Scenes from Family Court: Meeting in the Ladies Room
After one of my many court appearances, I found myself in the Ladies' wherein a girl who looked to be 16 or 17 was weeping in silent dignity. Stuck for a moment in the doorway, I finally scurried into a stall and stayed as long as I could. Finally, I had to come out and when I did, I was again struck by her composure as she dried her tears. Her disinterest in fleeing outside, or into a stall, like most of us did to fall apart. Her lack of interest in what others might think, good or bad. I'd never seen anyone cry with class before (I certainly don't) and she was so young!
Even so, old enough to be her mother, I figured her to be there because of her meth-head boyfriend and the infant that was almost certainly downstairs in the Day Care Center. Hopefully, just the one. In other words, I condescended and I assumed and I did so with great specificity.
"it'll be OK, honey," I said. "I've been doing this forever. Yours will be over soon, just hang in there." More twaddle like that. It'll go faster if you use birth control and just accept that you'll never get child support out of the tweaker, I thought but didn't say. She was a kid; how bad could it be? Maybe now she's learned her lesson.
"No it won't," she corrected me. Calmly, bathed in the magic power of the Ladies' Room Confessional, she informed me that she had been "been doing this" all her life.
I tried not to scoff openly. "How old are you?"
"Seventeen. And Mom and I have been fighting him off that entire time."
According to her, Dad was the classic abuser who'd beaten, abused, stolen from, etc. both her and her mother for her whole life. According to her, the Court kept trying to force her to spend time with him and I don't know what all else because she started in again with the doomed but valiant weeping. Then she just cut it off and started repacking her purse.
There was no boyfriend, no baby, no meth.
(There might be a tad bit of over-identification with Mom since she sees herself as involved even in her infancy. But still.)
I'd condescended and assumed perfect knowledge of her situation without a shred of information -- exactly what's happens to me, to everyone, stuck in Family Court.
So I shut my big mouth and scavenged for tissues in my purse to save her nose from Courthouse TP. She accepted my Kleenex gracefully and left without a backward glance.
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