The Woman at the End of the Line

We were thrown together at the tail end of one of the longest lines in Los Angeles. I had come to the Sybil Brand Institute for Women, a.k.a. the county jail, seeking an interview with one of the city’s more infamous fallen angels, a celebrity prostitute. This woman just ahead of me in line had come to see a fallen angel of her own.

“They tell me,” she said softly, shyly, “that I shouldn’t come here so much. But what can I do? She’s my daughter. I’m her mother.”

She appeared to be in her late 60s. Her hair was changing color, the gray roots driving out longer strands of dark reddish brown. Her shoulders were hunched slightly forward. Her eyes, while kind, had the dulled, almost beaten look of someone who has carried a few too many of life’s heavy bricks.

Next.

The command came from an overhead speaker. It was the fuzzy, amplified voice of a deputy stationed behind a faraway glass window. We all shuffled one step closer to the window.

“How long is the wait?” I asked.

“It can take a couple hours,” she said, with an air of expertise. “It can take all night. Sometimes you make it in. Sometimes you don’t.”

Next .

Now there are in the city places of tremendous grace and beauty, places of wealth and glamour, power and bright light. The waiting room at Sybil Brand is not one of these places. In fact, the term room overstates matters. The waiting place consists of a cement floor covered by a thin roof supported by poles. A dozen or so wooden benches are scattered about, along with a few chairs. Long fluorescent bulbs provide a pale, vaguely unsettling light. The amenities consist of a small restroom, four pay telephones, and candy and soft drink machines: “Do not bang on machine,” a sign warns. “If you do, your visit will be canceled.”

Similar commands are posted all around. Don’t bang on the glass. Don’t step beyond the green line. No guns, no alcohol. These signs reinforce the obvious: This in fact is a jail, where jailers make the rules. “They’re in control,” the woman said. “My daughter doesn’t understand that. She keeps telling me, bring this, tell them that. I told her, ‘I can’t help you when you are in here. I can only help you when you are at home.’ ”

Next.

The drill is simple enough. Visitors fill out slips listing the name and booking number of the inmate they wish to see. They wait in line an hour or two to present this document to the window deputy. They then spend about an equal length of time waiting , hoping, to be summoned through a locked gate to the visiting room. Once inside, they have 15 minutes to visit by telephone across a glass divide.

In the crowd, which numbered 200 or so, there were grandmothers carrying little babies; bored young men with ponytails and beepers, observing, presumably, duties of the pimp trade; fathers wearing embarrassed expressions. One dad brought two children, still in their school uniforms. The children had received less than the full story.

“How come she can’t come home tonight?” one badgered her father.

“Because.”

Things could be learned in this line. One man with a strange, high-pitched voice spent 15 minutes explaining how to beat traffic tickets. An old-timer announced that anyone with an outstanding arrest warrant should leave: The window deputy would arrest on the spot. Two little kids practiced counting to 30 in Spanish, again and again and again.

Next.

Twilight gave way to a cool November night. The woman in line told her story in pieces. Her daughter had started a career in computers. Then came strange drug incidents. A craziness set in. “You lose them,” she said. “They are no longer your child.” A series of drug arrests began. She would get her daughter psychiatric help and see her improve a bit--only to be turned loose by a mental health “system” that is one of California’s sickest jokes. The last psychiatrist said nothing could be done until her daughter committed a violent crime. A week out of prison, she turned up in a hotel room, where she claimed two men had assaulted her. She stabbed one with a broken bottle.

“This time,” the mother said, “she’s in real trouble.”

Gone now for this woman is the notion of retirement. Now she and her husband must raise the daughter’s children, struggling to steer them away from the gangs and drugs that have come to infest their neighborhood. Now her nights must be spent in this line.

“Just say a prayer for me,” she said, reaching the front of the first line. “Pray I’ll get in tonight.”

She did. They called her name. She clapped her hands happily and hurried through the gate. The woman’s joy over this small triumph made her situation seem only sadder. As for the celebrity prostitute, I never did make it in to see her.