My Name Is Venus Black(89)

“Do you remember your sister, Venus?” he hears.

“From before,” says Leo. He thinks of the red trucks, the screaming, the silver thing. “I don’t want before. I want to go home now.”

“I understand,” says the voice who is Venus. “Do you remember your mom, Leo?”

“From before,” he says. “But I want Tessa. Where is she?”



“Oh, Leo, I’m sorry,” his mother says. “She’s not here. We’re here to take you home.” She squats down next to him. “I missed you so much.” She tries to touch his long hair, and Leo jerks away. “Don’t do that!”

“Okay, Leo. I’m sorry. No touching.”

“I see you have a car there.” It’s Venus. “What if I buy you some new cars to play with?”

“I’m not a baby!” he yells. “I’m thirteen years old!” He starts rocking number two. He can’t help it.

“You’re right, Leo,” says Venus. “You’re all grown up now, aren’t you?”

She sits on the floor, across from him. “Remember how we used to count the planets, Leo?”

Leo sees a ceiling of stars. The planets hanging in blue light. “Venus is red,” he says.

“Yes, Leo!” says his sister from before. “So you do remember your home. Do you want to come home?”

“I want to go home to Tessa! I don’t want before!” he yells. He wants to have a tantrum, but Tony says thirteen is too old. Instead, he stands up and looks at his yellow watch. “I need to go to school,” he announces. “It’s almost time for math!”

Venus stands up, too. “Leo, can you look at me?” He turns his head and tries. His eyes skitter across blue eyes and big black hair. He turns and looks the other way. He doesn’t want to see her.

“Go away,” he says loudly. “You’re confusing me.” Confusing is a word Leo recently learned. When they still won’t go, he stomps across the room, sits down in the corner, with his back to them. He starts to bang his head on the wall like he used to do.

The boots walk toward him.

“It’s going to be okay,” his mother says in a soft voice. “I love you, Leo.”

Tessa and Tony say this a lot, but Tessa has never taught him what he’s supposed to say back. He knows other things. Like when Tessa says, “Thank you,” Leo says, “You’re welcome.” When Tessa says, “I’m sorry,” Leo says, “I forgive you.”



* * *



—



INEZ IS STILL trying to get through to Leo, but I can’t take it another minute. I leave the room, tempted to slam the door. How did this happen? I feel like a fool. All my dreams of reuniting with Leo had been happy ones. I’d imagined him being excited to see us, jumping around and making his happy humming sound. Maybe that was too much to expect. But this? This?

As I’m headed out of the building, I spot the Mexican girl I saw the other day when they arrested Tony. She is seated in a plastic chair outside an office. This is the Tessa Leo is crying for. I approach her, furious. “Do you realize what you did? My brother has been so brainwashed by you, he thinks you’re his family. Now he is so confused, who knows how long it will take to fix this!”

“I’m s-sorry,” the girl stammers, clearly afraid of me. “I didn’t know…”

“Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it. Wait a minute. Are you here to see Leo? Are they actually going to let you see him?”

She looks down at the floor. “They want my help….But I don’t have to if—”

“Oh my God. Fuck it all to hell,” I say, storming for the door.



* * *



—

ON MONDAY MORNING, Tessa is waiting on a bench outside a courtroom. Marco didn’t think her father would want her to see him at the arraignment. She is anxious and resentful. She’s practically an adult, and she’s pretty sure her dad would want her there.

After a while, she wanders down the hall to a water fountain and gets a drink. All the men are wearing suits, and the women are in dress clothes, too. Professionals, she thinks. Not the kind of people she grew up around, but maybe the kind she wants to become.

She sits again on the bench and wonders what’s happening inside. Could they really charge her father with kidnapping? She has the urge to burst into the courtroom and explain that it’s her fault. But she knows that’s not how things work.



She thinks about seeing Leo’s real sister, Venus. She didn’t look anything like Leo. More like his opposite. She was so tall, and with all that curly black hair she struck Tessa as regal or exotic.

Tessa’s not sure, but she thinks Venus is probably about twenty. She can’t quit thinking about when Venus yelled at her Saturday. She’s never had someone get mad at her like that. It was so shocking that she cried afterward. Then she tried to put herself in Venus’s place. What if Leo was her real brother and he got kidnapped when he was seven—and when she finally found him he didn’t want her?

She couldn’t imagine how terrible that would be.

Thinking about it again now, a fresh weight of guilt presses down on her.

She wonders about Leo’s mother. Maybe she looks more like Leo. She will be so happy to get her son back. But will Leo even want to go with his mother? After what Venus said Saturday, she doubts it.