“Can I ask why she’s being detained?” I ask the officers flanking me.
“We’re not gonna tell you that,” Gallagher says.
“I just want to know if it’s something violent or dangerous, because I assume we’re going to be transported and locked up together.”
“Even if it’s something violent,” says Ellis, “she’s not gonna do much harm to you with her hands and legs in cuffs, is she?”
“Fuck!” she screams. “Why you taking me?”
“How long is the drive to the jail?” I ask.
“About an hour,” Ellis says.
“Why are you answering her questions?” Gallagher asks him. “If you answer her questions, she’s going to ask more questions.”
Ellis shrugs. “I’m just trying to get outta here.”
We go through a pair of double doors, down a long corridor, and into a freight elevator. The Polish woman stands next to me. She’s a lot taller than I am. She’s wearing jeans that cinch over her waist, white socks, black sandals, and a red nylon zip-up sweatshirt. I’m pretty sure her hands are the most enormous hands I have ever seen on any person in person.
All the officers are here, too: Coots, Morris, Ellis, Gallagher, The Albanian, Skolski, and Miller. Out in the customs hall, when I first arrived, there were officers of all ages and ethnicities—black, white, Asian, Hispanic, in their twenties, forties, sixties—but the staff of the Secondary Questioning Room are all of one type: white and military-aged, with the close haircuts of soldiers and the aggressively washed faces of people who believe they’re dealing with scum all day.
The Polish woman looks down at me. “Why? Why they taking me?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t get it, either.”
The officers ignore us. If I were Nicolas Cage I’d be elbowing someone in the jaw right now, but I’m me, so I cry tears onto my feet and watch them sink into my shoes.
—
The van is dark gray and windowless. It’s hard to climb up without the use of my hands. Morris steps in after me and tells me to sit on a narrow steel bench that runs along one wall.
“Can I just please sleep in the airport?” I ask her.
“No.”
“I can sleep on a chair.”
“You can’t stay here. We’re not a twenty-four-hour facility.”
“Is there an airport motel I can stay in?”
“We wouldn’t allow that. You might run away.”
“I won’t. You can put an ankle monitor on me.”
“We don’t do that.” She reaches across me for a strap.
“I really, really don’t want to go to jail.”
“You should have thought of that when the flight to Istanbul was leaving and you were playing word games and arguing semantics with me.”
“I wasn’t playing games.”
I hold my hands up while she straps me in. When she’s done, I’m pinned to the wall like I’m on an amusement park ride that’s about to start spinning. She turns to leave. “Can I just ask you one more question?” I say.
“What is it?”
“How likely is it that I’ll be granted another visa anytime soon?”
She shrugs. “It’s very unlikely.”
“How long till I’ll be allowed back in, do you think?”
“Years, probably. Ten years, twenty years. Maybe never. It just depends.”
“Oh my God.” For some reason, I think of my bike, locked to a street cleaning sign outside Jacob’s place, and I wonder what will become of it.
“Listen,” says Morris. “You’re acting—” She glances over her shoulder and lowers her voice to an almost-whisper. “You’re acting like this is the end of the world. It’s not the end of the world. I won’t lie to you. You’re going to have an unpleasant—what? Forty-eight hours. But then you’ll be back in Turkey.”
Suddenly Morris’s face is different. It’s not stern and unreadable. It’s—a face. A nice, kind face. Suddenly she looks like someone I could imagine sitting with at a kitchen table, drinking tea and talking about my disastrous love life and how horrendous her job is. I look at her hands and notice she’s wearing a wedding ring. I picture her lying on her side at night, with someone’s arms around her, hugging away her day.
“It’s just forty-eight hours,” she says again.
I want to say that it’s not always the amount of time you experience something that determines its impact on you. I also want to mention the bike. But I don’t want to be accused of playing games, and I don’t want her face to go back to how it looked before, so I don’t say anything.
“Do you want to take that Klonopin now?” she asks. “Then you can get to jail and fall asleep.”
“I can’t. It’ll totally zonk me out. I need to be awake to deal with whatever happens when I get there.”
—
It’s hot in the van—it’s a hot night in Philadelphia—but once we start moving, the air conditioner comes on. There are no lights back here, it’s very dark, and for the first time since I landed at the airport, five or six hours ago, I’m not under fluorescent lights. I don’t have to answer anyone’s questions, or defend myself, or ask what’s going on, or what’s going to happen next.
To my right, there’s a caged plastic window that looks into the front of the van. Miller is driving and Coots is riding shotgun. To my left is the Polish woman. She is sitting behind a thick cage wire divider, and she’s still shouting. “Why? Why you taking me? America. Ha!”
I stare at the wall opposite me. My head is aching and my eyes sting from all the crying. I also, I realize, haven’t eaten or drunk anything in a long time. The last thing I had was a bottle of raki with Ellie at the airport in Istanbul, before she left for London, and I ran to catch my flight to the States.
“Why you taking me?” the Polish woman yells. “You no taking me. No!”
“Hey,” I say.
She stops shouting but doesn’t say anything.
“Hello?” I say.
“Yes?” she says in the dark. “They taking us jail? I don’t believe.”
“What’s your name?” I ask. “I’m Claire.”
“What my name is?”
“Yes. Mine is Claire.”
“Boleslawa,” she says.
“Okay. Boleslawa. They told me the drive is one hour.”
“One hour?” she repeats. “Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s where the jail is.”
I turn my head and try to see through the window and out the windscreen. I can tell we’re on a highway, but the plastic is too fuzzy for me to read the signs above the road. Miller and Coots are talking to each other, but the drone of the air conditioner drowns out their voices. I wonder what this van looks like to the Philadelphian people passing us on the road.
I’m amazed by how sterile it is back here. Everything is stainless steel and bolted down. You could bang against the cage or try to break the plastic window with your feet and nothing would budge or crack. You could puke or bleed, and they would just hose it off and erase all signs.
“Boleslawa?” I say, practicing my pronunciation.
“Bobbi,” she says. “Is easy, just Bobbi.”
“Bobbi,” I repeat. “Cool.” She wouldn’t exactly be my first choice of companion in a Pussy Riot–type situation, but she’s who’s here.
—
When we walk into the jail, it’s like we’re interrupting a joke. There are two officers in uniform behind a window, and a guy in scrubs leaning against a wall. They’re all grinning like someone said something hilarious just before we came in.
Coots unlocks my handcuffs and tells me to turn around so he can unfasten the big leather belt they’re attached to. “Watch out for this one,” Miller says. “She has a problem with authority.” I’m taking in this information about Bobbi when I realize that everyone’s actually looking at me, including Bobbi.
“I don’t have a problem with authority,” I say. “I just didn’t want to be deported.”
Coots and Miller hand over some paperwork and leave. We’re no longer in their custody. We’re now in the custody of an older white guy with a sweaty forehead, and a pasty-faced younger white guy with glasses.
“Which one of you’s from England?” the older guy asks.
“Me.”
“Why you here? If I was you, I’d be in London, getting ready for the Olympics. Wanna switch places?”
“That depends. Can you get Netflix on that computer or is it just Solitaire all night?”
The younger officer comes out to where we are. “Whose is the Klonopin?”
“Mine.”
“Do you want to take it now?”
“Are we going to sleep now?”
“You’ve gotta be processed first.”
“Okay, I’ll take it later then.”
Bobbi has some medication, too, for her blood pressure. The officer says he’ll keep our pills and pass them on to the nurse.
“All right,” the older guy says from behind the glass. “Go to seventeen.”
“Sorry?” I ask.
“Go to cell seventeen. Up there, on the left.”
We walk up a short corridor and look in. It’s a tiny, windowless cell, probably two meters by three, with a bench along one wall, a small metal sink, and a steel toilet bowl with no seat. The younger officer comes up behind us and tells us to step in. Bobbi goes in. I step in and, as I do, I see the officer go to press a button out on the wall.
I step out. “I changed my mind,” I say. “I want the Klonopin. I’d like to take that pill now.”
“It’s too late, ma’am,” he says.
“Please. Can I just take it now?”
“You’ll have to see the nurse. Step in.”
I step into the cell again and, again, I see him go to press the button. I step out.
“Yes?” he says.
“Can I please see the nurse now?”
“No.”
“When can I see the nurse?”
“After we’ve processed you.”
“When is that?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll let you know when it’s time.”
“I’m very scared of being locked inside a cell.”
“You should have thought of that before you went and broke the law.”
“Can I talk to you about that? Because I don’t think I did break the law.”
“Ma’am.” He shakes his head. “I was born at night, but not last night.”
“I’m being accused of a pre-crime.”
“You need to stop talking now and step into the cell.”
I step in and he presses the button, and the door closes behind me.
—
Bobbi is sitting on the bench. I go over and sit on the other end of it. I look around. There’s a meshed window in the door and below it a slot where I guess people get their meals. On the wall next to that, what looks like an intercom, with a speaker and some buttons. The overhead lights are fluorescent, the walls are white cinder block, the bench and the floor are concrete. Above the sink, stenciled in big black letters it says:
WASH
HANDS
I pull my hood onto my head, put my feet up on the bench, and hug my arms around my legs.
“What we doing?” Bobbi asks.
“I guess we’re waiting to be processed.”
I try not to think about the locked door. I try to ignore it completely. When that doesn’t work, I try to remember other situations when I was locked inside somewhere and didn’t even care or think about it. The eleven-hour flight I just took from Istanbul, for example.
“We are here”—Bobbi points down—“every night?”
“Just tonight,” I say. “Tomorrow I go back to the airport. I’m assuming you do, too?”
“They take us airport this?” She holds her wrists together.
“You mean with handcuffs?” I look from her enormous hands to her worried face. “I’m not sure.”
I stare at the WASH HANDS. I decide to make as many words out of the letters as I can, but then I don’t make any.
“We are here every night?”
“Just tonight,” I say. “One night.”
“Tomorrow they take us this?” She puts her hands together.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I assume so, yeah.”
“No!” Her eyes widen. “But tomorrow will be people in airport. See us, this?”
I’m on a fault line, I’m on a fault line.
“What we doing?” Bobbi asks.
“We’re waiting for someone to come and get us, so we can be processed. Whatever that means.”
I’m on a fault line and I’m losing ground.
“We are here every night?”
“You mean all night? Yes, we’re in jail all night.”
I’m on a fault line, I’m on a fault line, I’m on a fault line, and I’m battening down.
It’s a song Lars wrote after he left our band and started a new one. I saw him play it onstage at the Hemlock, the last time I saw him. I haven’t thought about it since then, but it’s running through my head now, over and over.
“Why? Why they taking me? I going Los Angeles, see my friend. He say no.”
“What did they tell you? Did they give you a reason?”
“They not saying me nothing!”
“Do they think you’re trying to live in the States?”
“We are here every night?”
“Just tonight. Tomorrow we go back to the airport.”
I’m so damn tired of waiting for the crash. Turning under tables and praying it’ll pass. I’m on a fault line––
“Tomorrow we go airport?” Bobbi asks me. I know when I look over, she’s going to have her wrists together. “With this?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “If we do, maybe you can put your sweatshirt over your hands so no one can see.”
“No,” she says. “With this? Would be bad.”
“Why is it so bad that people at the airport see that? Why do you care? Are you worried someone’s gonna film it and put it up on YouTube? That would get like twelve views. I wouldn’t even worry. Unless you’re on the run or something?”
“We are here every night?” she asks.
I’m on a fault line, I’m on a fault line, I’m on a fault line and I’m losing ground.
“What we doing?”
“We’re waiting.”
“Tomorrow we go airport this?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe we can ask the wardens when they come and get us.”
“What we doing?”
“We’re just sitting here.”
“What we doing?”
“We’re just sitting in a cell.”
“What we doing?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’re kind of—languishing.”
It goes on like this for hours, with Bobbi asking and me answering, and Bobbi asking again. I can’t tell whether she’s hiding something or having some kind of psychotic episode, or maybe it’s a reaction to her blood pressure. I feel like my own blood pressure’s starting to rise, and I want to ask her to stop talking, but I’m scared she’ll start screaming like before or have some kind of meltdown, so I answer every question in a calm voice and then try to ignore her and do steady yoga breaths until the next question comes.
I have to pee, but I don’t really want to pee ten centimeters away from her. I stand up and go to the door. I can’t see anything through the window but a section of empty hallway. I press a button on the intercom thing. Nothing happens. I press it a few more times. No one comes.
“I don’t believe it,” Bobbi says. “I don’t believe it. Tomorrow we go with this?”
I sit down and lean my head back on the wall. I try to work out what time it is. If I was at the airport for, say, six hours, then in the van for one hour, and in here going on maybe four hours, it’s probably around two in the morning.
Not feeling steady on my feet. Don’t feel at home on my own street. I’m on a fault line.
I close my eyes and I start picturing my friends, my American friends—in San Francisco, Oakland, LA, and New York. In New Orleans, Austin, Atlanta, and DC. And Ithaca, wherever that is. I think of my friends who took teaching jobs in small college towns I’ve never been to: Auburn, Alabama; Moscow, Idaho; Gambier, Ohio.
I think about my American friends and wonder if I’ll ever get to see them again. I think about them and I wonder if it’s possible to be a patriot of a country that isn’t yours. Not an intent-to-immigrate-type patriot. Just, like, a spectator on the sidelines, eating cotton candy and waving at the big parade.
I think of my American friends and I hope they’ll never picture me here, powerless and nullified, locked inside a jail cell, somewhere in Philadelphia. Because I’m scared that if they knew about it, they’d believe that if I wasn’t allowed in—if I got locked up and sent away—I must have done something wrong, and deserved this somehow.
“We are here every night?”
“Hey, Bobbi, do you have a family?”
“If I have family?”
“Yeah.”
“I having one daughter. And ex-husband.”
“I have a brother and a sister,” I tell her. “My brother and his wife are gonna have a baby. So I’m gonna be an auntie soon!”
“We staying here every night before airport?”
It’s just a fault line posing as a punch line, says it won’t hurt me but just give it time.
It’s just a fault line posing as a friend of mine. Say you’d never hurt me but that’s just your line.
I close my eyes again and see myself back at the airport. I see all the officers, sitting around talking. But in my mind, I’m not sitting across the room from them like I was earlier today; I’m sitting among them, and we’re chatting. Miller says something rude about his ex-wife and I say, “You know what? You shouldn’t judge all relationships by one bad one. It sounds like you ended up with the wrong person. But you could meet the right person one day. It’s just a matter of chemistry.” Miller smiles and admits that I may be right.
“And you,” I tell Coots in my mind. “You could probably do pretty well for yourself. You kind of look like a skewed Ryan Phillippe. Maybe you could grow your hair out a bit. And honestly, you should probably think about switching jobs. This one isn’t doing you any favors.” The other officers laugh and tell him maybe he should listen to me. I’m basking in the feelings of camaraderie when I hear voices outside the door. I open my eyes. Two officers are escorting a girl down the corridor in the direction of the front desk.
Hot Little Hands Page 24
