by Jim Nelson
Piper walked between the standing sisters, clasping one on a shoulder. “We will not be disgraced. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Every night they tell you you’re blessed with the life within you. Then they lock you up in a room. How is that a blessing?”
She held her photograph aloft again. “Rachel,” Piper said. “She loved all animals. She cared for them dearly.”
Elena loved her baby brother. He had Down Syndrome. She cared for him every day.
Georgina wanted to learn to read books. She died illiterate.
Hanna loved flowers and plants, Ruby’s voice sounded out. She could read and write and handle money. She wanted to be a scientist and go to college. Before the next bridge spoke Ruby added, She proved herself one-hundredfold.
It crushed Hanna to hear those words, direct from Uncle Rick’s final letter—his suicide note—now quoted approvingly by Ruby. It felt Ruby had chosen Hanna’s bridge mother over Hanna herself.
Piper moved among the girls holding the candle of smooth yellow wax and a long wick. Hanna could now take in the larger photographs with the better light. They were older photos judging by the clothes the bridges in them wore. All wore bridge dresses, some from as long ago as the 1950s. Hanna wondered if Piper’s exercise was to recognize a bridge daughter, any bridge, as a kind of role model.
“I’ve traveled all across this country,” Piper said. “I’ve talked to sisters like you and sisters like me. Too often I hear our sisters talk about ‘the enemy.’ The police, they say, are the enemy. Or the Bridge Protective Services people are our enemy. Some times I hear a sister blame herself for the decision she’s made, and it crushes me. Never blame yourself. Guilt and shame are crippling tools being used against us. Guilt and shame are the claw and head of the same hammer.”
Piper returned to the head of the crowd. “Hear me on this. There is only one enemy. Our enemy are parents. The police do what they’re told. Social workers do what they’re told. They are agents of the mothers who wish to claim our lives in order to better their own.”
Piper’s voice raised to a soft shout. “It’s inhumane we live in the shadows,” she said. “That we must scrounge for food and shelter like rats in an alleyway dumpster. It is past time we were proud of ourselves and our heritage.” She shook the photo she held. “Rachel.”
Barbara. Justine. Hanna!
“Hanna,” Piper said, standing before Ruby. She took the photo from her and held it aloft. “I’ve learned much about this sister over the last three days. Hanna’s story moved me.” She dared raise her voice even further. It echoed across the room and elicited cheers from the other girls. “When the time arrives, we will share with everyone Hanna’s story. It’s through her life story we will shatter everything holding us back. Only when we speak with one voice—”
With the rise in volume and the girls’ fervor building, Hanna sensed an opportunity. She pushed through the double doors and with long strides was upon the girls in no time. One sensed her approach, twisted, and shrieked out. The piercing triggered an alarm in the others, and the hut filled with squeals of surprise and terror.
Hanna hooked a hand on Ruby’s forearm. Ruby remained locked in place, eyes wide. Hanna wrested her away from the others, Ruby’s screams making a trail through the clamoring.
The sisters of Hagar fled in all directions, some for the kitchen and escape beyond, others behind tables and service counters. The confusion worked to Hanna’s advantage. When Ruby resisted, Hanna redoubled her efforts and half-dragged her away. Ruby twisted and pushed, but Hanna’s grip held fast. She pulled her through the kitchen appliances and stainless steel surfaces for the service door.
A harsh light shone through the dismantled porthole, a bald white beam strong and steady. Hanna sensed the exterior of the Warming Hut was fully lit, like a sporting stadium at nighttime, but the panic of flight drove her through the door and outside. Her only thought was to get Ruby back to the car.
Patrol cars and unmarked police cars with detachable cherry-lights blocked all paths. A black-and-white paddy wagon was parked behind them, its rear doors wide open. Uniformed officers scrambled for screaming girls as they raced into the darkness. Other girls with their wrists in tie-locks were being led to the wagon.
Aghast, blinded by the floodlights and Ruby cradled against her chest, Hanna swung left and right, searching for escape. In one moment, Ruby was wrested from her arms. A moment later, her arms were stretched behind her back and her face was pushed into a support post. Behind her and from all directions, the squealing continued unabated. The dotted outline of the hulking bridge appeared in Hanna’s periphery. It no longer comforted her.
Twenty
Hanna noticed an upgrade in the quality of the room each time she was questioned.
Her first round of questioning was in the stationhouse booking room. It was a filthy box of worn tile, bulletproof glass windows, and a single scuffed-up wood bench along two walls. The harsh fluorescent lights overhead left nothing to suggestion.
Bits of litter on the floor told a story of the sort of people this room usually held. People who smoked Camels and Dorals, people who purchased liquor at a liquor store in the Richmond and stuffed the receipt in their pocket, people who chewed peppermint gum in foil wrappers. The room smelled of day-old piss. It reminded her of the homes of Hanna’s ecologically-minded friends who conserved water by letting urine stand in the toilet bowl. The tang of urine was thicker here, though.
Handcuffed to the wall railing, she’d squirmed and twisted to devise a comfortable way of sitting. She eventually conceded that comfort was not a priority for this room’s designer. It had been over four hours since her arrest at Crissy Field.
An officer was buzzed into the room through a plate-steel door. He produced a winkled, creased business-size card from his wallet and read Hanna her Miranda rights. “Are you willing at this time to make a statement?”
Hanna, exhausted and achy and parched, waited for more. “Statement about what?”
“About your association with fugitives of the law.”
Hanna began to protest. Handcuffed so long, she wondered if they’d forgotten about her. She’d also had time consider how to react when her moment arrived. She half-expected an apology and easy release. Instead they were calling her a criminal.
“I want to know where my bridge daughter is,” she said.
“One of those girls is yours?”
Hanna could feel the pulse in her neck. Her body felt electric, toxic, and polluted. “The girl I was dragging out of the building,” she said, enunciating each word as carefully as she could muster. “She is my bridge daughter.”
The officer looked over the sheet of paper on his clipboard. Hanna could see it was a list of names, girls names. He folded the top sheet up, studied the second page, then brought the top sheet down again. As he read, he twitched his neat, trim mustache, one so groomed it appeared drawn on with grease pencil. He tapped the end of his ballpoint pen on the metal clip holding the pages to the board. Every movement he made seemed designed to antagonize her.
“What’s her name?” he said.
“Ruby,” Hanna said. “Ruby Brubaker,” she added, offering her legal name.
“I can look into that,” he said. “Are you willing to make a statement about your involvement in tonight’s events?”
“Not until I see my bridge daughter,” she said.
He stood, knocked twice on the bulletproof glass, and was buzzed back into the office beyond. The steel-plated door swung home with a klang followed by the snug click of a security lock finding home.
—
The second round of questioning occurred in a proper interrogation room. Hanna sat on a cold metal chair bolted to the floor. The cold metal table she sat at was also bolted to the floor. She remained in her own clothes, although they’d confiscated her belt and jewelry. A steel bar ran across the top of the table. Her handcuffs were looped through it, forcing her once again to devise an uncomfortable position. This r
oom did not smell of urine, but it did smell of tobacco smoke. She wondered if police interrogation rooms were exempt from California’s indoor smoking laws.
The woman seated before her was a different uniformed officer, the sixth or seventh officer she’d interacted with since the Warming Hut. At first Hanna assumed each officer had a well-defined set of duties: Escorting prisoners from cell to room or from room to cell, taking fingerprints, taking mug shots, and so forth. By the end of her first day in the station, it dawned on her that none of these police officers specialized in anything per se, but rather were treated as a pool of labor and assigned tasks as they arose.
Hanna had never spent a full twenty-four hours separated from either of her bridge daughters. Now her only human contact was with these burly, taciturn officers, emotionless and indistinguishable as they shuttled her from duty to duty and her cellmates in the common jail cell. Her only warm moment those twenty-four hours was the sound of her father’s voice announcing her was unable to take the call and to leave a message. Hanna left him a rather wordy and prattling message, devastated that he failed to pick up.
The officer before her in the interrogation room kept her hair back in a tight bun. Her neck was thick like a linebacker’s, impressive to Hanna, who knew no matter how many hours she spent at the gym, she’d never approach such a physique. The officer repeated the Miranda rights the cop had read her the day before, reading from a card more-or-less identical to his. The officer slid a clipboard across the table to Hanna.
A cheap blue Bic pen was attached to the metal clip by a makeshift chain of thickly wound office tape and a length of twine. Across the top of the clipboard backing was written in thick black ink SFPD CENTRAL STA, and below it, DO NOT REMOVE. The clipboard secured a single sheet of paper, a standard form for providing written statements. Empty boxes at the bottom provided space for signing, dating, and witnessing the statement.
“Are you willing at this time to make a statement?” the officer said to Hanna.
“I want to see my bridge daughter,” Hanna said. “Her name is Ruby Brubaker.”
“I can’t discuss that at the moment.” The officer reached across the table and unlocked the handcuffs. “Right now, we need you to make a statement explaining last night.”
Hanna massaged her wrists. She did not take the pen. Ruby and Cynthia were her priorities, nothing more.
“We spoke with Bridge Protective Services this morning,” the officer said. “They’re holding Ruby.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s being processed,” the officer said.
“I’m not going to say anything,” Hanna said, “until I see my bridge daughter.”
The two of them sat at the table facing each other for nearly sixty quiet seconds. Finally, the officer rose from the table. She knocked on the only door into the room and called for Hanna to be returned to her cell.
—
She went by Patty, a twentyish woman sharing the holding cell with Hanna. Pink crackled wrinkles surrounded her eyes and lips. She spoke with a harsh hoarse voice, a smoker’s voice, Hanna thought. She called Hanna “Missy.”
Women came and went from the cell. Patty and Hanna were the cell regulars those first two days. Most of the others were return guests, so to speak. They knew the procedures outside the cell and they knew the rules inside it. Hanna kept to herself, aware the others thought she was prissy. One cellmate called her Martha Stewart and soon Patty was calling her Martha.
The one equalizer in the cell was the common toilet in the corner, all steel with a flush handle worked by foot. Hanna learned to urinate and defecate before an audience of six, sometimes ten women. Patty still referred to her as Martha.
Twice a day, social workers brought a baby bridge daughter to the hallway outside of lock-up for visitation and nursing. The baby’s cries carried through the steel-plated door. When the attendant swung it open to allow Patty outside, the baby’s screams filled the lock-up. The cries were muffled once more when the door slammed shut. The bridge infant only quieted in Patty’s arms.
The holding cell only offered hard backless benches for sitting and lying down. Some of the women slept on the concrete floor, which Hanna outright refused to do. Using wadded up newspaper as a pillow and hugging herself to keep warm, Hanna caught naps whenever she could piece them together. She counted days. It was Wednesday. Her mother had planned a baby shower for her. Suddenly it sounded delightful.
Hanna’s mother had killed Pint-sized, the kitten. Time in jail stirred up the suspicion within Hanna. Either that or her mother carried Pint out to the woods and left her there, abandoning her just as the mother cat originally intended. Pint was a sponge for affection. She would not have run off.
The piercing cry of the infant forced Hanna from a deep nap, the best sleep she’d had in two days. Coming to with a start, she nearly fell from the bench. She discovered her breasts ached as though swollen with milk. She pressed her hand into her chest, feeling for the origin of the pain. She found her breasts tender near her armpit and around the circumference of her nipples. The baby in the hallway roared and wailed.
She ducked her face to avoid the glare of her cellmates, who’d found it amusing when she jumped out of her skin. She’d not felt this motherly love in years, not felt anything this strong in so very long. It all came rushing back to her in a moment with the alarm shriek of a bridge crying for her mother.
—
Her third round of questioning occurred after a leisurely drive across the city in the backseat of a police cruiser, once again handcuffed. The officer drove with a rather pronounced amount of street courtesy, giving each pedestrian sufficient time to reach the sidewalk and staying clear of riders in the cycling lane. As they approached the Financial District, it crossed her mind she might be recognized in the rear of the patrol car. She slumped in her seat as the Wednesday-morning pedestrians strolled past in their business suits and patent-leather shoes.
In the Hall of Justice, the officer escorted Hanna to a fourth-floor room. The walls were painted flat white with wood trim. Chairs seemed placed at random about the room and around a table in the center. Dwarf rubber trees stood in pale green plastic pots. Handcuffs removed, she and the officer waited an hour.
Finally, a young woman in a business skirt and rectangular dark-rimmed glasses entered. In her arms, she carried a stack of manila folders and envelopes that seemed on the edge of spilling to the floor. From one hand beneath the stack, a floppy leather briefcase dangled. She dropped the stack on the table and released a deep exhale of stale air. After adjusting her bangs—floppy and wayward, a sure sign of a hectic day—she produced from her briefcase a writing tablet and a handful of ballpoint pens.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “Busy-busy.”
“I want to know about my bridge daughter,” Hanna said. “Ruby Brubaker.”
“We have Ruby downstairs,” the woman said.
Excited, Hanna involuntarily started to rise from the table. The officer, seated across the room and thumbing through a magazine, tossed it aside and stood to full height.
“She’s fine.” The woman motioned for Hanna to return to her chair. “She’s been examined by a doctor. He gave her a clean bill of health.” She fingered at the tabs of the folders in the stack, finding one in the middle and carefully sliding it out so as to avoid the others spilling over. She opened it before her and adjusted her meandering bangs once again. “We should be releasing her in the next six hours or so.”
“When can I see her?”
“That was quite a haul we pulled in from Crissy Field,” the woman said. “Been processing bridges and runaways for two days now. Health, legal status, background check, identification, next of kin,” she said as though repeating a memorized list. “Some will become wards of the state,” she said casually. She smiled and put forth her hand. “My name is Deborah Jess. I’m with Bridge Protective Services.”
Deborah was the first person of authority Hanna had
spoken to in three days who wasn’t with law enforcement. Deborah took a moment to study the paperwork before her. Finally she said, “The question we have to face is in whose custody Ruby leaves this building with.”
Hanna waited for more. Sheepish and looking down at her lap, she said, “I have only one wish,” she said, “and that is to take my bridge daughter home.”
“Ms. Brubaker—”
“Driscoll,” Hanna said. “Hanna Driscoll.”
Deborah jotted a note in the margin of her writing tablet, nodding her head. “What you need to focus on is the charges you’re facing,” she said. “Aiding and abetting fugitives from the law. Bridge endangerment. Contributing to dereliction of life. It’s a longer list than you might think.”
“No one has mentioned the exact charges against me,” Hanna said.
“The police have until the end of the day to do that,” Deborah said, returning her focus to the file folder. “They’ve asked for our department’s input, as the scope of the charges against you relate to our mission.” Peering down at the paperwork, she murmured something about a false report.
“Look,” Hanna said, “I know I shouldn’t have called the police like that.”
“No one’s told you, have they?” Deborah said. “The bust at Crissy Field has been in the works for weeks now. The city and county police coordinated it with the National Park Service. You wrecked everything going in there by yourself. You really don’t realize all the trouble you caused, do you?”
Hanna shook her head. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble at all.”
“Why were you there?”
Hanna took a deep breath. She’d had days to think and devised a dozen ways to shape her story. At ease for the first time since the soup-and-salad restaurant, her story flooded forth.
“I thought I knew where I could find Ruby,” she said. “I hoped I could just pick her up, put her in the car, and drive her back to my mother’s home,” Hanna said, the explanation draining from her in gushes. “If I didn’t find Ruby at the Warming Hut, I wanted the police looking for her. I couldn’t be everywhere at once.” Clenching her hands together, stuffing them between her legs, she said, “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
