The Stardust Lounge_ Stories From a Boy's Adolescence - Deborah Digges [59]
I've learned that by keeping quiet, Stephen takes on his own remorse. In the absence of crowding him with advice and reprimands, he speculates on how to avoid such a situation again. If you want to get to know someone, say the Buddhists, give him a big field to play in.
Though to anyone else our presence here once again might appear just another dark chapter, it is actually a victory. Today's alleged offense involves a minor driving infraction complicated by the fact that Stephen seemed to have misplaced his driver's license.
In other words, there are no weapons involved, no one harmed, nothing missing, no property destroyed or defaced, no involvement of drugs or alcohol, no gang members waiting outside to grill Stephen regarding his possible implication of them, no resounding, lingering repercussions.
Just a simple, illegal left turn, a kid with a reputation and no driver's license on him, and a testy cop. We haven't engaged a lawyer. Stephen intends to speak for himself.
One by one, the cases are called. We know we might be here for hours. I've brought student essays to grade while we wait, Stephen his math homework. But by turns anxious, distracted, and bored, neither of us can concentrate.
We resort to our old ways, play many games of tic-tac-toe. Then we move on to a game Stephen invented a few court appearances back that involves finding—in one minute—as many words as possible in the other's name. When Stephen passes me his list with the word boa underlined next to a drawing of a woman with a snake around her neck, we almost lose our cool.
We are substantially into the inevitable Hangman— Stephen having stumped me regarding the category of rap group names, my little stick man now nearly complete with limbs, torso, head, though as yet no noose around the neck—when his case is called. It's close to eleven in the morning. Stephen practically leaps out of his seat and makes his way down to the bench where he stands before the judge, his head bowed, his hands folded in front of him.
“Mr. Digges,” the judge begins after the charges are read.
“Yes, sir,” Stephen answers.
“I've seen you here too many times.”
“I know, sir. I'm sorry.”
“I'm tired of seeing you here, Mr. Digges.”
“Me, too, sir.”
“You are speaking for yourself today?”
“I am.”
“Very courageous. So tell me …”
Between them, Stephen and the judge review the violation. I strain to hear their discourse. Powerfully tempted to leave my seat and go to stand next to him, I check myself and observe my son for the first time alone before the judge as Stephen politely and thoroughly narrates.
I can't help thinking of the years that have brought us here—hard years, surprising, devastating years, years during which we were torn and we tore raggedly, painfully from each other, our separation as physical, as passionate as our earliest connection as mother and son.
I smile at the irony as I imagine other parents feeling as I do at this moment, feeling pride as their son or daughter crosses the finish line to win the race, or kicks the ball hard to score the winning goal, or traverses the stage to receive some award, a moment in which they see their child as I see mine, separate and capable and worthy.
As for my Stephen, he seems to have been born for adversity, he who entered this world screaming, who loved to jump suddenly from a high stairs knowing someone would catch him, who'd run headlong at his mother just as later he would run headlong at the world, leaping on its back, wrestling it to the ground.
I suspect that were Stephen an animal, he'd be a blue jay just as I've always thought that Charles and I would be sparrows.
So bandit-eyed, so undove like a bird…, Robert Francis writes in his poem “Blue Jay,” a poem Stephen loved as a child. Skulker and blusterer whose every arrival is a raid.
In another life, Stephen might well have been one of those children who survived the war-torn ghettos by hiding out, scavenging, stockpiling