The Queen of Language
Valentina is just about to start eating her lunch, a slice of pizza, a small, limp salad, and carton of milk. Her dyed black hair has been wrestled into a bird’s nest bun, tendrils looped over each ear. A grey sweatshirt and sweatpants two sizes too large swallow up her thin frame. She has almond-shaped eyes, a broad nose and the high cheekbones of an Aztec. She sits apart from the other two girls while a female guard wearily watches her – why? Because she had put pencils up her nose in an attempt to injure herself. As her creative writing teacher with security clearance, I am allowed to help her read as long as she uses only a crayon. When she sees me returning, she fills both cheeks with pizza and almost chokes. “Slow down! I’m not going anywhere!” I tell her. We sit on two scarred plastic chairs in the corridor of Central Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights, the guard lingering a few feet behind her. Valentina starts reading aloud from a book on parenting, following the sentences with a fingertip, then scooches very close to me and watches every nuance of my face as I help her pronounce the words. At 16, she reads at the level of a ten-year old child. So much has been lost in her eduation. When Valentina stumbles on the longer words, I write them out in a notebook with her pink crayon, putting slash marks in between the syllables.
Spon/tan/e/it/y
Non/ne/got/i/able
Com/mit/ment
Per/son/al/i/ty
When she pronounces a word correctly, she smiles brightly and high-fives me. Then she turns to her guard and says, beaming, “Miss Smith, Spontaneity! Personality!” While she reads, Valentina’s amber eyes tear up and she glances around the hall.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“People will hear me and think I’m stupid,” she whispers.
“Oh, no they won’t, and if they do, I’ll defend you!” and I make a fist and shake it. Then the tears disappear and she continues reading.
“You’re my first visitor, Miss B!” Her lower lip trembles and she says, “I don’t have any friends.” Is she pretending, or is she actually emotionally immature? We volunteer teachers aren’t allowed to ask questions about our students’ backgrounds, and certainly not about their crimes, so what I discover are surfaces in jagged pieces, in poems, stories, hushed voices when the guards have turned their backs.
“Why not?”
“I tried to make friends in elementary school by lettings kids cut ahead of me at the water fountain — but it didn’t work.” She takes my hand and cups it to her cheek. “Will you be my friend?” It is such a plaintive request, I can only nod and smile, yes.
As I prepare to leave and Valentina is directed back to her cell, where she is forbidden to read, she shouts down the hall, “Hey Miss B., spontaneity!” Last week when my students took turns reading from a short story by Luis Rodriguez called “My Ride, My Revolution,” Valentina refused her turn. The other girls snickered and rolled their eyes. Her profound sense of shame for her illiteracy, the stuttering and mangling of words, has, in essence, crippled her. Now, watching Valentina’s triumphant “Spontaneity!” as she swings her arm overhead and leaps into the air, I’m overcome by an abiding pride in her sheer will to grab language and make it her own. After a full year of driving from Venice Beach where flocks of wild parrots screech overhead, to East Los Angeles where ghetto birds, or police choppers, are more common, I have yet to come to peaceful terms with The Halls.
The following week, two of my most regular girls for the past several months are moved to another placement, that endless game of shuffling kids from Central Juvenile Hall to one facility or another. The ESU — Enhanced Security Unit — class is small but mighty in spirit. The girls write stories from the perspective of cartoon characters from graphic novels I put before them. I reward them each with a fudge brownie and banana muffin. As I went through the security system at the entrance where Mr. Jimenez reminded me I’m forbidden to bring in homemade treats, I offered him a sticky brownie and he waved me by. I gather my bags as the ESU girls wet their fingers and pick up the crumbs from their treats and walk to the Special Handling Unit. This is where juvenile inmates go when no other part of the facility will have them. It is raining this morning and Valentina is on her way out to get her vitals checked. She winks at me like a pixie. What did you do to get in here? I ask quietly to myself. How could you be so sweet? She holds her hands behind her back, as required whenever a girl moves between buildings and even when going from room to room. She returns twenty minutes later, her hair caught in a net of raindrops. As I work with two other girls, I keep an eye on Valentina as she is led in and takes off her rain poncho. Then she bends over slightly and a guard unlocks her handcuffs. She notices my look of dismay and surprise. I mouth, What happened? Valentina just beams at me, winks, and then sits down beside me.
“Miss B., why did you look so sad when you saw I was in handcuffs?”
“Because, Valentina, it’s just – I’ve never seen a girl handcuffed like that. What happened?”
“I walked away from my staff member and sat under a tree without permission. I mean, where was I going to go?”
This situation disturbs me. Shoving pencils up her nose and banging her head against a wall hard enough to get hospitalized are distinct signs of desperation. Putting her in handcuffs is not going to help her rehabilitation. But there is nothing I can do or say. Surveillance cameras record every word and every gesture.
So lamely, I admonish her: “You know the rules here. Obey them so you can get out sooner, right?”
After the class, she asks if I can work with her again. The unit staff tells me I have to get special permission. I walk to Mr. Coronado’s office – he’s not there, but a guard tracks him down. No is his reply. I now need additional special clearance as a non- family member to work with Valentina again during visiting hours. I entreat the guard to remind Mrt. Coronado that I didn’t need it last week, that I already have security clearance, but my appeal is ineffectual. I simply turn on my heel and walk out, determined to find a way to keep helping Valentina. I return through four locking doors and gates, back to the locked up building where Valentina waits for me. She looks up expectantly as I walk through the door. I shake my head, No.
“Why?” She rises up from the metal chair, her body suddenly coiled like a spring. A guard rises almost simultaneously with her. Valentina sits back down, dejected. She is very familiar with disappointment. I know her family doesn’t visit her – perhaps they’ve grown tired of her rebellious behavior. She told me once that her mother didn’t have a car and so couldn’t visit.
I send Mr. Coronado an email the next day, very politely worded, asking permission again, making it clear that I believe Valentina has made significant progress recently – and that I’m willing to return – free of charge – to do so again. I establish my credentials, mentioning the decades I’ve been a teacher, and sign the email with “B.A., Literature SUNY Purchase, M.F.A. Film, Columbia University.” When I last stood in his office, I noticed his framed degrees and accolades, the photos of him with local politicians, and the photos of his son in football uniform. It was clear to me then that Mr. Coronado puts a lot of emphasis on credentials and so I make a display of my own. It seems ridiculous, a game of who’s got more clout.
I had written Valentina a letter of support for her release from Central Juvenile Hall some weeks ago. She read it haltingly as tears welled, standing beside the scratched up, wire-reinforced window. She had been asleep when I arrived, just back from the hospital after the pencil she shoved up her nose was removed under light anesthesia. I ask Valentina now how she wound up back in SHU.
“I don’t know, but I’m going crazy in here. Please help me get out. I can’t stand it no more.” She takes my hands. Thus begins a hushed conversation in between writing prompts with the other four girls. Valentina asks me questions like: “What do you do when you leave here?” “Do you miss your daughter?” Then she tells me I look like her mother – she wishes I was her mother. “I’m going crazy in here. No, I didn’t do nothing.” She pouts and stamps her foot. This child-like behavior seems so antithetical to the fact that she is “gang-affiliated,” as the staff insist on this phrase. Among themselves, staff uses “gang-bangers.” I am to learn that such girls, my girls, all have ties to gangs, they were born into it. Despite committing very adult crimes, their emotional maturity lags behind.
“Valentina, you’re here for behavioral reasons. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth.”
She apologizes. “I started banging my head against the wall over and over again, saying, ‘I don’t want to live.’ So they put me in the hospital. I don’t know when I’m getting out.”
She asks if we can talk after class. We have to be very careful because it wouldn’t look good in front of the guards for us to have a private conversation. We manage to sit alone for a few minutes after class, across from the metal table from one another. She takes my hands.
“You look like you’re gonna cry, Miss. Why is that?”
“Because I’m worried about you. “
“Really? You care about me like that?” Valentina smiles. Then her voice dips low again. “I can’t be in here no more. I’m afraid that I’m going to die in these four walls.”
I remind her that she has to behave herself if she wants to get out, but honestly, I don’t know what that means. If it is complete acquiescence to orders barked at you, deafness to name-calling, indifference to bullying tactics, then a “normal” response would be to strike back. That is, until the fight is knocked out of you. She says she has no court date, no idea when she’s getting out. Earlier in the class during an unguarded moment where the girls were comparing their baby daddies to one another, boasting about their gifts, hard earned by committing various crimes for them, Valentina ticked off with her fingers, I been there, done that, smoked that, run with them, tried that, I done it all. And yet she looks angelic, with flawless tawny skin, the lithe movements of a dancer, save for the multiple, homemade tattoos on her fingers, arms, the one she showed me covering most of one calf some weeks ago of a clown. She put her foot on a metal seat and pulled up one pants leg. “I got this one because I’m always the fool, the joke’s on me.” It is during such moments that, strung together over a period of a month or two, I begin to learn more about Valentina, that her mother, her sister, her uncle all passed through Central Juvenile Hall, that cycling in and out of The Halls has become a family thing, as generations of families of far greater privilege cycled through the Ivy Leagues. Such is the ever-widening gap between my Westside students and those locked away here.
* * *
It is Christmas time now, and I have wrapped a bunch of Trader Joe’s treats, chocolates, salted caramels, and gingersnap cookies for my students, explaining that I have individual gifts for each one of them. While I hand out these items, four of the girls tear into them, but Valentina just stares at hers. It is a rather large red tissue paper wrapped gift of a selection of cookies. I circle back to her and ask why she isn’t opening her gift.
She replies quietly, “Is this really only for me, I mean, it’s just mine?”
“Yes, and you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. Open it!”
Her lower lip begins to tremble, her eyes fill with tears. “I’ve never had a gift like this before.” Finally she opens it slowly, pulling out each selection of cookies with the awe of a child. Then she does something sweet and unexpected. She hands me one of the peanut butter cookies.
I grew up comfortably well off. When we left Munich and arrived in Santa Monica, we slept on the floor of a vacant house for a year before my mother, an interior designer, made enough money as an assistant on film sets to afford furniture. She was industrious and talented, and in a matter of ten years had purchased a house with a garden and a small kidney-shaped pool. We owned a horse once and a decent car. While we certainly were not part of the mega-rich set, we did quite well.
But I have lost touch with true poverty – and I mean not only economic poverty, but poverty of spirit, generosity, industry, education, poverty of good health and good judgment. Seeing Valentina weep because she’d gotten a wrapped gift for the first time in her life is both humbling and eye-opening. Recently, a friend of mine, a man whose values I thought aligned with mine, announced after a few glasses of wine that such girls, thieves, prostitutes, he called them, deserved whatever they got, that we all have to take responsibility for our actions. I reflect on this comment as Valentina and the other girls carefully flatten out their Christmas paper, fold and then place it in their notebooks. And as they eat, it is not just crumbling cookies, but sugar and butter, fat chocolate chips and walnuts that blossom in their mouths. The ingredients of freedom, the symbols of a more generous life.
Two weeks later I go to Los Padrinos Juvenile Court in Downey because Valentina has asked me to attend her hearing. The Court is across the street from a golf course; it is quite an odd juxtaposition to see men in golfing garb whacking balls around a vibrant green, while dissolute families file into the maw of the juvenile court system. In the summer of 2019, two years later, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall will close amid wide criticism for having one of the highest rates of inmate depression and suicides. It further distinguished itself by having a reported 214% increase in pepper spray use, a veritable storm of noxious, deeply damaging chemicals deployed on the most vulnerable and defenseless of targets: children.
Something on me sets off a security alarm and a guard wands me front and back. As the waiting room slowly fills with families – newborns, toddlers, surly teens, mostly mothers, some men, I drink my third cup of coffee and continue grading 9thgrade papers on Elie Wiesel’s Night. My job as an English teacher in a private school sustains me financially. The juvenile hall job sustains me spiritually. One student quotes: We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. A baby starts to wail two benches away from me, a full-throated, unhappy wail that ends in a wet cough. Wiesel writes further: Our obligation is to give meaning to life and by doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life. The cacophony of arguments, crying babies, announcements over the speaker system, and the constant beep-beeping of the metal detectors all conspire to draw me away from any more grading. I then step into a line with parents and guardians to check in and get a slip of paper explaining the procedure of juvenile court proceedings and the name of the department Valentina will be in. Somewhere a radio plays Taylor Swift’s “Ready For It?” I’m getting worried I’ll be overlooked in the chaos of this mysterious procedure, and so I check in again, making sure someone in a uniform understands I’m there for her.
Two hours pass. People come and go. A handful of boys passes through, their shaved heads, heavily tatted, their bodies swimming in suits and shirts and ties too big for them. Finally, I hear, “Teacher for Valentina O, dept. 252” – I’m instructed to follow the green line through the halls to the courtroom. There I’m met by Valentina’s attorney, a white man, about 35, with the corn-fed features of a Midwest farmer’s boy, thrusts out a damp hand. He wears a charcoal grey suit, sweat stains under each arm.
“Are you her mother?”
“No, no I’m not , I’m her teacher.”
“Any family here today?”
The hall is empty, save for a small, round woman, slowly peeling an orange nearby. “No, just me.” He grumbles, then says, “She has only two months left to her sentence, we’ve tried everything to help her, nothing works. I’m going to ask for leniency and ask the judge if he’ll release her.”
I follow him into a windowless court room, with wood-paneled walls and the stuffy air of a space suspended in time. Valentina wears the standard issue orange jumpsuit with “Probation” across the back, and when she sees me enter, she waves and smiles as though we’d run into one another at a coffee shop. She has run away, been re-arrested, and bounced from the streets to the Halls many times. This space where the walls press in, the seats remain unmoving is more home to her than any real home would be to a girl whose path was not so jagged.
The judge, a pasty-faced man in his 60’s, parks himself behind a podium, asks who I am, and I say for a third time that morning, “I’m Valentina’s teacher,” but then add, “and her advocate.” The possibility that Valentina may actually be released into the world, as enormously unprepared as she is, starts to seem a real possibility. The male D.A. reads her charges with the monotone of a recorded public service announcement: “Breaking probation, leaving the facility without permission. She has admitted her guilt.” He faces her, his glasses slipping a bit down his nose:
“Do you understand these charges and what your options are at this point, Miss Valentina?”
“Yes, sir!” she nods, consults with her lawyer, then turns to me, offering a radiant smile.
“Sir, can you see your way clear to allowing my client to be released? With only two months of her 365 day sentence left, she is of age, only three months shy of her eighteenth birthday, and it would do her no good to go back into detention.” In actuality, he and everyone else in charge of Valentina’s fate is simply exhausted dealing from with her.
“Young lady, if we were to release you today, where would you go?”
“Well, Sir, I would go home, right nearby in Southgate.”
The judge then addresses me and asks if I feel that home is the best place for her, better than returning to Central. I’m startled on two accounts: First, I’m not the girl’s mother. I’m not her therapist, her attorney, social worker, or probation officer. I’m her writing teacher, but I’m the only adult who shows up to this court date. Second, doesn’t her track record more than indicate that she is in no way mature enough to be released? I haven’t a clue what home means, except that Valentina has wept a dozen times with me in class, complaining of homesickness. Where is her mother now?
I answer, “I guess so.” What I don’t realize until two hours later is that she is being released to me. I try to get her lawyer’s attention, but he is already packing up so quickly that I don’t have a chance to speak with him before he trots down the corridor and disappears around a corner. The waiting room at Los Padrinos fills and empties with adolescents in every variation of pissed off, resigned, tearful, surly, or belligerent. Uniformed guards take no backtalk from any one. When one young man slouches in with his pants sagging almost under his bottom, the guard instructs him to hike it up or he’ll get kicked out. There are no Asians. Few Caucasians. There are very few fathers in attendance. My cell phone rings. It is a supervising detective returning my call about a home invasion of almost a month ago, when a man wearing a ski mask broke into my house at 3 am. My boyfriend was startled awake and gave chase. The man got away. Because I was not assaulted, the home invasion is low priority. I look around this cavernous, noisy room, suddenly aware that any one of these juveniles could have been the ski-mask wearing intruder. The investigation continues.
Finally, Valentina bursts through a side door wearing a t-shirt, loose black pants, and sneakers. She flings her arms around me and shouts, “I’m free! I’m free!” She grabs my hand and squeezes it hard, then skips like a little girl to my car. Climbing in, she plays with the automatic windows, pushes knobs. She flips on the radio and sets it to a rap music station, raises the volume, looks up, sees the sun roof and asks if she may open it. When she’s done pretending we’re shooting to the moon, she turns and grins at me.
“Where are we going, Miss?”
I had no idea when I left the house that morning that I’d find Valentina in my car with no plan on how to proceed. She shows me an envelope in which someone has placed two dollars and her medical records. That’s it. Not even a prescription for medication for her bi-polar disorder, which I learn about when we talk over a Chinese lunch. I stall, calling the non-profit organization I work with to speak with a case manager. I put Valentina on the phone, she answers “Oh, no” to a few general questions regarding drug addiction and gang activity, and then hands the phone back to me.
“I want to go home now,” she announces, taking my hand. She has tried calling, but there is no answer. I’m growing more nervous about what to do with this girl who has been incarcerated most of her teen life, out long enough only to get back into trouble. Now she’s famished, giddy. She has lined her eyes with my black eye-liner and run my coral pink lipstick over her lips.
“Do I look pretty?”
“Yes, you do.”
“I love you, Miss B.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I offer only a smile. “Val, what are your plans now? Does your mother know you’re coming home? I don’t want to take you there if it’s not safe.” She disregards this, tries to change the direction of our conversation by chattering on about finishing her GED. I ask if she understands who to stay away from. “My sister, she’s a meth head — my old friends. They just get me into trouble … Hey, isn’t this a nice restaurant? Do you like the food?”
My concern grows. This is the first time in almost a year that I have been alone with Valentina without the grim supervision of staff. Now, she is out in the open air, and temptations lurk around every corner.
I don’t want to be in South Gate after dark falls. She asks if I can take her home, around the corner. I can’t stall any longer. We walk slowly back to my car. The brash sunlight has shifted to a cool peach, the first sign of sunset. I dig around in my wallet, and hand Valentina my last fifteen dollars. I don’t want her to be without money, but then immediately worry that she will use it to buy drugs. She directs me to her house, an old wooden bungalow painted a cheery blue. Curtains are on every window and the front gate appears locked. She gives me a big hug and says thank you repeatedly.
“Promise me again that you’ll call if there’s an emergency.”
“Oh, yes of course, Miss.”
What constitutes an emergency in her world? An overdose? The police chasing her? Her mother throwing her out of the house again? I watch as she makes her way to the front gate, where she fumbles with a chain and lock. I let the car slowly roll away, down the street, around the corner and then I pull over. I am trembling, frightened for her, wishing I could just go back, scoop her up, take her somewhere I know would be safer than home – anywhere but home. I wait until I get my bearings, figure out where the nearest freeway is, and then start driving.
Tonight, as rain falls for the first time in over eight months, I lie sleepless in bed, worried I have done the wrong thing by bringing Valentina home, that I will never see nor hear from her again. Young girls like her really don’t make it out there. They die anonymous deaths and the few people in her circle are either too grief-stricken or indifferent to let others who care about them know.
There are moments — driving down Alvarado Street in downtown L.A. where the press of immigrant life crowds sidewalks — when I think I catch a glimpse of Valentina, moments in class when a glossy-haired girl stumbles on reading a challenging word, that I see faint echoes of her. How, when Valentina pronounced spon/tan/e/it/y properly, then strutted down the dim corridor of juvenile hall, her fist pumping the air in triumph, she was for a brief moment the Queen of Language.