Chambermaid

by Saira Rao

  Yet again, Brian had grown tired of me, turned his back and continued to hold court as to the Supreme Court’s current docket. Brian was about five foot seven. He had a wide ride and tight khaki pants. He tucked in a white oxford shirt, the collar buttoned down. He wore a dark brown braided belt and a red sweater vest. With the brown wool fedora, he looked like a drug-dealing elf. Brian was the spiritual leader of the group. Brian thought I was stupid. Ergo, everyone else did, too.

  Brian’s fans followed him back to the courthouse after lunch. I kept my distance, walking a half block behind everyone else. Matthew joined me.

  “Hey, Matthew, thanks so much for piping up for me back there,” I said, taking a deep breath, venturing to spew sacrilege. “Those people don’t seem to be so much up my alley. You know?”

  “They’re just lawyers, that’s all,” he replied. “I wouldn’t take it personally. And you were right. You know, about Bowers and habeas.” Matthew shoved his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips, as if he’d said too much.

  “So, um,” I fumbled for a talking point, “you have a girlfriend. What’s her name? Did you guys meet at Yale?”

  “Ah, yeah, her name is Heidi. And we did meet at Yale,” he answered, staring ahead. “She’s actually clerking for a judge on the Southern District of New York.” Full stop.

  “Wow, great, does she like it there? I wish so badly I’d gotten a clerkship in New York.”

  “Ah, her judge really likes pastrami,” he said awkwardly. Then, silence.

  “Who wouldn’t like pastrami? It’s a very likable meat.” Why did I always have to fill the silence?

  “What I was trying to say is that the only thing her judge likes is pastrami. As in, the only thing he talks about is pastrami. Which is pretty weird, you know,” he paused. “And I’m sure Heidi would trade places with you in a minute. She hates New York.”

  How could anyone hate New York? I found myself a bit cross with Matthew for dating someone who affirmatively hated New York.

  “Yeah, I guess New York is tough for some people. It’s expensive. Um.” I searched for another negative but was coming up short.

  “Well, in law school, she used to get up really early and go walking at the mall in New Haven. And there’s no place really for her to do that in Manhattan.”

  “As in mall walking? That kind of mall? That kind of walking?” I asked, trying to suppress my shock. Was Matthew dating a senior citizen? Did we have a Harold and Maude sequel on our hands?

  “Yeah, she likes to walk at the mall,” he said, his face reddening a bit, “and, er, there was this one store she loved where she used to buy postcards for her collection. And I think she misses that, too.”

  I’d never been so happy to see the courthouse and was actually grateful for the security check, as I couldn’t think of anything to say about postcard collections.

  Entering chambers, I quickly returned to my cubicle to do some covert Internet research on the ACLU. Matthew headed for the supply closet, presumably to grab a new mechanical pencil. The judge kept taking his from his desk drawer.

  “MMMAATTTTTHHEW!” Surely Matthew’s mother had never intended his name to be pronounced in such a fashion.

  “MMMAATTTTTHHEW!” Surely Matthew’s mother heard the judge all the way in Idaho. “Get in here now!”

  Matthew stumbled inside. At least six feet tall, he nevertheless looked meek next to the judge. One of the few things I knew about Matthew was that he’d grown up on a farm in Idaho where he spent his youth castrating bulls. Twenty years later, a small elderly lady was making him shudder.

  “You and Sheila have been gone for over two hours!” Talk about fuzzy math. We’d left at 12:05 and it was 1:10. We’d been gone for sixty-five minutes.

  “Um, Judge, actually, we left shortly after—”

  “NO! NO! NO! Janet said you’ve both been gone since eleven-thirty!” What! Why would Janet lie? And the judge had been staring at me at 11:30. How on earth was it possible for me to have been getting stared at by her and lectured by Brian all at the same time? The ginger noodles started to stir.

  “SHEEEEELLLLLAAA!!” Shoot—I was selfishly hoping that Matthew would take the rap for the both of us. I walked into the torture chamber as Matthew headed out, nostrils flaring.

  “Who do you think you are?!” Her eyes were filled with hatred. I didn’t have a good answer. I used to be a well-liked, affable, relatively charming, somewhat intelligent Indian American woman. Now, I was a stupid lunch-whoring Pakistani.

  “I do NOT go to lunch. I am nice enough to let you people go. But you’ve taken advantage of me one too many times.”

  Heavens to Betsy Ross! What was she talking about? We had no vacation days, weren’t allowed to be sick, worked ten hours a day, couldn’t speak, could barely move, and cranked out more bench memos than the Catholic Church cranked out pedophiles. All for a pittance. And we were taking advantage of her because we’d been held up for five minutes getting lectured about habeas corpus! This was outrageous. Yet she was the one outraged. My silence caused further infuriation.

  “THERE WILL BE NO MORE LUNCH!!! NO MORE LUNCH!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND!!!????” Actually, I didn’t. Was she outlawing the entire, age-old concept of lunch?

  “Yes, Judge,” I lied.

  When I walked back into the clerks’ cave, Matthew silently beckoned me to his cubicle.

  “Sorry I left you in there like that,” he whispered.

  “I’d have done the same thing,” I assured him. “What do you think sparked that episode? I mean, did we just deserve that?”

  “I don’t know, can’t really answer that one,” he mumbled uncomfortably. My cue to leave.

  As I stood, I noticed a shimmering frame on Matthew’s desk. The picture inside revealed a blond waif who managed to sport such a severe camel toe that it resembled a forklift.

  “Oh, that’s Heidi,” Matthew explained. “That’s her at her parents’ house down the Jersey shore.” I nodded, soaking in the cheese factor. “She, ah, she gave me this frame in case you’re, you know, wondering,” he quickly added. I wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed by (a) the glitter, (b) the fact that he had a picture of his girlfriend in a string bikini at work (or anywhere, for that matter), or (c) the toe.

  “That’s nice. That’s, ah, really nice. She’s lovely,” I muttered. Returning to my cubicle, I caught a glimpse of the judge, who pursed her lips at me, nodding her head disapprovingly.

  I was in a foul mood when I got home. Out of sheer panic, before leaving work, I’d e-mailed my contact at the ACLU about the application process there. She hadn’t e-mailed me back. Granted, it’d only been a few hours, but in that time I’d managed to convince myself that Brian was somehow masterminding the death of my legal career. Never mind that he had no clue that I had either worked at the ACLU or had any desire to work there in the future.

  As for the day’s big news, namely the Edict of Lunch, it was not only upsetting as a procedural matter (checking out the judge’s tonsils for no good reason was no good) but proved substantively confusing, as well. Based on her exact words, I couldn’t deduce the status of lunch: Would I ever be allowed to eat lunch again? Would the innocent people of the third circuit—including New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands—have to abstain also? Depriving James and Kevin of lunch for a year was no way to thank them for being supportive friends. Especially Kevin, with whom I’d not yet established a long enough positive history to throw in the bad stuff.

  I called Sanjay to get his take on the situation.

  “Well, Sheila, um, I, can you hold on just one second . . . no, no I told you I needed those X-rays in room 602. No, I didn’t say 622. Six-oh-two. OK, I’ll be there in a second. Hey, um, Sheila, what were you saying? Actually, can I just call you later?” The phone went dead before I could respond.

  James was still wearing his suit when I went down to his apartment. “Hey there,” he said, greeting me with neither a smile nor a frown. It was the kind of apathy th
at normally took a lifetime to generate. But I couldn’t blame him really. It was impossible to differentiate one evening from another.

  “Hi. My life sucks,” I complained dispassionately, sinking (as usual) into his hand-me-down pastel couch. James had even uglier furniture than me.

  “Sheila—your life sucks right now,” James qualified, squinting his eyes and tilting his head in an attempt to find something original to say. As if looking at me from a sharp angle might help. “And anyway, at least you don’t have to dress like this,” he said, pointing to his navy blue suit. “And if it makes you feel any better, I had a horrific day,” he said, loosening his tie. “His scooter died—allegedly—today. I had to wheel him into court so he could hear a motion. He told one of the lawyers that he couldn’t believe she’d passed the bar exam, because she was so incompetent, denied the motion, and motioned for me to retrieve him. All the while, my delicate flower coclerk just sat smiling at the judge. Anyway, I go up to the bench to get him when all of a sudden the little scooter fucking turns back on and goes fully out of control.”

  In spite of a concerted effort to take the situation seriously, I laughed.

  “Don’t laugh. He ran over my foot.” James motioned to his right foot. His big toe resembled a globe with a smattering of black-and-blue continents. I placed my hand over my mouth, trying not laugh. “And then he did it again. But he didn’t even realize he was doing it. So, there I was in front of all those people, literally getting run over, and I had to pretend like everything was totally normal. I managed to hit the power switch on the thing and wheeled him out of there. Limping.”

  “OK, you win.” Getting run over by a nearly dead, power-hungry man in an out-of-control electric bike in front of a courtroom of people beats getting grounded from lunch.

  My cell phone rang. It was Kevin. “Hey, Sheila. Jana and I are about twenty minutes away from Ralph’s. See you in a few.” Click! Drats! I’d totally forgotten about dinner with Kevin, his coclerk Jana, and James. Ever since the clerks’ (un)happy hour(s), James had struck himself a fantabulous deal—he and Jana would sleep together about once a week. No strings attached. The best part about it was that Jana had started being super nice to Kevin, so as to not jeopardize the setup with James.

  “Oh no. I totally spaced on tonight. I have zero personality right now and have a feeling Jana will think I’m a dud,” I explained. James grabbed his wallet and keys before delivering a dose of reality.

  “Sheila. Listen I hate to break this to you. I don’t think today is either a particularly bad or good day for your personality. This is kind of how you’ve been since we’ve started this clerkship thing. So, get off your ass and let’s go. And Jana is really nice. Trust me.”

  Forty minutes later, I found myself sitting at a table covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth desperately trying to be one of the gang.

  “So, Jana, I understand you went to Virginia,” I said. Considering I already knew she clerked for Judge Adams, law school was next on the list.

  “Yes, I did.” She smiled proudly. “And I understand you work for Judge Friedman. I hear that she is one interesting judge,” she said, with a knowing wink.

  “Yes, she is interesting.” I tried winking back, but since I’d never mastered the art, it ended up as more of an unpleasant squint. James and Kevin had been sitting mysteriously silent, each slurping an entire carafe of wine through a straw. Ralph’s was the kind of place where such behavior was not noteworthy or kitschy.

  “What about you? How do you like clerking for Adams,” I asked, gently returning to what I had a feeling was Jana’s favorite subject—Jana.

  “Well,” she said, grinning at Kevin, “Adams is, like, really the best. The woman is hysterical. Like today, for example, Kevin”—she snapped him to attention—“Kev, did you see it when she handed me that brief in that trespassing case and it was, like, huge and she just said”—and then Jana took a time-out to chuckle, which made the rest of us feel compelled to chuckle also in spite of not knowing the punch line—“‘this brief ain’t so brief.’” Then, full-fledged hysteria. Tears ran down her face. Our respective spaghetti and meatballs came.

  Through one particularly large bite, Jana continued: “And, like, yesterday, the judge came into me and Kev’s area and it was, like, totally quiet back there, and she just said, ‘Wow, you guys are quieter than Justice Thomas is on the bench’”—cackle, snort, cackle, piece of meatball went flying from Jana’s mouth and landed splat on the left lens of James’s glasses. To think they’d be doing it later. Kevin eeked.

  James quickly blotted the ball, which smeared his lens. Jana just kept talking. I yanked what was left in the carafe from James’s weary grasp.

  “Yeah, so all of the clerks are like supercool. I mean, Kev for one, of course. Then there’s Walt. He went to, like, NYU. As you know, I went to Virginia. I loved Virginia. I was on the Law Review. Were you on the Law Review, Sheila? I was on the Law Review. Walt was on NYU Law Review. The judge always gets, like, one guy from NYU. And Betsy, that’s our last clerk. She went to Duke.”

  I wondered if I could choke myself if I ate a meatball whole. Stealing a glance at James, I silently implored how sex could be worth this.

  Walking outside, Jana hailed a cab and tried to drag James along with her. Politely lying that he had an early morning conference with the judge, he managed to free himself and walked home with me and Kevin, during which time he assured us that he was done with Jana. If only he’d stuck to that plan.

  About an hour after we returned to our respective apartments, James slipped back out to pay Jana a surprise booty call. Brian answered Jana’s door, holding a bottle of champagne, wearing nothing more than a Mickey Mouse towel and his fedora. Unsettling to visualize. Psychologically damaging to witness.

  James stayed long enough to entertain Brian’s weighty question: “Hey man, how’s the fuckin’ district court treatin’ you?”

  Chapter Seven

  There I was. Plaid skirt. Shin guards. Cleats. Mouth guard. Hockey stick. I was ready, all warmed up. The refs took position in center field. The whistle blew. I was off and running, totally in control of the ball. And then—from left field!—a small hunchbacked lady in a plaid robe carrying a massive gavel came and smacked the ball right out of my possession.

  “You have to be faster, faster, faster, faster. SHEILLLAAA—FASTER!!!!” On the sidelines, my coach, my mom, and the entire commonwealth of Virginia stood staring, disappointed. We lost! It was all my fault. Little robed judge with big smile stood in the middle of the field caressing her gavel with one hand and her trophy in the other. A triumphant, toothy tyrant.

  I jumped out of bed. It was 4 AM. I was panting. My sheets were soaked in sweat. The judge had managed to ruin my field hockey championship in the eleventh grade. Incredible—the woman was a time and space traveler! Her “You’re not working fast enough, Sheila. You’re rilly rilly slow, Sheila” was taking its toll.

  A few days earlier, I had been helping David, one of our interns, with the doctrine of qualified immunity. After three years of law school and one bar exam, I still didn’t understand the nuances of immunity, a particularly thorny patch of law. How was David supposed to get it after just two semesters of school? As I was flipping through his blue brief, attempting to assess the allegations, the judge came sauntering into my cubicle. The three of us. Same cubicle. Not so much air.

  “What are you doing, Sheila?” As if it weren’t totally clear. Did she think I was giving David a blow job? David had stopped breathing.

  “I’m just he-hel-helping David with qualified immun—”

  “NO! NO! NO! I don’t. DO NOT have time for my law clerks to help my interns. Your time is my time and I certainly do not have time to talk to interns.” David still hadn’t taken a breath. The judge wouldn’t even address him, which was rather awkward considering she’d practically shoved her face into his perfectly still stomach. “Now, tell him to go back and figure it out. That’s why he is here. To l
earn. Not to receive handouts.” With that, she spun, practically knocking one dead intern into my lap, and stomped off. The judge was right—we were there to learn, and what a rich learning environment she’d created. Halfway back to her office, she turned around.

  “In case you’ve all forgotten, we have A LOT of work to do. We have a sitting next week. I don’t have time for this fraternizing.” Signature move. The look behind yell. I shoved the brief at David and gently pushed him out of my cubicle.

  The judge must have forgotten that we had finished all of the work for the October sitting weeks ago and were already halfway through November. This meant every case being argued the following week had been fully researched and briefed in the form of a bench memo and all cases that didn’t get oral arguments had been disposed of in nonprecedential opinions. Translation: We were over a month ahead. Nonetheless, the judge still ranted about our being behind and being slow, and I had started to buy the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker. The woman could have brainwashed Charles Manson.

  Every time I shut my eyes, visions of a small woman with a large bun danced in my head. Sleep deprivation was preferable. And so I plucked my hair for about two hours before showering up and heading to chambers. I wondered if the rain gods had picked that morning to piss on me out of sheer spite. The only thing worse than insomnia is insomnia followed by a rain storm. And the only thing worse than mental abuse and loneliness is the paranoid self-absorption that follows, leading one to believe that even the weather is out to get them.