The narrow wooden bench creaks and bows every time someone sits next to me. It arcs so deeply when a heavy man sits in the very middle, two feet away from my tight clasp of the built-in armrest at the end, that I fear the old wooden fibers are spreading open beneath me and the bench will spring shut, snapping my buttocks within their grasp, when he stands. I imagine myself impaled by jagged splinters piercing and clasping me so that I could not even speak, just open and close my jaws like a speared fish.
I gasp and flail a bit at the image of me as a dying fish trapped in this courtroom, dry men in dark suits standing folded-armed over me, issuing a sentence of impalement for 60 days, including time served. The social worker reading her paperwork one bench ahead and two scooches to the left glances up at my involuntary jerking motion. She raises an eyebrow, silently asking, ‘uh, you okay, lady?’ and I smile weakly, vaguely patting my chest as if I’ve just squashed a cough or sneeze perhaps.
Another case is called, but I cannot follow along because a sudden influx of people—next case must be a big one—are entering the courtroom, and the giant doors crash violently shut behind every single one. I thought a courtroom would be a hushed, secularly sacred space. I was wrong.
The entrance to the courtroom from the hallway has two massive wooden doors swinging on giant hinges. Ill-fitting security bars look recently added to enable an emergency lock-down, and now these heavy metal posts and bars crash into each other with the full weight of the thick wooden door every time someone goes in or out. The metal bars slam so violently against each other that they shake the floor and vibrate my wooden bench each time they crash shut. I swear they could guillotine a baby’s hand.
My body shudders each time the doors clang and bash.
I imagine forgetting my children, those two new foster children whose middle names and birthdates are still a test of my short-term memory. Behind me, as I entered the courtroom and one of them reaching out for me as I disappeared through the door, her tiny soft baby hand reaching for me, perhaps her little voice calling, “Mama?” and then that door slamming, slicing, and her agonized shriek filling the air.
This time I don’t even try to hide my asthmatic gasp of horror but instead let my body’s convulsive, reflexive gasp for air propel me right up onto my feet and out the door, striding ferociously up the hall and away from those horrific doors, ostensibly to get a drink from the paltry, dribbling drinking fountain covered dully in fingerprints, I’m sure are crawling with impetigo, scabies, a smear of meth, a few grains of coke.
I forcefully twist my head away, not allowing myself to even look at the elevators, as I move towards the window at the end of the hall, overlooking a parking lot half-asphalt and half-gravel so that I cannot tell if it’s a gravel lot half-paved or a paved lot slowly disintegrating into gravel. I hug my elbows tight to my sides and allow tiny little sways forward and back, so my head is gently dipping forward-down, then back-up then forward-down. Yes. Dip. Nod. I. Can. Do. This. Yes. Dip. Nod.
There is a family behind me, arguing. I can see their reflection in the window I’m facing. They speak so urgently, so forcefully, that it’s as if they are projecting their grievances into holograms floating before me, just outside the window, somewhere above the rows of grimy cars. The man keeps leaning and glowering. I don’t know why he must lean when he already consumes all the air in the room.
A shapeless man in an xx-large sweatshirt and sweatpants, he leans and glowers, and mutters, and simultaneously, at the exact same pace, and at a pitch that exactly cancels out both their words. His equally massive wife leans in and placates. She, with her scrawny ponytail, ratty flip-flips, and a shapeless sweatshirt, leans and mutters but also, additionally, pats the air with her hands, attempting to dampen down his energy while, in fact, exacerbating the argument with her constant patter. Between them, seated squarely between them so that both his parents must crane their heads around his proportionately massive bulk, is their teenage son. He appears to be impaired in some way. He holds both hands in front of his eyes and waves and pats his fingers lightly together in a complicated rhythm, his mouth gently shaping words that he may or may not be giving voice to, it’s impossible to tell over his parents’ din.
I turn to leave the window, and as I walk back up the hallway, I see what had been blocked from my view. There is a girl, about 13 maybe. She is tiny like a starved rabbit. Her face is frozen in fear; her frame skeletal. She is staring at my shoes. I turn my head surreptitiously as I walk up the hall, and her face rotates with me, her gaze never leaving my shoes as the two-inch heels tap, tap further away from her, carrying my size-2 pantsuit, understated daytime jewelry, and exclusive-clients-only hairstyle out of her reach and back into the courtroom.
As I passed the hulking family in the hall, I finally deciphered enough of their conversation to realize this wasn’t dad-mom-son-daughter. This was uncle-aunt-son-cousin, and they were here to keep custody of the girl rather than let her go into the system—that evil system trapping kids and cutting them off from their families.
I braced the weight of the doors against my open palms till they closed silently behind me before resuming my seat to await the trial that would place my two foster daughters permanently in my home.
Photo Credit: illusionbreak Flickr via Compfight cc
