he was jailed for three weeks. I came to visit him that first evening, chill with shock, thinking I was done crying for a while. I brought him the book he was reading. I pressed door buzzers and intercoms, waited behind locked doors, spoke through thick glass windows to curt, distracted guards. The book was denied, without explanation, and the tears came again -- and I've found ever since that my tears serve only to shut doors and close faces. When I calmed down, I was given 20 minutes to speak to him. He came out dressed in faded, ill-fitting work clothes, pale and embarrassed, and we huddled in a crowded room of other parents and other boys, some of them loud and strutting, others silent and withdrawn. I visited every day I was allowed -- which was not every day -- and each time I left he had to go through a strip search. He told me about the other boys, the drive-by shootings, the rapes and the robberies about which they bragged. He told me about recreational drugs I'd never heard of before. He described several R-rated movies he'd seen in detention, violent films I'd refused to let him see because he was too young. He described the hours of mental health evaluations, the blood tests, the interviews. He complained about the food and the boredom, worried about his missed schoolwork, talked of everything but what had happened, his lawyers, the hearings to come. I talked to lawyers, too. I wrote large checks. No one asked about the younger boy, the victim. Two armed and uniformed police asked him on the first day if the story was true. After that, no one mentioned him. No one suggested a doctor's exam or a counselor's interview. No one interviewed my husband and me, no one visited our home. So I arranged for a lawyer for us, and I took my other son to the doctor -- who found no physical evidence of abuse -- and to a counselor. We never spoke with the district attorney who prosecuted the case. My older son stayed in jail. First one, then two custodial hearings were scheduled and abruptly canceled without explanation. I got lost in the unreliable labyrinth of voice mail, lost messages, messages never returned, authority changing hands. I grew skittish and paranoid, glancing out the window at every car slowing down near our house, at the ringing telephone, the doorbell -- wondering if men with guns and blue uniforms would come for our other son without warning, take him away as well. I didn't know what to do or who to ask. I was afraid to tell any of my friends. We sat in the courthouse hallway before the third scheduled hearing, sat there in stark terror. I had asked the receptionist in the lobby what to expect. She looked at a schedule, at my son's name and the word "sodomy," and said casually, "He'll probably be locked up for a few years. That's typical." The juvenile advocate came out of his office and leaned over and told me that this hearing, too, had been canceled. The district attorney had a conflict. I started to cry. My husband sat motionless and silent. "I don't know what to do," I whispered. "Tell me what to do." He turned on his heel and walked away. "I can't talk to you when you're crying," he said.
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