Issue 153 Is Online!

search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

T he rope broke.

It plays in my head. Over and over again. And every time, I go back to the beginning where I press the buzzer.

I press the buzzer. I wait. Privilege is the badge I wear. I look like someone with a resume. Someone you would meet in a gallery. Someone you would confide in. Someone who has experienced the kindness of strangers.

I understand the power of appearances. Yet I am the kind of person who continues to make those judgments. I know better. It is my privilege that lets me forget.

But in this place, I must wait to be buzzed in by the man in the booth. So I wait. He doesn't look my way. So I wait outside, in the snow, on the other side of a glass door. I am tempted to turn and run. I am the cowardly lion and my legs have turned to straw. Minutes later, a teenager in a backward baseball cap pushes the door open for me from the inside. He is Asian. His eyes don't meet mine, they are staring at the large white Nike runners that he wears under pants that are sizes too large. I thank him. He turns away. I look around, I am standing in the lobby of the United Nations. Or so it feels.

I am the only person here with pale skin. This embarrasses me. I understand why the woman who holds the scales of justice wears a blindfold. She too is embarrassed. Truth makes a mockery of justice.

Urine, stale smoke, and bleach choke me. The smells are an unholy cross between a hospital and a bar. I try to stay away from both. They smell of fear. But unlike bars, no alcohol is served here. And unlike hospitals, visits here are limited to twenty minutes, twice a week.

Abandonment is encouraged.

I had thought about bringing my dog along for the ride. She would rather sit in my car in the parking lot than wait at home for me to return. But I worried for her safety. I didn't want anyone teasing her or taunting her while I was out of sight. I can protect her, and so I do.

I wait in line with the others. Two young women of colour joke. One holds a child in her arms. There is a familiarity with the procedure and a grace to their movements. When it is my turn, I fumble to show identification to the man sitting behind the glass window in the raised booth. I scan his face for a sign of kindness or familiarity. In vain. He is impatient with me. I show him one piece of identification. He wants two, and they must both be held up to the window at the same time. I struggle. I am holding a large winter coat, a magazine and a purse. I put the coat, the magazine and purse under one arm and hold up the two pieces of identification. I can barely withstand the rigours of visiting a place like this. I feel a deep humiliation.

When a metal drawer is mechanically thrust out at me, I know I am expected to sign-in, but there is no pen. Only the cap of a pen that once was. The man in the booth stares. I ask for a pen. The drawer is sucked back and spit out. Now there is a pen.

He wants me to move along, but I see a sign that says any money that is to be transferred must be submitted at this window. So I ask if I may do that. Again the drawer spits out. I drop in ten dollars. The man in the raised booth tells me, through the round metal speaker in the glass, that he will give me a receipt later and to move aside. I move aside for the young Aboriginal woman behind me. I do not know that the ten dollars will disappear without a trace. Later, when I ask, they will have no record. No proof = no truth.

My dog was eleven months old when I got her from the shelter. I remember the smell. Not as bad as this, but the same kind of stench. I didn't want a puppy. I wanted an older dog from a good home whose family could no longer care for her. The dog would have to have a history of living with a cat (since I have a cat) and a child (since I have a child). But somehow, the dog I ended up adopting was a stray, with no history except that she had been abused and abandoned. There was just something about her eyes. A longing for the kindness of a stranger.

I sit in a grey metal chair, attached to other grey metal chairs lined up against the wall. I pile the coat, the magazine and the purse on my lap. No one else reads. I look straight ahead at the bare grey wall. I'm startled when I hear someone shout out your last name. A guard filling a doorway down the hall is calling your name. I am waiting for the receipt for the ten dollars but if I don't present myself when your name is called, my twenty minutes might tick away.

I leave my seat and rush down the hall, again juggling my belongings. I am about to walk through the airport-like metal detector when I am told to put all my belongings in a locker. The man motions me back down the hall and says something about turning left. I am utterly confused by the directions. I wonder what it must be like for those who are struggling with a new language. Some other visitors in the hall are saying - Over there - but I see no lockers. Finally the exasperated guard comes and shows me where the lockers are. They are down the hall and a sharp left down another corridor. I wonder how I was supposed to find these hidden lockers. I wonder why there is no sign. Then I remember where I am. And it all makes sense.

I read the directions on the locker. Put in a quarter, open the locker, put in your belongings and then close the locker and take the key. I can read, so I have some confidence that I can do this. I do not know at this point that the number on the key does not correspond with the number on the locker. I find that out later when I unsuccessfully try to open three different lockers. An older Aboriginal woman kindly says, You have to remember the locker number cuz the numbers on the keys don't match the numbers on the lockers. Another couple looks unhappy with me. It appears I am trying to open their locker. My pale skin burns.

It was snowing the night I brought my dog home. On the white sidewalk, between the road and the house, she relieved herself. The snow turned a deep carmine. No one at the shelter had known she was in heat. Apparently, had they known, they would have quarantined her. She looked up at me, confused. I felt guilty. I was already regretting the enormous commitment I had just made.

I return to the guard by the metal detector and walk through. This appears to be my first successful act. He motions me to sit in the room on my left. I look over and am startled at how much this looks like a bad movie set. There are two metal stools bolted to the floor in front of each pane of glass. In front of the glass, lying on the ledge, is an old Bakelite telephone receiver. It is attached by a twisted metal cord to something under the counter. I am thinking how much this reminds me of the film Dead Man Walking. But I am not Susan Sarandon and you are not Sean Penn.

And my dog is not Lassie. But like Lassie, she has become my devoted companion. I will always be the one who rescued her from the shelter. The first few months, she followed me everywhere. Except the basement. She would not go down to the basement. She was afraid. And when we walked in the park, she would growl at men in ball caps. Especially ones who carried sticks. I learned this every time I had the car filled with gas. Later I learned to decline the offer of a window wash.

Again I stumble. I don't know which stool I am expected to perch on and I don't know if it matters, but it might. I am still concerned about losing some of my twenty minutes. So I ask the guard, Which is my window? As I fear he might, he just gives a hand signal. I ask for clarification. He comes over and points to the stool. I sit down and wait. Beside me is a mother with her almost-teenage daughter. The mother is holding the phone to her ear while the daughter sits on the metal stool beside her with her head in her hands. She looks bored, like she is in church and wants to go home. I wonder why they can't provide two phones at each spot. Then again I remember where I am. I cannot see who the mother is talking to, there is a barrier at eye-level between us.

I called my dog Tikkum. It was meant to be Tikkun, which is Hebrew for "to heal and transform the world." I told people, Better my dog should carry the weight of this expectation than my child. I never really questioned whether the word was ever meant to be a name.

Then my eyes catch the corner of something bright orange. When you appear, I see it is your uniform. Grown men wearing bright orange one-piece tunics. I imagine the board meeting at which the uniform was agreed upon. No one actually asked, How can we best humiliate them. It was understood.

I try to take my dog everywhere with me. To the video store where they give out treats, and to friends' houses. When I leave her alone at home, she eats things. Mostly paper. Wherever she can find it. Tissues from the bathroom garbage can, letters that are lying on a surface below knee-level. Anything. She is terrified of being abandoned once again. The vet calls it separation anxiety.

You sit down facing me. I pick up the phone. You pick up the phone. There is dead air. I look at you but all I see is fingerprints on the glass. We try to talk, sitting holding these 1930's phones, looking through this dirty window. I am wondering if the twenty minutes is running. I turn and try to motion to the guard. He finally acknowledges me and the sound is turned on.

Your head is shaved so that only a shadow is left. The scars are obvious. Your life is engraved on your scalp. I think the jagged line over your brow was etched shortly after your birth. I know that when you have a choice, you will wear a ball cap again. It will be a while before you have a choice.

You are nervous as you speak through the receiver. You sense when other men in orange coveralls enter the room on your side of the glass and your eyes dart over your shoulder. An instinct born of fear. You tell me you do not sleep because you are in a dorm with thirty other men. Last night one man was tied to his bed and beaten. There are no witnesses. You were all there. The abandoned ones, so quick to abandon.

There is a buzz on the phone. The twenty minutes has almost run its course. I have heard all that I can bear. Then you tell me about the rope. Your hand rubs your neck.

Another failure.

There is another warning buzz. You say you are grateful for the visit. No family or friends have made the trip. I am grateful it's time to go. You are crying.

In court they said that you were incapable of human connection. Then they left the paneled room and washed their hands.

I drive down my tree-lined street and turn the key in my front door. I push the code to disarm the alarm. I drop to my knees and hug the dog that licks my face. I wash my hands. Scrub, not wash. I sit on the rug with Tikkum. Bits of paper from the waste basket lie on the floor. Some are partly chewed. Every time the door closes behind me, she knows it is another abandonment. Until I reappear.

I think of your childhood. The brutalization of your body. The baseball cap that hides the hideous scars. The bat in your closet that has never been used in a game but has been soaked in blood. For you there were no games. There were no lullabies. There was no childhood. And now, more than anything, you want no more of this life.

But the rope broke.

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

It all seems nightmarishly Kafkaesque. But I know better. It makes perfect sense. The law deals only in frozen moments and those moments are carefully selected. For you it froze a moment in which the violence done unto others was done by you.

Nothing less than due process has found you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

It will take me a long time to shed the visit. It will take me longer to separate the grief from the anger. I am a volunteer. A stranger who came to help, to offer shelter way too late. I will not abandon you but I cannot adopt you. I cannot take you home. I cannot do the very things that matter the most.

Violence follows you like a devoted dog.