I had a pretty good life back home. Sure, my turn of the century duplex didn't have central air or heat, and was more like camping indoors, but it was in a neighborhood steeped in history, filled with art, friends, music, and a lifestyle I had come to love.
The gas heater in the kitchen was probably older than my parents, and had an established history of frantic phone calls about gas leaks. It was in some ways mildly amusing to see workers clad in hazmat suits enter my kitchen, and worrisome that they were present to resolve a leak of undetermined cause. On cold days, I would leap out of bed, full sprint to the kitchen, light the heater, and dive back under the covers for the 20 minutes necessary for the house to become bearable. In the dead of winter, the pier and beam wood floors never managed to heat up.
The rent was right, and I could hear polkas playing at the biergarten across the street. When it rained, I opened the screen door so the scent of rosemary filled the house. But, I got the call every law school graduate hopes to receive, and a secretary asked me when I was available for an interview with the Managing Partner.
I had less than $100 dollars to my name, but had enough to pay for my one suit to be dry-cleaned and gas for the old Volvo. It was $15 to park in the lot adjacent to the high rise office building. I had never seen a parking lot charge so much. I walked into the lobby and looked around, I was very early so I sat on one of the beige leather couches and soaked in my surroundings. The marble floors, mahogany, shiny elevator doors, a security desk, and inlaid interactive building screens were intimidating. The security guard asked me if I needed any help, I explained I was very early for an interview. Around 45 minutes later, I got on the elevator and entered the lobby for The Firm. Every part of my body screamed, “Please hire me” and I was concerned the desperation was seeping out of my pores. I started to break a sweat. Finally, I was marched past the offices with towering views of downtown, which housed very busy, very important looking attorneys, and into the Managing Partner’s office.
I thought the interview went pretty well, but in the end, he told me that they had already taken on the associates for that year, but he would call me if there was an opportunity for which I would be well-suited.
March 2007 at 2 pm on a Sunday, I got the call. If we are being honest, I was sleeping in and half awake when I answered. The voice on the other end said he was at La Guardia, so he couldn't talk long, but wanted to know if I would be interested in a contract job. I thought it was a friend playing a mean-spirited prank on me, but when I looked at the screen on my flip phone, it had an area code I was unfamiliar with. I would be hourly. My schedule would be 7 am to 7 pm (at least) and I would make $25 per hour, and time and a half for the overtime hours each day. It was a job, and it got my foot in the door of my dream firm. I asked if I could have some time to talk it over with my family and a frustrated voice gave me the name of another contact with the firm to call the next morning with my response.
Still in pajamas, I got in the Volvo, drove to my parents’ house, and asked them to sit at the kitchen table. I had 72 hrs to move an entire life. I spent the remainder of that week on my little brother’s couch in the neighboring city, my new home. The rental property I found would be ready soon, with a rental price that was more than my parents’ mortgage. Every aging relative felt compelled to protest the hike in my cost of living. In the end, the house was a 10 minute commute to downtown and if my foreseeable future was only work, I didn’t want to spend what little free time I had in a car. The water heater didn’t work and painting wasn’t completed, so I had my hand-me-down bed in the middle of the floor next to a hanging rack, both of which I had to cover every morning with drop cloth so the workers wouldn’t get paint or dust all over my few belongings.
I was doing the right thing, wasn’t I?
The Gig
It was clear from the moment I arrived that I was not wanted, and most, if not all, had protested. I was belittled and repeatedly informed that they did not hire graduates from my law school. They also didn’t like where I went to undergrad. I was hidden away on a separate floor, seated for 12 hours a day in the middle of a plastic-topped folding table; most of my job was counting, and alphabetizing paperwork. I would later end up co-supervising this multi-million dollar project, but I was only a supervisor in name. I had the duty and title but no mark of respect or even dignity was ever granted me. I was generally disliked. In fact, it was a sign of popularity within the firm to be openly hostile to me. I was also roughly 10 years younger than the aging harpies in the firm, blonde, and a size 6 on a fat day.
I watched the sun rise and set from the high rise. I was supposed to be lucky, but I went home every night and cried to my mom about the new ways I was informed that day of my generally disagreeable presence. Nothing was ever good enough and every evaluation was wretched. I was being told for the first time in my life that the things that I did were not only mediocre, but poor. I would be subjected to special trainings by low level legal assistants and I questioned why I had been granted a license at all, or how so many people had been hoodwinked my whole life into thinking that I was this gifted, thoughtful, kind, brilliant being when clearly, I was contemptible. I spent every night reviewing with my mother new ways I could try to show my co-workers how great I am. I started to believe I had developed Seasonal Affective Disorder from my lack of sun exposure, save for a 5 minute walk to and from a neighboring restaurant to pick up a to go order I would eat over my keyboard.
I got pneumonia and when I was released from the hospital, on the way home, I drove (myself) by my church and dangerously swerved into the parking lot’s side entrance. I walked as quickly as I could to the Rector’s office and I told her my latest update. I cried until I thought I had used all of the water left in my tired body. I told her that I guessed I needed to pray about it more, and that I should be grateful to have a job and finally to be given insurance. She said, "You don't need to pray right now, honey. You need a scotch."
Attorney at Sufferance
Around 4:30 pm on Friday, I went down to the 14th floor knowing that a legal assistant had a Bible. I had to look up the correct passage in Matthew for a special issue on a religion case. Matthew 28:19-20. I visited with the those who only a year before I had supervised every day from 7 am to 7 pm. On my way back upstairs I reviewed the strategy I had developed half at home, in lieu of sleep, and half with a veritable lightning strike that managed to make its way into my new corner office that afternoon. It was a complicated strategy, one fraught with disagreements on internet message boards by other professionals. After coming to grips with the reality that my client would be forced to return to the country of origin in order to obtain the relief sought, I was explaining the decision to a colleague.
The H.R. representative appeared in my colleague’s doorway and relayed to me that the Managing Partner was looking for me. Out of habit, I glanced down to see if my BlackBerry was present in its usual location and find out which case was at issue. But it wasn’t there. I stood up a bit slower than usual as only a couple weeks before I had surgery, and because of the disregarded recovery, the bracing garments impeded my immediate ability to hoist myself out of even the most agreeable chair. I told my colleague that I would update him after my strategy was implemented and thanked him for being a sounding board. The H.R. lady smiled, looked me in the eyes and excitedly I told her of the new strategy I developed as we walked toward the grand elevator banks, still blindly seeking some base level of approval.
The mahogany inlays and patterned carpeting added to the grandeur of the moment. It was now almost 5 pm and thanks to my assessment of the case, based on recent developments and research, I knew that it was going to be a long night. Saturday, I had a formal party to go to back home, one that signaled the beginning of the Debut year for girls coming out in society.
My date and long time friend had invited me to attend the party where I was never on the invitee list. Debuts were a rite of passage I only got to watch from the cheap seats. My grandmother and cousins had all taken part, and I remember vividly seeing my grandmother’s dress on the other side of railing and glass while on a school field trip to a local museum. That glass and railing was a symbol of the divide between those around me growing up, and where I stood.
The H.R. representative smiled and chatted in the empty fashion I was accustomed to when conversing with her. I have always felt as though I could tell her any combination words, such as, “grape, elephant, car, accident, move, desk,” and she would still smile and nod, “Yes, Harper.”
I asked what the MP needed, and reassured her that I would go straight to his office, even though I had some major casework to tackle. I still didn’t have a dress for the party and had hoped to get into town early enough to catch up with my friends from high school. My wish to obtain a simple, yet elegant enough dress that I could double dip and wear to the annual firm Christmas party, remained unfulfilled even after a rare lunchtime venture out of the office to a high-end boutique. I was never out of the office at a reasonable-enough time to make it to a store during other people’s hours.
As I walked through the hallway of the 15th floor, I saw the two runners dart out of my new corner office without making eye contact, and shut the door slightly. This was odd because, well, they did not generally spend a great deal of time in my office as it was primarily inhabited by me. They avoided eye contact. As I walked up to the glassed-in office of the MP, I saw the office manager sitting toward the corner of the couch, and just inside the door. She was holding a notepad and a pen. The HR representative was, too.
I sat down in the chair closest to the wall of windows, and in the looming darkness, I could see the State Capitol lit up for the evening. I asked to run a strategy by the MP earlier, but surely this was a large audience for such an event. The next few minutes remain fuzzy with moments of deafness, surrounded by an internal distancing. I started to feel like my head was no longer attached at the shoulders to my body, which had surely sunk down to somewhere on the floor below. Something about my writing had not improved and the more honest slip of the tongue, “there is not enough work.” They wanted to end the relationship, effective immediately.
