make her look like a doll. The two of them are not related. It’s early in the morning and it’s a thick, slow line and nobody in it is in a hurry. The girl tries to say something and the lady reaches down and brushes her lips with her index finger.
At the edge of the table I empty my pockets into a Tupperware dish, step through the metal detector with my hands out and my palms open. The police officer nods, slides my belongings across a barren steel table, a set of keys and a wallet with a chain that attaches to my belt loop. I’m too young to be a parent, too old to be in trouble. I pour my things from the dish into my hand.
I walk past the courtrooms where the children are tried for crimes committed across the city. Things like robbing parking meters or throwing other children from rooftops. The yellow benches outside the courtrooms are filled today with juveniles waiting for their verdicts. The kids are not allowed in the actual courtroom unless the judge summons them with a question. The violent offenders and the run risks are cuffed to a chair in one-person rooms known as hotboxes.
In the basement there’s a cafeteria with eight grey tables, wire chairs, and a vending machine that sells hot chocolate, coffee, and chicken soup from the same spout. I buy a coffee and sit down where someone has left a newspaper. I read about the heat wave and what the newly elected mayor of Chicago plans to do about it. It’s the hottest summer on record and people are dying everywhere. Across from me three officers are taking a break. They sit in front of three empty cups. They think I’m on their side. I place my hand over the mayor’s face. I run through the plan in my head.
In the years since I’ve been here they’ve placed art along the walls of the lower floors. Cityscapes and still-lifes, all of them dirty-looking in cheap metal frames. There’s an escalator, and then wider, black, polished stairs leading to the second floor. The top three floors of Western house the jail, a brutal place, always overcrowded and understaffed. Children are supposed to be shipped from here to St. Charles within three months. It doesn’t always work that way. Paperwork gets lost. If the parent doesn’t show up to collect the child there are proceedings for the child to be made a ward of the court. The state takes custody. A placement has to be found. The placements are run by private agencies like the Jewish Children’s Bureau or the Catholic Charities or the Children’s Home and Aid Society, who may or may not want the kid the state is offering. The state allocates the same funds, $31 per day per child, whether the child is in a group home, a shelter, or a mental hospital. There are children who spend years in here.
I come to a large door and adjust my tie against my reflection. Inside there’s another door, and then another, and the intake for the jail and the administrative offices, where the secretary sits in front to greet and vet visitors. The secretary, years ago, was a beautiful Hispanic woman named Camilla who took everyone’s name into a green binder as they were admitted. I never spoke to Camilla but I remember her. Everybody does. She was removed for having an affair with one of the inmates—someone’s dream come true. He was seventeen years old, being tried as an adult. It was his last good time. I was twelve then and knew only what I heard in the lunch hall. They were caught in a broom closet with her skirt up around her waist. But there are other places to have sex in Western, unused offices, of course the showers. The doors to the rooms don’t have windows and are locked from the outside and it’s two to four boys for every room, so opportunity exists there as well.
Camilla is a nice memory for me, though I didn’t know her at all. I just remember her red skirt, and the short pointy heels on her shoes, and where her skirt stopped and her legs began.
I thought about her every day I was inside and by the time I
At the edge of the table I empty my pockets into a Tupperware dish, step through the metal detector with my hands out and my palms open. The police officer nods, slides my belongings across a barren steel table, a set of keys and a wallet with a chain that attaches to my belt loop. I’m too young to be a parent, too old to be in trouble. I pour my things from the dish into my hand.
I walk past the courtrooms where the children are tried for crimes committed across the city. Things like robbing parking meters or throwing other children from rooftops. The yellow benches outside the courtrooms are filled today with juveniles waiting for their verdicts. The kids are not allowed in the actual courtroom unless the judge summons them with a question. The violent offenders and the run risks are cuffed to a chair in one-person rooms known as hotboxes.
In the basement there’s a cafeteria with eight grey tables, wire chairs, and a vending machine that sells hot chocolate, coffee, and chicken soup from the same spout. I buy a coffee and sit down where someone has left a newspaper. I read about the heat wave and what the newly elected mayor of Chicago plans to do about it. It’s the hottest summer on record and people are dying everywhere. Across from me three officers are taking a break. They sit in front of three empty cups. They think I’m on their side. I place my hand over the mayor’s face. I run through the plan in my head.
In the years since I’ve been here they’ve placed art along the walls of the lower floors. Cityscapes and still-lifes, all of them dirty-looking in cheap metal frames. There’s an escalator, and then wider, black, polished stairs leading to the second floor. The top three floors of Western house the jail, a brutal place, always overcrowded and understaffed. Children are supposed to be shipped from here to St. Charles within three months. It doesn’t always work that way. Paperwork gets lost. If the parent doesn’t show up to collect the child there are proceedings for the child to be made a ward of the court. The state takes custody. A placement has to be found. The placements are run by private agencies like the Jewish Children’s Bureau or the Catholic Charities or the Children’s Home and Aid Society, who may or may not want the kid the state is offering. The state allocates the same funds, $31 per day per child, whether the child is in a group home, a shelter, or a mental hospital. There are children who spend years in here.
I come to a large door and adjust my tie against my reflection. Inside there’s another door, and then another, and the intake for the jail and the administrative offices, where the secretary sits in front to greet and vet visitors. The secretary, years ago, was a beautiful Hispanic woman named Camilla who took everyone’s name into a green binder as they were admitted. I never spoke to Camilla but I remember her. Everybody does. She was removed for having an affair with one of the inmates—someone’s dream come true. He was seventeen years old, being tried as an adult. It was his last good time. I was twelve then and knew only what I heard in the lunch hall. They were caught in a broom closet with her skirt up around her waist. But there are other places to have sex in Western, unused offices, of course the showers. The doors to the rooms don’t have windows and are locked from the outside and it’s two to four boys for every room, so opportunity exists there as well.
Camilla is a nice memory for me, though I didn’t know her at all. I just remember her red skirt, and the short pointy heels on her shoes, and where her skirt stopped and her legs began.
I thought about her every day I was inside and by the time I
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