Chapter 37: Two Days
Author's Notes: Two days in the life of Buffy Summers. Poor Buffy. The dialogue given to 'Jerry' are actual quotations from a man I know in a program like that. He's a hoot. :-)
Sunday Sunday morning broke soft and warm the day after Buffy's big night at the Bronze with Willow and her friends. She smiled as she slowly stretched herself awake, all warm and cozy and feeling completely at peace. She'd met some new friends, gotten closer to the boy she'd been dreaming about for over a year, and he'd asked her for a real date. A
date! And he'd kissed her!
Three times! A kiss! From
Spike! It was all she could have ever hoped it would be. It was the first day since her ordeal had begun that she felt completely at peace with herself and her world.
The peace lasted all of two minutes. Lasted right up until she turned on her side and saw the sweet face of her baby girl smiling from the picture frame sitting on her bedside table.
That was all it took for the enormity of her situation to come crashing down upon her head once more, until peace was just a distant dream. When she had awakened yesterday afternoon, having cried herself to sleep on her bedroom floor, she'd been numb, unable to feel anything at all for a few hours. It was just too much to take in -- her baby's anguish, the loneliness, her total lack of control over the most important person in her life, her little Katie. Oh God, her poor baby girl! She was so miserable, no understanding of why her mommy was suddenly gone from her life. And who knew what the foster parents were like, anyway? They could be good kind people who would treat Katie just like she was their own. Or they could be cold terrible people who saw in her daughter nothing but a government check, caring not at all for the baby girl in their home.
And Buffy had absolutely no control over any of it. Other people now ruled her world, and her baby was their hostage. She was told time and time again: do this, don't do that, meet this deadline, cooperate with all aspects of 'the plan' -- or you'll never have your daughter back again. In her heart of hearts, these well-meaning people were no better than terrorists to Buffy, holding her baby hostage to their own need to control
her life. She was sixteen, and she had no right or control over anything any more. And baby Katie was paying the price for all of it.
She hated them. She'd been following their rules for just a week now, and she hated them all, those Godforsaken people who kept her baby from her. And she could never let them know. If they knew how she felt, they'd punish her, and punish Katie by keeping her from her forever. She had to play the game they played, and beat them at it. She had to win, or lose her daughter.
So she would smile, and follow the rules, and be the picture of a perfect sixteen year old girl as well as the perfect mature little mother when she needed to be. And if she was able to keep it up, they'd release their tiny hostage and hopefully leave the two of them be. Let them be happy again.
One day they would have to let her live her own life once more. She wouldn't be a child forever.
~~~~~~~
She wasn't terribly hungry when she came downstairs for a late breakfast, so she decided on a very simple meal. As she spread cream cheese on half a toasted bagel, Rosemary came shuffling into the kitchen, yawning sleepily and pouring herself a cup of coffee that had been left warming since John went to work several hours ago.
"Good morning!" Buffy greeted her foster mother with as much charm as she could muster.
Rosemary scowled at her. "My
God. Why are you so
happy this early in the morning?" She yawned again. "It's not normal."
Buffy chuckled. "It's ten am. I have it on good authority that cheerfulness is fully permissible at any hour past nine on a Sunday." She plopped her bagel down on a small plate, grabbed her glass of juice and headed out to sit by the pool.
Rosemary gave a sarcastic little smile and followed her outside.
"So ... You're happy. Good time last night?" Rosemary sipped the bitter coffee and grimaced. "Ugh. This is awful." She placed the cup on the little table between the two of them and pulled her feet up on the chaise longue.
It was a beautiful, sunny day already, and completely out of the season for Christmas week. Buffy thought it was depressing to have sunny heat during Christmas season, but couldn't help being happy that it was perfect poolside weather as well. Silver linings.
"It was a good night," she remarked noncommittally as she stared out at the water.
"A good night ... If I remember my teen years correctly, that means there's a boy involved at some point." Rosemary lifted an eyebrow and smirked.
"Could be." Buffy hedged with a little smile.
"Hmmmm ... Yep. Definitely a boy," she continued. "And judging from the silly grin you keep trying to wipe off your face, a very handsome boy." She squinted her eyes and looked hard at Buffy, who continued to gaze out over the water, ignoring her foster mother's stare. "And not just
any boy. The
right boy."
Buffy turned her head toward Rosemary and considered what to tell her. She knew these people could make trouble for her as far as Spike was concerned. Tanya had told her that laws passed earlier that year required foster parents to permit the children in their care to lead as 'normal a life as possible', which hadn't been the case previously. Tanya said before this law was passed that kids sometimes couldn't even go to their own high school prom or have friends over to the house because the date or friends hadn't had a 'criminal background check' first. Teenagers weren't allowed to leave the house, or had ridiculously early curfews. The foster parents and social workers were so completely irrational in their desire to 'protect' the kids that they forgot to let them be kids. So California made a law that said they shouldn't be restricting kids so much just because they were in foster care. But it was a new law, and sometimes new laws were slow to catch on. And John and Rosemary were used to caring for small children, not teenagers. Tanya said she told Buffy about the new law, so that if she was too restricted by her foster parents, she could let Tanya know and she would set them straight about it.
Buffy thought John had definitely gotten the message, because he had let her go out with Willow last night, and even gave her a normal curfew hour. But she didn't know how Rosemary thought, and she didn't know how far John was willing to let her go in her quest for a normal high school teenage life. She was treading on some tricky ground here, and she needed to be careful not to do anything that might make them tighten her restrictions unnecessarily. As long as Rosemary was ill upstairs and John was acting like he wanted to be a friend rather than a father, her world was pretty much on her own terms in this house. With Rosemary feeling better she didn't know how much that freedom might shift.
She was truly worried. She'd waited a long time for a first boyfriend. And what a boyfriend he might turn out to be! She couldn't imagine losing him because her foster parents got all weird about it. She just couldn't let that happen, not now.
"My tutor, Willow, has some good friends that I met last night. They're really good kids, get good grades and all. And one of them asked me out last night. We're supposed to go out on a real date Tuesday night."
Buffy decided if she could confide in Rosemary, as a fellow female, she might see herself in Buffy's shoes and be sympathetic. Unless Rosemary had been a total slut in high school and overreacted to normal dating behavior now. Or had gone to a convent school -- see same overreaction scenario. Definitely a gamble with this lady, no doubt about it. But she had to get permission for this date, and Rosemary seemed like her best bet in that area. She would just have to put it out there and see where Rosemary stood.
"And it's so sweet. It's like a real nineteen-fifties kind of date. You know, pick me up, go to dinner and a movie, then take me back home." Buffy nodded happily.
*Please get it, Rosemary. It's innocent. Just two innocent kids having an innocent evening out. Nothing to be concerned about.*
Rosemary watched a mild breeze ripple across the water, and sighed.
"I understand, really I do," she began hesitantly. "But John, he worries." She looked over at the dismay written across Buffy's face. "Don't worry. We're not telling you that you can't see this boy. What's his name?"
Buffy thought fast. What did Giles call him the other day?
Think!! "William. His name is William Rayne. He's my age, and the nephew of the man who runs the library at the high school, the same man I have to report directly to while I'm enrolled there. In fact, Mr Giles is the one who arranged my tutoring with Willow and is giving the tests I have to pass." She watched Rosemary for any sign that she understood how not-terrible these new friends of hers were.
"Well. That's reassuring. If he's the nephew of the school librarian that can't be too bad, can it?" Rosemary smiled, then continued on. "John did feel, though, that as your foster parents, we do need to be careful that you're protected at all times."
"Protected?" Buffy's face fell. This couldn't end anywhere good, could it?
"This is so embarrassing ... for me. And John just wouldn't feel comfortable talking to you about this, as I'm sure you can understand."
Buffy was starting to get a picture here. *Oh God. Please no.*
"But we do realize that you
are almost seventeen years old, and you do already have a baby so we know you are .... experienced ... if you see what I mean ..."
*Kill me now. Please. I mean it. Right now.*
"So we want to be sure you use protection when you go out with any boys you meet. Especially boys who are 'the boy', if you see what I mean." Rosemary nodded and smiled at Buffy, who was blushing furiously and finding it difficult to look her foster mother in the eye right about now.
*Where is a sucking sinkhole when you need one!*
"I understand," Buffy assured Rosemary nervously. "I don't really have any plans to ... you know ... but if I ever do ... you know ... I will most definitely make sure I'm ... protected." She kept her eyes on the pool. She couldn't possibly look at Rosemary and continue to have this conversation.
"Good!" Rosemary declared happily as she rose and walked back inside the house. Buffy could hear her distant affirmation of "Excellent!" as the french doors closed behind her.
Buffy thought that she could not have been more mortified. Until she remembered what else Rosemary had said.
She said that John had asked his wife to talk to Buffy about using 'protection'.
*Oh God! That is so much worse. Just the thought that John thinks about me and 'protection' at the same time is cringeworthy.* Then she thought rather bitterly, *So much for interfering with me and Spike. As long as we use 'protection' all systems are go on the homefront.*
She really wasn't sure which upset her more - that they talked with each other about her having safe sex, or that they simply assumed she would be having sex in the first place. They didn't even bother to ask her if she was thinking about it, or warn her to avoid it, or anything. They didn't even question it.
Buffy decided it was better to repress the entire conversation forever, and pretend it had never happened. She hoped to God that they would never speak of this again.
~~~~~~
Monday Willow and Buffy had studied for several hours at the Sunnydale library that Monday, and then Buffy had to make her excuses to leave for an 'appointment'. The 'appointment' was in reality the classes she was required to take, and that she was greatly hoping none of her new friends ever found out she was being forced to attend. Willow didn't completely understand why Buffy had to leave so quickly that afternoon, but she rolled with it and promised to see her again on Wednesday. She also warned her that she expected some fuzzy details on her big Tuesday night date with Spike. Buffy promised to provide said details, so Willow waved her cheerfully off to her 'appointment'.
The court's drug diversion program met at four pm each Monday afternoon at the local community health clinic. When Buffy arrived early, as instructed, she was given a plastic cup to use for a urine drug and alcohol test and sent into a 'dry' bathroom to complete her portion of the process. Returning to the front desk with her cup in hand was probably one of the most humiliating things she'd been required to do so far. And she'd thought she'd met the 'humiliation limit' when she'd actually spent a weekend in jail, and lived several months in a New York maternity home. Mortified though she was, she smiled and pretended that it was no problem whatsoever.
Next, she had to have an 'intake interview' with Jerry, the 'facilitator' of one of the groups, and answer lots of questions about her drug and alcohol usage, and also identify her 'drug of choice'.
Buffy tried to tell the tattooed man -- who looked more like a middle-aged biker than a therapist -- that she really didn't use drugs and alcohol, and certainly had no 'drug of choice', but that answer was not the correct one. He simply would not believe that a court would order her to attend a substance abuse group unless she abused some substances.
"I was slammin' junk when you were just a bubble in your daddy's ball sac, so don't think you can sit there, princess, and pull one over on
me. You have a problem, and you just don't wanna own up to it. But you're gonna sit here in these meetings and you're gonna participate, or we're not gonna sign your card. And then
you can tell the judge all about it when you see him again."
Buffy had just about had it with this 'intake interview'. She was treading a fine line somewhere between cooperation and complete meltdown.
"Fine. I admit it. I'm a crack whore," she glared at him. She watched in horror as he started to write it down on her intake chart.
"What are you doing?!" she went to grab his writing hand. "Don't write that
down!"
He stared pointedly at her hand still clutching his wrist, and she quickly let him go.
"I was being sarcastic, really. I'm not a crack whore. No crack of any kind. No whore-y-ish-ness at all. Really."
He stared at her in stony silence. He never even blinked.
It was at that point that Buffy burst into tears and just sat back down in complete defeat. From her immediate right, a box of tissues magically appeared, and she took a handful and cried into them as she fought to regain some control.
"Jerry, I think I've got this one," the new man told her tormentor. "Buffy Summers, is it?"
Buffy blew her nose and looked miserably at her rescuer. "Uh-huh."
"Why don't you come with me, and we'll finish the intake over in my office."
She stood and followed the new guy to his office, with a last distrustful glance at Jerry, who was himself frowning at her as she left. She wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but the incredible stupidity of it prevented her from giving in to that bit of childishness.
She took a seat in the new guy's office and worked to compose herself, bracing for another round of 'what drugs do you use?'
The new guy was named Ted, and although he did admonish Buffy that she would fail miserably in her program if she didn't come to grips with her problems, he did not insist she admit to problems she believed she did not have. She got the distinct impression that he thought that she did indeed have problems, but preferred to let her face them in group, as the weeks progressed. It was frustrating, but at least she was spared the 'ball sac' references and Ted did not put her down in her chart as a 'crack whore'.
*Note to self: do not make sarcastic remarks to people who hold your life in their big tattooed hands'.*
In order to get out of there, Buffy realized she would have to tell them something, so she admitted to having had some drinks at parties a couple of years ago, when she was fourteen and barely fifteen, and that she had ingested some 'GHB ' or 'something like it', at one point, but that she did not know about it until later so she felt that it really didn't count. Ted wrote it all down, and decided to list her 'drug of choice' as alcohol.
Ted mentioned that he saw her 'unwed teenage mother' situation as the result of her alcohol usage, and she finally got tired of denying it and let the man think whatever he wanted to. She just didn't have the energy to argue with them any longer, and she wanted to get this over with and check it off her 'to do' list so she could get her daughter back.
She was hoping to avoid Jerry completely from then on out, and therefore was relieved to see that she would be placed in Ted's meeting instead. The meeting was run in a group therapy format, with fifteen teenagers sitting in a circle of chairs in a 'meeting room'. Ted asked them how they were all doing, and if anyone had anything to share today, and whoever wanted to talk did so. Then they saw a gory film about what happens when you smoke way too much weed. Apparently, according to the film, you become a hooker and wind up on heroin, and are finally beaten to death by your pimp.
Buffy thought they might perhaps have laid it on a little thick in the movie. One of the boys in the group - Warren - actually cheered when the hooker got beaten to death. Buffy thought that Warren was way creepy, but that if he continued on his present path he might make a respectable enough pimp himself one day.
*Everyone needs a goal,* she thought as she stared at the boy. When he suddenly stared back and gave her a very creepy smile, she shrank back into her chair, wondering idly if she was going to need to
start abusing some substances just to get through the meetings themselves.
Finally 'meeting one' was over, and Ted signed her court card and she was free once again.
*I wonder what angry god I pissed off.*
She walked over and sat on one of the benches outside, and waited for her next 'class' to begin.
~~~~~
Because of the timing and the fact that it was in the same community health center, Buffy had signed up for the 'domestic violence for teenage girls and young women' class being held that same night at seven o'clock. It was a two-hour class, but when it was done, she could check that off her list and move on. She found herself thinking that the kids in the drug class should have to stay for the domestic violence class, so they wouldn't wind up as beaten up hookers, but what did she know? She just followed the plan. She wasn't responsible for other peoples' plans. She did think that Warren, though, should at the very least be forced to attend one of the violence workshops. There were some future hookers out there who'd be very grateful for it, she was certain.
*Sigh*
This group was a friendlier mix of people, and most of the girls in it were there because their boyfriends were, to put it mildly, creeps. One girl in particular, Lily, had to be taken to a safe house to escape her psycho boyfriend. He'd been shot to death in a standoff with police the month before, and Lily was eight months pregnant with his child. Lily was also sixteen, and seemed a little lost but very kind. Buffy felt a kinship with Lily, another young girl left with a baby and no family to help and no baby's father to lean upon. After the group they talked for a while and exchanged phone numbers and said they'd get in touch again soon.
~~~~~~~
It was nine o'clock and Buffy was finally on the bus that would take her back home. As she sat there, she thought about how her entire life had been reduced to checking off little boxes as 'done' in her program plan. It was her very own version of 'Bring one hundred thousand dollars in unmarked bills to the phone booth on Darcy Street. Don't be late or you'll never see your kid again.' She didn't mean to have a snarky attitude, but seemed unable to rein it in at the moment. Her anger, although well-hidden, burned white hot. Her anger kept her grounded, focused on her goals. It prevented her from feeling the full brunt of her pain. She simply couldn't handle this much pain. It was too much. Better to dwell in the anger instead.
~~~~~~
When she finally let herself in the front door, she was too exhausted to even consider dinner. She simply trudged up the stairs to her room and switched on the light, intending to change into her pajamas and call it a night.
As she headed for her bathroom for a quick shower, she noticed something sitting on her bed, in front of the pillows next to Mr Gordo. Walking over to see what it was, she picked up the box and stared at it in horror.
Buffy sat heavily down upon the edge of her bed, dazed and in shock. She had been wrong. The plastic urine cup was
not the most humiliating thing she'd experienced so far. She held her worst humiliation in a box in her hands. There were two dozen of them, and they were 'ribbed for her pleasure'.
~~~~~~
Hope you enjoyed. Please leave a review if you can. I appreciate each one of them very much. They're like crack. For writers. :-)
Sara