Trial-1
Famke sat with Royal behind the prosecutions side of the courtroom and bounced her foot nervously. Imani’s sister Amari was sitting across the aisle from them glowering at them.
Cliff and Jubilee were sitting with Denny and Mary, Cliff’s parents on the other side of her and Royal and Cliff’s spine was straighter than steel.
Famke was called to the stand as the first witness for the prosecution. After going through the spiel about telling the truth and reminding her she was under oath, the lawyer smiled gently.
“Ms. Noor, can you tell me how it was you were first introduced to Mindy and Prince Robinson?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “My brother was at the Saint Mary’s hospital, in the specialized children’s ward undergoing cancer treatments ahead of a surgery. They were trying to reduce the size of his tumor with radiation and chemotherapy ahead of the surgery. I spent a lot of my time at the hospital, and I was in the cafeteria having a cup of coffee. Mindy and Prince were a couple of tables over arguing a so I’d noticed them. I didn’t pay them much attention until Mindy sat at my table.”
“Why did she sit there?”
“I overheard Prince demand he wanted her to try one more time before giving up. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but she was crying, and she got up and left the room saying she needed to use the washroom. When she came back, she accidentally sat at my table instead of the one she’d shared with Prince. Prince wasn’t at his table because he was at the counter buying another coffee.”
“You remember it very clearly.”
“Yes. I was annoyed to be honest. I didn’t know what the fight was about but what I heard was a woman who said she couldn’t do it anymore and a man who asked her what it would cost him to convince her to try again.”
“Cost him?”
“He specifically said, ‘what will it cost me to get you to try one more time? A bigger house? The new car you want? Name it.’ My very first opinion of him was he was insensitive.”
“This changed?”
“Yes, with time.” She bit her lip.
“How did they identify themselves?”
“Mindy introduced herself as Mindy Brown. Prince didn’t correct her.”
“How did you and Mindy get better acquainted.”
She took a breath, “um, well, Prince was constantly on the phone or leaving the cafeteria to talk on the phone over the next several weeks and she and I would sit and chat alone. We commiserated over the maternal figures in our lives.”
“How?”
“She vented a lot about her mother-in-law. I vented about my aunt who I fought for custody of Bram. We both felt alone.”
“Speculation,” Imani’s lawyer called out. “She can’t know the woman felt alone.”
The prosecutor looked to Famke, “did she tell you she felt alone?”
“More than once,” she shrugged. “She told me she felt alone, angry, pressured.”
“Your opinion of Prince. Did it change because he paid Bram’s medical bills?”
“No. In fact I was angry about it. He overstepped but, I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse. The billing lady sought me out in the cafeteria to let me know the cheque hadn’t cleared and treatments could cease. He passed her his credit card.”
“How long after this, did he broach the idea of surrogacy?”
“Not two weeks.” She admitted. “About three and a half weeks from the date I’d met them.”
“Not a lot of time to ask someone for such a huge imposition. Why did you agree?”
She took a deep breath. “My opinion from the time my parents passed away was I was not going to have children. My father was a child psychologist working with the state and I’d heard more than my fair share of stories about kids who came from homes where finances were an issue. I never wanted to bring a kid into it. They assured me I would always be part of the child’s life as an auntie, and I would be able to watch her grow up. I figured it was likely my only opportunity to carry a child and knowing it was going to a woman like Mindy who so desperately wanted to give her husband a family, I felt I was at peace with the decision.”
“When did this change? When were you no longer at peace with your choice?”
“Three weeks before I delivered Precious, I came home from the hospital after an especially brutal visit with Bram. It was a difficult day all around. I got to the house, and she was angry with me.”
“The house they told you they bought as their dream home.”
“Yes.”
“Why was she angry?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it get better? Did she come around?”
“Not at first. I chalked it up to her being a bit jealous of him taking care of me. She wanted to be pregnant for so long and there I was having her baby, and he was doting on me. I tried to reassure her but everything I said only set her off more. I presumed it was jitters, so I tried really hard not to let it get to me.”
“This was why you were worried you’d made a mistake?”
“I was worried about Prince’s reactions actually. Not Mindy’s.”
“Why?”
“I understood why she was upset or at least I thought I did so I tried to be patient. On the other hand, he was cold to her. There was no reassurances or affirmations from him to her. It reminded me of the first time I’d met them when he offered her a car to get pregnant one more time. He was still nice to me, I can’t say he wasn’t but with her, he was short-tempered and insulting. He went so far during one argument to say they wouldn’t have been in this situation if she hadn’t been defective. It was the first time I wondered if I hadn’t made a huge mistake.”
“Did you talk to anyone?”
“No. A couple of days later, she was fine again. I caught them making out in the kitchen and I knew they were good.”
“Were you jealous?”
“No.” She said vehemently. “Not even remotely. I grew to care for both of them but not romantically. Prince kissed me once, during the ultrasound when the tech announced the baby was a girl but I told him not to do it again or Mindy would have my head. He said all along he wanted a little girl to spoil so he got a bit emotional.”
“Did he ever apologize for kissing you?”
“No. We never spoke of it again.”
“The day you birthed Precious. Run us through what happened?”
“I went back to my own apartment to pack my overnight bag for the hospital. I mean, it was already packed at the house, but I wanted a few things from my place to bring with me. Mindy was with me with her little camera. She would print pictures all the time and she was taking my picture in my kitchen. She told me to smile, and my water broke. We went from giggling in the kitchen to full on panic.”
“Then what happened?”
“They were weird in the car on the way to the airport. Prince kept saying things like his baby was coming and Mindy would correct him and say our baby. I felt he was trying to piss her off.”
“Why?”
“My guess would be to make her refuse to come to the hospital.”
Before the opposing counsel could object, he pushed quickly, “Had this happened before?”
“A few times she missed prenatal assessments because they would argue, and she would say she felt sick.”
“And this was the atmosphere on the way to the hospital?”
“Even in the hospital. When I was situated in the birthing suite, they were bickering about his baby versus their baby. Prince wanted to see the birth. Mindy insisted he not see my vagina. She wasn’t excited anymore. When she’d been in my apartment she was laughing and happy but in the birthing suite she was sullen, angry, as if she didn’t want to be there but was forced to be. Then it was time to push. Precious’s heart rate dropped, and my blood pressure bottomed out. It was chaos. Mindy made a comment about me dying. Prince told them to save me no matter the cost.”
“You. Not the baby?”
She nodded. “Yes. Then I misspoke.”
“How so?”
“I was delirious. They were giving me medications, frantically hooking things up and taking things off and I begged the doctor to save my baby. Mindy heard it and freaked. The minute Precious was out, she insisted she was going to be the first person to hold her. The nurses working on Precious said they needed to get her oxygen, so nobody was holding her yet. Prince and Mindy didn’t spare me another glance. I was whisked away. I woke up after midnight in my room and I couldn’t stop thinking of how much I wanted to hold her. Everything felt wrong but when I called for the nurse, she checked me and found I was hemorrhaging again. I was taken back to surgery. In the morning, I asked if I could see the baby and it was then they told me they were gone.”
“They took her?”
“Yes.”
“They brought her home?”
“I assumed they brought her back to the house. I tried calling and texting and never heard from them. I went to the house when I was released from hospital, and they were gone. The house, I found out, was a rental. It was all lies. I was pretty scared. At that point, all I wanted to know was she was okay.”
“Precious, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Because you knew she shouldn’t have been discharged given her medical condition at the time of delivery.”
She nodded and then wiped a tear away. “I really missed her.”
“No further questions.” The lawyer sat down.
Imani’s lawyer looked to her. “You said you didn’t have romantic feelings for Prince. This wasn’t true though, was it. In fact, his account to his mother and in all the letters he wrote, you shared a torrid love affair right while his wife was in the next room of the house they rented.”
Famke bristled, “I didn’t lie. We didn’t have an affair. I was rarely alone with Prince, other than for prenatal assessments. I spent far more time with Mindy than Prince. Are you going to accuse me of fooling around with her too?”
“She didn’t leave letters outlining her affection for you.”
“You know who also didn’t write letters outlining affection? Me. You know why? Because I didn’t love him like that.”
“He painted a different picture.”
“Did he?”
“I believe you had an affair and when push came to shove and he was forced to choose between you and his wife, he chose his wife, and it left you bitter. Did you threaten to keep the child from them, Famke?”
“No. Not once.”
“Yet, you maintain they stole her from you. You didn’t want her. You say yourself you never wanted to have children. How do you steal something from someone when they don’t want it?”
She locked eyes with him, willing herself to not snap at him for doing his job. “The minute I knew she was in danger, everything changed. The moment I knew she was at risk, I realized how much I loved her and how much I wanted her. Her. Not Prince or Mindy or the pair of them but I wanted her. I wanted my little girl to be okay, to live and to be mine. It took almost losing her to realize how much I wanted to keep her.”
“Basically, it took you forty weeks to decide you wanted something to which you were not entitled. You hadn’t wanted her even momentarily in all that time yet the minute your lover and his wife were ready to leave you, you wanted to take the one thing which would have held them together.”
“That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it? No further questions.”