Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away by Alice Anderson

Author:Alice Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS

Addison called first thing Monday morning with the news that Liam, via Buford, had filed an emergency motion to appear. Liam was requesting the court issue an emergency change in physical custody. As expected, he was accusing me of physical child abuse on Avery.

“There’s more, Alice,” Addison said, her voice quieter than usual. “Have you ever been committed to a psych ward or tried to kill yourself?” she asked.

I sat on the other end of the line, silent.

“Alice?”

“Um, yeah. I mean, no. Why are you asking me this?”

“Well, they’re accusing you of much more than abusing Avery.”

“Like what?” I asked in what may have been my final moment of glorious ignorance of what was to come.

Addison continued, “They’re saying you’re suicidal, homicidal, and an immediate danger to both yourself and the children. They say you’re a habitual liar, with a genius IQ, who has had multiple abortions.”

“What? He can just say anything he wants?” I asked, stunned.

“Well, he has something to back it up.”

“Like what?” What could he possibly have to back it up?

“Ethel Kahn has written a letter that she believes you have dissociative identity disorder, are an immediate danger to the children, and that the children should be removed from you immediately.”

“She met with me for forty minutes and never said a word!” I yelled into the phone. “And I haven’t seen her since.”

“Well, Liam’s been seeing her, and they’ve apparently been going through your book. They’re introducing it as evidence.”

“My book? My award-winning book that was an inspiration and hope for survivors of sexual abuse? From NYU Press? My book of literary poetry? That book? How could that possibly be used against me?”

“I don’t know what’s in there, Alice, but they’ve submitted it as evidence of pornography, perversion, and parental unfitness,” Addison said.

Pornography.

Perversion.

Parental unfitness.

“They submitted my book as evidence against me? To take my children away?”

“Yes, they did. Well, actually, they submitted a photocopy of the book. They left off the cover material, coincidentally.”

“So it looks like I’m some coffeehouse poet with a bunch of random ramblings?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did I fall asleep and wake up in 1952?”

“You’re too intelligent for the likes of them.”

“But seriously, that book isn’t autobiography. It’s literary poetry, not nonfiction. If it was, I’d have killed my father, been a prostitute in Japan, a stripper, with a sexual attraction to Jesus.”

“Of sweet baby Jesus.” Addison sighed. “I’m going to need a copy of that book. And can you get some, I don’t know, famous writers to write you letters that it’s not all a true story? I think we’re going to need to educate the court.”

A small sob escaped my mouth.

Years earlier, Liam had forced me to promise to never write another poem. I had never stopped, but I’d stopped writing them down. Now I silently promised to never write another poem if I could just keep my children.

If poetry makes me lose my children, I hate poetry.

“Alice, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this.” She paused. “What is your relationship with your daddy now?” she asked.

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