Chapter 3: The Divisions Within
Stef's head was pounding now; the tension headache that had started earlier that day had now transitioned into a full blown migraine, which she was sure had been triggered by stress. Desperate for relief, she downed an Aspirin while impatiently waiting for her wife to get home. Every few minutes the woman would look out into the backyard to ensure Callie was still there, fighting the overwhelming desire to march out there and drag her to her room to send a clear message that she wasn't going to tolerate her disobedience.
As the cop massaged her temples, she realized how close she felt to the end of her rope with Callie, who had taken up a new habit of testing her boundaries over the past couple months and was a far cry from the girl who had come to live with them only four months ago. The Callie that they had first met was extremely timid, never once asking for anything, and had been eager to please and follow all their rules. Deep down, Stef understood that the challenges they faced now were ultimately good things; it meant that Callie was beginning to become more comfortable with them. Of course it made sense that as Callie began to trust them and feel safer in their home, that she would also be pushing her and Lena to test their commitment. It was her way, Dr. Kodema had explained, to make sure they were the real deal and that her and Jude would be okay with them. However, although Stef and Lena had insight into what was going on, accepting the current status quo was an entirely different experience altogether. It was hard not to become increasingly frustrated; it seemed that every step Callie made towards letting them in was followed by several steps back. On top of that, because Stef did most of the disciplining, the girl seemed to challenge her with greater frequency and intensity.
The woman groaned. She had been convinced that after Callie had been put on a tight leash for repeatedly skipping school, she would be toeing the line a little more carefully. Now that Stef's anger over the recent incident had somewhat abated, fear and discontent were slowly settling in. Fear of what might have happened if, instead of Timothy, it had been a constable who caught the two teens. Knowing that they could have lost Callie to Juvenile Detention again, which would unravel all the progress she had made while in their care. Fear that the beautiful girl who they had come to love would never trust them fully to let them and to love her unconditionally. Fear that her and Lena wouldn't be able to figure out how to parent her, or rather, that Callie wouldn't allow herself to be parented.
Having been with the police department for over two decades now, Stef knew that Callie and Jude's mistrust of authority figures had been directly cultivated from the homes in which they had been in. Although neither children had said anything about, the signs of having been mistreated had been there: stationing outside the bathroom to wait for the sibling inside, startling at sudden movements or sounds, and difficulty making eye contact. She remembered the day that Lena had discovered food stashed under Jude's bed; after much coaxing the boy had divulged that some parents had withheld meals if they caused trouble. With sadness, Stef also recalled the first time she had spoken firmly with Callie over something inappropriate she had said to Jesus and the girl had cowered. She sighed at all the trauma standing in the way of them creating a healthy, trusting relationship with the youth like an insurmountable brick wall.
"Hi, honey." Lena sounded tired as she came through the back door with the rest of their brood in tow. All the kids began to quickly go upstairs after mumbling their acknowledgments to Stef. They had heard the announcements for Callie to go to the school office and knew she had gotten into trouble, and none of them wanted to be around for the fallout to save her the embarrassment. Only Jude lingered behind for a bit and Lena, noticing his nervousness, gently pulled the 8-year-old toward her into a hug. "Get started on your homework," she reminded as she walked with him to the stairwell, tousling his hair. "Grandma's taking you lot for the night so Mom and I can spend some time with Callie. She'll be more than happy to help you with math."
Though the women knew how disappointed Callie would be to be separated from Jude, they also trusted that enforcing some healthy distance between the siblings would be good for them. Plus, it'd be the only way for her and Stef and Callie to talk without running the risk of being overheard.
"Let me get this straight. You grounded her for three weeks, after it worked so well last time?" Lena clarified. She couldn't help her facetiousness in the confusion as to why her wife would resort to grounding again, especially since it hadn't seemed to deter Callie from skipping class again. Or from experimenting with drugs and alcohol; they were officially worse off from where they had started.
"Why would you do that?" Lena asked again, gently this time. She felt guilty for giving Stef a hard time; after all, she hadn't given her wife any guidance on how to handle Callie, other than to issue an order to find her. "Callie needs to understand why what she did was wrong. I'm going to have her write an essay on why it's wrong to be smoking and drinking—"
"Lena, I hardly think that an essay is going to be enough of a deterrent for Callie," the cop scoffed, taken aback by Lena's response to how she had dealt with their daughter. After cutting her workday short immediately when Lena had called, the very last thing she expected was for Lena to be criticizing her on how she disciplined their children.
"I'm sorry, honey, but it was the best I could come up with at the time, alright?" Stef said. "But we haven't had to ground Callie much and I think it might work," she explained, hoping she wouldn't have to eat her words later. "It was supposed to be two, but she tried to instigate a fight by shoving me so she got an extra week," she said, as Lena continued to look unconvinced.
The woman continued desperately, admitting her own insecurity aloud. "I don't know what to do with Callie anymore. She's thirteen, smoking cigarettes, doing pot, blowing off school. She's deliberately disobeying us, Lena! Nothing we've been doing deters her," Stef said in exasperation.
"Okay," Lena said gently, trying to diffuse Stef's residual temper while still grappling with her own frustration with her wife's knee-jerk approach when it came to their kids, which Callie seemed to get the brunt of.
"It makes sense that we're having trouble keeping her in line," she reasoned, "Callie's still adjusting, remember? She and Jude haven't ever had much structure and our rules are going to be a learning curve. We're just going to have to be patient with her."
"You know that they're used to being beaten or locked in a room over stealing granola bars out of the pantry or chipping a glass by accident. Of course they're not going to take grounding, chores, and getting privileges taken away seriously right now." Lena continued as she recalled her past conversations with Bill, the kids' Social Worker, and Dr. Kodema. "Callie especially…she took the brunt of the abuse and was focused on doing whatever she needed to for them to survive. Stef, she's not used to being disciplined. It'll take awhile."
"Easy for you to say," Stef mumbled, as her resentment towards Lena grew. Her wife was sensitive and preferred to talk with their kids, leaving any serious infractions for Stef to dole out. However, because Callie appeared immune to Lena's approach and had been getting involved with situations beyond typical teenage misbehaviour, Stef had been left the default person to try to get her under control.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lena questioned, hurt by Stef's insinuation.
Stef looked at her apologetically. "Honey, I'm sorry, I am just so frustrated. It's exhausting to always be the one that needs to drop everything at work for Callie, even when it's for something that happened at school. It definitely makes it harder to bond with her when I have to be the bad cop, all the time."
She continued, trying to be gentle to avoid hurting Lena's feelings. "You're the one with the PhD in Child Psych, Lena. I need you to start using it because I obviously don't have the skills to get through to her. Today I really did want to shake Callie and knock some sense into her. I need to take a breather before I say or do something I regret.
Despite her wife's efforts at being sensitive, Lena felt hurt. She kept her voice down as Callie was outside and she didn't want her to overhear their conversation. "Is that what you really think, Stef? That I don't deal with Callie? It's not easy you know, trying to be her Vice Principal and parent at the same time. Plus you know that Callie seems to respond a bit better to your tough love approach—" she whispered harshly before Stef cut her off.
"—Well maybe you need to start practicing some tough love, Lena, because there's no way I'm going to be able to do this alone!" Stef countered. "Roberts is supportive but I am really pushing it with all the time off work I've been having to take to go look for Callie. Now we have three days of suspension where one of us has to be home for, and I assume it's going to be me!
"Am I wrong, Lena?" she asked her wife in exasperation, a little more softer this time, as Lena looked guilty. Stef shook her head. "I'm going upstairs, this migraine is killing me. Good luck with our daughter. Maybe you'll have better luck since she's made it clear she doesn't want anything to do with me right now."
Lena paused, hoping that Stef was right and that she would be able to get through to Callie. She shut the back door quietly and walked across the yard towards the large tree the girl often gravitated to. Just as she had expected, Callie had her back against the trunk and arms wrapped around her legs; she looked up dejectedly as Lena approached and the woman saw from the puffy eyes and flushed face that she had been crying for quite some time. Aware of the blowup between Stef and Callie, and that her wife had not gone easy on the girl, Lena dreaded knowing that Callie would soon be unhappy with her as well.
"Oh, sweetheart," Lena murmured, crouching in front of her and placing a hand on the girl's knee momentarily. She moved to sit on the ground next to her and placed an arm around Callie to bring her in against her. They two of them sat like this in silence for a couple minutes, in part owing to Lena's apprehension. Usually she and Stef would tag team talking to the kids because their styles complemented each other's effectively but somehow this system had fallen apart with Callie.
"I don't want to talk," Callie whispered, putting her head down and hugging her knees a little tighter, "I know I got suspended. Stef already yelled at me."
Lena shifted her body so that she could look at Callie directly before responding. "I know, and I'm not here to yell at you but we do have to talk. I didn't have a choice there because you broke a zero tolerance rule. On top of that you disrespected your teacher and I by ignoring us when we called you to the office. That's unacceptable, Callie, and not something we can just forget about," she said in a way that was stern, yet sympathetic.
Lena slowly inhaled at the lack of response. "Did something happen in Science that made you not want to go?" she asked, though she already suspected the reason why. After speaking with Callie's teacher and looking over the class content and end of term assignment, she knew the topic was likely triggering in its reminder that she didn't have biological family. But the youth only looked down and shook her head.
"No?" Lena pressed, ducking her own head to try to get Callie to look at her before deciding to continue when the teen didn't express any disagreement. "Why didn't you come to me, Bug? I would have helped to negotiate a different topic for you. You aren't obligated to complete an assignment that you are unable to due to circumstances beyond your control, sweetheart. But I can't help you if you don't ever tell me what's wrong."
When the only response the woman received was a shrug she dropped her voice in seriousness. "Alright, Callie, I get that you don't want to talk. Then I need you to listen—and I mean really listen to what I'm going to say to you next because it seems you haven't heard what we've been wanting you to hear lately." Callie looked shocked. Unlike Stef, the woman was careful about leaving her Vice Principal side at work and she had rarely seen her this stern outside of her office. "Attendance is mandatory—you need to attend all your classes unless you are sick. When a teacher tells you to do something, you need to listen. Smoking marijuana is unacceptable, period."
"Why is it any of your business what I do?" Callie finally snapped, glaring at her. "I'm not the only one smoking pot at your stupid school!"
"Okay Callie, don't you give me any backtalk right now," Lena said sharply. "We're not talking about anyone else right now but you, young lady." She was surprised when the youth retorted, "Look, can you just tell me how long I'm suspended for so we can get this over with and you can leave me alone?"
Lena exhaled. "Three days, Callie. You can go back to school on Monday. Two for drugs and alcohol on school grounds and an extra day for disrespecting your teacher and I."
"Did I say I was done?" she chastised when she saw Callie begin to get up. "We want an essay from you on why smoking pot and drinking are inappropriate. Mom has already grounded you so you have a bit of time to think about all this and how you're going to work on getting our trust back."
"Okay," Callie said, in a tone that was barely audible as she appeared on the verge of tears once again. Though she was angry towards Stef and Lena, she was more upset with herself for messing up again. The women had already put the wheels in motion to adopt her and Jude and while Callie was thrilled, she also feared knowing that they had the power to stop the process as well if she kept pushing them too far.
Seeing the change in the girl's demeanour, Lena tightly grasped Callie's shoulders with both her hands and gave them a squeeze. "Please know that Mom and I aren't trying to make you miserable. We just need to see some better decision-making on your part. We love you, I mean it," she said. Despite her annoyance, she could see Callie's confusion and fear and knew that right now, she needed reassurance; they would have plenty of time to talk over the next few days.
"C'mon Callie, time to get inside," she directed softly as she helped her daughter to her feet and placed a kiss on her temple.