When I finally lift my head, I have to squint to adjust to the daylight. The glare bathes my living room, as though even the sun has placed me under heightened scrutiny.
I know I can’t sit here forever. I make my way to the desk where my telephone is located and sit down. Without dialing, I push my ear to the receiver in order to listen for any surveillance. I’m not sure what this would sound like. I decide I should just assume they are there.
I take a deep breath and dial my parents’ number. Before it begins to ring, I realize that I have no idea of what I’m going to say. I hang up.
Have you ever had to call your parents to tell them that you are the target of a criminal investigation? If so, you know that this is a task that requires some forethought. The news will likely be disturbing. Also, it would be a mistake to tell them something that the government does not yet know. This would technically make them witnesses to my crime, a thought so terrifying that I consider whether I should call them at all.
I decide that I am too far gone where the government is concerned, that there is no sense in hiding anything from my parents. I make two small caveats. First, there is no reason to worry both of my parents. I will tell either my mom or my dad, but not both. Second, I will not give this parent the full story until after I have consulted with a lawyer.
The only decision that remains is which parent to tell. The issue is a complicated one given that my needs are contradictory. On the one hand, I am in need of a steady hand, one that is guided by common sense, to help me figure this out. On the other hand, I am in need of sympathy, of someone who might understand why I did the things I did.
Logic and common sense are qualities epitomized by my dad. A civil engineer by trade, he has spent a lifetime considering the science of structure, a pursuit made possible only through the avid use of rational thinking. My dad is a man who approaches every issue with an analysis that is as measured as it is detached, the type of person who not only reads the instruction manual that accompanies an electronic device, but enthusiastically highlights it for future reference. The type of person who keeps this manual in a clearly labeled file contained in an elaborate filing system located in the basement. The type of person who maintains a filing system containing four decades’ worth of such documents with a level of order akin to that of the National Archives. The type of person who retains a file labeled “Children’s Artwork.” A file labeled “Greeting Cards.” A file labeled “Blank Paper.”
That my father leads with logic is probably a product of his upbringing. He was born in an old holy city ninety miles south of Baghdad in an era of Iraqi politics rendered unstable by unsavory influences. Regimes would come and go and then come back again, each time bringing a new set of uncertainties and fears. Nothing was predictable, until the Baathists took over, and then the only thing that was assured was misery. My dad has seen the very worst of what a lack of order can bring, and so it’s my hypothesis that this is why he has dedicated himself to a life guided by reason.
I should mention that I have visited the city of my father’s beginnings, yet was unable to picture him anywhere near it. The city has a rich religious history, but because reason and religion do not always mix, I can’t imagine my father was much taken with this. The air was hazy with smoke wafting from open food stalls, the smell of spiced lamb ubiquitous. My dad invariably smells of Old Spice and refuses to eat anything out of paper or plastic. The dusty streets were teeming with local children running among religious pilgrims, their smiling faces smudged with dirt and their movements carefree. As a parent, my father admonished my siblings and me to sit still and implemented bath time as a non-negotiable demand.
My father’s measured approach strikes me as appealing. But when I consider the other side of the coin, I hesitate. For while my father will probably have the most sensible answer as to what I should do next, he will never be able to understand why I did what I did. In my father’s universe there is no justifiable reason to disobey the rules. If there is a good enough reason to break a rule, he often says, the rule would not exist in the first place.
How can one argue with this? What I learned over the course of my childhood is that one can’t. I thus received no leniency in tenth grade when I was sent to the principal’s office because I refused to throw away an apple I was illicitly eating during class. Already condemned by the school to a week of lunchtime detention, in facing my family tribunal I took the adamant position that there were starving people in the world, and to require me to waste a perfectly good apple was unjust, even immoral. My father, unmoved, grounded me for a month. When I protested that this harsh punishment was not unlike those meted out by the oppressive government he had fled, I bought myself an additional two weeks for cultural insensitivity and general smart-assedness.
Remembering my father’s unwavering adherence to the rules makes me rethink bringing him into today’s conversation. I shift my consideration to my mother. If “logic” is my father’s guiding light, then “tradition” is my mother’s. To my mom, there isn’t any problem that cannot be solved by adhering to the time-tested standards of the ancients. Of these, she is very familiar. Raised in an elegant Baghdad neighborhood in a home that was a stone’s throw from the Tigris, my mother was brought up in a sea of adages that can be traced back to the birth of civilization.
The most stringent of my mother’s standards regard the conduct of women. A woman is supposed to act in a certain way. When we watched one of the preeminent women on The Real Housewives of New Jersey proclaim that “a wife should be a cook in the kitchen, a lady in the parlor, and a whore in the bedroom,” my mother’s eyes widened. “Listen to her,” she ordered me. “This is very true.” The conviction in her voice was so cringe-worthy that I was unable to finish my ice cream sandwich.
But even these qualities are not enough. Women must also be academically accomplished. My childhood was replete not only with admonishments to study but also the pervasive sense that I was never doing quite good enough. It was not uncommon for a ninety-six percent on a math test to be met with an inquiry as to the whereabouts of the remaining four percent.
In order to enforce her impossible standards, my mother ran a very tight ship. I am of the opinion that because she lived under Baathist rule longer than my father, she was better versed in its more effective methods of control. There were no individual rights in our household. My mother kept a mental list of all of our significant schoolwork so that she could interrogate us about completion. Personal choices of any kind were subject to her approval. Book bags were routinely inspected. Time in front of the television and on the telephone was regulated and monitored. The closest I have ever come to a fear-induced heart attack—and I include the aforementioned visit by the feds—was when my sister and I snuck out of the house and returned in the middle of the night to find our mother standing out front in her coat, waiting for our arrival. She was always one step ahead, making our efforts to live outside her lines futile.
My mother’s traditionalist views make me hesitate again. After all, good girls do not break the law. And there is a romantic relationship mixed in with my case, something of which my mother will certainly not approve.
But I also think about the fact that, like most traditionalists, my mother is a sizable hypocrite. When I visited Baghdad for the first time, I learned that she was a very different daughter than what she expected me to be. She was uniformly described to me as someone with too many friends and social engagements, and with propensities not in academic achievement but in fashion and dance. Although her sisters pursued degrees in medicine and science, little mention was made of my mother’s scholastic work ethic. I later discovered that this was because it mostly didn’t exist.
When I learned of my mother’s double standard, I thought about all of the times in childhood I had to account for missing percentage points. In a brief moment of postmodern thought, I resentfully pondered what kind of punishment my mother wou
ld have doled out on her younger self had she been a member of our household. I wondered, too, if her younger self might have served as an effective lookout that night when my sister and I tried to sneak back into the house.
Still, over time I’ve come to see that my mother’s hypocrisy comes from a good place. Her role as parent-slash-dictator is likely an outgrowth of her belief that her children deserve more than what was made available to her. And for all of her insistence on perfection, she is a big believer in throwing caution to the wind. In a vivid memory from childhood, she permitted my brother and sister and me to convert her green metallic Buick Skylark into an imaginary General Lee, the iconic vehicle from The Dukes of Hazard, each of us hanging from its windows Bo-and-Luke-Duke-style while she drove us to the day care at her Jazzercise class. In my memory, with my torso extended and my arms outstretched, I felt as though I was flying. I remember looking at my mother in the driver’s seat; she was intently observing the road, undisturbed by her children’s whoops and hollers. My mother understands that there are times to set aside logic—and child-safety laws—and just be.
So while my mother talks tough, her heart is soft. Even in matters of criminal justice, she cannot bear the suffering of others. She takes the abstract position that crime must always be met with unfettered punishment, yet she will openly weep whenever she watches Sean Penn make the slow march to the death chamber in Dead Man Walking. When she served as a juror in a federal drug matter, she could not bring herself to find the young defendant guilty because she did not want to ruin his life. Though she will never say so, my mother believes that everyone deserves second chances, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of being good.
It is this good place in my mother’s heart, and her ability to see virtue where reason can’t, where I believe my salvation can be found. She is the parent who wins the unfortunate prize. She will get why I did it, I think. She will understand.
I dial my parents’ number. It’s still early in the morning, but my father picks up after the first ring. As I expected, he is already preparing himself for the day.
“Hi, sweetheart!” he says. He does not express surprise that I am calling him so early on a weekday. He is possibly hoping that I have finally adopted the sleep schedule he has futilely encouraged since I was young. He does not know that were it not for my rude awakening by federal agents, I would still be asleep.
I ask if I can speak to my mom. “She’s still sleeping,” he says.
“Can you please wake her up?”
He pauses for a moment. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I lie. “I just wanted to tell her something and this is probably my only chance today to call.”
I soon hear my mother’s groggy voice on the line. “Hi,” she says. I can tell that she is still supine, under the covers.
I’m not certain how to begin, so I start with the obvious. “Mom, some agents came to my door this morning.”
“Some what?”
“Agents,” I say. “From the Department of Justice.”
“What are agents?”
“They’re like the police,” I say. I do not add: but they are much worse.
I hear my mother sit up. “The police? What do they want?”
“They said I broke the law.”
My mother lets out a long exhale. “Well, that’s ridiculous. There must be some mistake. Just tell them, Jennie, that they made a mistake. They’ll sort it out.”
Her relief is making this worse. I take a deep breath. “It’s actually not a mistake,” I say.
There is a long, painful pause.
“How can it not be a mistake?” And then, cautiously: “Did you do something wrong?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What do you mean? What did you do?”
“I can’t tell you,” I say.
“What? Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t want anyone from the government to question you.” I don’t want to say it, but I have to. “Also, my phone might be tapped.”
There is silence on the other line. My mother knows from tapped phones, having grown up under a paranoid dictatorship. Hers is a learned response, one that is based in fear.
“I think I really messed up.” Saying this out loud causes all residual shock to dissolve. For the first time that morning, I begin to cry. And then, with a tone of self-pity that only a mother can indulge, I sputter through tears, “I think my whole life as I know it is pretty much over.”
“Don’t say that. Crying is not going to help now.” And then, as I cry harder, she says: “No, no. You’re a smart girl, a good girl.”
This is a phrase my mother repeated to me in my most vulnerable moments in childhood. To hear her say it then made my troubles subside. To hear it now as a grown woman facing criminal charges is decidedly less comforting, possibly because in this moment it is the furthest thing from the truth.
“Mom,” I say pathetically, “can you please come here?”
“To New York?”
“Yes,” I say. “I want you to come here.”
She agrees. She has one condition: “Please, don’t tell your father about what happened,” she warns. “He will be sick over it.”
She’s being literal; my father’s worry usually manifests as physical ailments. Once, on a cruise vacation when he could not locate my brother and me—we had absconded to the boat’s casino in the hopes of finding unclaimed tokens for the slot machines—his fear that we had fallen overboard made him so ill that we had to summon the ship’s doctor.
But there is more to it: she is also sparing my father from what she is feeling now.
She seems eager to get off the phone. She tells me to let her know what I can, when I can, and that she will let me know when she is coming.
She is saying good-bye, and I interrupt. “Mom?” I say.
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry. I promise to spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
She does not immediately respond. I hear a deep sigh. “No,” she says.
It’s not clear what she is saying no to, and I’m too afraid to ask.
When I get off the phone with my mother, I am not sure what to do with myself. That’s the horrible thing about getting tangled with the law: there is everything to think about and nothing to be done. My shock has waned, and I let reality sink in.
I halfheartedly walk into my bedroom. I might as well get dressed, I think. As I rummage through my closet for something to wear, I catch a glimpse of myself in my full-length mirror and freeze.
I’m wearing my standard-issue nighttime clothing: a pair of gingham pajama pants and a cotton T-shirt. But what I failed to remember when I ran to the door this morning is that the night before, I had selected a T-shirt that was almost completely sheer. In the commotion of my morning, I’ve also failed to put on a bra. My breasts are entirely exposed.
I reflexively pull my arms around my body, as though somehow this will erase the fact that I have managed to flash two agents of the Department of Justice. I suppose that being consummate professionals, neither Burly Man nor Lady Agent let their eyes linger on my chest. Or if they did, I was too distracted to notice it. I clutch my arms harder in the hopes that this will stop the cringing. It doesn’t.
What I don’t know as I stand essentially topless in front of my mirror is that this is a harbinger of things to come. Criminal cases have an inevitable voyeuristic streak. Personal details, even when they don’t precisely bear on the relevant facts, always seem to rise to the surface. I’ve often wondered if this is an intentional prosecutorial tactic, confronting suspects with the sordid details of their personal lives to force them to acquiesce to the government’s demands.
I’ve seen glimpses of this in practice, clients having to admit affairs or fetishes or narcotic proclivities. But now it’s me who will be standing
in the spotlight. This will seem harmless at first: I will be asked to identify my birthmarks, to provide my weight, to list any tattoos. My pharmaceutical records will be discussed. I will be asked questions about my family, my bank account, the places I have called home.
But over time, the exposure will extend to the most intimate parts of human existence, the spaces that one believes, or at least hopes, will never be public knowledge. E-mails of the romantic kind, both written and received, will be presented as evidence. I will be questioned about the location of kisses, both on earth and on my person. A prosecutor will advise a judge that I maintain that I did not have sex with my co-conspirator and that he is unable to prove otherwise. In an open courtroom, a defense attorney will ask about my vagina. My bra will become the stuff of newspaper headlines. On a message board for lawyers, men will hypothesize about my ability to perform fellatio. I will learn that in the realm of criminal justice, no corners of life are sacred. Everything is for the taking.
As I stand in front of my mirror, however, I know none of what’s to come. Instead, I stare at my reflection, at the residues of my beauty regimen from the day before. My hair, perfectly coiffed for yesterday’s prison visit, has been reduced to limp waves. My skin is tan from the sweltering summer. I notice smudges of mascara on the sides of my eyelids, faint traces of eyeliner underneath. My face looks as though it was once precisely drawn but then placed in a washing machine.
I gaze at it as though it belongs to someone else. This, I think to myself, is what a criminal looks like.
Without a clear memory of the remainder of the day, I’m later forced to piece together its events through documentary evidence. Taxi receipts and legal bills demonstrate that I meet with my attorney that same afternoon. I note that he is kind and thoughtful and does not appear to openly judge what is undoubtedly my disheveled state. I give him the letter from Burly Man and in painful detail explain exactly what I did and why. As most lawyers do, he speaks reassuringly, but I do not leave his office feeling reassured.
Criminal That I Am Page 2