Novel: Filling the Cracks—Chapter Ten

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Trigger warning: The following story contains topics that may disturb some readers, including child physical and sexual abuse, domestic abuse, substance abuse, violence, and suicide. Although there is no explicit sexuality or language, this is written for an adult audience and may not be suitable for children.

Chapter Ten

Virgie’s hugs and concern for Beth ended at the same time as Constable Kitchener left the house and drove away in the patrol car with Hughes. Exhausted from a night with little sleep, Beth expected to be able to unpack her duffel bag, change clothes, and have breakfast before heading to school.

Instead, Gary rose from the kitchen table and cuffed Beth across the head. “Little idiot! Do you like to cause trouble? You’re going somewhere you won’t cause trouble.”

Beth’s eyes flashed at him in alarm. Virgie grabbed her arm and dragged her down the stairs to the basement. “I’m putting you somewhere you can’t run away from.”

When Virgie removed the heavy wooden plank from the door barricade brackets that held the door to the cold room under the stairs, Beth screamed in terror. She pulled hard against Virgie’s vice-like grip on her wrist.

“No, Mommy! Please, no! Not in there. I promise I’ll be good. I promise I won’t run away or tell anybody anything again. Please don’t put me in there!”

The cold room was four feet by eight feet, and the height varied with the slope of the stairwell overhead. It had a wall of earth held back by the beams that supported the house. The floor was dirt, too, and there was no light inside. With the door closed, it was pitch black and cold. Four, six, and eight-legged creatures occupied the room. They terrified Beth in the light, much more so in the dark. Once before, Beth had been trapped there by an older cousin who pranked her. She still had nightmares that involved being locked in that space.

Virgie was unmoved by her daughter’s tears and pleas, throwing her into the cold room, and Beth hit the dirt wall on the other side. She dashed for the door, but Virgie slammed it in her face and replaced the wood board that held it closed. It was like a wet towel had been thrown over her in pitch blackness, and the stink of dirt and mold threatened to overwhelm her. She pounded on the door with her fists and clawed at the crack that was the opening until her fingernails were torn and blood flowed. Her screams (which they heard) were ignored.

She dropped to the ground, sobbing so hard no sound came out, and her body convulsed. She didn’t breathe for several seconds, then gasped and cried more. Of all the punishments she could have received, this was the worst, the one she hadn’t anticipated. Beth had no idea how long Virgie planned to keep her locked in there. Would she feed her and bring her something to drink? Would she get a pillow and blanket to sleep on? Would the mice and spiders eat her alive?

“Mommy!”

#

Marg arrived home from work to find Lisa and Aurora sitting in front of the TV, munching on a bowl of popcorn and watching reruns of nineteen-sixties sit-coms. Excited to see her, her daughter dropped the bowl and spilled kernels all over the green carpet in her rush to greet her mother in the kitchen. Aurora followed.

“Mom, Beth wasn’t at school today. I knew she’d be missing. Something happened last night after Daddy dropped her off at her home.”

Marg set her purse down on the kitchen table and shrugged off her light jacket, hanging it over the back of a chair. “Well, maybe Virgie kept her home because she didn’t sleep much last night. I know I wanted you to stay home.”

Lisa had insisted on going to school despite sitting up most of the night waiting for someone to find Beth. She’d been anxious to see if her friend was all right. “I stopped by there with her homework before coming home. Virgie said she was still asleep and wouldn’t let me visit her. Mom, I can’t believe Beth slept into the afternoon like that.”

It was unlikely, but not impossible. Still, she was concerned, too. Knowing what she did about the abuse and neglect in the Clark home, Beth missing school wasn’t a good sign.

“Okay,” Marg said, putting her jacket back on. “You and Aurora, peel some potatoes for supper. I’m going over there to check on Beth.”

“I want to come, too,” Lisa insisted, but Marg wouldn’t have it.

“No, it’s best you stay here and start the potatoes. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Marg walked down the street. It sprinkled out, and puddles covered most of the pothole-riddled gravel back alley. She avoided stepping on the earthworms that had escaped the soil to avoid being drowned by the rainwater. She entered the Clark yard. The grass still hadn’t been cut, and Marg had visions of using a sickle to cut it down like rice stalks or wheat.

She reached the front door and pressed the doorbell. Not hearing anything, she assumed it, like several windows, was broken. She rapped hard on the door instead.

Virgie answered, already dressed in her uniform, purse slung over her shoulder.

“I’m headed off to work,” she told her and tried to close the door on Marg, but Marg blocked the door with her hand.

“I’m here about Beth. We were worried about her last night, and I’d like to check on her, make sure she’s okay.”

Her lip curling upward and nose crinkling, Virgie said, “You know, it’s none of your business.”

“It was my business last night when you came over drunk at two in the morning, demanding to know where Beth was.”

“I’m grateful that your husband found her, but that doesn’t give you the right to inspect my home and family. Beth is resting. I need to go to work now, and you’re not welcome here. Goodbye.”

Shoving hard, Virgie closed the door, and Marg heard the deadbolt slide into the locked position.

Oh no, you don’t. Marg hurried to the side door as Virgie emerged and headed for her rusty Tercel parked in the back. She followed her.

“Is Beth all right, Virgie? If I call the police to do a welfare check, will they find her well and uninjured?”

“You need to back off,” Virgie shouted, not pausing but jogging around the garage to the parking pad behind it. “Go home and mind your own business, Marg. You don’t want to tick me off.” She unlocked her car and climbed in behind the wheel, slamming the door.

Marg pressed her hands on the side window, shouting through it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the neighbor watching from her kitchen window, but Marg didn’t care. “Is that a threat, Virgie? What are you going to do to Beth if I don’t? How harsh will her punishment be for what I do?”

Virgie started the car and put it into reverse; she hit the gas pedal hard without checking the lane for anyone approaching. Without braking first, she put the car into drive, causing the transmission to buck and the vehicle to lurch forward down the alleyway.

The car drove off. Marg exhaled hard and stared at the Clark house. Otto and Beth were alone there; the absence of Gary’s truck suggested he was at work. Since Beth was twelve, leaving her to care for Otto wasn’t illegal—she was of legal babysitting age. Marg wanted to go into that house and investigate, but she didn’t have the right.

But the police did. However, if Marg called the RCMP detachment in Spruce Grove, they would dispatch Derek Hughes, so it was an exercise in futility. She needed to stomp over Hughes’s head. It was time to stop suggesting action and to take it.

#

Sergeant McCabe’s office in the Spruce Grove detachment was little more than a cubbyhole with a desk, typewriter, and telephone. A Canadian flag stood in the corner of the office behind her desk, and the sergeant, clad in her uniform, sat in her chair, hands folded on the desk’s surface. She had pulled her honey-blonde hair back in a bun secured to the back of her head. There was a yellow-gold wedding band on the constable’s hand but no engagement ring. She sat in an uncomfortable chair; Frank, dressed in a shirt and tie, sat beside her. He’d taken time from work to accompany Marg.

Marg had spent the past twenty minutes detailing to the officer the neglect and abuse the Clark children suffered at the hands of their mother and uncle. McCabe listened without interrupting except to ask the odd quick, clarifying question.

“And you say you’ve reported it to Social Services?” McCabe asked once Marg had finished. She reclined back in her chair.

“Yes, twice,” Marg said. “And the police have been called twice in the past month over incidences concerning Beth and Otto. Two nights ago, Beth ran away from home and spent most of the night in a garden shed across town from her home. I called the RCMP to report her missing, not her drunk mother. The responding constables parked at the Clark house all evening and sat around drinking coffee with Virgie and Gary instead of hunting for Beth like Frank did because one of the constables, Derek Hughes, has sex with Virgie Clark.”

McCabe lurched forward in her seat, making part of the base rise and bump against the floor. “That’s a serious allegation you’re making, Mrs. Jones.”

“Beth is the one who told us,” Frank defended. “She knows. He’s over there with Virgie at least once a week. He’s been told about the abuse but has done nothing. I’ll bet he didn’t even file a report.”

McCabe did not comment whether he had. Instead, she said, “I’ll look into what you’ve told me today and speak with Constable Hughes. If Social Services hasn’t acted on your reports to them, there’s little we can do, but that being said, I won’t neglect the matter. I assure you.” She stood, by doing so, indicating that their meeting was over.

“Will you call us and let us know what comes of your investigation?” Marg asked, both she and Frank standing to leave.

McCabe was diplomatic. “It’s policy when conducting investigations into allegations of child abuse that there is a level of confidentiality we can’t breach for the sake of the children concerned. It’ll be up to Family and Social Services to decide what information will be released and to whom.”

“In other words, no,” Frank murmured out of the side of his mouth. To McCabe, he asked, “What’s going to happen with Hughes?”

“Again, I can’t guarantee that you’ll receive news from the service concerning what happens with Constable Hughes,” the sergeant answered, walking them three feet to her door. “I assure you, I’ll speak with him to hear his side of the story, and if necessary, an internal review will be conducted.”

When the Joneses were seated in their van in the parking lot, Marg growled in her throat. “This is ridiculous. We both know she won’t do a darned thing with what we told her.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Frank agreed, starting the vehicle and driving them out of the lot.

“Frank, you turned the wrong way,” Marg told him, rubbing her temples with her fingertips to relieve the headache she’d developed.

“We’re not going home yet,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“The office for Social Services here in Spruce,” he replied. “I don’t care that we don’t have an appointment—someone will listen to us, or I’m conducting a sit-in in their lobby.”

Marg couldn’t help but smile, reminded again why she loved him so much. “Me, too. We need to find a pay phone so I can call my sister and ask her to stay with Lisa and Aurora tonight—just in case?”

They found a pay phone and made the call before storming into the Social Services lobby and demanding to speak with a worker about a case of abuse neglected by the government and the police. They spoke loudly so everyone in the waiting room could hear.

“I’m afraid if you don’t have an appointment, I can’t help you today,” the receptionist said, not looking up from her work, pasting color-coded stickers on file folders. “If you like, I can fit you in to speak with someone next Monday—“

“We’re talking with someone today,” Frank cut her off, his voice rising one notch so the people in the offices behind reception could hear him. “We’ve made several reports by phone and gone to the police, and nobody takes us seriously, but two young children are being abused, and they need intervention, and they need it today. So please tell whoever is in those offices back there to give us twenty minutes of their time for the sake of those kids.”

“Sir—“

“You’ll have to call the police to tow my butt out of here before I leave without talking to a case worker.”

Marg repressed a smile, proud of her husband. An introvert who hated confrontation, his insistence proved he was as worried about Beth and Otto as she was, if not more so.

The receptionist frowned, slapping her pad of stickers on her desk and standing. “Please have a seat. I’ll see if someone is available.”

“Thank you,” Frank said.

Marg waited until the receptionist disappeared behind a diving wall before saying, “She’s gone to call the RCMP.”

Frank took her hand and led her to the waiting area to sit. “Good. When I stand before the judge for my bail hearing, I’ll tell him about the ridiculous run-around we’ve been getting from the government and law enforcement. Somebody will do something about it today, even if I get busted.”

Marg hugged his arm. “My hero.”

The receptionist returned to her desk, careful not to meet Frank’s gaze when he glared at her. He tensed in his seat, preparing to stand, when a blonde middle-aged woman emerged from behind the divider and approached them, extending a welcoming hand and beaming smile.

“I’m Mrs. Lieder, a case worker. You must be the Joneses?”

Marg stood up with her husband and spoke before he did. “Yes, we are. How do you do? Thank you for taking time for us.”

Mrs. Lieder was pleasant. “Not a problem. Follow me to my office so we have privacy.”

Marg and Frank followed her behind the divider into a narrow corridor with offices lining each side. Mrs. Lieder’s office was on the right-hand side halfway down the thirty feet.

They took seats at her desk, decorated with a gold-framed five-by-seven photograph of three children all under puberty and a vase with pink Gerbera daisies.

“As soon as the receptionist gave me the names of the children you told her, I had her look them up in our system,” Lieder said, opening a file folder on her desk. “We do have a record of your calls concerning the Clark children. I went to their home after your first call, I believe it was, and the mother and the twelve-year-old girl were home at the time, but the boy—Otto?—was out on a bike ride. We don’t call ahead; we want to observe the home as it is, not spruced up for our visit. I spoke with Virginia Clark, the mother. She claimed no abuse or neglect in the home and that her children were well cared for. I spoke with Beth outside of the mother’s presence.”

Marg exchanged a look with Frank before asking, “What did she tell you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information to you,” Mrs. Lieder replied, removing her glasses to clean the lenses with a tissue from a box in her desk drawer. “But she alleged certain acts of abuse that required further investigation. However, Beth refused to answer any of my questions that day and hid in her bedroom until I had to leave for another appointment.”

“Why didn’t you act on what she told you?” Frank asked.

“She didn’t give me any details. She made a blanket accusation of abuse and hid from me. I had nothing to work with.”

“So that’s it? You just dropped it?” Marg asked, shaking her head and squeezing her purse, which rested in her lap. “It’s obvious Beth was frightened. You should have dug deeper, questioned Virgie, and spoken with Otto. Returned to talk to Beth again or interrogated Gary.”

Lieder’s smile faded. “I know how to do my job, Mrs. Jones. I have right here in my file a request I submitted for another visit soon.”

“‘Soon,’” Frank echoed. “What does that mean?”

Lieder shifted in her seat as if it were hot on her bottom. “It means that once we have a worker with time in their schedule to do a follow-up visit, one will be conducted.”

“So there’s no set date?”

“No, not yet.” The social worker sighed. “You must understand dozens of reports of abuse and neglect come across our desks every week. We have to investigate each one, but that requires time and human resources, both of which are in short supply. We do the best we can with the resources we’ve got.”

“That’s not good enough,” Marg asserted; her chest burned, and that heat reflected in her face’s redness. “Beth and Otto are in danger every minute they’re in that home.”

“I understand your frustration; believe me, I do,” Lieder told her, and for the first time since meeting her, the woman came across as sincere. “I’ll request Beth and Otto’s case be bumped to the top of the list. But even doing that, another worker may be unable to visit for two or even three weeks.”

Marg swallowed back a sob. “It might be too late for them by then.”

“If you believe the children are in imminent danger, call nine-one-one and report it to the police. They’ll respond immediately to such a call. But otherwise, we have to wait for the system to chug along at its slow pace. We’re doing the best we can. More funding from the government to hire more caseworkers would help, but the Minister recently made it clear in the Legislature that there won’t be increased funding this year and cutbacks for next. If you want to force change, you start by going to the people who hold the purse.”

“Or take things into your own hands,” Frank said to his wife as they walked to their van following their meeting with Lieder.

Thanks for reading! Chapters Eleven to Twenty-Five will be posted soon on the Subscriber Content page, accessible only to those who subscribe to my email newsletter. More information to come. Thank you again for reading, and please subscribe to see how the story ends. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in the comment section below. Please share this blog with your family and friends. Check out my other blog posts, also found here at paulinejgrabia.com. God bless, and have a great week!

Pauline J. Grabia

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