Change of Circumstance

CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE / Candida Lawrence On March 1, 1986, I flew to New York City to attend a one-day conference/speak-out for "fit" mothers who had lost custody in the courts. I wondered if I would be the only woman there. I had read Phyllis Chester's Mothers on Trial and was thus informed that other women had lost custody of their children in all manner of ways, but I still believed myself uniquely punished. In twenty years I had not met another woman whose "case" resembled mine. All the divorced women I knew had custody of their children, and never was that custody seriously challenged. I entered an immense room crowded with women. No one seemed eager to state her reasons for attending such a gathering. We looked at the books on display, checked our coats, were anxious to find a cup of coffee and a safe seat, not too close to the speakers' tables, but close enough to hear every word spoken. I felt very much alone and was sure all the women were arms of the court or social workers or reporters. They all looked somewhat uneasy but otherwise normal, and I figured they'd travelled many miles, as I had, and were tired. And then the stories were told—from the platform, to each other at our tables, at the afternoon small panel discussions. The stories were complex, a complexity of law and courts, jurisdiction, judges' rulings, a snarl of loss. These women had lost custody because they moved to another state, because they had a lover, because they remarried or did not remarry, because they accused the father of battering, of abuse, of molesting a child and proved it with hospital records in court, because they were of the wrong color or economic rank, because they were on welfare, because the father had more money or prestige, because they were lesbian. They were forced by the judges to share custody with criminals, brutes, addicts, molesters, and fathers who skipped with the children to South America or Australia. I heard my own story from someone else's mouth again and again. I heard women say sadly, "Oh, I should have taken my children long ago and disappeared." They always said "my children," never "our children." I asked one woman if she felt uncomfortable about that assumption. She said: "But I went through the pregnancy. I nursed them. I watched for fever. I taught them their first words. They are part of me, like limbs. I cannot replace them." A black woman said: "Nature gives a mother the right to be near her children always. No court should mess with that right unless 84 · The Missouri Review the mother's real bad. I mean drunk, crazy, drugged, sick. A father's got a right too, but not to take away a child and break the mother." I have written this book for the women at the conference and for all those who couldn't make the journey. On the Road AT 6:30 A.M., WE BACK OUT of the hideaway driveway and are on our way. While I concentrate on finding a sign which promises Highway 99 some time in the future, the children push buttons on the radio: ... It is Friday, August 13th, and a bad day for the Southland . . . rioting started Wednesday night after a routine drunken-driving arrest near the predominantly Negro Watts section of Los Angeles . . . the city of the angels. It was resumed Thursday night when some seven thousand Negroes took to the streets . . . It doesn't seem to matter which button they punch, all stations are giving out news of Watts. I think of my Headstart four-yearolds and try to imagine seven thousand of them grown huge and hating, angry and hot, throwing rocks, starting fires, with the courage of cohesive action they have learned in childhood. "Turn if off for a while," I beg. "It's broken. When Shawna plays it, she gets nice music. Can you fix it, Mommy?" Tony asks. "Mommy, are we going to Watts to help the Negroes?" Olivia looks worried. "We are heading in that direction, but we won't go...