when will I be healed?

As some of you may know, before I was in charge of wiping butts and filling sippy cups, I had another employer. I was an assistant district attorney. It was a really great job, actually. I made some wonderful friends and we always had fun going to lunch and going out for drinks after work. And I would get to work late. That is at least H's perception of my job, because that is all I told him about. It never seemed right to tell him about interviewing a girl in my office first thing in the morning who had been anally raped by some sex offender her mom picked up on a bar, or about the autopsy photos of a murdered two year old I had to see before lunch, or about the douche bag who quote "really [doesn't] get all that enhancement stuff" who beat my boss in his re-election bid. It's just not good dinner conversation and so instead I just told him about something fun my friend Sheri said at lunch or something annoying that my boss M____ S_____ had done.

And I never ever told him about my most disturbing case ever, my first felony trial, which was more gruesome to me that any murder, and that is the guy who had 9000 pictures of child porn on his computer. There are things that the brain is never supposed to see. And if it does see them, it becomes damaged. Like you've been shot. My brain was shot by this loser defendant whose computer password was pussy. There was one picture in particular of a little girl about Annabelle's age. I'll spare you the details. But it was sickening.

When you have a gun shot wound or a broken bone or amputation, it heals. Slowly. But when it rains or is cold out, you still feel that twinge of pain, phantom limb syndrome, whatever. And so here I have been, in Stepford for 2 years now. And the first summer, I went to traffic court, and had a perfectly lovely conversation with a guy about his open felony warrants and he and I chatted for some time before I realized that people were staring at us, me the white girl in the suit and him the black dude with the open felony warrants. Fast forward to the fall, when my neighbor was murdered by his grandson. Decapitated. We found out about it on our walk back from the park. My girlfriend was so horrified she almost vomited. I just wondered aloud if the defendant was a juvenile or an adult. Then the following summer, when all the moms in my moms club adopted a homeless family and were trying to get the dad a job, until they found out that he had been to prison. They were all shocked and the mom who was the head do-gooder was so apologetic about it and I thought, "well of course he's an ex-con" and wondered why we weren't going to help him any more.

Annabelle doesn't know about my wound. As far as she knows, mama's job has always been to take care of her and papa and talullah and keep the house clean. Most days, I am fine with that

Fast forward to this spring when I read the Steig Larsson girl with the dragon tattoo books. I had lunch with a girlfriend and we were discussing them. She told me that she had a very hard time reading them because she found the subject matter so disturbing. I had to think for a moment. What was disturbing in those books. Finally I remembered it, "you mean the anal rape?" She said "well that, and the incest. The father and the brother." I nodded, and pretended to think it was disturbing too.

And now I wonder, when will I be healed?

Don Brown

Don Brown is dead. Dead and gone and buried today. To say he was a grumpy old fart would not be accurate. If you only knew Don Brown and had no concept of what a fart was, you would think farts are not at all pleasant, which, of course, they can be. Dexter Patterson is a grumpy old fart. Not Don Brown. He was irascible and misanthropic. Sly like a fox. Qualities which I personally find endearing, but I didn't necessarily want to talk to him. When I saw this icon of a bygone era in the courtroom, I wanted to run and hide out of fear.

By the time I came to Conroe, he was already on the decline. But he still beat me like a drum in trial. It was an unlawful carrying of a firearm case. The guy was driving in his car with a handgun in the door pocket. In my mind at the time, my youthful, cocky, "we live in the Heights, recycle our trash, don't own guns and never will" mind, the case was clear cut. The guy was guilty. We set out to pick a jury. Don walked in at the last minute, wearing a light blue, suede, nubuck- style jacket with gold cording on the shoulders and lighter shade of blue Wrangler dress pants and, of course, cowboy boots. His white hair was slicked back. I watched the panel of potential jurors as they watched him. Regular good folks, the kind of people that our current commander in chief thinks cling to their guns and religion. It was like John Wayne had walked in the courtroom. And there I was. Twenty-something in my Ann Taylor belted suit. Mercifully, I knew enough to to think "oh shit, this ain't good."

I can't remember if he called me Stella or Miss Stevens, but when he talked he spoke with that peculiar East Texas accent that you don't hear too much nowadays, in an age where everyone is from nowhere. Regardless, it sounded snidely and condescending. Of course, addressing me by my Christian name only occurred when we were conferencing with the judge, to the jury I was the government's attorney. I was the government trying to take their guns away. The defendant was traveling (funny how he never mentioned that to the cop-- see how I am still a sore loser?) and it was his God-given right to have a gun in his car to protect himself if the need should arise. It would be a stretch to say the jury deliberated for10 minutes, because I could hear a lot of toilet flushing going on in the jury room and afterwards, they did not want to talk to me, just to the old gun-slinger, the meaner, crankier, wrinklier, Western version of Matlock.

My only consolation was that a few months later, my friend beat him in a DWI case. She did it with grace and charm, qualities that will get you a long way with a jury when your opponent is as mean as a put-upon rattlesnake. After the guilty verdict, she very sweetly asked the jury for the maximum punishment and got it-- minus about 10 days. After that trial, Mr. Brown called her "Maxumiiiiime -Caru-liiiine." And for years after, on a regular basis brought her huge sacks of candy.

He had a stroke. And he was on death's door, or so we were told by his putative son. But he came back. His skin was green, his nails were yellow, but he was back dammit. And I loved him for it. And a couple of years later he had another stroke. And again we were told, this is it, he won't make it. But he did and a month later was back in the saddle, maybe a little lopsided, but back in the saddle.

And so after the second stroke I just assumed he wasn't going to die, like my mom says "cosa mala nunca muere."

He wasn't mala, not really, not by a long shot-- just a cantankerous old fart, okay, maybe a sour, cantankerous old fart, with my apologies to Mister Patterson and the fart.

Monday story- time

Mondays at work usually mean a jury trial. Which means you get to work early, print out some signs for the prospective jurors to look at and do some last minute stuff before you rush to court. Then you get to court and that is when you figure out what case you are going to try, because invariably the case you spent the previous week preparing for has settled or the defense attorney has the flu, or your officer can't be there or some other such nonsense. So then you scramble to get witnesses lined up, call off the other witnesses for the cancelled case, do some other pleas on other cases that were set, and then finally you pick your jury. Then you figure out in your allotted 30 minutes which people out of sixty hate you because they don't like your suit, your accent, your point of view. Then a quick break for lunch and then trial starts. Mondays at work can be exhausting.

This is Monday, and today I took Annabelle to the library for story-time. Now let me preface this--- I have never done this before because fun little activities like this are always during the day-- scheduling that proves that there is a vast and definitely right wing conspiracy against working moms. So I had no idea what to expect. I got there and met a nice mom and her daughter-- Annabelle promptly started eating her food. Then the other moms started filing in. I checked them out, they all looked pretty normal, mostly my age-ish, educated types. We all sat in chairs in a circle and the story-time lady, Sidney, told us it was time to start. I was wondering why no one was sitting down in the center for the story-- I soon found out. Sidney said "it's wheels on the bus time" and then all the normal, my age-ish, educated looking women started to sing "The wheels on the bus"-- oh yeah-- did I mention there were hand movements too? My first instinct was die a death of hysterical laughing at the sight of all these grown women singing this ridiculous song. Then I saw that Annabelle was into it. She was dancing and mimicking the movements and I also realized that I knew most of the words. So how did I learn these words? I am definitely not the type of mom who listens to kid music, because frankly it's all garbage and I don't think you foster music appreciation by having kids listen to bad music. So it must have been something I learned as a child, because for some reason, as a society we have decided that kids need to experience swish, swish, swish, etc., and as I realized this I decided not to be so judgy-- when in f***ing rome, sing wheels on the bus dammit.

All in all, it was actually pretty fun.

On the Hypen front, here is a snippet of the conversation I just had:

H: "You know what I think I should be? A professional golfer, what are your thoughts on that?"

Me: "Do you know how to play golf?"

H: "No, but I could learn."