Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “Justice.” Mrs. Drexel repeated the word, but this time in a harsh and grating voice. “Justice is depicted, traditionally, as being blind: a tall, clean, solid woman holding a scale before her, weighing the facts, blinded to prejudice or distraction of any kind. The facts, yes. No mitigating circumstances—just weighing the facts against the necessities of the law. We teach all our young law students, and yes, all our young police officers, that this is a good and fine thing, and as it should be. Blind justice. But let me tell you,” Mrs. Drexel’s voice rose shrilly now, perhaps to her own surprise, for it echoed in the tile room and bounced off the walls, and she lowered her voice but it was still emotional and ragged and trembled slightly, “let me tell you, justice should not be a blindfolded woman. Justice should be round-eyed, clear-eyed and deep-seeing, looking beyond the man standing there in front of the court to be judged for the one particular crime. Justice should see into his life and into all the things that have touched him, and been done to him, and twisted him into what he is—all the hurts and hungers and deprivations that have built him into what he is.”

  Mrs. Drexel was seeing all the Pacos of her lifetime; there was an almost unbearable look of pain and anguish and misery on her features, burning from her eyes. She twisted her body slightly, as though warding off a pain she herself was inflicting, yet was powerless to stop. “Justice, ha? It has no meaning, it does not exist. Not in our courts, not in our lives. Justice isn’t either one of those things, Mrs. Uhnak—it’s not blind and impartial, not all-seeing and pitying. The eye of justice is jagged!”

  Mrs. Drexel shook her head up and down briskly, and it was as though the thought had just occurred to her and she seemed amazed at how clear and true her own words were. “Yes, that’s it. Jagged. As jagged as broken glass. Sharp and cruel and distorted, seeing things cruelly, without pity, judging on the instant, isolated deed and judging the deed, condemning the man. Justice is the political instrument of a clown-magistrate who convulsed them in Night Court for years and reads his reviews in the columns like an entertainer and who gauges what kind of day in court he’s had by the number of laughs he’s gotten. Now. Now, then. How does that seem to you, eh?”

  I ran my tongue over my parched lips, but my tongue was dry and sticky. The woman looked so anguished and pain-racked. The strength and power and vitality seemed to have deserted her again. I saw that the left side of her skirt was stained with water and the liquid green soap, and I pointed to the wet spot and said, “Your ... skirt. It’s wet, Mrs. Drexel.”

  She stared at me, bewildered, as though the words were spoken in an unknown language, and I pointed. She looked down absently. “Oh. Oh, yes, it got wet, didn’t it.” Her voice was low and distracted, and she began rubbing the stain with her fingers in a futile, undirected effort. I offered her a clean handkerchief.

  “I think you’d better wet the handkerchief and try to rub the soap out. It will stain.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Mrs. Drexel soaked the handkerchief under the cold water and began rubbing it into the stain, which spread blackly over her left thigh. Then she blotted it a few times with the dry half of the handkerchief, which she then bunched up and handed to me, saying, “It’s wet. I’m sorry.”

  The abrupt, complete change in conversation made me feel dizzy and lightheaded. The room was damp and Mrs. Drexel looked like someone I had never seen before, someone puzzled and at a loss over a soapy stain on her skirt. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, putting the soggy ball into my pocketbook.

  “No, you’re right. It doesn’t matter, does it?” Mrs. Drexel’s words were not for a wet handkerchief. They were weary, exhausted, defeated words, said more to herself, to her own thoughts. A deep, involuntary intake of air hit the back of the woman’s throat and emerged in a soft sigh. She glanced at herself in the mirror, moved her hand in a fussy gesture over her hair, missing the stray lock that stuck out over the rim of her eyeglasses. “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated.

  “Mrs. Drexel,” I called to her, not knowing what it was I wanted to say.

  “Yes?” She turned, her face alert again, bright again, the strain miraculously receding.

  “Mrs. Drexel, I want you to know that ... well, that I admire you. And I respect your feelings. But ... well, we each have our job to do.”

  “Yes, we each have our job to do.” Her voice was flat, as though in disappointment, as though she had been expecting to hear some other words.

  I glanced in the mirror, turned my face sideways, dabbed the edge of my chin with my finger, licked my lips and walked past Mrs. Drexel, who stood watching me. My hand on the doorknob, I turned as Mrs. Drexel made some slight motion, some slight sound. She was facing me.

  “Mrs. Uhnak, I’m ... I’m tired today.” She faltered for the first time, then laughed a short, bitter, humorless sound. “Today. I think, Mrs. Uhnak, that you are probably a very nice girl and a very hard-working girl and a very earnest girl. I think you probably take your job quite seriously, and that is a good thing. But,” she said, raising her finger, her voice hoarse, “these are human beings we deal with here. They are human beings when you get them, and when I get them, with many years of their lives over and done with. Don’t lose sight of that fact, my dear young lady. Not ever!”

  I nodded, made some sound, as a child would answer an old, dominating teacher whom she admired with one part of herself, yet pitied and feared, all at the same time.

  I left Mrs. Drexel standing before the mirror, poking absently at her face. My partner was leaning against the wall in the corridor, beside the water fountain, smoking and reading his crumpled morning News. He dropped the cigarette under his large shoe when he saw me coming toward him.

  “I was wondering what happened. I saw poor old Minnie going in there after you. She fight the war all over again?” He laughed a short, mean sound.

  “No,” I answered, not looking at him. “I didn’t speak to her. She was washing her face—we just ignored each other.”

  He laughed again. “You sure beat the pants off her today.”

  I looked at him curiously, seeing his smile, noticing the lean cheeks, the narrow, hard, joyless eyes. “Yes,” I said softly, “I sure beat poor old Minnie, didn’t I?”

  And I didn’t speak about the case any more nor about Minnie Drexel, for we were, after all, kin. She was trying to buy, with her life, what I had tried to purchase for one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

  Epilogue

  JUST RECENTLY, A LIEUTENANT who knew me during my initial days in police work was reflecting on his first thoughts of me. “Dot,” he said, “you were a starry-eyed idealist, always expecting the best from people and always shocked when they didn’t come up to your expectations. I had you marked as a born social worker.” And then he laughed and said, thoughtfully, “And I don’t think you’ve changed a bit!”

  His remark was offered as a curious kind of compliment, for an idealist with deep feelings about people has a difficult time of it in police work. His evaluation of me as “not having changed a bit” was wrong, and I have been trying to measure some of the changes that have taken place as a result of my career in police work. I can look back from the vantage point of having been removed from active police field work for several years now, and perhaps I can view myself somewhat more objectively than would be possible otherwise. It is interesting to note that I have been accused, by newer acquaintances, of being a very cynical person, and I have been weighing the two evaluations in an attempt to arrive at some conclusions.

  What the lieutenant said about my always expecting the best from people and being shocked when they let me down was true to some extent. When I was very young, I was a perfectionist, driving myself toward certain ideals, and I measured others against my own standards. I expected people to be and to behave in my own image of perfection. Certainly I have matured to the level where I feel a responsibility for my own actions but a realization that I have no right to judge others. This was a long and hard lesson to learn, and a tre
mendously important fact to accept. I have come to be a realist about people and have learned through personal experience that some very good people are capable of some very bad deeds and some very bad people are capable of some very good deeds. I have learned that human beings are the most complicated creatures existent. Where once I had believed we were each given two choices, to follow the good road or to follow the bad road, I now know that life leads us along endlessly crisscrossing, spiraling, twisting paths, tangling into a network of directions not easily definable nor separable. Where once I had believed that an individual human being had free choice to plan and follow his destiny, I now realize that we are all under many pressures, from within and from without, that lead us into actions and directions almost beyond our control, and that our ability to lead our lives as decent human beings is often something greater than a small triumph.

  If I am indeed cynical, it is only because I have learned to look truly into the “systems” that govern our lives. I do not believe the pious, pompous words carved into the buildings where “justice” is announced; I do not believe that justice is administered as it should be—fairly and fully. Yet, I have become mature enough to believe that we have the best system that man has been able to devise—be it far from perfect. I know that justice does not exist in our daily lives, and I have learned that life is not a system of rewards and punishments meted out to us as an inevitable result of our accomplishments.

  Yet, I am not truly a cynic, for I still expect that we will one day all be better than we are. I believe that we continually make progress as human beings and that though we inch forward almost imperceptibly, we will one day come to know each other and make greater attempts to understand and accept each other. My lifelong enemy, as a young girl and still now, as a grown woman, has been the bitter generalization, the tossed-out, all-inclusive remark that marks and scars and stains vast groups of people indiscriminately. I questioned these generalizations as a young girl almost instinctively, and I deplore them now as a grown woman from years of experience with vast numbers of people from all backgrounds.

  If I have acquired a certain skepticism and a certain hardness, it was a necessary growing process, for a police officer cannot be a sponge absorbing the misery and degradation he encounters. But on the other hand, he cannot let his inevitable shell become anything more than that. He cannot let the hardness penetrate to the center of him, or he will cease to be a human being.

  If through the years I have been shocked or disillusioned or sickened by the people I have encountered, or the situations in which I have become involved, I do not now regret my career, for I feel my life in police work has been a tremendously important education.

  My career has given me a backlog of stories—interesting, amusing, offbeat, terrifying—so that I am able to entertain a group of listeners. But this is not the important thing.

  In the inevitable quiet moments, when I am alone, I am able now to evaluate my growth in understanding, tolerance and acceptance, not only of others, but of myself, and to realize my responsibilities as a human being.

  This is the important thing.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1963 by Dorothy Uhnak

  cover design by Kelly Parr

  978-1-4532-8351-6

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com