INTERLUDE

In late February, Elie goes to see Pedro, Ivy, and Janeth get arraigned and formally charged with the murder of the church deacon. The charges are expanded to include gang enhancements. Afterward, Elie goes to see Ivy, who cries throughout their entire visit. Ivy tells Elie she relapsed while the couple was on the run. She can’t believe what’s happened and she worries she’ll spend the rest of her life in jail. While Elie agrees that she’ll probably be going to prison, she also reassures Ivy that no one knows what will happen.

In the weeks that follow, as their lawyers prepare for trial, everyone remains locked up; despite some feeble attempts at raising money, neither Ivy nor Janeth can make bail. Still, bail is not what either woman thinks about. Because she is undocumented, Janeth has a pair of intertwined fears: Her daughter, Angelina, is just a toddler, and she worries what will happen to her if she is deported. At the same time, Ivy is focused on the fate of her son, Jessie. She’s the only parent he has—Carlos, his father, is going to be in prison for a long time. Ivy and Jessie have been living with a couple she calls her in-laws, but their family tree is actually much more complicated. Ivy and Carlos aren’t married, and Jessie’s grandfather (Carlos’s father) lives with Sonja Vallejo, his girlfriend. Despite the unusual relationships, everything was working out until the deacon’s murder. Now, Ivy is terrified that because she and Carlos are both locked up, four-year-old Jessie will be swept into the child welfare system and adopted by a stranger. She’s pretty sure that his “grandparents” won’t want to take care of Jessie now, with all the trouble the case has stirred up. They’re furious because their house was raided the Tuesday after the shooting when the police came searching for Ivy. Ivy believes they might want to cut ties with her and her child altogether. They’d been supportive of Ivy for so many years, promising her they’d never give up on her and they’d always take care of Jessie.

Janeth isn’t as worried about her daughter, Angelina, going into the system. She knows that Luis, her baby’s daddy, is immature, yet she also knows he loves his daughter. They’re both dependent on Myra, Luis’s mother, who’s already told them she’ll always take care of their little girl. She wishes she had a real mother she could have depended on—not the woman who raised her, dead and buried in some anonymous grave in Mexico. Now Janeth knows she has no choice: she’s got to rely on Luis and his family.

The homegirls make sure there is a steady stream of visitors who see Ivy and Janeth and offer them emotional support. They all worry about the trial and carefully watch both women’s attorneys. Everyone likes Janeth’s public defender. She’s working hard on Janeth’s defense and talks to her every day. Because they are both petite, the attorney says she will bring some of her own clothes for Janeth to wear when they go to trial.

But Ivy’s lawyer is another matter. From the outset, everyone quickly sees he’s completely incompetent. Unfortunately, Ivy doesn’t have much of a choice in who represents her. None of the three can afford a private attorney, and each need their own counsel. Janeth was assigned a public defender because she was apprehended first. Pedro, because technically he was apprehended second, was assigned a lawyer from the alternate public defender’s office. Just as the name implies, an alternate public defender steps in when there is a conflict of interest—in criminal hearings, only one individual can be represented by a public defender. Since Ivy was arrested last, she was assigned what’s known as a panel attorney, from the lowest rung of public defense. Panel attorneys are obtained through the Office of the Indigent Criminal Defense Attorney. Any lawyer from “the panel” is paid a flat fee to defend cases, no matter how many hours they put in, and the fee, even for homicide cases, is small. Their incentive to work many hours on any case is very low—most try to negotiate deals as quickly as possible. Everyone is worried about the panel attorney’s abilities except Ivy. She keeps telling the women from the café who visit that things will work out and says she believes that Pedro will honor the hood and take responsibility for the crime. “I trust him,” she reassures the women. “He said he would take care of me.”

But the women from Homegirl are full of anxiety—they don’t trust Pedro, and they’ve seen Ivy’s attorney fall asleep in court during two of the preliminary hearings. Adela is furious, “I told Ivy, you better throw some water at this fool. Your attorney’s no good. Fire him. Get rid of him!” At the café, she tells Erika, “We should take some eggs to throw at him. Wake his ass up—he’s terrible.”

Ivy doesn’t listen. Her attorney reassures her that he’s going to get her case dismissed in the preliminary hearing. She hopes he’s right, and she’s preoccupied with Jessie. Unlike Janeth, she can’t depend on her baby daddy’s family if she’s sent to prison. The homegirls keep asking Elie what will happen to Ivy’s little boy. “He’s really a cute kid,” Elie tells me. “I think someone will want to adopt him.” But for once, the worst doesn’t happen. Jessie’s paternal grandfather and his girlfriend file for guardianship—they are dead set against their grandchild going into the system. Ivy doesn’t like the fact that they’re planning to ask for custody and she fears losing her parental rights, but at least Jessie isn’t in foster care.

For now, both Ivy and Janeth start to concentrate on the case. Pedro will be tried first, and the women wonder what he’s going to do. Is he going to stand up for them? Is he going to explain that he pushed them, that they didn’t want to kill anyone? Ivy and Janeth still don’t know how things got out of control, they still don’t understand what Pedro was thinking or doing. It all happened so fast. They are both frightened about what will happen when they go to court.