The first 17 years don’t matter much, so I’ll just tell you this: Dad was in prison, Mom didn’t come home one day. Maybe she didn’t love me. Maybe she died. Maybe she was too coked up to remember where we lived. But I was almost 18 anyway, so I just kept paying the bills in her name until the money ran out. That’s when I met Henry.
Big Henry owned a garage downtown that people only went to after every other option was exhausted. I tried to keep the electricity turned on by getting rid of Mom’s ’87 wagon. Big Henry was the only one who would let a 17-year-old sell a car that was registered in someone else’s name. That should have been my first clue. But he said I had an honest face and even offered me a part-time job that I was just hungry enough to accept.
By then the debt collectors had figured out Mom was never paying them back and decided they’d settle for the house instead. Big Henry let me stay in a room behind the garage, but made me leave from 10pm to 3am every night. That was the time for his other business. One morning I came back early and saw Maria, his niece, crying while an older man forced something up her denim skirt. She was fourteen. Big Henry caught me watching and pulled me away by the hair.
I earned enough to pay for my room, two meals a day, and thirty dollars spending money each week. I cleaned out the cars people brought in until they were in somewhat respectable selling condition.
Almost every time I saw dangling ignitions or broken windows.
Twice I saw car seats and baby wipes.
Once I saw blood.
But I didn’t see these things, really, if anybody asked.
At 10 pm on my 18th birthday, Big Henry told me not to leave. That it was time for me to begin a position in his other business. I could take home five hundred a week, plus 20% of what I made. I could move into my own apartment. Buy real food. He said all this as he unzipped his pants and rubbed around inside. I’d never actually seen a man naked before, but I couldn’t imagine they were all as hideous as this. The money was tempting, but I’d seen what it did to his other girls. The bruises and the track marks and the soulless eyes.
“No thanks, I’ll just stick with the cars.”
He laughed. “This isn’t up for negotiation.”
“Everything can be negotiated.”
Aparently not.
That was the last I’d seen of Big Henry. When I wouldn’t take the second job, I lost the first one, too. So I was eighteen, unemployed, and homeless. The next five years were a blur of working shitty jobs for even shittier wages and eating the food other people left on their diner plates. Or in the trash, if it was a bad day. Then, 23 years into a miserable and mostly unremarkable life, I found Jesus. Literally. Jesus D. Guerrero, a lawyer and member of the local ACLU. The library was free and always warm, so that’s where I spent most of my non-working hours. He saw me reading a book about prisoners’ rights during times of war and, in a somewhat condescending way, asked me a longwinded and technical question. Both of us were surprised to hear me answer correctly.
Jesus gave me a simple job in his office which led to progressively better jobs and eventually enough money to go to school. I left out the less savory parts of my upbringing and earned a reputation as a go-getter who defied the odds to get what I want in life. Cheesy, but it helped with the scholarships.
This is the story that flashed through my mind as I stared into the sweaty face of the man in front of me. The name and social security number had changed, but there was no mistaking it. Everyone else saw Franklin Armstrong, but I saw Big Henry: the monster pimp. And he saw Little Chrissy: the whore who wouldn’t go down on him.
But he couldn’t say a damn thing.
As much trouble as Franklin might be in, compared to Henry he was an angel. A Girl Scout. The patron saint of Girl Scouts. There were people far less gentle than I who would love to learn the whereabouts of Big Henry.
And his knew it.
It was the slow resignation of realizing, a little too late, you didn’t strap on the parachute.
Fuck justice. Fuck tradition. Just this once.
For eating out of trash cans.
For the things nobody knows you did.
For Maria.
I’ve got you.
All rise for the Honorable Christina Johnson.
The case of the State of Texas v. Franklin D. Armstrong is now in session.
