Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “You lied in asking him that question about a girl and an alleged attack. You lied, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “How can a lie take the form of a question? You might say that we tricked him into an admission.”

  “Yes, I might say that; and I might say that you tricked him into grand larceny, according to your own testimony.”

  “Go ahead and say it, Mrs. Drexel. The fact is, he committed grand larceny and 1897.”

  Her scorn matched my own. “Oh, you gave him the business, all right.” She muttered the words to herself and, without looking toward him, she waved her hand at the D.A., who was starting to rise. “Oh, save it, Mr. Langton, save it, I’m finished with her. It just sickens me a little, that’s all—they are phony charges, both of them. Go ahead, go ahead, Detective Uhnak, you got your grand larceny and your 1897 arrests. Wait. One more question.” Her voice was razor sharp, her eyes glinted coldly. “Do you get credit for two arrests or one?”

  I watched her steadily, my voice low and even. “I’ll settle for one conviction, Mrs. Drexel.”

  We regarded each other in a kind of hypnotic glaring, and I could see nothing in the room but the blazing, glinting, enlarged eyes beneath the shining spectacles. Then I stood up from the chair, felt my foot miss the step of the raised platform; I groped for the railing, then turned away from Mrs. Drexel. I walked past her and found space beside my partner.

  “Christ,” he whispered behind his hand, “is she burning! Look at poor old Minnie, she’s fuming!”

  Poor old Minnie can drop dead. The questions repeated themselves hollowly in my head, the meanings and insinuations hammering and thundering through me: was he the only Puerto Rican? Didn’t he look dirty and out of place, standing there among those nice, clean, respectable people? I felt myself bursting with my unspoken words. It wasn’t like that; I’m not like that. I could feel the heat in my cheeks and the cold taste of anger in my mouth.

  Mrs. Drexel went to her client’s side and bent forward, whispering earnestly into his ear. Paco’s head bounced up and down and his face contorted into a puzzled half-smile; then he whispered some words to her, his hand gesticulating vaguely. Mrs. Drexel apparently answered his doubts, for he nodded and seemed to be grinning at some thoughts of his own.

  Mrs. Drexel’s witnesses included a slim, tall man wearing a light gray suit and tie to match, who was a Mr. Gerstein, Paco’s employer. He testified that Paco worked for him as a packer, had been in his employ for four months, earned forty dollars a week and had been a steady and honest worker. He also testified that Paco used his knife for cutting strings and rope and that all the boys used knives for this kind of work. He said that he had nothing bad to say about Paco. And his manner said that he wished he had never heard of Paco.

  The district attorney advanced quietly, holding the dangerous yellow sheet—Paco’s record—in his hand, and asked Mr. Gerstein if he knew that Paco had been convicted twice for jostling. Mr. Gerstein, in honest surprise, said no, he hadn’t known that. Then the district attorney asked Mr. Gerstein if he still thought that Paco was an honest boy, and Mr. Gerstein, flustered and greatly agitated, said, “Well, so far as I know.” The D.A. smiled and thanked him, and Mr. Gerstein retreated to some dark corner whence he had come, nodding self-consciously as he passed Paco, who was beaming a wide grin in his direction.

  Father Fernaldo testified that Paco was a good, quiet boy who attended mass, not at frequent intervals, but occasionally. He said that he lived with some cousins and worked as a packer for a living. As far as he, Father Fernaldo, knew, Paco was a mild, quiet boy. The D.A. passed Father Fernaldo with a friendly wave of his hand—he could afford to be generous. Then he nodded to Mrs. Drexel, but she said stonily, “No further witnesses. Defense rests,” and put one hand protectively on Paco’s shoulder, unwilling to offer him up to the district attorney.

  Within twenty minutes, a stretch-and-cigarette length of time, the jury returned the verdict of guilty on both counts, and Judge Goldhaber glared down at Paco, who listened to the verdict, an empty, dead look on his paling face. The judge’s eyebrows crept down across the bridge of his nose, and his mouth made harsh but wordless sounds. Finally, consulting the bridgeman; he set down a date for sentencing. Then he made a short speech to the jury, addressing it mainly to the foreman, who nodded his vigorous agreement. He spoke about society and vicious thieves and thugs and muggers and rat-punks. All the while, Mrs. Drexel’s hand rested on Paco’s arm, until he pulled it away sharply, with a sudden, bitter, comprehending look on his gray face. When the judge’s speech was finished, he motioned brusquely to the court attendant, snarling, “Get him outta here!” Mrs. Drexel began speaking rapidly to Paco, who was being tugged along by the court officer. She patted him on the shoulder, on the arm, nodding her head in a curiously motherly way. Paco would not meet her eyes, and she stood watching him until he disappeared behind the barred doors of the detention room and the large oak door closed again, fitting neatly into the contours of the courtroom.

  Outside the courtroom, in the marble corridor, I felt the dry, sick taste of my cigarette deep in my throat, felt the keyed-up excitement that always carried me through a trial. I was sticky and damp with perspiration and felt tired and yet highly elated at the same instant. A deep resentment was knotting my stomach, and I felt the twinges of pain, a sharp pinching sensation high on my right side. The gnawing would subside after a few hours, if I had some tepid milk, munched the chalky pills, stopped smoking. But it was strong right then, and I felt a cold, clammy sweat on my forehead and my hands were trembling.

  “Listen,” I told my partner, speaking quickly, afraid I was going to be sick. “I want to get washed up, I’ll meet you by the water cooler in about ten minutes.”

  Without hearing his answer, I turned and walked quickly from him. The ladies room was empty. It was a long white tile room with two smeary washbasins, four gray-doored chambers, and a long chrome-framed mirror running the width of the room, over the sinks. I ran the cold water over my wrists, then splashed some water onto my forehead and cheeks, holding a handful against my eyes and sucking some into my mouth. Swishing the cool water in my mouth, against my cheeks and tongue, I tried to think of nothing but the pleasant, fresh, clean sensation, and watched as the water spilled from my open mouth. I scooped up another mouthful and then the door opened and Mrs. Drexel entered the room.

  I swallowed the water in a gulp, choking on it, and blotted my face dry with the scratchy paper towels. Mrs. Drexel stood at the sink next to mine and put her pocketbook on the narrow ledge of shelf directly under the mirror. I looked at my own reflection in the mirror, dabbing at the drops of water around my mouth, but my eyes slid irresistibly to Mrs. Drexel’s face. Her eyes were surprisingly small without her glasses, and she dug her fingers into them ruthlessly, as though pushing them into the pits of her sockets, forcing weariness back and away. She rubbed her eyeglasses quickly and carelessly with a piece of tissue paper. As she replaced them I turned toward her, and I could see smudges and drops of water across the lenses.

  Mrs. Drexel studied me in her direct way, and her eyes filled the entire circle of each lens of the glasses, as though they were painted comic spectacles. Even when she narrowed her eyes, they seemed round. For the moment, neither of us spoke, each of us seeing the other now in this different setting. I was surprised that Mrs. Drexel seemed shorter, that there were lines around the corners of her mouth, that there was a soft covering of middle-aged fat over her neck. But Mrs. Drexel, measuring me, seemed surprised by nothing.

  “Oh, I know you, Mrs. Uhnak,” she said suddenly, as though continuing a conversation that had been momentarily interrupted. “You are young and bright and very quick, and you sit up there on that witness stand and you think to yourself: ‘I’ll show her; she won’t beat me!’ And it’s all a game to you—a contest, a battle of wits that you have to win. When you step down, you feel everyone in court watching you, knowing how very clever you are, how very self-assured.”
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  I didn’t answer, but I felt my hands trembling and I forced my fingers to flex; then I let my hands fall naturally and unmoving at my side. I pressed the edges of my back teeth together to stifle the pounding in my throat.

  “And now you’re feeling very triumphant and very pleased with yourself. ‘I’ve beaten the old bag and she’s mad as hell, and the hell with her!’” Mrs. Drexel did not pause; her voice was soft, but it had a strong and steady whining quality, and she seemed to be hurrying to get the words out, to get it all said before she was interrupted or out of breath. “You beat me, yes. You got your conviction and you can go back and tell them in your office about how sore poor old Minnie was, and how she came around crying afterward, but let me tell you something!” Mrs. Drexel lowered her voice, and her words were hissing and tense. “You didn’t beat me. And you didn’t beat the poor little slob of a Spanish boy in there. He was beaten the day before he was born and I was beaten the day after I became an attorney for the Legal Aid. We only get the losers, so you can’t beat us. You beat yourself—you all do, all you fresh, bright youngsters, every time you get on that stand, and every time you see it as a game that you have to win, all the way home, regardless of the price someone else has to pay for your victory. You have to win it all, and you don’t budge an inch and you don’t give an inch!”

  “Should I have let him walk away with the man’s wallet, Mrs. Drexel?” My voice was hollow in the room, and the sound of it was brittle and unfamiliar.

  Mrs. Drexel’s face contorted into a flushing, twisting kind of anger. “Oh, don’t give me that! Don’t insult my intelligence. Don’t tell me about you having your job and me having my job. Don’t try to con me, Mrs. Uhnak, I’ve been around too long. I’ve seen too much of it. I’m reaching you, you know what we’re talking about. He faces seven and a half to ten years, and that bastard Goldhaber will give him the max. You know it and so do I. You should never have let him get his hands on the wallet. You should have moved yourself and nabbed him for jostling.” Mrs. Drexel inhaled a great gasp of air, holding up her hand to stop me from speaking. She wasn’t finished. “Oh, you’re a pretty little girl, Mrs. Detective Uhnak, your face is very young and soft. But I’ll give you another two years. It will start. The hardness. It shows in your faces, you pretty ones. Yes, in your eyes firsthand then in your mouth. In your expression—the bitterness, the cynicism. The rotten hardness and callousness. There is nothing uglier or more grotesque than the face of a once-pretty woman who has turned hard.” Mrs. Drexel’s mouth twitched, and she looked around quickly, her hands rushing into her pocketbook for something, digging impatiently, then she snapped the clasp again. “I know you,” she whispered, more to herself than to me.

  It had touched a nerve center, a raw, living, painful nerve center that Mrs. Drexel had not imagined. I know you. All my life I had dreaded that kind of identity—one of them, one of those, I know you. I felt the color drain from my face, licked my lips drily, and Mrs. Drexel looked up, saw my face, narrowed her eyes shrewdly.

  “Oh? You don’t like that? You don’t think it’s true about you? You’re different? Ha!” she snorted contemptuously.

  I felt an urgency to justify myself, to identify myself. But why? To whom? To this woman with her unknowing opinions? When I answered, it was with resentful words rather than with the other sentiments that were pounding inside of me. “Look, Mrs. Drexel, do you want me to cry about a little crook named Paco? He’d be the first to laugh if I did. He’d be the first to laugh at you and your great concern.”

  The words hit the woman, and she blinked rapidly and I knew I had wounded her. “Go ahead,” I said, “if you want to knock your head against a stone wall, go ahead. Not me.”

  It wasn’t what I had wanted to say. I had wanted to tell her something else, to start somewhere else, but our beginning had been out there, in the courtroom. It was the smug, knowing, arrogant expression on the woman’s face that had forced these hard words. This beat-up, soft, old bleeding heart!

  As my mind formed the words, I gasped inwardly. My God, my God. It isn’t me thinking like this; it isn’t me speaking to her this way.

  “Oh, it’s a stone wall all right, and I bang away and I chip away.” Mrs. Drexel’s hand touched her dark, disheveled hair without purpose. “The walls in prison are stone walls too, and they don’t move much either when you beat them with your fists. Do you know that boy you’re sending to prison? Do you know Paco?”

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling and sighed a long, insulting, annoyed sound.

  “Oh, sure, you know him. He’s a little gutter rat and he’s got two others on the sheet, and you’re right. That’s all he is, a little, dirty, smelly, Spic gutter rat.”

  “Listen here, Mrs. Drexel ...”

  “Oh, I apologize,” Mrs. Drexel said with elaborate sarcasm. “You wouldn’t call him a ‘Spic.’ Well, forgive me then. The word just slipped out and maybe it isn’t part of your vernacular. A little Puerto Rican rat, then. But let me tell you something: he was born a baby, a little brown, unwanted bastard, and his mother left him with her mother along with an assortment of little brownish-whitish-blackish bastards while she ran off to get herself fixed up with a couple more of the same. The grandmother threw them out when they could walk, and they learned how to steal food, how to steal bread, and how to steal anything they could get their little hands on, because the poor, stupid little bastards, God help them, they wanted to live. Don’t ask me why—the eternal mystery of life—but they wanted to live and they managed. Barely. Paco came here when he was twelve years old to find his mother, all by himself, with just the clothes on his back. He found her and she looked at her skinny, runty, blotchy little son and told him to get the hell out and leave her alone. So he went to live with some cousins and they took him in and he slept on the fire escape in the summer and shared a very full, very busy bed in the winter. They told him to eat somewhere else, because they had enough trouble feeding their own kids. Oh, blink at me, Mrs. Uhnak, blink hard, it doesn’t matter, does it, because Paco is a scummy little bum, and you’re right, because he is, and he’d steal your eye teeth if you opened your mouth!”

  Listening to the flow of words that came from the woman without ceasing, I cried inwardly—but not to Mrs. Drexel. I know Paco, that inward voice said, I worked with him in the settlement house for over a year, only his name wasn’t Paco, it was Luis. He was eight years old, and he had a large open gash over his eye one day and he told me his father had thrown a shoe at him. And he didn’t tell me with any sense of outrage: it was a thing his father did when he was drunk or angry or just felt like it. I took Luis to the hospital, and the doctor sewed him up, without any anesthetic, just took stitches in the child’s head, and said, “These people are like pigs!” Luis just sat there, not saying a word, not making a sound, with this doctor jabbing him and saying these things. I bought Luis an ice cream soda because his world was so intolerable and I didn’t know what to do for him, and he beamed like he was the luckiest boy in the world. He was proud of his stitches and I felt ripped up inside.

  I know Paco, all right. But you don’t know me and you have no right to judge me.

  Then finally when I did speak, the words were not the ones I wanted to say. Again it was the cold voice of the stranger—the words and tone forced from me by the accusations of this blazing and righteous little woman. “Mrs. Drexel, why didn’t you plead him guilty, cop out to petit larceny and let the probation officer write up Paco’s history? It’s been done before. Why did you go to trial?” And then, cruelly sensing that I had hit into the woman’s soft center, I twisted the words for some revenge. “Or didn’t you want to give Judge Goldhaber the satisfaction? Maybe you have your own game to play.”

  Mrs. Drexel clutched her pocketbook with both hands and slammed it against the sink. “Oh, no,” she said, moaning, “oh, no, you won’t question my motives. I won’t permit that. We try, that’s all, we try. The boy insisted on his innocence, and I won’t plead a boy under those
circumstances.”

  The woman’s face had the weary, heavy pallor of a prisoner. She had spent too many years inside the walls, within walls of her own making—living it, breathing it, sleeping it. She spoke with the driving, repetitious quality of the attorney to the unknown, the unwanted, the hopeless. Mrs. Drexel never had a winner. When she spoke to her clients, the words fell on deaf or scheming ears. She knew they were all liars and cheaters and thieves and degenerates and criminals and that they had no love for her and would use her and turn on her and scorn her. And all the years of talking to them and telling them and fighting for them had taken a heavy toll. The woman carried the burden within her, without hope of any kind, and it was streaked and drawn into her face, and it sounded in her voice.

  “Mrs. Drexel,” I said softly, feeling the pity and sadness and guilt that had been beneath all of my feelings toward this woman, “I’m an officer of the law, and you’re an officer of the court. We have laws for people to live by and we have a system of laws and”—I waved my hand in the air, groping for a word—“and justice!”

  Mrs. Drexel drew in her breath and seemed to revive and snap back into life fully. “Ah, yes,” she said, “ah, yes. Justice.” She said the word carefully, snapping her lips together and nodding her head. She leaned against the edge of the sink, not noticing that the rim was wet and soapy and was staining the side of her skirt. “Let me tell you about justice, Mrs. Uhnak, let me tell you all about ‘justice.’”

  I flipped the crumpled piece of wet paper towel which I had been holding all the while into the wastebasket with an impatient gesture and shook my head. “Not today, Mrs. Drexel, my partner is waiting for me.”

  “No,” the woman said as I started to leave, “for just a moment.” There was a strange, almost pleading sound in her words. Wanting to leave this room, to be far away from Mrs. Drexel and her crazy, magnified eyes, I could not move.