The Gift of Our Wounds

by Arno Michaelis

  I was humbled and more than a little bit disappointed when, after college, I couldn’t get a job in law enforcement. Here I was with an education from one of the top universities, having majored in criminal justice and sociology, and I couldn’t get my foot in the door. I couldn’t even get a callback. I think a lot of it was that many of the places I applied to didn’t see a “Pardeep Kaleka” fitting into their police culture. I must have tried twenty or thirty municipalities before I finally landed a job with the Milwaukee PD. Milwaukee had a diverse police force—white, black, Latino, and a smattering of Asian—but even in Wisconsin’s largest city I was the first Punjabi Sikh.

  Before I could get out on the street, I had to spend nine months in training at the police academy. It was like boot camp, very regimented and militaristic. One minute you were being screamed at to shine your shoes, the next, ordered down to the floor for pushups. Kaleka! Drop and give me twenty! Kaleka! You didn’t call me “Sir.” Kaleka! Tuck in your uniform! Salute with a proper snap! Come to attention! Let’s move! Push yourself. One more! Seven recruits dropped out the first week. It was survival of the fittest, and the most determined. They broke us down to build us up—but what had they created?

  After graduating from the academy, my probationary beat was in the worst part of the city, in a neighborhood with abandoned houses, boarded-up businesses, and an epic crack epidemic. A community made famous by a documentary, Milwaukee 53206, that was named for its zip code, notorious for having the highest incarceration rate of black men in the entire country. Shootings and homicides were a regular occurrence there. We called the place Little Beirut. The residents called it “The Zoo.” The area was so crime ridden that it was crawling with cops, and backups were always just around the corner. My shift was 4:00 to midnight, the time when all of the action happened. I quickly learned community policing wasn’t part of the job. There was no time to walk the beat and get to know who lived there. My partner and I rushed from one assignment to the next with no break in between. Shootings, knifings, drug wars, gang fights, and domestic-violence calls were the norm. My partner was the driver and I was the runner. Every shift meant at least one foot chase and I always had to be ready to run.

  When my probation period ended, I was assigned a new beat and a new partner. John Delaney’s reputation as a tough, no-nonsense city cop preceded him. He was highly respected on the street, and the people in our jurisdiction knew better than to pull any BS on his watch. It didn’t take me long to understand why. On my third day with him, Delaney and I left our godforsaken territory to get lunch at a pizza place in a better part of town. As we walked into the restaurant, a guy sprinted past us and out the door while a lady inside screamed that he had her purse. Delaney and I took off after the purse-snatcher. This time, Delaney was on foot and I was driving the squad car. I caught up with them in an alleyway where Delaney had the purse-snatcher hemmed in. He proceeded to beat him stupid. Okay, we’re not in Kansas anymore, I thought as I watched him pummel the perp. I stepped in to cuff the guy, who, I was pretty sure, was never going to steal another purse. Delaney explained that that was how we subdued criminals in the city. We roughed them up until they knew enough not to do that kind of shit again. It wasn’t what we were taught in the academy. It was just the way it was done.

  Got it, I said.

  I was a year into the job when I married a Punjabi Sikh woman I’d met during my last year at Marquette. I’d seen Jaspreet around but never introduced myself, until one night I went to a concert on campus where she was performing an Indian dance. She was dressed in a white Punjabi suit and I thought she looked beautiful. After the show, I got up the nerve to introduce myself. A group of us were going to an after-party. She and her friends were welcome to come. In our culture, girls usually didn’t go to parties unattended, so I was surprised when she showed up.

  The party was on the rooftop of an apartment building with a stunning view of the city. My buddies and I were doing shots and I saw Jaspreet, standing in a corner. I was in the midst of my wild days after breaking up with Jenny. It was a period when I was a dog with girls and drinking far too much. Emboldened by the whiskey shots, I went over to her and we made small talk. I was already half in the bag, but I continued drinking. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my apartment the next morning.

  I called my friend Harpreet to ask what happened between the party and my place. Apparently he had driven me home, and Jaspreet still had my jacket. I’d offered it to her when she had gotten cold. He passed on her phone number and I called. “I’m sorry if I made a fool of myself,” I said. Jaspreet was kind enough to say that I hadn’t. She and Harpreet found me laid out in the bathtub with all of my clothes on. The two of them walked me outside, got me into a car, and Harpreet had taken me home. I felt so embarrassed by my behavior. “Was I nice to you?” I asked. “I hope I was because I intended to be.” I was relieved when she said I’d been a perfect gentleman. We made plans to meet for dinner that night, ostensibly so I could retrieve my jacket.

  So began our courtship. After three years of dating, we were married in a traditional Sikh ceremony at the temple. My parents were thrilled that I’d married within my faith. They admired Jaspreet for her kindness and her strength. I’d always said I would only marry for love, and I had.

  * * *

  I GAVE POLICING my best shot, but it wasn’t for me. One of my last assignments was a shooting involving a young boy. He’d been on the streets, selling fake drugs, and someone paid him back with a .22. The kid was “motherfucking” me all the way to the hospital. Motherfucking pig. Dirty motherfucker. You ain’t shit. I ain’t saying shit. I took his feistiness as a sign he was going to survive and told his mother as much when she arrived at his bedside, but I was wrong. He died that night. The kid was probably twelve or thirteen years old.

  Every one of those kinds of incidents brought me closer to the realization that I had gone into police work with naive expectations. I’d started out with such a simplistic mindset: the good guys protected law-abiding citizens from the bad guys. Of course, it was so much more complex. Sometimes I’d see kids whose lives were so chaotic that they were actually relieved to be arrested and locked up. They’d fall asleep in the back of the squad car because they felt safe there. It was as if they were thinking, Thank God I was caught and this is over. I don’t have to do this anymore. My heart hurt for those kids. My background, my interest, was studying human behavior and using whatever knowledge I gained to work for the betterment of the community. But it wasn’t as easy as the good guys locking up the bad guys. Humankind just wasn’t that simple. Yet in order to survive the trauma of policing you almost have to maintain that simplistic worldview because to lose it, as I was beginning to do, made you vulnerable in an unforgiving profession. Cops have a saying: “I’d rather be tried by twelve than carried by six,” meaning going home alive after every shift justified whatever it took to survive the job. Better to be brought up on charges for excessive force—or worse—than give someone the benefit of the doubt and be carried out in a coffin. I began waking up in the middle of the night, second-guessing everything I did on the job. Had I been too easy during that stop?… Was I careless?… He could have killed me … If she had pulled a gun, would I have been able to shoot her? I didn’t want to be the cop who pulled the trigger too fast. I didn’t want the job to make me hard and cynical. And the cop I wanted to be was beginning to seem impracticable and naive. Sometimes I’d be awake all night and go to work feeling sick in the morning. I suffered from asthma and anxiety. Jaspreet tried to help, but there was no comforting me. One night she asked me about work and I snapped. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it—not ever—because it meant reliving the shit I had just been through. People always said it was the badge that took law enforcement officers on a power trip. That wasn’t true. It was the gun and bulletproof vest that inflated your sense of importance and invincibility. Badges didn’t do damage. Guns did. I wanted to help people, not kill them.

/>   I was four years on the job when I responded to the call that gave me absolute clarity about what I needed to do. It was late at night and the dispatcher had gotten a report of “shots fired,” a routine call for my partner and me. We arrived in the area to find a young woman slumped over the steering wheel of her car. I slipped into the passenger seat beside her. She was probably nineteen or twenty, and she had a bullet hole in her head. I looked up and saw a man walking toward me. He was hysterical and crying, “I killed her! I killed her!” Choking out his words, he said he had shot his girlfriend during an argument. I didn’t mean to do it. I was just so fucking angry! I’m so sorry. So sorry! He handed me his gun and I cuffed him and put him in the back of the squad car. Returning to the young woman, I felt a deep sense of grief. She was so young. I wondered what her life had been about. Had she finished high school? Gone to college? Did she have friends? Have big plans for her future? Was she loved?

  It was my job to notify the next of kin. As it turned out, she lived nearby with her parents. It was around 1:00 A.M. when I knocked on their front door. A man answered and the look on his face told me he knew what was coming. I asked after the girl and he said he was her father. “I’m so sorry, sir,” I said, explaining that his daughter had been killed. The man struggled to hold it together while I told him what I knew. His wife stood behind him, clutching his shoulder. When she heard that her daughter was dead she fell to her knees, wailing. Her name was Rose, the mother said. She was a good daughter, but she’d been involved with the wrong man. They fought constantly and he abused her. Her mother had tried to warn her, but she never listened. “My daughter had a baby!” the mother sobbed. A two-year-old who was asleep upstairs. What were they to tell their granddaughter? Her daughter loved that little girl so much. They were everything to each other. What would happen to the child now?

  I saw the agony on the woman’s face and choked back my sadness. Jaspreet was pregnant with the first of our four children, and I couldn’t imagine our child growing up without her. My stomach churned. Most of the homicides I’d handled involved scumbag dope dealers, never the young mother of a small child, who physically resembled my wife.

  I told the parents I would stay in touch and gave them my card. “Call me anytime, day or night,” I said. Walking back to my squad car, I pictured their daughter, so young, her whole life ahead of her, slumped over the steering wheel of her car. Feelings of sadness and frustration bubbled to a boil of helplessness and anger. I wanted to be able to do something. But I can’t do shit about this. I couldn’t save her from her abuser. I couldn’t save her for her little girl. I couldn’t make it better for anyone. All I could do was notify her heartbroken parents. This is not where I belong.

  That night I knew I could not do the job for another year, much less twenty—not without turning into someone I didn’t want to be. If I were going to make a difference, it wasn’t going to be wearing a badge and carrying a gun. I needed to try to reach people before they needed the cops.

  A month later, I handed in my resignation.

  * * *

  JASPREET DELIVERED OUR first child soon after, a daughter we named Amaris. I went back to work at Dad’s gas station and decided to return to school for my teaching certificate. Two weeks after the start of the semester, Scott Campbell, the principal of an alternative school in the same dicey part of the city I’d once patrolled, contacted me to say he’d heard I’d left the department and was working toward becoming a teacher. One of his teachers had just walked off the job and he was looking for a replacement. With my experience with at-risk kids and my familiarity with the neighborhood, I would be a perfect fit for the job. I could teach there while I was pursuing my official teaching certificate. Was I interested?

  When could I start?

  How about tomorrow?

  The Northwest Opportunities Vocational Academy (NOVA) was a last-chance school for at-risk seventh through twelfth graders living on the northwest side of Milwaukee. They were tough, troubled kids who came from poor, single-parent households and had been labeled incorrigible and unfit for public school. Most were mixed up with gangs and drugs and all of the other evils of the mean streets of the city. Some had criminal records; some were on probation.

  Because I had just come from policing in the same neighborhoods where these students lived, I felt competent to deal with whatever I was confronted with. I knew the population well. I had seen where these kids came from and what they went home to. They lived in barren apartments with dark, makeshift curtains covering the windows and stained mattresses on the floor. Their cupboards were bare and their refrigerators were empty. As a cop, I had always made it a rule never to sit down when I went to a call because I didn’t know if there were rats or cockroaches crawling around. It was common to go into an apartment and find a parent and four or five other adults inebriated or strung out on drugs while children roamed around unsupervised. Those kinds of conditions passed as normal for these kids. I called it normalized misery. There was a code switch between their home lives and the expectations of school. They came to class on Mondays agitated from the weekend and ready to fight, calmed down during the week, and left in survival mode on Fridays.

  My strategy for helping my students was to first make an initial investment in them by getting to know their stories. During my first week there, I met a sixteen-year-old kid named Devante who was always in trouble. I saw him sitting outside the principal’s office and introduced myself. “Hey, man, how you doing?” I said, taking the chair next to him. “Why are you here?”

  Devante looked at me quizzically and explained that he’d had an argument with his teacher. I listened patiently as he talked about how unfair the teacher was and that she had it out for him. He gave me a bunch of half-assed reasons for why he was justified in his behavior. After about fifteen minutes, I said, “Let’s go to the classroom. I’ll have the teacher come outside and you can apologize to her.” Devante shook his head and groused that that wasn’t going to happen. “Look, Devante,” I said. “The teacher is having a hard time. She has twenty other students. She wants to be able to help you, but think about how difficult it must be for her with so many others who also need her help. Have empathy for her.”

  Invoking empathy and developing a connection resonated with wounded kids. I’d seen it over and over when I was policing. Devante finally softened and agreed to hear the teacher out and apologize to her. We walked to the classroom and they talked outside in the hallway. When they were finished, I suggested Devante also ask for forgiveness from his classmates for disrupting the class. He hemmed and hawed, but conceded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Teaching empathy and empowerment was almost like a magic pill. I’d seen many a student do an about-face when they were put in a position of helping others. An incident that exemplified the point was when Scott was robbed at gunpoint after school one day. We were the last two to leave when, in my rearview mirror, I saw a young black teen holding a gun to his head. Instinctively, I threw my car into reverse in an attempt to run the kid over before he shot Scott. That had managed to scare him away. When our students heard about what happened, they took it upon themselves to help secure the school and keep everyone safe. For us, NOVA became a sanctuary from the madness of our Milwaukee environment.

  We had a hundred really troubled kids in our school that the system had given up on, throwaways that no one else was willing to take on, and every one of them was capable of growing into a good, productive adult. We made a difference there. More than teaching, our job was to help the students discover that they were not the worthless human beings that society had labeled them as. They were valuable young people with plenty to offer their communities and the world.

  Watching the students find themselves, that was where my heart lay. I had found my niche. During my seven-year tenure teaching at NOVA, I’d experienced deep heartache and witnessed countless success stories. I thought I would never leave.

  If the temple shooting had
n’t happened, I’m certain I’d still be there.

  FIVE

  A CALLING

  Truth is high, but higher yet is truthful living.

  Guru Nanak Dev Ji

  Arno

  After years of alcohol abuse, drunk-driving charges, jail time, and being buried beneath a mountain of regret over being intoxicated for the first eleven years of my daughter’s life that will haunt me to my grave, I decided to quit drinking. With my daughter tucked safely away in bed, I spent the last hours of 2003 in my parents’ garage, with rave music blasting and a case of Bud Light on ice beside my chair. Chugging bottle after bottle toward sobriety, I had to choke down the final few. This is your last case of beer, motherfucker, I told myself. Make it count.

  After draining my last brew, I wrote a drunken email to my buddy Dave, a recovering alcoholic I knew from work. I knew about his sobriety because he told me about it in granular detail every fucking day we worked together. “I want to quit drinking and go to AA and I want you to be my sponsor,” I wrote him. Dave responded right back. WTF is a sober guy doing up at three in the morning, I wondered. His response was melodramatic, I thought, about how I needed to check into a hospital because I could die from the DTs if I wasn’t properly supervised during my withdrawal. I didn’t really know anything about AA except that it involved going to a few meetings and having a sponsor. Dave wrote that I would have to attend meetings every night for the first three months. Wait. What?

  I read his response, passed out, and woke up sometime on New Year’s Day 2004 with an epic hangover. In the midst of my suffering, I contemplated my next step. I made a deal with myself: rather than spending every night for three months—and surely beyond—in a church basement with chain-smoking, black-coffee-swilling dry drunks, I would quit cold turkey on my own. And that’s what I did. I haven’t tasted alcohol since. The very few times I’ve been tempted, I’ve only had to recall my then eleven-year-old daughter’s response when, a few days after my decision, I told her I’d stopped drinking. “I’m so glad, Dad,” she said. “I always hated it when you were drunk.”