiving psychiatric care and has been stabilized on medication. She has taught school in Carrollton, Georgia for six years. She is a faithful member of Whitesburg Baptist Church.”

  Alice removed her glasses as she continued. “Jennie regrets her mistakes. She regrets leaving her children and being apart from them for an extended period of time. She seeks the opportunity to know them and to be a part of their lives. She is requesting a minimal amount of visitation with her children in an effort to reestablish her maternal bond with them and to provide a positive, female role model for them as they move toward adulthood. Thank you.”

  “Ms. Carson?”

  “Your Honor, twelve years ago, Ms. Bateman deserted her husband of five years, and her children, aged four and two. She chose to desert the week before her husband was scheduled to defend his dissertation and as the family was preparing to move to Charleston, where her husband had been offered a position in the English department at the College of Charleston. At the time, Ms. Bateman was working part-time as a barmaid.”

  “No,” Jennie exclaimed. “I was a waitress at a restaurant.”

  “Ms. Bateman, do not interrupt.”

  Alice put her hand on Jennie’s arm. “We’re sorry, Your Honor.”

  “Your Honor, we will document the nature of the establishment where Ms. Bateman was employed as we proceed. Ms. Bateman chose to work, placing her children in daycare. Her husband had an assistantship and was in the process of publishing his second novel at the time. Money was not an issue.”

  Kimi Carson stepped away from the table and stood in front, speaking without notes.

  “Ms. Bateman began to drink heavily. She began to entertain men in her bedroom while her children listened on the other side of the bedroom door. One Saturday, when her husband confronted her about her behavior, she struck her four-year-old daughter, screamed obscenities at her husband, packed a bag, and stormed out of the apartment.”

  “Don’t talk about my daughter like that.” Jennie’s father stood and shouted at Kimi.

  “Quiet.” Judge Sullivan pounded her fist on her desk. “Ms. Green, who is this?”

  “This is Mr. Askins Bateman, Jennie’s father. Her parents and siblings are here today to show their support for her.”

  “Control Mr. Bateman. Have him show his support in silence, please.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Jennie buried her face in her hands while Alice talked quietly with her father. She glanced up and saw Thomas shaking his head. He looked as if he felt sorry for her.

  “Ms. Carson, continue.”

  “Ms. Bateman stormed out of the apartment, not to be seen again by any member of her family until today. Over the past twelve years she has not once, not once, Your Honor, visited, written, called, emailed, texted, IMed, friended on Facebook, nor contacted her daughters via any other method.” As she spoke, she held up her fingers, one by one, counting the methods by which Jennie could have reached out to her children. “Now she seeks to…”

  She paused and looked at Alice. “What was it? Oh, yes she ‘seeks to reestablish the maternal bond and become a positive influence in the lives of her children.’ She plans to do this by totally disrupting her children’s lives, dragging them away from the only home they have ever known, from their father, who has devoted himself to them for more than a decade, from their friends, and from their interests. She asks to do this for significant periods of time each year. Your Honor, we can see no way in which her plan would benefit the children. In truth, it would benefit no one—except Ms. Bateman herself,” she pointed at Jennie, “by assuaging the enormous sense of guilt she must feel for her behavior.” She paused. “Her petition should be rejected in its entirety.”

  Kimi Carson sat down and there was silence in the courtroom. Jennie wiped her eyes. Alice had warned her that the hearing would not be pleasant.

  Alice called Jennie to testify. Jennie’s legs were shaking as she walked to the chair beside the judge’s desk. She tripped and almost fell as she reached the top of the platform. As she lowered herself into the chair, Alice smiled at her.

  “Are you nervous, Jennie?”

  Jennie nodded. “My hands are shaking.”

  “And you stumbled a little. We all understand. It’s perfectly normal to be anxious.” Alice looked down, consulting her notes. Jennie looked to the left. Her mother and sister both smiled and her brother gave a thumbs up. She glanced to the right. Thomas was staring toward one of the windows. All Jennie could see when her gaze followed his were dull, gray clouds. His attorney seemed to be reading on her tablet. Neither appeared to be interested in what she might say.

  “Jennie, you grew up near Whitesburg, Georgia. Could you tell us a little about your childhood?”

  Jennie described her childhood, growing up in the country, in the house where her parents still lived.

  “My grandparents lived with us, or we lived with them, I’m not really sure which. Grandpa died when I was about nine, Grandmom when I was fourteen.”

  “You were close to your grandparents.”

  Jennie nodded. “Especially to Grandmom. My mother worked, and Grandmom took care of us. I remember helping her cook. She taught me how to bake all sorts of bread—loaves, rolls, muffins, cakes.

  “We would go into the woods to pick berries. The fields would be so full of them that they would appear to be entirely red or black as we approached, depending on the type of berries. Her blackberry pies were to die for. I used to make them for my family. Mine were really good, but not like Grandmom’s.

  “I was afraid of thunder, and she would sing to me during storms. Whenever I was sad or afraid, she would hold me in her lap and rock me until I felt better.”

  She choked back a sob and looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.

  “I’m sorry. I still miss Grandmom. I suspect that I would not have been so messed up if she had been around to help me. I…I still go out to the cemetery to talk with her sometimes.” She wiped at her eyes. “Does that mean I’m crazy?” She looked up at Alice.

  “Not at all,” she said softly.

  “I wanted to be just like Grandmom, taking care of my children, teaching them, playing with them, but Thomas wanted me to work.”

  Alice led her through a description of her teen years.

  “I had my first date when I was fifteen. Johnny Ackerman took me to a football game and to the dance afterward. Then we parked out by the pond an
d kissed and all. Daddy would have had a fit if he had known, but we didn’t do anything bad.”

  “Who talked with you about boys, dating, sex?”

  “My mother did. A girl ought to talk with her mother about things like that, not to her father or to some stranger.” She glanced at Thomas, but he was looking in the other direction. “We sat on the porch one afternoon when I was about twelve. She laid down the law. Told me she would kill me if I had sex before I was married.”

  “You met your husband when you were in college?”

  Jennie nodded. “First day, eight o’clock, English one-oh-one. We sat next to each other in the first row. When class ended and everyone stood to leave, my books fell on the floor.” She paused. “Actually, I pushed them off the desk to attract his attention.” Her family all laughed. “We began to date and we dated for four years. We married the summer after graduation. Thomas began graduate school the next fall.”

  “Were you happy?”

  “We were happy. I became pregnant immediately. Alexis was born the next year.”

  “And your second child?”

  “Our second child was stillborn, but I quickly became pregnant with Christa, and she was born two years after Alexis.”

  “So you were pregnant for about half of your marriage.”

  Jennie nodded.

  “How did your husband feel about having children so quickly?”

  “He seemed happy. We both wanted a family and we never did anything to prevent me from becoming pregnant.”

  “So when did things begin to go bad?”

  “After Christa was born.”

  “Tell us what happened.”

  Jennie described how she had changed over the last two years of her marriage.

  “I became a very depressed and angry person. I lost interest in things I had enjoyed, playing with Alexis, for example, sitting up late talking with Thomas, arguing about some abstract question of philosophy—we used to have so much fun doing that—going for walks around the Emory campus, and, well, sex.” She glanced at her parents and felt her face becoming warm.

  “Some days I didn’t want to get out of bed, and that was especially hard because Thomas was a real morning person. He would hop out of bed early, full of energy, talking about his plans for the day. I would become so irritated that I would want to scream and sometimes I would. His feelings would be hurt and then he would be quiet. You’d think that would have helped, but I would feel guilty for hurting his feelings and I’d then be angry about that. Finally, he learned to just leave me alone in the morning. I would awaken and I would hear him in the kitchen, laughing with Alexis and Christa, having a good time. When I would stagger in and try to join them, they would stop talking, and that would make me angry.” She shook her head.

  “After a while, I was down most of the time, but I could blow up with the smallest provocation. There seemed to be no way for me, or anyone else, I suppose, to predict what would make me angry. If someone disagreed with me over the slightest thing—where to go for dinner, when to leave for church, what to eat, what movie to see, what time Alexis should go to bed—I might start screaming and not calm down for an hour. Other times, I would clam up and not talk, just pout, perhaps for the rest of the day. I believed people—everyone—were being mean to me.”

  “Was your husband mean to you?”

  “At the time that was my feeling.” Jennie managed a weak smile. “In my sane moments—I did have a few of those—I knew that he wasn’t. The Thomas I loved and married would never have been mean to me. It was my problem, my illness, not his.”

  “How did your husband react?”

  “At first, he would try to comfort me, find a way to help me feel better, calm me down, cheer me up. When he did, I would be angry because I felt he was treating me as a child. After a while, he quit trying. Then I would be angry because I felt he didn’t care.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “He couldn’t win. My mood could change on a dime. One minute I might be hostile, the next I might be trying to lure him into bed. I never understood humor and he loved to tell jokes. When he did, if it was possible, I took them personally.” She tried without success to catch Thomas’s eye to let him see the apology in hers. “I must have been hell to live with.

  “One afternoon, one of the guys at the restaurant persuaded me to have a drink. He said it would make me feel better. I’d never used liquor before, just beer or wine occasionally. The alcohol didn’t really make me feel better. It just made me not care that I felt so awful. I drank more and more. Toward the end, I was high on alcohol most of the time.”

  “When you left your husband, you moved in with another man.”

  “I did. I…I told you that I lost interest in sex. That wasn’t really true. As our relationship deteriorated, I lost interest in sex with Thomas.” She gulped. “I made up for it by sleeping with other guys. One of them let me live at his place when I left Thomas.”

  “Why did you leave him?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The last few weeks of our marriage are a blur. The morning I left, I remember we argued, there was shouting, the girls were crying. I recall stomping down the steps, scowling, thinking…thinking I’m free at last.”

  “When I’ve talked with you, when I’ve talked with other people about you, you don’t seem like the person you just described.”

  “I’m not. About two years after I left, right after our divorce, in fact, things began to change. I met a preacher who took an interest in me. He invited me to church. He convinced me that God loved me in spite of myself. He helped me join AA.” Jennie straightened her back.

  “I moved away from the man with whom I had been living. I stopped sleeping around. I quit drinking. I stayed with my parents while I went back to school, and I became a teacher. I earned my master’s degree. I’ve taught third grade at Carrollton Elementary school for six years. I was teacher of the year last year.”

  “Good for you.” Alice smiled.

  “I entered therapy. I’ve been on medication for the past seven years, and my mood swings are controlled now. I own my own home. I’m a member of Whitesburg Baptist Church and I go to church every Sunday.”

  “Every Sunday?” Alice smiled mischievously.

  “Almost every Sunday.” Jennie smiled. “Unless I’m sick or out of town.”

  “You’ve turned your life around.”

  “I have. I’m happy again.”

  “Do you ever find yourself becoming angry?”

  “Of course. Everyone gets angry. I used to be terrified when I began to feel that way, afraid I would slip back to my old behavior. Once, just after I began therapy, my father saw me in town wearing a tank top, and he told me to put on a shirt, not to show myself in public dressed as I was. I felt as if he was treating me like a child, and I could feel the anger boiling inside of me. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where I wanted him to go and what I wanted him to do when he arrived…I can’t believe what I almost said to him.” She covered her eyes with one hand. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “Take your time, Jennie.” Alice patted her arm.

  Jennie finally looked up. “I stood on the sidewalk, my mouth open to speak, when suddenly I saw myself, back in our apartment, attacking Thomas, telling him the same things I was ready to say to Daddy, and I started crying. I turned and ran.” She took a deep breath. “He probably doesn’t even remember it.” She glanced at her father, who was shaking his head.

  “I made a special appointment to talk with Dr. Wilson. We worked on ways for me to cope when I start to feel like that, and they really work. I’ve found that I’ve needed them less and less over the years.”

  “Why did you never contact your children before? Why seek visitation rights now?”

  “At first, even after I was sober, I had nothing to offer my children. I was still learning to control myself. Later, I was afraid. Afraid they would want nothing to do with me. Afraid of what Thomas might do. I imagined knocking on his door, having hi
m open it, having him slam it in my face. I know he wouldn’t have done that, literally, he’s not that kind of person, but that was the way I felt. Then, one Saturday, I was shopping in Atlanta.”

  Jennie described seeing Thomas and her daughters in Atlanta. “As I drove home that night, I kept saying to myself, over and over, ‘Those children are mine. Those children are mine.’ Well, Dr. Wilson, my therapist, had already broached the idea of my contacting my daughters, trying to obtain visitation with them. She thought it would help me develop more self-confidence, that it would empower me. She’d had me list the steps I would have to take to actually accomplish it.” She noticed that Kimi Carson was looking directly at her, scribbling in her notebook. “I decided that I had nothing to lose from trying.”

  She turned to the judge. “I’m not trying to hurt Thomas or to break up his family. I know that he has been a wonderful father. I just want to know my children. I want them to know me. With my experiences, maybe I can help them avoid the mistakes that I made, maybe I can help them to have better, happier lives.”

  “Thank you, Jennie.” Alice patted her shoulder. She handed an envelope to Kimi Carson and turned to Judge Sullivan. “We have supplied to the court, and to Ms. Carson, information concerning Jennie’s financial condition and her ownership of her home, as well as depositions from her pastor, her neighbors and her coworkers concerning her character and her behavior. In addition, we have provided an evaluation of her psychiatric condition from her psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Wilson. You will see that, by all accounts, she is a responsible, well-liked, stable person.”

  Alice Green sat. Jennie looked up at the clock. She had been talking for almost an hour. It had seemed like fifteen minutes.

  Judge Sullivan checked the time too. “Ms. Carson, it’s after eleven. Would you like to question Ms. Bateman now, or wait until after we break for lunch?”

  “Your Honor, I have a few issues which I would like Ms. Bateman to clarify. It should only take a few minutes. However, in fairness, I will want to re-call her to the stand later to respond to certain aspects of Dr. Lindsay’s testimony.”