2006 - Vol. 3, Issue 6

The last part of my food stamp interview was more familiar to me than it should've been. A cop–show junkie since my early teens, I'd seen a few people fingerprinted in my time. I was prepared for the dingy walls covered in public–service–type AIDS posters that curled up slightly at the corners, if not the putrid pink shade of the walls, which I supposed the powers that be believed to be calming.

I noticed my grasp was making my papers damp and thought, Yeah, works like a charm. I'm so calm it's dripping out of my pores. Every time I went to one of these appointments, my nerves were on high alert, as if I were a spy with microfilm in my bra, even though there was no reason for it. I was so conscious of the dramatic possibilities of the moment I wondered if I should've called my lawyer. Of course I didn't have a lawyer, since technically my only crime was being busted during a boom, but I was already serving a lifelong sentence as a crip and therefore didn't need any additional black marks against me.

The desk she wanted to do it on was predictably too low, so I got my first bumped knee of the morning while pondering how it was that I knew what the ink smelled like from television. That was only partly true; it was just the same sharp smell that rose off my printer when somebody changed the ribbon. See, this doesn't have to be different from being at Staples or Kinko's. It's a thing that normal people do: An errand — not just for losers, freaks, and the desperate.

I felt guilty for thinking that, but surely the blind guy mumbling to the invisible friend was in one of those categories, as were the poor kids in here with their mom. The guy who was late — who looked as though there was nothing in the world wrong with him and who, therefore, got a halfhearted and bleary eyefuck from almost everybody in here — gave no sign that the hard stares affected him at all. He just slumped in a chair and put his feet in the aisle, and I added him to my litany of losers.

Despite having been in this chair for my whole life, I never expected to be in here. I grew up on the other side of town  .  .  .  sort of the whiter side, even if I hung out with my Spanish teacher's daughter in high school. I wasn't sure why, but while I waited for the social worker to solve her table dilemma, I was filled with the urge to scream out my bona fides — those credentials that made so many people tell me I was "brave," "strong," or "inspiring." I bet I could list every gold star going back to the second grade, though there may have been hundreds, for approval affected me like cheap wine, giving me the same mixture of bravado and eventual shame. In the end, though, I decided not to break through the dim, fluorescent–buzzing near–silence that was punctuated by the kids whispering in Spanish. Even as I had the impulse, I could tell that nobody in here would give a crap about the community college newspaper I had worked for, my stellar GPA, or the fact that I had quit Honor Society in high school because it was too hard to get a late bus for the meetings. Honor Society? Why don't I just tell them I sold my polo pony? Everything that I had clutched around me began to feel ridiculous, at least until the social worker — whom eavesdropping had told me was named Lydia — said, "This way."

The mother told her kids, "Cuidado con la silla" and I almost translated, "Watch the chair," to prove that I was smart, and therefore, good. A worthy and successful addition to any entitlement program — in the short term, of course. In the long term, who knew? I would always keep this experience in mind to show myself how far I'd come.  .  .  .  That's what I'd tell people someday.

Thankfully it took all my concentration to navigate the narrow hallway, or I might have started babbling this whole spiel to the social worker. But I managed to master my nerves, reminding myself, This is an errand, not an Oscar acceptance speech. Lydia was already going to hear enough of my "humble beginnings" to last us both for some time, so I kept a lid on it.

Things were much more familiar on the other end of the hallway. A rug did its red best to brighten the place, but the effect was undercut by the nap being so stepped–on it looked like the Trail of Tears had passed through. I wondered if the decoration was intended to make the employees feel comfortable with poking into strangers' lives all day. Lydia guided my chair into the warren of cubicles. "We'll use my desk," she said briskly. It was the first time she'd spoken to me so I waited to see if a reply was expected. None was; she wasn't asking. She might as well be asking her manila folders which tray they preferred to sit in. I had begun to feel comfortable in here against my will — a function of all the cartoons: "Marmaduke" and "Family Circus," a "Dilbert" or two that I imagined the office rogue had clipped. But I also spotted my personal diagnostic of an unhappy office: a big yellow poster telling me I didn't have to be crazy to work here, but it helped. It could've been any sad office in America, until Lydia pulled out that fingerprint card, and I started to expect a big, beefy cop to call me a "pissy gimp bitch" and slam me against the filing cabinet. It would almost be easier if he did. I'd know what to say, or have a finger gesture at the ready. I wanted to laugh to keep from crying. Instead, I rubbed my wrist, which felt irritated by imaginary handcuffs. I really didn't feel comfortable when Lydia silently held my hand, even if she wore a perfume my mother also liked. She didn't say anything, but we got through half my right hand without incident. The ring finger, with my birthstone ring on it, bore a totem of better days. Mom freaked when I suggested selling it.

"Things aren't that desperate yet!" she told me, full of old–hippie confidence. It was just as well; between the weather heating up and all the noodles I'd been eating, I didn't think I could get it off anyway. Lydia's eyes narrowed as she looked at it.

"It was a graduation gift. You know, from high school.  .  .  . " Translation: my parents' money, not mine. Pinkie swear. "It kind of doesn't come off."

The silence stretched uncomfortably, fraud prevention forgotten momentarily as she considered my hand. Like many "recovering" A–students I know, sometimes the thought that someone could meet me and not think I was smart and charming filled me with total and complete horror. I think that was what was operating when I said, "I could still sell it, though," to Lydia.

"Really?" she replied neutrally. She noted something on a page on a clipboard.

"Yeah, but I'd have to throw in the finger, too. What a mess!"

I hoped she'd laugh, but she just looked disgusted. Just a flicker, beneath her professional face, but it was definite. Damn. My ego needed that laugh like the grocery bill needed the little colored stamps. A minute later I said, "That was a joke."

"Do you joke about dismemberment a lot?" she asked, as if wondering if she should give the shrinks next door a heads–up.

"No," I lied. Actually, when I was in the mood, anything went, but if that was the biggest lie I ever told.  .  .  .  Well. "I don't know why I said that," I tried to appease her.

"I understand," she said, like she didn't. "We're going to need a bit more information.  .  .  ."

It was funny how one short red-haired woman with wire–framed glasses sat behind a desk and became "We." She considered the documents I'd laid on the chair next to us.

"Information? From whom?" As soon as I said it, I knew two things: That my mother was right when she said good grammar was a habit, and that I had just made a big mistake. I felt like I had to say it that way, though, or the next thing I knew I'd be found drinking from a bottle in a paper bag and saying "Don't got no  .  .  .  " in public. Lydia pressed my thumb down on the pad. "Left hand, please,"

I extended my much weaker left hand across the desk. She pulled on my index finger, extending it painfully, and as always, the other fingers clustered around it.

"Keep the fingers separate, please." She pulled on them and got a blurry index/second finger mush, indistinct and formless — there no way at all to read the identifying whorls.

Given my politics, it was fitting that my left hand resisted. Lydia sighed. Out of habit, I almost apologized.

"I would," I explained. "But I can't. My fingers have a synergy."

"A what, now?" Maybe the big words from my therapy appointments were a mistake, too.

"They don't work individually very well.  .  .  .  It's a cerebral palsy thing. Brain damage. My right hand has it a little too, but I can control it more. All the same, could we fingerprint the left hand in a big clump?"

"What good would that do?" Lydia asked.

"You tell me.  .  .  ."

If Lydia could not trust me to come in her office and be who I said I was, maybe I didn't want to make her job easier. My finger hurt from her pulling, but not as much as my pride.

"I think  .  .  ." she suggested, "that the right hand will be sufficient. In this case." Okay, I'm only half a criminal.

Lydia softened, let the traces of a smile play around her mouth for the briefest second. My relief seemed comically out of proportion, as if I'd really gotten away with something — the Synergy Scam went off without a hitch.

The social worker cleaned her glasses with a tissue, then cleared her throat like a teacher determined to regain control of a class with spring fever. "That still leaves us with that documentation issue."

I almost told her that that was a good way for glasses to get scratched. I had an urge for a petty vengeance, so I didn't offer the right answer to her question right away. There were no gold stars with this test, and no extra credit came for being lovable, which was hard to let go; I had learned that laughing at myself made most people almost okay with me in my chair, and I had come to see that as my biggest place in life.

"Right. What do we need? I have the doctor's statement, three months of bank statements, and three photocopied rent checks."

"Well, there are two months' of photocopied rent checks here.  .  .  ."

"Only two?" I remembered so clearly putting all three grainy Xeroxes in the folder and thinking what a crazy person my handwriting made me look like. But maybe I had just thought I'd done it. Sadness and self–doubt were clinging to my mind like the ink clung in traces to my fingers (even after Lydia offered a moist towelette), and I didn't trust my recollections.

"We usually like three."

Had I known that? Had I left one of them on the counter in my mad rush to not get left behind by paratransit this morning? Or did somebody tell me two by mistake? I couldn't be sure whose mistake it was. Already it felt as though when I'd woken up several hours ago had been a more innocent time. Fingerprinted? But I've never even been carded.

"I'd  .  .  .  hate to make another special trip," I replied, loathing the note of begging that crept into my voice. "Couldn't I fax it to you?" I despised how I felt like a six–year–old in the moment before she answered.

Please, God, don't let me cry in front of her. I had begun talking to God more often this year, as I moved away from self–conscious collegiate atheism to a sort of faith. But I still didn't feel a spectral hand on my shoulder or see a beaming goddess bearing flowers, so to me they felt less like prayers than asides, but my request worked. I didn't cry until I got home that night.

The difficult morning that we had shared seemed to make Lydia inclined to be magnanimous. "Well, I suppose," she said. "As long as you do it promptly. By close of business tomorrow."

I was grateful she relented, but also irritated. She seemed to enjoy being able to decide whether or not to turn another person's day upside down, a pleasure I'd had to give up after the one day my mother caught me crank–calling people when I was ten. I tried to focus on the relief, not the anger. She was being decent, in her way, but suddenly I was glad she didn't get my jokes.  .  .  .  Why did I need someone like that to find me amusing? I wasn't really a poster child, despite my fair hair and rounded cheeks that flushed whenever I was in the grip of strong emotions, therefore being nice and pink due to this internal drama. My being cute wasn't going to flip this tote board; I put on a warrior's face and tried to give away nothing, wished I could put on my mirrored sunglasses, too. I thought that might look rude, though, so I left them in my purse.

In all those TV dramas I loved so much, we'd be getting ready for one last quip or bit of irony, then a fade–out, followed by a wistful piano playing over the credits  .  .  .  a perfect exit moment that I'd be denied because waiting for a ride in real life lacks dramatic tension. I settled into the suspended animation of the loiterer whose business has been transacted, and was relieved that my wait was short. I heard the van rattling outside the door.

I took a second to tell Lydia, "Your lenses will last longer if you use a soft cloth that doesn't scratch, instead of tissues. That's been bothering me all day." I smiled and was gone, without the piano sendoff, true, but I was comparatively free; and for now that was enough.