Unreliable Justice

More than anything I want to throw it all away and start again. Not from the beginning, or middle, or end, but from a blameless place, one with no path to, or exit from. Back then, every day felt like a war outside, and I might get caught in the crossfire. I had no control over the outcome. I had no control over my own self, whatever that may be.

I got off the bus at Henry Corner and stared at the law office across from the bus stop. The tormented people waiting outside in the heat had this settled look about them as if they had just heard a news report that a nuke was about to level the city, but they’d all decided to finish their lives together, but alone, ‘cause where else could they go? A security guard was smoking at the edge of the car park across from the law office. A few fragile-eyed people came in and out of the big golden rimmed revolving door. They looked to me to be completely colourless, all those legal documents in their hands, envelopes and green leather binders, neat wooden pens that probably cost more than my entire outfit. These people, like weather-beaten plaques on a stone wall, held onto their documents with white knuckles. I walked the edge of the city with a swim bag brushing my hips. Escape, chicken burgers, wings, images of these delicious foods flashed in my mind. I thought about angels too for a second, but mostly just if you could fry their wings and if they might taste yummy or have that stinky bitter taste some vitamins do.

Arriving at Sands Pool was a doozy. The instructor was already calling the other girls into the water, which meant I had to sneak past her to the changing rooms to avoid being roasted in front of my entire team. Our instructor at Sands is called Ruth. Ruth is what the older girls call a ‘huge bitch’ as if being a bitch varies in size and weight like some sort of investment. I agree with them though, she is a bitch to me but I’ve seen how she treats the other girls, especially the prettier, well-to-do ones, and it made me warm to her. When Ruth saw me walking out of the locker room she hurried over. Her pink, Dollar Store flip flops quacking the whole way around the pool. The look on her face seemed to change as she became aware of the sound her crappy shoes made.

“Where have you been? That’s the second time this week, Rachel.”

“Sorry, Ms.R my stomachs been—”

“Save it. Stretch and get in the pool. And what are you a cow? How many stomachs you got? I’ll speak with you after conditioning.”

Her voice boomed over the pool. The other girls giggled but I ignored it. Mom says people who laugh at you only see the parts of themselves they don’t like. Usually, if they don’t have something to joke about with each other they scrutinise me and call me ‘freckle face’. During a break one time, Cindy said my face looks a lot like if someone hurled shit through a screen door on a ginger girl. That time I broke down after the lesson. It was hard not to imagine the angel in question up in heaven holding a metal sifter in front of my pudgy baby face and cranking the handle while another angel floats just above the sifter with they’re pants down, shitting. Why did I care so much? I was young. Nowadays I see girls that remind me of those bullies at Sands Pool and they’ve painted on the freckles which I was so ashamed of all my life.

I went into Ruth’s office after practice expecting a lecture about tardiness and self-image.

“Are you doing alright, Rachel?” She’d said.

“...” I looked around, confused.

“Is there anything going on at home that I should be aware of? I haven’t seen your Mom at meets in a while,” She knelt over her thighs and touched my arm in a way that was supposed to be tender but came off as awkward and forced. I fixated on a picture of a red sports car bending around a race track completely engulfed in smoke on her work calendar.

“Nothing comes to mind.” I couldn’t stand the look on her face. It was that same look I gave people at the law offices.

On the bus, the week after the tardy incident, I saw a man on a bike get hit by a car. The biker was coming up along the side of the bus on Cleveland Ave. when he got split. It was his fault; he was turning into the right-hand lane too quickly in front of morning rush traffic. For a brief moment, I thought it was a giant razor blade coming out of the roof of the car that’d sliced him up. The bus passed as it happened. A few cars honked and I saw dark red blood dripping down the windshield as his body hovered in the air for a few aired moments. He was the ugliest man I’d ever seen and I could’ve sworn he winked at me while he was up there, above the intersection. His face was all screwed up like he ate something bitter, but I realised the razor blade was a surfboard which the driver must’ve painted silver. He looked so peaceful hovering up there above the morning traffic. Then his body crumpled on the cool asphalt and I had to turn away. He looked free there just for a second, flying through the air like a discus. Buddy, my friend from the neighbourhood, showed me what a discus was, and schooled me on how to throw one ‘in theory’ he likes to say. Not much about ‘em has changed since they were used in Greece like 3000 years ago. Though, they aren’t made of lead anymore. Buddy’s two years younger than me but he’s pretty strong for a twerpy boy. We arm wrestle a lot and play rough. He lives just down from our trailer and his mom Clair used to drop him off at my place when she worked weekend day shifts. Grandma says Clair is a good momma and always was sticking to her word. She ain’t outta pocket one bit, nope, she’s right on the money, that one, Grandma says.

Buddy’s real cool cause he doesn’t cry when we play and he gets dead legged or if I jab him in the arm and it starts to bruise. We try to play tennis and games that involve a lot of pain and stuff cuz that’s what’s fun about games like that. It’s fun to see who taps out first. This one time though, he slapped my arm so hard I got mad and picked up a rock and chucked it at his head. It missed and hit him in the shoulder but torn his shirt and left a bloody gash. He didn’t hold it against me though. Buddy’s real smart too, like he knows all about science stuff and what the rocks are made up of and gravitational fields or something like that. He says he wants to work at NASA like his uncle who’s from someplace in Germany. When he asked what job I want when I grow up I couldn’t think of one.

The next day at Sands Pool I came out of the toilet and saw Liz kissing Roya by the vending machines. I could tell that it was more than just a playful thing cause they were sort of hiding back there. I told Cindy and the others straight after. They thought I was trying to start some goss with them to get on the groups’ good side, but then Cindy saw The Couple In Question walking out of the locker room together and asked straight up if it was true. They both blushed and Roya started to cry. The other girls made fun of them for weeks, calling them Lebanese and Titty Lickers. Cindy did this thing where she turned around and hugged herself pretending to be Roya making out with Liz, ‘Oh baby, you’re so sexy in your— (kissing noises) pink swim cap. I don’t know what I’d— (kissing noises) do without you’. Roya left Sands Pool after one of the girls drew a cartoon of her and Liz naked in the pool and taped it inside the door of her locker. Liz just got quiet and started to lose her colour. I noticed she’d put her headphones on right after practice and only take them off when she was about to change into the suit. The others are a little scared of me now that I started this thing but not as scared as they are mean, so I resumed my post as the team punching bag after the Liz and Roya thing wore off.

Buddy came over one day with a map of Europe and showed me exactly where his Uncle was from in Bavaria.

“It’s a tiny town, and he says they eat pretzels and cold ham for breakfast! And they drink sodas for breakfast! Can you believe that?” He asks if I can pronounce the name and I try and fail a few times until he bursts out laughing. I have to act interested to keep him around and after a while, he gets bored of talking about Germany and we go climb the banyan trees to look for bugs. We couldn’t find any cool ones, so we tried to get as high as we could in the tree. Banyans are crazy webbed trees that look sort of like the ligaments and tendons in your legs. They sprawl out in all different directions and seem to make no sense at all in the way they grow. At the top of the tree, we looked out over the horizon scattered with tin roofs from our neighbour’s shanties. Buddy and I took turns trying to spot each other’s place, and guessing who’s house belongs to which old neighbour.

“That one over there is yours, the one with that rusted bit on the edge that looks kinda like Africa,” Buddy pointed his pale finger far out.

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“You ever get scared of falling when we climb?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“You ever get scared in the dark when you wake up and you gotta pee?” Buddy’s a talker.

“No, Buddy, do you?” I say.

“Are you ever scared that maybe I’m gonna grow up to rule the world and you’re gonna have to live in it?”

I found a pair of old goggles Mom got me in my locker at Sands Pool and tried to swim with them for a lesson but they kept filling up with water. They must’ve started to dry rot because the straps were cracked and had stretch marks on the edge.

“What’s going on today Rachel? You’re slowing up on us?” Ruth didn’t yell this time but her voice carried.

“Sorry Ms.R, my goggles are broke.”

“Like your family.” One of the girl's whispers loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Hey! Who said that? Cindy? Was it you? That is totally unacceptable to say to a teammate. You girls are gonna fess up or everyone gets 2500 meters fly, except Rachel!” She spit out her words. Then she took me out of the pool and wrapped me in a warm towel. Inside her office, she made me a chamomile tea and brought out a pack of chocolate chip cookies she’d bought from the vending machine. She signed and sat down to share the cookies.

“You know Rachel, the days are long but the years are short.”

Back in the park, Buddy told had told his Mom that he slipped on a wet branch and fell out of the tree. It didn’t matter to her how it happened, she told him, it was pure carelessness on his part. He shouldn’t have been climbing trees, she said. We’ve talked about this. It cost her nearly 2,000 dollars to get the bone set and a proper cast, which he had to keep on for five months. Luckily, Buddy has a highly developed pain tolerance. His friends all signed the pinching red gauze he picked out for his cast but he never asked me to. I watched them from across the street and saw him notice me standing there with my arms folded then quickly look away. We stopped hanging out so much after that, even though he said he didn’t hold it against me.

The next day I walked into town alone to look at the law office people. It took me about half an hour to get there on foot but I didn’t have anything else to do. It was so hot that afternoon. We lived the motto: Endless Summer, which isn’t as glamorous as it sounds, it turns out. Everyone was in a mood that made me feel shapeless. Like an oversized hoodie on one of those starving souls from the third world, you see in textbooks. There was a new security guard on duty and fewer people were outside smoking than is normal for a weekday. The sun was high and you couldn’t escape the heat. When you stepped into a shadow it came from underneath but if you flapped your shirt it just steamed the sweat off your skin and turned your whole chest into a hot bath. A man in a white collared shirt that looked brand new had his sleeves rolled up and sported tight-fitting khaki trousers stepped out of the office door. He had pleasant features. The security guard nodded to him. He walked over to the smoking bench and produced a small bronze case that popped open when he hit a little button on the side. He took a long, dark brown cigarette with a gold filter out of the case, and lit it with a match he seemed to already have in his hand. I slurred toward him, dragging my feet across the pavement, each step getting heavier. My nose wrinkled. I had to try and resist itching it. The man looked familiar. He turned left, eyeing me up and I kept walking towards the bench where he sat smoking. When I got within twelve feet of him, I could scan his face and saw he had freckles and dark blue eyes that have the quality of a deep body of water. His hair was brown and fading to grey but I could tell it had once been a cold shade of ginger. Some twenty feet away a guy carrying a yellow legal pad fell crossing the road and the security guard looked at him with modest sincerity, as if to say, I knew that was going to happen.