Redeeming Justice

by Jarrett Adams

  I come back the next day, and the next. After my Friday shift, the foreman stops me on my way out the door.

  “You work hard,” he says. “We want to put you on permanently.”

  I’m stunned, flattered, and disgusted.

  “I can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t keep doing this.”

  “I’ll raise you to eight dollars—”

  “No, thank you.” I’m desperate for the money, but I can’t walk through life reeking of French roast.

  Monday, I return to the temp agency and ask that they assign me anywhere other than the K-Cup factory. An hour later, I receive my next job—working at a company that makes brass fittings for pipes and pays a lofty ten dollars an hour. I arrive at this place, hand the floor manager my index card, and follow him to my station.

  “Here,” he says, pointing me to a spot between two burly guys standing at an assembly line, neither of whom speaks English.

  “What do I do?” I ask.

  “What they do. Run the machine. Watch them. He’s Oscar; he’s Luis. You have any questions, holler, ‘Luis.’ He speaks better English.”

  “But I haven’t had any training. Maybe somebody should train me how to work the—”

  “Training?” Baffled, the manager looks at me and walks away.

  I squeeze between Oscar and Luis, smile, say hi. They grunt in unison.

  I watch what they do, a series of lightning-fast, orchestrated movements that culminate in yanking back and slamming down hard on a piece of machinery resembling a rudder. Luis works two machines at once and pays absolutely no attention to me. I follow his moves, and after a while I have some idea of what I’m supposed to do. But how do I turn this thing on? I catch Luis’s eye and shout above the din and rumble of the machinery, “Turn on?” He looks at me as if I were hopeless, leans over, and flicks an ignition switch right in front of me. The machine groans into motion.

  I spend the day copying whatever Oscar and Luis do, rarely exchanging a word with them, my goal during the eight-hour shift being to keep my fingers from being crushed under some erratic, boomeranging piece of metal. Mercifully, my shift ends with both my hands intact. I spend the next two days working the machine, yanking up and slamming down on the rudder, dumping finished brass fittings onto a tray, then starting all over, occasionally yelling at Luis for clarification, advice, help, and even companionship. Meanwhile, on my own, I’ve studied the company manual and determined that this place makes every kind of brass fitting imaginable. I quietly chant the names of the fittings to pass the time—elbow, tee, reducer, union, coupling, cross, cap, swage nipple, plug, bush, expansion joint, adapter, steam trap, long radius bend, flange, valve, and—repeat. One day, as I prepare to leave the floor, the floor manager pulls me aside.

  “Hearing good things,” he says.

  “From who?”

  “Luis. He says you know all the fittings, and you picked up the machine real fast. We can use a reliable full-time guy. I can kick you up to eleven an hour. Let me know by end of the day tomorrow.”

  I hate this job. But I’m swimming in debt, and I need to start putting money aside for my own apartment. Every day I stay at my mother’s, I feel I’m stunting my independence. She and my stepfather have done so much, but I need my own place. I decide to accept the manager’s offer. I find the work mind-numbing, but I have survived worse.

  The next morning, I arrive at my station and smile at Luis and Oscar, who grunt a hello. I flick on my machine and prepare to settle in for the long day, thinking about how I will feel accepting the floor manager’s offer. I pull back on my mechanical rudder, and a severed piece of a tool flies back and hits me in the mouth. I howl. Blood gushes. I collapse to the floor, Luis shouts, and before I know it, I’m sitting in a hospital emergency room, receiving seven stitches. Wait–ing to be discharged, pressing an ice pack to my throbbing mouth, I make a decision.

  I’m never going back to that place.

  * * *

  —

  I decide to take a chance on myself.

  I start my own company.

  I will do odd jobs, handyman stuff, putting up shelves, hanging TVs, minor carpentry, easy electrical, painting, and my specialty, masonry, building garden walls out of bricks and stones. I print business cards and hand them out to family and friends, while my mother floods the neighborhood with my cards and calls everyone she knows. The card identifies me as a mason, or bricklayer, which is true. I took a masonry class in prison and received a certificate.

  I start with one client—my mother. I hang her new flat-screen TV over the fireplace. She invites friends over to see my handiwork. She’s proud and persuasive, bordering on pushy, assuming her role as my vice president of public relations. Within a week, I get a call to hang her friend’s TV, then a call from another friend to put stones around her garden. Word spreads. Before long, I’m hanging TVs, building bookcases, and creating backyard gardens, my fledgling business starting to bring in some cash.

  * * *

  —

  The speech class at South Suburban begins. I arrive early, take a seat in the classroom, and feel my leg pumping from nerves and excitement. I cannot believe this day has come. I hope I blend in. I hope I don’t look too old. And I hope that when I get up to speak, I don’t stumble and stammer and make a fool of myself. I like reading, but I’m not sure how I’ll feel speaking in front of a bunch of strangers.

  Two other students come in, women who look my age or a few years younger. They sit near me, and we all begin making small talk. Then another student comes in, a guy at least my age or older. He sits across from us and joins the conversation. Before I know it, all twelve students taking the class and the teacher have arrived and we’re all engaged with each other, chatting, laughing, getting acclimated. I not only blend in; I fit in. I feel wired, energized by this casual conversation. Simply being in this setting and interacting with students stimulates me.

  The teacher takes over and asks each of us to introduce ourselves and reveal something about us, a surprising fact, or a goal. We go clockwise around the room. When it’s my turn, I give my name, admit that I’m a little nervous, and say, simply, “My name is Jarrett Adams and I am going to be a lawyer.”

  * * *

  —

  I fall into a comfortable rhythm. I spend my days working, usually hanging TVs or lugging heavy stones in a wheelbarrow and landscaping gardens. The weather turns warm, then hot. On good days, I book back-to-back jobs, then rush home, shower, drive to school, and settle in to class. I give speeches, ace the midterm, prepare for the final, which will be a speech utilizing a prop, a demonstration speech. I get to know the other students in the class, become friendly with most, friendlier with others. I even go out on a date. It’s pretty much of a disaster. I’m anxious the whole time, looking all around me for faces, hands, my attention everywhere but on the young woman who sits across from me in the casual restaurant I’ve chosen. Too soon, I think. I love being in school, but, yeah, I’m not ready for this.

  For my final exam, the demonstration speech, I raid my mother’s kitchen. I grab a bottle of water, a wire strainer, and a bowl of cherries. I’ve rehearsed the speech in my mind, but I’m so confident now speaking in front of others that I know I can speak off the cuff and kill it. When the teacher calls on me, I explain that I’m going to demonstrate a concept called straining. I tell the class that I learned about this in a psychology book I read a few years ago, when I had a lot of time to read.

  “Life,” I say, cradling the bowl of cherries, “can feel overwhelming. Sometimes you feel as if you’re flailing, even drowning. You feel so overwhelmed that you can lose your way.”

  I dump the cherries from the bowl into the strainer. Then I hold the bowl under the strainer and take out the bottle of water.

  “In order to find your way, to figure out what’s truly important, to identify wh
at you enjoy, what turns you on, what turns you off, you have to go through a process of straining. Take a look at everything in your life and decide what really matters. Keep those things. Remove the rest.”

  I pour the water over the cherries. The water trickles through the strainer, flows into the bowl, leaving the cherries, glistening with droplets of water.

  “The cherries? That delicious fruit? Those are what matter. The essentials. The core parts of your life.” I slosh the water around in its bowl. “This is the excess. You can dump this out. Identify what matters in your life and strain out everything else.”

  The class applauds.

  One of the guys says, “That was really unique.”

  “Yes, it was,” one of the women says. “Now you better bring those dishes back before your mother finds out.”

  I come home after the class feeling exhilarated. When I walk into the kitchen, my mother says, “I was wondering where my cherries went.”

  “I took them to school,” I say. “They were my final exam.”

  Two days letter, I receive my grade for the course—A.

  * * *

  —

  In midsummer, while I’m painting a woman’s garage in blistering heat, John Rhiel, my lawyer, calls my cell phone.

  “You sitting down?”

  “No. I’m scraping old paint off a garage. Then I have to put on two coats. Gonna die in this heat. What’s up?”

  “It’s over.”

  Time stops. The ground pulsates from the heat, or my pulse pounds all the way from my heart to my feet. I burn, and then I literally go mute.

  “Are you there?”

  I nod.

  “Jarrett?”

  “I’m—yeah.”

  Then I do sit down—on the driveway. I feel light-headed, as if I might faint.

  “You mean—?”

  “Yes. The prosecutor agreed to dismiss the charges. Officially.”

  “All the charges?”

  “Everything. Your record will be totally expunged. Your conviction is being reversed.”

  “This is final.”

  “Final. The court will send you a letter—”

  I leap to my feet.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to be there. I want them to look me in the eye. I’m going to be at that hearing when they dismiss the charges.”

  “You sure you want to drive all the way up to Wisconsin?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  * * *

  —

  My lawyer and I sit at a table in the courtroom, facing the bench. The prosecutor sits to my left. The court reporter sits to my right. The only other people in attendance, my mother and my stepfather, sit in the row behind me, or as I still think of it, the first pew. We have driven five hours from Chicago to attend this hearing. As we wait for the judge, I think about the number of times I’ve sat in courtrooms like this, churches of law, feeling intimidated, helpless, and afraid, awaiting my fate, the temperature always turned way down, a bitter chill slicing through the room. Icing the defendant. Looking for any way to intimidate you. Not today. Not ever again.

  I close my eyes and exhale slowly. Then the sound of fabric rustling. The judge enters. I recognize her. I will never forget her. She is the same judge who sentenced me nearly ten years ago. She looks older but still seems as severe as a high school vice-principal. She doesn’t look at me. She addresses the prosecutor, beginning the hearing. They have a shockingly brief exchange. “Yes,” the prosecutor says, “I agree to drop all the charges.” “Fine,” the judge says, “that will be done.” The judge then proclaims that my conviction has been completely reversed. She slams down her gavel and ends the hearing. She stands, turns her back on me, and exits the courtroom.

  I can’t believe it. The proceeding takes less than five minutes.

  The judge never acknowledges me or my mother, doesn’t apologize to me, doesn’t wish me luck, says not a word. The one time in my life I want to hear someone say, “I’m sorry,” I hear nothing. Silence screams through the courtroom.

  “They wasted our time,” I say to my mother in the car as we drive back to Chicago. She sniffs, dabs at her eyes. She has cried so much in her life.

  “They didn’t even acknowledge us,” I say. “They acted like they didn’t see us, like we didn’t exist. It was like those ten years behind bars never happened. They made me feel invisible.”

  I squint at the rolling hills of Wisconsin through the back window of my stepfather’s car.

  “I’m going to come back here as a lawyer,” I say. “They’re going to remember who I am. If it takes the rest of my life.”

  17.

  Safe

  With Linda Bathgate’s help, I choose my courses for the fall, everything at night so I can continue working days. Linda helps me fill out the forms for financial aid. The financial aid office responds quickly. They’ll cover all my expenses for one semester.

  “What about after that?” I ask Linda.

  “Working on it,” she says.

  School can’t start soon enough. I walk through campus the first week of fall semester, trying not to appear too eager, but I can’t help it. I have found my place. I feel fired up going to classes, interacting with students, engaging with professors, even studying. I struggle when I’m not on campus.

  When I am most alone, in bed at night, staring into the darkness, unable to sleep, I feel my body jerk with sense memory. I don’t dream, but moments of terror pump through me. I sit up, suddenly not sure where I am, thinking I’m in segregation. I get up, wander through the house, my body feeling hot, flush as if with fever. I open the refrigerator to cool me down; then I stare inside, inventory the contents, still amazed at everything available to me on the shelves. One sleepless night, around 4:00 a.m., as I close the refrigerator door, I feel someone’s eyes on me. I turn quickly and see my mother’s shadow disappearing down the hallway.

  * * *

  —

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she says one morning as she stands at the sink, drying dishes.

  I wait for my mother to continue.

  “I see how hard this has been for you—”

  She stops, curls her lip, and looks at me, her eyes full.

  “I think you should talk to someone.”

  “You mean a shrink?”

  “Yes. A therapist.”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “You’re going through a lot. It could help to talk it through—”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I know you’re strong. But this is different. You may need some help.”

  I go quiet. I think about her watching me the other night as I looked inside the refrigerator. I see myself awake all night, staring at the ceiling. Walking the perimeter of every room I enter. Checking the locks on doors, windows. Watching strangers’ faces, hands, shadows.

  Thinking about time.

  The time I lost, doing time. How long have I been out? How long have I been home? Time blurring by at warp speed.

  In my experience, in the Black community, young men experience PTSD, which we say stands not for post-traumatic stress disorder but for persistent traumatic stress disorder—a condition brought on by exposure to constant violence. We normalize violence and live with its aftermaths—depression and anxiety. When we feel unsettled or desperate or depressed, we tough it out. We don’t talk it out. We don’t do therapy. We look away from therapy. We look down at therapy.

  “Will you at least think about it?” my mother says.

  I don’t answer.

  But I don’t say no.

  * * *

  —

  During the days, I book as many jobs as I can, but work comes inconsistently, and my bank account balance continues to hove
r precipitously close to zero. I face a pile of bills every month, paying off the loan on my old car while accruing new ones—school books, supplies, gas for my car. I think about asking out a girl in my English class, but what do I have to offer? Dinner at McDonald’s? A drive through the neighborhood in my clunker? A stroll through the mall, my head on a swivel, checking frantically for faces and hands? I don’t think so. I abandon the idea.

  One day, a woman who owns several houses in the area calls me for a job. She asks me to redo the flower bed in the front of her house with garden stones. She wants to plant shrubbery, put in an attractive garden, her goal being to sell the house. She wants to create curb appeal and believes a plush garden surrounded by stones will do the trick.

  When she gives me the address, I hesitate. The house sits on a street in a neighborhood known for one of the highest murder rates in Chicago. Then she tells me how much she’ll pay me—the most I’ve ever gotten for a job. If I work nonstop, I can do the job in one day. Get to the house at dawn, get out before dusk. I don’t have school that evening, so I’ll have the whole day to complete the work. “I’ll take it,” I tell her.

  Driving to the house, I know that the job requires two men, especially given the late August heat and my determination to finish the work before dark. But I refuse to bring on a helper. I need the money, and I doubt that anyone else can work at my pace, maniacal. I arrive at the house, and I see that we’re talking about grunt work, moving a large stack of heavy stones from the back of the house to the front, laying them down carefully, and then hustling to the back for the next load. At my request, the woman leaves a wheelbarrow in the garage.