Irreplaceable

I’ll call her Lucinda.  She was 13, a little undersized for her age, and pretty with small, neat features and olive skin.  Her English, like her Spanish, was flawless; she had grown up speaking both every day of her life.  She was from a part of the South Bronx I knew only by precinct.  I had been through her neighborhood, but generally at high speed and in a police car.  She wore jeans that she’d marked up with a ballpoint pen, “Spanglish” messages to and from friends that defined her life and announced the things she held dear and cared about.  They were things that I was a lifetime and more from understanding.Lucinda’s uncle had been molesting her for about three years.  She had vomited this simple, awful fact to her mother one night when the thought of spending hours alone with him loomed close and her ability to mask the panic at the thought of it faltered.  Thankfully, her mother had done the right thing.  She had called their precinct.  A thorough SVU detective had taken a report, and she had sworn out a complaint.  Through the labyrinth of Bronx due process the complaint had traveled, eventually landing on my desk.It was in this way that Lucinda and I were brought together.  I greeted her mother, a small, tough but kind looking woman, in Spanish as we stood in the waiting area of the Child Abuse and Sex Unit.  She was gracious despite my accent and occasional grammatical errors.  Then I led Lucinda alone back to my office. Her eyes were black, and moved restlessly around the room as I asked her to sit down.  When they met mine, they were oddly blank.   I was used to that.  I maintained eye contact with her, striking a careful balance I had struggled to achieve over the years.  You don’t want to bore with your eyes, especially when you’re my size.  On the other hand, you don’t want to seem unfocused or uncaring.“Lucinda,” I said.  “Thanks for being here.”  The blank eyes shifted to something more inquisitive.  It had never occurred to her that she had any choice in the matter.  They settled back to blank, and she shrugged.  She looked at the floor.  I waited a few seconds.  Sometimes they just start talking.  But Lucinda didn’t.  I thought for a long moment and fished out a line I’d used many times before.“Do you know why you’re here?”The change was instantaneous.  The look in her eyes melted- I know of no other way to describe it- from blank to two holes of pain her face.  It was more than the eyes, actually.  Her entire face seemed to shift and contort.  She was being crushed by fear, guilt, revulsion and pain.  She nodded.“Okay,” I said carefully, and at low volume.  I considered myself as I always do in professional situations with most women and children.  I am tall, white, and heavy.  My voice resonates naturally like a bass drum, a blessing in some courtrooms but a curse in other venues.  Why someone like Lucinda would give me the benefit of any doubt is beyond me, but sometimes childhood is the prosecutor’s best weapon in child abuse cases.  Sometimes they give us the testimony we ask for because they don’t yet have the wherewithal to refuse us.  Sometimes they’re just willing to take leaps with us because (thank God) they haven’t yet been taught by experience not to dare.“Do you think you can tell me about what’s been going on with your uncle?” I asked softly.  She shrugged, and seemed to cave in further.  It was as if I was asking if she’d consider slamming her hand in a car door for my amusement.  “Just wait a few minutes,” I said.  “It’s okay.  I’m going to look at the file. You can look at it too, if you want later.”There was a small, cheap radio on my desk, playing at low volume.  On that day in early 2007, it was playing “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce.  As I fell silent the music floated over between us.  Lucinda glanced at the radio.  Her head bobbed slowly as she recognized the song- the tune is catchy as hell.  In a few seconds, she began to mouth the words.  I let a minute or so pass.“You know when this comes on in the clubs,” I said, again at low volume, “the girls all go like this.”  I lifted my white-shirt covered arm over my head and pointed awkwardly to the left.  She looked at me quizzically for a long moment.  Then she smiled.  And then, later, she told me.