Shanel and I said our hellos and I introduced myself to her. I'm going to be 50 this October so just about everyone looks young to me now. Especially cops. They look like they just graduated 6th grade. Shanel seemed young to me, too. Maybe it was just the circumstances. Or, maybe it was the poor decisions she made in the past. Or, possibly more fitting, it was that she seemed to not have a grasp on life in a mature way. Have you ever talked to a person and realized their reality is not all that close to your version? Maybe that was it.
Whatever it was about her that gave me that impression wasn't as important as what she must have been experiencing waiting to take the stand that morning. I'm sure whatever I was feeling she had it 10 times worse. I told her how sorry I was for what happened. That small gesture of compassion opened up the flood gates.
She told me how one her dead fiance's sisters had called her with death threats. How his family still blames her for what happened and all of the ways they had been harrassing her. She talked about renting the house from her stepfather and how since the fire he hasn't let her back in and hasn't shared any of the insurance money with her. She didn't have the funds to retrieve her clothes from the dry cleaners and she wasn't the one that sent them there. Her car was still parked behind the locked gate in the driveway and she had to get a lawyer to fight to retrieve that, too. As she was telling me the details of her life going years back, I heard a combination of wailing and quiet sobbing.
Shanel looked from me to the top of the staircase. I turned my head, too, and discovered the source of the tears. It was the sweet older black lady from the bathroom earlier that morning. She was accompanied by an older genteman who looked to be her husband. He had his right arm around her and his left arm holding her left arm. She needed the support walking down the stairs as she dabbed her eyes with tissues and softly cried. A few beats behind them was a young woman carrying a little boy no older than two. She was the one moaning. She cried over and over, "They took my mother. They took my mother." She was using the wad of tissues in her free hand to wipe her eyes. I can still feel how her pain ripped into my heart. The little boy had a look on his face that said he didn't understand what was going on but he knew it wasn't good and now was the time to be quiet.
They rounded the corner and walked out of sight down another hallway.
You and I both know I have no idea what happened or whether their family member deserved to be sentenced. I do know the amount of pain I had just witnessed was the same as what I have seen and experienced at funerals. It took a bit of time for me to recover from the tide of their grief that had just slammed into me and make sure I didn't get pulled into the undertow as my emotional knees buckled.
Shanel had resumed telling me her life story and continued to do so until Det. Lewis walked into view to tell me the court was ready for me.
