On The Job
All the rookies were anxious about who they'd get for a partner, although at this point, partner meant a senior officer to watch over us for a few months. A mentor, partner, and guardian rolled into one. The senior officers were the ones that should have been nervous; they were taking on rookies.
Jason leaned toward me. “Who’re you hoping for?”
“Doesn’t much matter,” I said.
“Don't give me that shit. I’ve seen you checking out Jefferson.”
I wrinkled my brow and gave Jason a look. “Are you serious? He’s old!”
Jason laughed. “He might be old, but he gets the ladies.”
I shook my head. “You’re all alike.”
“And you love it,” Jason said. “But don’t worry, I’ve seen the way Jefferson looks at you, too. I’d bet fifty bucks he ends up your senior officer.”
I laughed it off, but secretly hoped he was right. Jefferson was the one I wanted.
The first few pairings brought some much-needed laughter, especially when short little Margie got paired with six-foot eight-inches Kirkpatrick, and skin-and-bones Borsch got hooked up with a very-chunky Alicia Vick.
Jason jabbed me in the side when they called me to pair up with Jefferson. I can’t say I was disappointed. Everything else had gone according to plan, and it wouldn’t be difficult to make this fit nicely with what I needed to do.
He walked over to me, boasting a swagger a lot of the younger cops had. His smile seemed genuine, but the look in his eyes matched the strut of his walk. The kind of look that had stripped me down already. I felt certain he was doing unimaginable things to my naked body in his mind.
“How do I look?” The words blurted out of my mouth before I realized how that sounded, but even that mishap went right for me.
It took him off guard. He lost his focus and stared, then mumbled, “I’m sorry?”
I flashed one of my disarming smiles. “I asked how I looked. I noticed you staring. Am I ready for the streets?”
That put him at ease. He returned my smile. “Ready? Yeah, I’d say you’re ready. As long as you have a great partner.” He reached out his hand to shake. “Senior Officer Jefferson,” he said. “But everybody calls me Jeff.”
“Rookie Lisa Benz,” I said. “Everybody calls me Lisa.” I laughed. “Great to be working together.” Then I punched his arm and headed for the door. Now that I knew what worked, I intended to keep him unbalanced, despite his seniority.
We drew assignment in the Tenderloin District, and the first few days of patrol went as I anticipated.
We headed down Turk Street toward Taylor, going past the Tenderloin liquor store. There were already a couple of guys leaning against the wall, and it would be three hours before the store opened. Two more people were slumped over near the corner where Turk meets Taylor Street. One looked alive, but the other was questionable.
Jeff beeped the horn, then leaned toward me and hollered out the window.
“Show me you’re alive,” he said.
The one who looked questionable stirred at the sight of the cop car. He raised his arm and waved, and then laid his head against the wall. He shoved the guy next to him, who shoved back.
“Good enough for me,” Jeff said.
“That’s it? Show me you’re alive?”
Jeff laughed. “If we got out to check on every drunk and drug addict that was slumped over against a building, we’d never get off Turk Street.”
I sighed and then nodded. Some rookies got lucky on their first tour, got the areas where the cafés and coffee shops outnumbered the people. Jeff and I ended up in the Tenderloin, or Little Saigon as they called it now. Down here, the liquor stores and seedy hotels outnumbered everything except the drunks and drug addicts.
We rolled slowly past a grocery market that had metal bars on the windows. The sidewalk looked like it had been pissed on for a hundred years. I didn’t get out to see if it smelled the same.
We went past the G&H liquor store on the corner of Jones, and past some apartments that didn’t look horrible on the outside. A person might be fooled into thinking this wasn’t a bad place if this was all they saw, but that perception wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes.
Jeff took a right on Leavenworth and up to Eddy Street. Wasn’t too much going on. A straggler here and there and everybody staring at us and then turning away. I felt certain we could’ve made our busts for the month if we checked everybody for half a dozen blocks, but Jeff seemed to be content cruising by, as if he had something else on his mind.
“Is this what it’s going to be like? Cruising streets all day?”
“A lot of it,” he said, “and when it isn’t, you’ll wish it was. Nights can be tough.”
We passed a Vietnamese grocery store, and a shop that looked like it had nothing but porn videos, then Jeff went all the way up to Geary Street, where there were more clubs, more liquor stores, and then more liquor stores.
I stayed in the car as Jeff said, but I kept my eyes on him. He was talking to a couple of gangbangers—Asians, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me—and they appeared agitated, hands waving, bodies postured for an argument or a fight. Jeff seemed at ease for a while, but then he grabbed one of them by the collar and yanked him close, using his left hand. His right went toward his gun.
I jumped out of the car and started toward them, but he waved me off. The gangbangers stepped back, relaxed. I stayed where I was, prepared to go in if necessary. Within a few minutes, Jeff returned.
“What the hell was that about?” I asked.
Jeff shrugged. “Couple of punks thinking they’re tough.”
“Do you know them?”
“Seen them around a few times. They’re new here.”
I got a bad feeling. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but something. All my life I’d been able to tell when things were wrong. I still remember the first time it happened. That time is burned in my mind forever.
Something Is Wrong
18 years ago, San Francisco
* * *
Rachel tapped my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “Time to get up, sleepy.”
“What for?”
“First day of school, remember?”
I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall, laughing the whole way. “I get the bathroom first.”
“You’re a brat,” Rachel said, but she didn’t mean it.
I got dressed, then Rachel fixed me Cheerios and toast for breakfast. “What about lunch?” I said to Mom as she kissed me goodbye.
She knelt and put her arms around me, and then pulled Rachel into a three-way hug.
“Tell them you forgot to pack it,” she said. “They won’t let you go hungry.”
“Won’t they want money?”
Rachel patted my back. “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you how to do it. After a few days, they won’t ask anymore.” Then Rachel tugged my arm and said, “Hurry, or we’ll be late.”
“Bye, Mom,” I said. “See you tonight.”
She waved, and said, “Love you. Don’t forget your age or your name.”
As I walked to school, holding Rachel’s hand, I felt like crying. It was my first day and I was going to have to tell two more lies.
Mom had prepared us well. Drilled us on our ages, new names, history, and everything else. All we needed to do was convince them we were real, and honest. The real part was easy. Honest was a different story.
A middle-aged woman stared at me from behind her desk. “Next,” she said, and I stepped up before her.
“Name,” she said.
“Marissa.”
“Date of birth.”
“October 11th, 1982.” I had to lie. That’s what Mom told me to do.
The woman looked me over. “Small for your age, aren’t you?”
“Always have been,” I said.
“Medical conditions?”
“None.” I knew she shouldn’t have asked, but I answered anyway.
“
Did you fill out the form with address and contact information? If you didn’t, it will be rejected.”
“All done,” I said.
“Have a seat to the right. Someone will show you where to go.”
Ten minutes later, I was shown to Mrs. Buford’s class. Buford looked like she had been there since about 1822. I’m sure it wasn’t that long, but I didn’t think it was far off.
I said goodbye to my sister, who was going by another name now. She had taken the name Rhonda because it started with an ‘R,’ just like Marissa and Morgan both began with ‘M.’
Mom said it made it easier to make the transition that way, and I guess she was right; within a few weeks after using that name, I was answering when people called me ‘Marissa,’ although it took a lot of focus. I had, however, started calling Rachel by her new name of Rhonda. The hardest part was when Mom called me Marissa. I missed my real name—if it was my real name.
“Good morning, Marissa. How are you this morning?”
“Fine,” I said. She almost caught me by surprise calling me Marissa. Despite the practice I’d done with my sister, I wasn’t naturally responding to the new name. Rhonda said it might take a little while longer.
I sat at a desk in the middle of the room, where I wouldn’t attract much attention and opened up the reading book. I had no idea how to read, but I was a quick learner and figured it couldn’t be too difficult.
Rachel, who now went by Rhonda, helped me with homework. Old Buford must have figured something was wrong when my homework was always right, and my classroom work wasn’t, but if she suspected anything, she never mentioned it.
Two months went by and I was learning things. Buford turned out to be a good teacher, and she seemed to take an interest in me, helped me when I had trouble grasping new ideas. Once I started to get the hang of reading, the other subjects got easier: I could read the math problems, and I understood what English was about. It was getting to be fun.
One day, Rhonda was walking home with me, when someone called my name. Problem was, it was my old name.
“Morgan! Hey, Morgan.” A girl ran across the street toward us. She was a second-grader and had lived near us before we moved.
I turned, instinctively, but caught myself and quickly turned back and ignored her.
She caught up to us within half a block. “Morgan,” she said. “Remember me?”
I remembered her all right—1511 Dowd Street, Apartment C—but I wasn’t about to tell her. Instead, I wrinkled my brow and said, “I don’t know you, and besides, my name is Marissa.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared. “Morgan, it’s me, Janis. Remember?”
Rhonda, who was a fifth-grader, stepped up. She pointed her finger at Janis. “Listen, she already told you, her name is Marissa, so back off.”
Now Janis looked confused. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but that’s Morgan, and you’re her big sister. That’s all I know.” She turned and walked back down the street, but kept looking back at us.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked.
“We’re gonna tell Mom,” Rhonda said. “She’ll know what to do.”
As we finished the walk home, I thought about what would happen. “Rhonda, I don’t want to go anywhere else. I like it here, and Mrs. Buford is nice.”
Rhonda walked for another ten steps or so. “We’ll see what Mom says.”
We were doing homework when Mom came home. “Hi, girls. How was school?”
“Somebody recognized Marissa,” Rhonda said. “She lived in the building next to us on Dowd Street.”
Mom began trembling and sweating. She looked as if she would fall. “Are you sure?”
“She came right up to us,” Rhonda said. “No doubt about it. Knew me, too.”
Mom paced in circles for a few seconds. “Start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“No!” I said. “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t care what you want,” Mom said. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow.”
“But I like it here,” I said.
“You’ll like the next place just as much. Now help your sister pack.”
“But why do we have to leave?” I asked.
“You remember Ted, and how he used to hit me?”
I lowered my head. “Yeah.”
“We can’t risk him finding us. So stop arguing, and get packing.”
* * *
The next day we found an apartment in the Mission District. It wasn’t a nice neighborhood, but it was a decent apartment. You could count the white families on one hand, including us; the rest were Mexican. It looked like we were going to have to learn Spanish to get along here.
Aside from the obvious negatives, there were positives, also. There were plenty of kids, and even though they spoke Spanish, they were friendly. It was warmer, too. Not as much wind or fog, though I didn’t know why. And school was only three blocks away, a real nice benefit.
We registered for school the next morning and, of course, had new names. Mine was Manuela, and Rachel/Rhonda became Rosa. Mom said it would help us fit in if we used Spanish names. We changed our birthdates, too. Used the same days, just changed the month. Mine became March—like Manuela, they both started with ‘ma’. And Rosa switched hers to October. It was the second letter of her new name, and it ended with ‘r’, the first letter. It made it easier to remember.
* * *
The morning went by slowly. I didn’t know any of the kids in school, and they were all smarter than me. When the teacher asked questions about numbers or reading, most of the kids raised their hands. I slid lower in my seat so the teacher wouldn’t see me.
I knew it was only a few hours before the bell rang for lunch, but it felt like forever. I rushed to the hallway and got second in line. The teacher marched us toward the cafeteria, but it was at a very slow pace. I wanted to run because I couldn’t wait to see Rachel.
We went down two long halls, and then turned left into a huge room with lots of tables. I poked my head to the side, looking all over, holding my breath. Then I heard her voice.
“Little sister,” Rachel—Rosa—said.
I breathed easier. Rosa was my best friend.
She came over, took me by the hand, and said, “Hi, Mrs. Gibson.”
The teacher looked at her, then me. “Rosa, so good to see you.”
“This is my sister,” Rosa said. “Can she sit at the table with me?”
“Of course, she can,” Mrs. Gibson said.
She took us aside and whispered, “Rosa, do you girls have lunch?”
“Not today,” Rosa said, “but that’s okay, we’re not—”
“Nonsense. Let me get the class seated and I’ll take care of it.”
When Mrs. Gibson left, Rosa poked my arm. “See, it’s easy. You’ll get used to it.”
I nodded and smiled. I wouldn’t tell Rosa, but I didn’t want to get used to it.
* * *
At the end of the day, Rosa was waiting for me outside the classroom.
“You have a good day?” she asked.
“It was okay,” I said, but once we were alone, I told her I was scared.
“That’s okay. I was too for the first week or so. It gets easier after that.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Mom said to meet her at the playground on the way home. She’ll be there in about an hour.”
Rosa and I had so much fun that I lost track of time. She was pushing me on the swing when I heard Mom’s voice.
“Are you girls having fun?”
I jumped off in midair and ran to her. “Mom!”
“How was your first day at school?” she asked.
“It was good,” I said. “Will you stay and play with us?”
She tilted her head like she was going to say no but she surprised me with a smile and said, “Okay, for a little while.”
She pushed me on the swing, rode down the slide with me, and we even climbed the monkey bars together. Then
Mom said she was worn out and went to sit on the bench. Rosa and I kept playing.
We had so much fun that day that Mom decided to meet us once a week. So every Wednesday she’d come to the playground around four o’clock and we’d be a family. We did this for six months, never missing a week. It didn’t matter that we had no money and lived in a terrible place, or that I had to lie to get lunch from the school. Those six months were the happiest times of my life. It all changed in early March.
* * *
Mom met us like usual, and we played, like usual. Then she went to sit on the bench. I was in the sandbox with Rosa, building tunnels.
The next time I looked over, a man was sitting next to her on the bench. They were talking.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Never saw him,” Rosa said.
I got out of the sandbox. “What’s Mom doing talking to him? She said never talk to strangers.”
“That rule is only for kids,” Rosa said.
Mom kept talking to him, and I didn’t like it. After a long time, I grabbed Rosa and said, “Let’s get Mom. I want to go home.”
Mom stood and pulled me toward her when I got close to her, but she didn’t say anything, almost like she was embarrassed by us.
I looked up at the man. “Who are you?”
Mom squeezed my arm and started to say something, but the man interrupted her.
“That’s all right,” he said, and then he leaned down next to me. “My name’s Marc, and I’m a friend of your mother’s.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. “What’s your name?”
“Little sister,” I said, and Rosa laughed.
“Tell him your name,” Mom said.
He pretended to laugh, and then he stood. “That’s all right. I have to be going anyway.” He looked at Mom and said, “We’re good for Tuesday, then?”
“Tuesday’s great,” Mom said. “See you then.”
All the way home, Mom kept telling us how wonderful Marc was, and that he might be the man she was waiting for. When we got to a busy corner, she got close to us and said, “In every girl’s life, there is a man who is meant to love her forever—unconditionally. Some women don’t ever find that man, which means somewhere out there a lonely man is looking for his special partner. But the lucky girls find their loves. And if you find your special love, it’s better than anything.”
Promises Kept, The Story of Number Two Page 2