Five Uneasy Pieces

“Money,” she said, in a flat voice.

“How much money did you expect to find in an old lady’s purse?”

Shrug. I suppressed the urge to hold her shoulders down. “I dunno,” she mumbled.

I scanned the report again. “This happened three blocks from where you live. Do you know this woman?”

She shook her head.

“You have a problem with her?”

Silence.

“You just figured you had nothing better to do, so why not pick up some spare change from a little old lady who can’t defend herself?”

Tina shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“Was breaking her arm part of the plan?”

Some emotion—regret?—flashed in her eyes, but her game face returned quickly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to knock her down. If she’d let go the damn purse, she’d o’ been all right.”

“But she didn’t let go. And you got caught.” A pair of undercover cops sitting surveillance had intervened when they heard the woman scream.

“Yeah. Jump out boys got me,” she said. “Motherfuckers.”

“Jump out boys?”

“You know. Unmarked.”

I nodded. You learn something new every day. “What are your grades like?” I asked, switching gears.

“Okay, I guess.”

I went through the tedious process of digging for more information. Bottom line: she was an average student who read at a higher than average grade level. And she had better verbal abilities than her terse responses would suggest.

“So what’re you reading now?” I asked.

She held up the book. A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown.

“I read that. Quite a story.”

She nodded. “It’s real.”

It was real, all right. The memoir was a mature selection for a 13-year-old girl. Cupcake Brown (her real name) had run away from a dreadful foster home, and ended up in a gang, addicted to drugs—before her eighteenth birthday. She hit rock bottom, living in a dumpster at one point. With some support from other recovering addicts and the law firm that employed her, Cupcake turned it all around and became an attorney. An uplifting story about possibilities that casts a positive light on lawyers—and you don’t get to hear many of those.

“Are you reading that for class?”

“Naw. Jus’ for fun.”

“It’s refreshing to meet a young person who reads.” I winced at my choice of words, those of an old fart. Tina didn’t seem to notice. “You do any after-school stuff?” I asked.

“I played softball up ‘til last year, but I dropped outta that.”

“How come?”

Another shrug. Maybe she was trying to work out knots in her shoulders. “I dunno. Just don’t feel like it no more.”

“Ever do any volunteer work?”