The Writing Loft

Walking to The Corner
By Nora Profit

    There are hundreds of thousands of us now, all traveling back and forth over roads that lead to our nation's prisons. We move silently among the normal and respected, afraid some day of being discovered.

                No one hides us. We hide ourselves. We weave clever falsehoods in a desperate determination to preserve the small shreds of dignity left to us by mistake. We are the wives, lovers, sisters, and mothers of America's damned; the families of sons, husbands, fathers, and uncles now referred to as "inmates, prisoners, and the incarcerated."

                We are the women emotionally bonded to America's social discards — the loved ones of the judicially abused, wrongly accused, and undeniably guilty. And we, because of our determination not to abandon, have been pronounced —without regard— "guilty by association."

            Each week our audacity not to let go is met on all fronts with disdain, from the jailers who hold our loved ones ransom, to the state who has mandated prisons to take their appropriate pound of flesh. To them we are merely a tolerated evil and a necessary nuisance. To our friends and families, we are fools. The fact that we number in the millions has not changed their minds.

            It was not my intention to join this band of misfit women indirectly accused of aiding and abetting a national crime wave. But I was drafted - drafted the very day my 15-year-old son walked into the house to announce that my husband - not his father - was being arrested at that very moment, on our very street corner.

          “Mom, the police are arresting Walter.” Carl made his announcement with a voice that trembled with regret and concern, regret that he had been chosen to deliver the message, and concern that I would have to receive it.

          “He’s on the corner,” he continued, “The police have him on the corner.”

          I didn’t answer.

          “What will you do?”

          I still didn’t answer. I didn’t know.

            He searched my eyes for signs of emotion. There was nothing for him to see.

            In the distance, in some other vague reality, the phone began ringing. We took no notice of it. Without answering, I made my way to the door, walked out of the house and crossed over to what now seemed to be an unfamiliar walkway. Like a steer being channeled to the butcher’s pen, I was trudging a predictable path to an emotional slaughter. The smack of my tennis shoes on the pavement let me know I had reached the sidewalk.

        "I can take anything,” I chanted. “I can take anything."

        My fabricated mantra gave me a feeling of strength, but there was nothing to warn me that today would be the beginning of a sorrow even my imagination couldn’t conjure up. “I can take it,” I repeated. “I can take it.”

        Little of what made me strong in the difficult weeks gone by had remained, but still I moved steadily toward the scene of Walter’s demise. I walked past the houses of casual friends, past the doors of mandatory neighbors, and onward, past the homes of what can only be called community acquaintances.

        The truth was out now. What I once thought of as a private hell was now public knowledge. The neighbors peeking and peering from behind closed blinds and parted drapes were proof of that. All their eyes were on me. I was now the subject of today’s conversation and the news that would keep people talking for weeks. For a brief moment - one fleeting instant - I considered retreat. I thought of running and hiding and pretending nothing had happened, but my duty and responsibility held me on my course. I had to go. My life was irrevocably being decided on the corner of Greenholme Street and Madison Avenue, and I had to find out how badly it was being mangled. I continued to walk. I closed my eyes briefly, hoping for some relief, but none came.

        I kept my stride steady and deliberate. I walked past the tall dark lady with the bad twin boys and the man who used to lend us his Sunday newspaper. I walked passed the woman whose runaway dog Walter and I always felt compelled to retrieve.

        As I walked from block to block, stepping first onto the curb and then onto the pale dirty sidewalk, I decided I would feign dignity. Next, I decided I would pay special attention to each crack embedded in the concrete. That way, I reasoned, I wouldn’t have to see the questions on people’s faces or the disgust in their eyes.

        “I can take it,” I said to myself. “I can take it.”

        A black sturdy woman too tall to be attractive and unable to remember my name, called out from her second floor window. “Hey, honey,” she yelled with loud familiarity, “What’s going on down there?”

        I pretended not to hear.

        “Did someone steal ya’ car, darlin’?”

      “Yes,” I lied instinctively, ignoring my promise to ignore.

        As I reached the corner, the area took on the melodrama and make-believe of a Hollywood backlot stage. There were vehicles and people everywhere. Some half-dozen patrol cars were parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. About twenty law enforcement personnel ran back and forth processing paperwork and relishing the capture of the neighborhood monster. Irreverently, and loud enough for all to hear, they spoke glibly about “bagging the sucker.” They were referring to Walter, but without realizing it, they were referring to me too. They had ignored the reality that families get bagged right along with their deserving prey.

        As I made my way closer, tragedy groupies eased themselves to the edge of the set to watch the sheriff direct the scene. Sacramento’s hundred-degree weather made the air almost too thick to breathe, and smelled of too many people and late-afternoon living. The crowd buzzed with theories and suppositions. I made my way through the onlookers and easily breached the invisible line separating spectators and actors. My eyes quickly searched for Walter. A glance was all it took. He stood off to one side with his six-foot frame and quiet demeanor leaning up against Judy’s green Toyota. He was silent, isolated and appropriately shackled, and dejected. His head was up, but there was a look of remorse in his body that only I could see. His glimpse of me seemed to intensify that agony. I looked in his face for an explanation, but he said nothing. I searched his eyes for a message, but there was none. I ached to ask him if there wasn’t something he wanted to say to me, his wife and only companion. There was, but I would not hear it for some time. Walter - Buchanon, Georgia’s Doughbelly - had never been important to anyone else in his entire life, except me. And now he was important to the whole State of California. He was now the object of curiosity for a large neighborhood and the reason for the existence of the Sacramento County Justice Department.

        In the few short moments that it had taken me to walk the two blocks from the house to the corner, the future of both Walter and myself had been irrevocably redirected. He would no longer be my husband, I would no longer be his wife. From today on I would be his benefactor and he would be my charge. From today on he belonged to the State of California - to have and to hold from this day forward - or until they said otherwise. Like Judas in the Bible, Walter's course was set. It was much too late for remorse. It was too late for Walter, too late for me, too late for us. From today on, we would both learn the meaning of regret and the agony of lost tomorrows.

        I was deep in thought when a detective, too old and too fat to still be on the force, broke my concentration. "Who are you?" he asked, noticing that I had dared to encroach on the scene of his authority.

        "I'm his wife," I said barely audible, nodding my head in Walter's direction, making sure not to look back at the interfering crowd.

        "You can't talk to him, you know," he said, staring intensely at me.

        "Why not?" I asked.

        He ignored my question and took advantage of the opportunity to further his investigation. "Where do you live?" he said in tones that suggested I might be an accomplice.

        "Near here," I answered much too flustered. I meant to say, down the block or something much more accurate, but I had difficulty keeping my mind focused. I was always making mistakes like that. I scolded myself inwardly, "You never say things right when it's important.”

      “Look,” he said in the most demeaning way possible. "If you have any stolen goods in your house you've got one chance, and one chance only, to bring ’em out.”

        "Stolen property?” I stammered, not realizing I was being accused. “There’s nothing in my house.” I answered quickly trying to assess the real nature of his question and the extent of the implication.

       “Listen, if you don't cooperate I'll get a search warrant.” Blinking several times to clear my thinking, I wondered why he was saying that to me. Why was he talking to me in that manner? And why did he call me ‘mama’? I began to think over what I already knew to be fact. There was no stolen property in my house. There was nothing there that didn't already belong to me. Nothing I hadn't worked hard to get.
        Suddenly I realized that I might be in danger of being arrested too. My mantra and my resolve began to abandon me, and then my body attempted a similar retreat. My lungs refused to hold air or breathe in rhythm. My heart took on a pace of its own, working desperately to keep me conscious. My eyes began to close without my consent. "No! No!" God urged me. "You can take it. You can take it."

        Recovering, I volleyed back with a kind of strength nature gives only to those who have nowhere else to turn. "You'll just have to get that warrant,” I said sternly. “And, don't you talk to me that way."

        I was making my way back from the edge of oblivion. "You do whatever you think you have to do, but be sure you have the authority to do it."

        I looked back at Walter, wishing he could rescue me as he had done so many times before, but this time I was on my own.
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