Chambermaid

by Saira Rao

  As expected, Laura came tapping. I vowed to be supportive.

  “Yes?” I swiveled around, attempting to appear welcoming. It didn’t matter how I appeared, however. Laura didn’t see me. Just herself. All she had to do was hit “play” from the previous two nights.

  “I really think Janet is homophobic. Do you even know how hard it is to work when she just stares at me? Stares at me when I walk through their office?” Not this again.

  I was sticking to fag haggery. Frankly, homophobia was totally passé, and while Janet wasn’t the friendliest kid in class, she certainly hadn’t exhibited specific animus toward Laura. As for the staring, Laura had no room to complain. Last count: the judge had stared at me for about eighteen hours, and we had exactly another 2,120 hours to go before the end of the year.

  “Yeah, that really sucks, Laura,” I said, patting her on the back. It was enough to send her back to her cubicle and allowed me the opportunity to take my sympathy to Janet. Fat was one thing. But Janet had just been told that the mere sight of her made the judge want to off herself.

  “Um, Janet, are you OK?” I asked, carefully approaching her cubicle.

  She looked up from a book, seething. Did I say something wrong again? Was “Are you OK” in the same irrational category as “How are you?”

  “Why don’t you just go back to your big office and do whatever it is that YOU people do!” Janet practically spit in my face. It was then that I noticed she was simultaneously reading the Bible and clutching a cross pendant around her neck.

  Apparently I’d landed in Psych 101. Cycle of violence: father beats child, child grows up and beats his own children, and so on. Unfortunately, the law clerks were pretty close to the bottom of the chain, as interns didn’t start for another week or so. But Roy was definitely at rock bottom, which seemed like a dangerous position. If I were the judge, I wouldn’t want to piss off a man who wore armor and carried a sword on the weekends.

  Judge Friedman buzzed me in the late afternoon.

  “She-la. That Judge Adams can’t do anything. She can’t do what’s-its-name—whatever that case is you’re working on. So, stop working on it. We’re giving it to another panel.”

  Very rarely in one’s life does the unbelievable occur. Sextuplets. Winning the lottery. Dolly the cloned sheep. And now, Judge Adams’s inability to work on the labor case—and my salvation. I wanted to call the producers at Dateline NBC.

  Judge Adams was on the panel for Judge Friedman’s next sitting, but she had to recuse herself from my case. Her husband was the venerated mayor of Philadelphia, and his last campaign had accepted large sums of money from one of the unions that was a party to the case. This created an obvious conflict of interest for Judge Adams. Anytime a judge was recused from a case, it was bestowed upon a different panel. This, of course, stank for the parties, as it delayed their appeal. But for me, it was liberation from labor law hell.

  After appearing to be duly outraged by Judge Adams’s “ineptitude,” I accepted my next assignment, whose body weight was twice that of my previous case. The initial panic borne from its girth dissipated once I opened the first brief. It was a death penalty case. Though capital punishment jurisprudence proved daunting in its mind-bending complexity, it carried the highest stakes—life or death—and as such, I welcomed the challenge.

  I was especially intrigued considering the recent spate of DNA evidence proving that countless innocent people had been executed over the past decade. Outraged by these findings, the governor of Illinois had called for a moratorium on all executions until further review. The governor of Pennsylvania had not taken a similar measure, and the man appealing his death sentence was nearing the end of the line. I pored over the first fifty pages without so much as a desire to procrastinate. This is why I had come to Philadelphia, to be a part of such important work.

  It didn’t hurt that I actually felt capable of interpreting the law involved. The crux of the case was strictly Sixth Amendment, which provided criminal defendants the right to a public trial, jury, and counsel. Although we had spent much of our first-year constitutional law class dissecting right-to-counsel cases, I’d never encountered as riveting a case as the one I was now reading:

  Dell Nelson, a thirty-six-year-old African American male, sits on death row at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, south of Pittsburgh, roughly a nine-hour drive to Philadelphia, where Nelson was born and raised. In 1988, days after Nelson’s eighteenth birthday, twenty-year-old Peter Nussbaum, a junior at the University at Pennsylvania, was found shot to death, execution-style, near Arch Homes, the public housing complex where Nelson resided with his grandmother and three young sisters. Dell Nelson was . . .

  DING! Thirteenth floor, going down.

  I was astounded that (a) I’d been so engrossed in my work that I had failed to notice the judge’s departure and (b) that the judge had made said departure without insulting anyone.

  I read a few more pages before putting Dell Nelson and Peter Nussbaum away for the night. As I turned off my computer, I remembered that our two fellow coclerks would be starting the next morning.

  Judging from the clerks I’d encountered thus far, I trusted that the chances of either of them being friendly were slim to none. At that point, however, I’d settle for colleagues who didn’t crack jokes about Supreme Court justices, scoff at non-top-five law school graduates, and accuse others of homophobia. Another week and I’d probably be willing to date a convicted serial killer as long as he didn’t want to discuss Law Review.

  Laura came tapping instantly. She was breathing more heavily than usual with one finger extended. Then bent. Then extended again. On my shoulder. Tap, tap, tap. I took a deep breath and rotated my chair. I wanted a cheeseburger, not a lecture.

  “Sheila. I’m quitting.”

  I was confused. Quitting what? Her nightly sermons?

  “What?” I asked, totally at a loss.

  She just stood there speechless, not realizing I wasn’t accusing but was actually asking a question.

  “Laura, I’m asking you a question. What are you quitting exactly?” I slowly enunciated.

  “This fucking job.”

  My head was spinning.

  “I just can’t take it here. That woman is such a bitch.”

  This was serious. She was serious. The whole week, while she bitched about Janet, Roy, anybody, everybody, not once had she mentioned the judge. I had figured Laura was like all the other peons around the courthouse who’d never breathe a bad word about a judge and would take any and all judicial abuse. I was wrong. Again. My arms dropped, along with my jaw, heart, lungs, intestines, and maybe one kidney. Nobody quits clerkships.

  NOBODY.

  Laura could have told me that she was actually a black man or that she had just bitten off the head of a small horse. She even could have said that she’d just given birth to a child in the bathroom, clipped off the umbilical cord with a stapler, and FedExed the baby to Argentina. All of these things were more plausible than her actual words.

  I’m quitting. I just can’t take it here.

  Sensing I wasn’t going to respond in this century, Laura plowed ahead.

  “I mean, I’ve spent my entire life getting comfortable with my weight. With who I am”—she started crying—“and that—that bitch—has destroyed me in one week. And I thought my dad was bad. I mean, I’ve had diarrhea all week.”

  I reached for Laura’s hand, encouraging her to continue, while shutting out the damaging imagery.

  “I mean, you can’t say you haven’t noticed, Sheila. She practically calls me fat to my face. And this after I’ve worshipped that woman and her Leffert opinion”—sniff sniff—“I mean, I practically memorized every word of that thing. For someone who’s done”—sniff—“so much for women’s rights, she’s totally destroyed this woman!”

  So, Laura had caught on after all. She wasn’t stupid. She was Chicago Law’s valedictorian, something she managed to remind me of even in her darkest hour.

 
“I mean, I only graduated at the top of my class! I don’t deserve this shit.”

  And she didn’t. But neither would the person who graduated at the bottom of her class. The fact is, nobody’s boss should make them feel bad about their weight. I understood. I didn’t even try to stop her.

  “Laura. You need to do whatever it is that you need to do. What are you going to say?”

  As it was, she wasn’t going to say anything. Instead, Laura left the judge a hate letter in the box in front of Janet’s desk.

  Chapter Four

  A clerk should never comment on the judge’s views or work habits, or offer a personal appraisal of the judge’s opinions. Even when directly asked, the clerk should say only something like, “I enjoy working for the judge and I cannot comment beyond that.”

  —“Conduct, Protocol, and Ethics,” Law Clerk Handbook

  Friday morning, I took a shower, dried my hair, looked in the mirror, and screamed.

  Since I was a child, I’d suffered from trichotillomania, a rare disorder where one compulsively picks at his/her hair. Panic triggered picking. The night before, I’d come home, sat in the dark for hours, and picked a small bald spot on the right side of my head.

  But I needn’t have worried. That spot would blend right in a few short hours from now when I was tarred and feathered. TGIF!

  The twenty-five-minute walk to work did little to sooth my nerves. I headed into the Dunkin’ Donuts just across the street from the courthouse in the hopes that coffee would help. It was the same DD I’d patronized five mornings in a row. I approached the counter.

  “What you haveeng?”

  This was not promising. Every morning, at the same time, I’d come face-to-face with the same boy from Laos. My order hadn’t changed once. Large with skim. No mochalatta, carmelita, nolita, frappashita. Also, I was a court of appeals law clerk, practically royalty. My esteemed order should have been committed to memory.

  Whoever said reality was perception and vice versa hadn’t met the ten-year-old kid numbly staring at me, with a glimmer of sympathy. The Department of Labor would have had a field day at this particular DD. Child labor laws, perhaps not big in Laos, were still fashionable in the United States. The kid should have been in school.

  “A large coffee with skim milk and one sugar. Please,” I calmly asked, patting my bald spot. Honey attracts more bees than vinegar. I smiled.

  “One laahj wit one sugah ant skeem!” the kid yelled to his colleague, who could barely see over the counter. Said colleague wasn’t a day older than six and seemed deaf. While my twice-removed aunt probably heard my order in New Delhi, it did not seem to register with anyone at DD. It was possible that everyone there was hard of hearing, considering the blaring Christian rock. The laminated posters of little blond girls with pigtails, plaid skirts, and knee-highs petting unicorns didn’t help. It was a moment I’d never quite envisioned for myself.

  Adding to the ambience were two kids behind me. Both in Liberty Bell hats and hemmed jeans shorts.

  “I’m going to have a Boston crème,” Tween 1 announced.

  “But you’re in Philadelphia . . . NOT Boston!” Tween 2 replied.

  The laugh track came from their parents, who were wearing his-and-hers blue T-shirts. His read: “Abigail Adams was here.” Hers said: “John Adams was here.” The words were embossed on their heaving chests in red, white, and blue. The thought of getting felt up by Abigail and John Adams was more disgusting than imagining your grandparents doing it. No mas café.

  Outside DD, a particularly kind heroin addict, who didn’t stare at my hair, was serving as doorman that day. Maybe she didn’t stare because her eyes were rolling to the back of her head. According to the Philadelphia Chronicle, Philly was the new Seattle. The heroin here was cheaper and purer than anywhere else in the country. This impressive fact translated into a pack of addicts swarming around the courthouse, begging for money. Some of their best work went down at the Dunkin’ Donuts, where throngs of emaciated skeletons would fight over who got to open and close the door for a dime. The blond girl, who couldn’t have been older than fifteen, kindly opened the door. I gave her my coffee cash and proceeded on my merry way. Aside from the fact that I could have sworn I spotted her liver, lungs, and pelvic bone through her thin skin, it was a rather pleasant exchange, especially considering how feverish I felt when I turned and spotted the courthouse.

  The words “JUSTICE FOR AL” that wrapped around the top of the building didn’t help. Considering the corner of junkies and my own dim fate, “Al” was indeed the only one getting any justice.

  “Good morning, missy!!” With my myriad ailments, I’d barely noticed Duane, the tight-polyester-panted man who stood in front of the courthouse every morning, smiling and waving uncontrollably.

  “Good morning to you, too,” I replied, smiling. It was important to pacify Duane. After September 11, the powers that be decided to add him as the first line of defense against terrorism. Everyone in Philly was obsessed with being the next target. The fear was that the Liberty Bell would be taken out. With all the beautiful old churches and museums in Philadelphia, I couldn’t figure out why the bell got so many accolades. Replacing that thing with a tree, a memorial, a trash can wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. But I kept that to myself. It would have been grossly unpatriotic to speak of it. And everyone knew what became of grossly unpatriotic brown people—Guantánamo.

  In any event, Duane didn’t seem like the obvious choice for a top counterterrorism mission. The guy was so busy checking out every woman’s legs that he’d probably let me bring in a nuke, provided I was wearing a skirt.

  After getting the twice-over, I courageously proceeded to “security,” a process which made the Dunkin’ Donuts–Duane one-two punch seem like a day at Canyon Ranch. Reluctantly, I placed my cell phone in a crusty plastic box and then onto the rickety conveyor belt. Cringing through the metal detectors, the chanting predictably began.

  “Phone in the bucket. Phone in the bucket. Phone in the bucket!”

  What did that mean anyway? Why did they say it repeatedly? Most important, why were a dozen people involved? Not to mention, all the screaming drew presumably unwanted attention to their most unusual uniforms: clip-on bow ties (for women also), pleated pants, which created the illusion of pregnancy (for men also), and some form of facial hair (especially for the women). After everyone in the tristate area was made aware that there was some phone in some bucket somewhere, I flashed my ID card and retrieved my offending phone.

  Which brings me to my ID card. Tragic. I just couldn’t understand how I—a watered-down version of Indira Gandhi—managed to look like a battered Janet Reno in the picture. I looked like an old white woman with gigantism, a bowl haircut, and yellow teeth. Particularly mysterious for a short, long-haired South Asian. As if that weren’t enough, the chanters wouldn’t give it a rest.

  “She’s got the red phone! She’s got it!” A female guard looked at me with pity after studying my picture. Being pitied by a woman with a bow tie and mustache had to be the dictionary definition of rock bottom. Thankfully, she lost interest in me the second she had the chance to belittle someone. “No red phone. Check it, kiddo,” she growled at the district court clerk behind me. Self-esteem restored. The red phone signaled an individual’s right to bring a mobile phone into the courthouse. All judges enjoyed this right. So, too, law clerks to court of appeals judges. All other court staff, including district court law clerks, were required to check their phones with security. Lucky for me, I was an accomplished appellate law clerk, which, according to the government, meant that I was less likely than my district court comrade to blow up the building.

  By the time I approached the elevator, I was exhausted and it wasn’t even 8 AM. Now it was time for the elevators. While seemingly innocuous, they presented their own set of problems. The courthouse elevators represented everything that was wrong with the current state of American conversation.

  My first week of work h
ad thus far provided the following breakdown, and I had a feeling it wasn’t an anomaly:

  Monday: one overweight black lady; one underweight white guy, bad teeth; one Indian Janet Reno. Bad everything. “Howwasyourweekendtooshort,” the lady said to the elevator wall. Guy: “Aren’t they always.” Reno: Nothing.

  Tuesday: similar racial, gender, aesthetic breakdown. “When’s the sun gonna come out? We’ve just had the worst summer!” “I just don’t know. Never saw a summer like this one.” Reno: Nothing.

  Wednesday: See Tuesday + “isitalmosttheweekendyet?” Reno: Nothing.

  Thursday: See Wednesday + “It’s supposed to rain Saturday morning but then get nice for a few hours Saturday afternoon, and then rain Saturday night and then Sunday is a wash but for maybe one hour in the afternoon. And—it’s almost Friday!” Reno: Twitched.

  I dreaded the elevators as much, if not more, than the guards. The only saving grace was that the judges had separate, but unequal, elevators. As I battled the chanting phoniacs and engaged in meteorological banter about how Wednesday was not Friday and Monday was actually Monday but it was almost Friday on Thursday, the judges parked their luxury cars in a private underground garage and rode a private elevator straight to their respective chambers. This contemporary Plessy v. Ferguson regime proved ineffective, as the craziest person in that place was a certain robed rascal who wouldn’t hesitate blowing up anybody who failed to give her due respect.

  Reluctantly, I hopped the ’vator for the masses along with two girls around the same age as me—clerks, I surmised—and one woman who looked like she’d just swallowed some nails for breakfast—plaintiff’s attorney, definitely. It didn’t seem like anyone knew anyone else. Maybe I’d be spared. Wrong again. Plaintiff’s attorney turned to me—gasp!—“Thank God it’s Friday.” DING! Thirteenth floor.