Cutting Teeth(76)

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, MAGGIE CHAPARRO


APPEARANCES:


Detective Wanda Bright





PROCEEDINGS


DET. BRIGHT: Do you like your school, Maggie?

MAGGIE CHAPARRO: My mom said school, well, she said it’s really been going downhill for a while.

DET. BRIGHT: I see.

MRS. ROXY CHAPARRO: I didn’t say—I’m sorry, I was just sending an email—Maggie, that’s not—

DET. BRIGHT: It’s fine. We want to encourage honesty and I don’t want you to feel like you’re being questioned here, Mrs. Chaparro. Earlier, though, you were saying something about the school photographer, Maggie?

MAGGIE CHAPARRO: Mr. Smiley was sick so I didn’t know him. Mommy said he looked like a pedal.

DET. BRIGHT: A pedal. Can you translate?

MRS. ROXY CHAPARRO: Kids. They hear everything. I just said to Miss Ollie, in passing, that he looked like—that he looked like a pedophile. I was being—

DET. BRIGHT: What made him look like a pedophile?

MRS. ROXY CHAPARRO: I don’t know. Some people just do, you know? Like doughy. Pale. Puffy lips and out-of-date glasses.

DET. BRIGHT: What time did you have pictures taken?

MAGGIE CHAPARRO: After Zeke got in trouble for potty talk and Bodhi told everyone he was going to marry Miss Ollie.

MRS. ROXY CHAPARRO: Let’s see. It was around 2:30, I think.

DET. BRIGHT: It sounds like you were there.

MRS. ROXY CHAPARRO: Just for a second. I forgot Maggie’s bow and I don’t like her looking like a ragamuffin. It reflects badly on me and it bothers my husband when we get the photographs back. Plus, she does better with a bit of coaching.

DET. BRIGHT: Mrs. Chaparro, why didn’t you mention you were on campus?





THIRTY-TWO




Rhea has stopped looking both ways before entering the Chick-fil-A drive-through. For breakfast, she orders her usual chicken biscuit and hash browns and then the same, but with milk, for Bodhi, to his delight. She reminds him not to get used to it and the two of them devour their meals while listening to a “Songs to Sing in the Shower” playlist on Spotify. Bodhi’s put on two and a half pounds in the last week and a half while Rhea has lost six on fast food and root beer. Only a matter of time before the other moms at school start sniffing around asking what is her secret.

By Rhea’s calculations this will last another two weeks, three tops, and then she’ll be through the worst of it. Six investors have signed their letters of intent following her interview. And with that money, she can rent space in a warehouse. She can get an assistant. She can give herself a raise. She can get a cat. She can get a life. And she’ll look back on this time and be like, Who? What? Oh, that was me?

Yesterday, they’d called Bodhi in for questioning and he’d surprised them all when he insisted Rhea was in the classroom the day of Miss Ollie’s murder. But no, she assured the detective, he was remembering that wrong. She was in the classroom the day Bodhi was bitten, not the day of the murder, ask anyone, ask Mary Beth, ask Darby even. This is the problem with kids. Unreliable witnesses.

Well, he didn’t mean any harm. As soon as she pointed out that she was there on the day Zeke attacked him, he was able to correct his memory. Of course mama was right. Mama’s always right.

She smiles at her son through the rearview mirror. “So, Mr. Bodhi. What are our positive affirmations today?” He swings his legs, the rest of his body pinned in by the three-point harness of the car seat.

He chews his food slowly and with his lips shut tight—it’s the little things—and then swallows. “I’m brave,” he says. “And I’m true. I’m quick. I’m strong. I’m kind. I got good hair.”

“Oh yeah, you do.”

Of all the tinctures Rhea concocts, the thing she most wishes she could bottle up is Bodhi. His essence. His comedic timing. His curiosity. His inherent politeness. None of which she can take responsibility for. Bodhi at four years old is a magic of her own making but none of her design.

So what if he doesn’t have the syndrome? Details. The point remains. She’s a conscientious mother, which is more than she can say for many of the other parents.

She stares at him for too long until he says, “Mom, why’re you staring at me like that?” He giggles and lifts his chin, exposing that little-boy neck she nuzzled when he was seven pounds eight ounces.

Through her windshield, there are all the makings of a weekday morning going on. Cars stuck behind school buses. Moms rapping behind steering wheels after drop-off like windows aren’t see-through, and that Starbucks line’s still maddeningly long.

“You’re right, you’re right.” She reverses out of their parking space and turns down the volume on the speakers. “We should go to school. How’s school going?” she asks. Bodhi hasn’t said much about Miss Ollie. In fact, Rhea hasn’t been able to get a firm sense of how much he understands about what happened to her. In some ways, he’s such an old soul, but in others, he’s slow on the uptake.

“It’s all right.”

“What do you mean it’s all right?” She exaggerates his ho-hum tone. “I thought you loved school. I thought you wanted to be a teacher when you grow up. Isn’t that right?” Did it bother her that this new future occurred to him only after having Miss Ollie? A little, but that was before. Situations change. Rhea has changed.