8 | The Judge Who Already Knew Her Name
The emergency hearing was scheduled for Monday at nine in the morning, in a county courthouse forty minutes from the church, in a room that smelled like floor wax and old paper.
Daniel, Sophie and I sat on a bench in the front row because there was nowhere else to sit.
Sophie was wearing her flower girl dress because it was the only nice thing she had that was clean, and I had pinned her hair up on one side with a pink clip I bought at a drugstore on the way.
Sylvia sat on the other side of the room with a lawyer in a gray suit.
Sylvia's lawyer did most of the talking at first.
He said Sylvia was seeking a stepparent standing and that Daniel's home was unstable.
He said there was a history of neglect.
He said Sophie had been exposed to an environment that had already produced one emergency custody change this year.
The judge was a woman around my mother's age with reading glasses on a chain and a mug that said Save the Bees.
She read the petition quietly for a long time.
Then she looked over the rim of her glasses at Sophie.
"Sophie, honey," she said.
"I know this room is loud and full of strangers.
Do you want to sit up here with me for a minute?"
The other lawyer started to object, and the judge said, "I asked the child, not you."
Sophie looked up at me.
I nodded, and she walked up to the bench and the judge turned her chair toward her, and the bailiff moved to a corner and turned his back.
"I know you," the judge said softly.
"You come to the reading program on Thursdays at Elm Street, don't you?
You read to my granddaughter's class last month."
Sophie nodded.
"Now," the judge said.
"Your flower girl dress is beautiful.
Did you want your hair cut on Saturday?"
Sophie shook her head.
"Say it out loud, sweetheart," the judge said.
"It has to be on the record."
"No," Sophie said.
"I said no.
She did it anyway."
The room was very quiet.
I took out my purse and I handed up to the clerk the ziplock bag with the hair, the pharmacy sticker on the back, and the red ribbon tied around the middle, and I said, "Your Honor, that was in her overnight bag.
The cut was weeks ago."
Judge Berenson looked at the bag for a moment and then put it down carefully, like you put down something that might break.
Then I gave the clerk my phone and the file Marisol had transferred to me Sunday night, which was the hallway camera from the venue.
We watched it three times.
In the video, Sylvia walks into the dressing room ten minutes early.
Nobody sent her there.
She reaches for the scissors herself.
Then I gave the clerk the recorder Marisol uses for vows, and the courtroom heard Sylvia's own voice from Saturday afternoon, from the front desk of the venue.
"I took the shoes and the hair for safekeeping," she said on the tape.
"The wedding has to stop until the court sees how unfit that woman is."
The other lawyer looked at Sylvia.
Sylvia looked at the table.
The judge listened to the recording twice.
The second time, she didn't look up from her notes.
Then she set her glasses down and said, "The petition is dismissed.
Given what I have heard, I'm setting a permanent order hearing, and I expect Ms. Hart to have separate counsel by then, because her current representation may have some explaining to do."
Sylvia's lawyer lifted a hand.
Whatever he was going to say, Judge Berenson cut it off with one sentence that stopped everyone in the room.
"Mrs. Reyes," she said, "you were listed as a witness on this petition until this morning.
Would you like to explain?"
Everyone turned.
May you like
I turned too.
And there in the second row, in a linen jacket, holding a leather folder on her lap, was my mother.
