MY SOFT SPOT

Between the stark, white slabs of concrete prison walls which they call the attorney visitation room, I meet with clients whom I will represent in their fight to stay in the U.S. There, I spend colorless hours while the men recount their woes and the troubled life that led them there. Inevitably, I tend to develop a soft spot for many of my clients, even if logic and experience tell me they really have no chance.Outsiders may call me a sucker for even getting in the ring, but one must believe in another's humanity to do this kind of work.

I once fell for a drug dealer. He told me I was his angel-- a remarkable woman-- but I warned him, like I have all of the others, that I couldn't work miracles. We live in a world of black or white, bad or good, wrong or right, and he was black, bad and wrong. In the tiny sterile cell where we met, I coaxed him to tell me his story of crack and guns, blood and violence, a murdered father, ten felonies, nine misdemeanors, eleven bullets in the gut, and fourteen dreary years of prison. And still I believed in him as he in me. I thought naively that he would stay and start over. Maybe I should have realized that I was the only one who thought so. He knew much too much about the streets and how they crept their way into one's being. In another life they might've called him a sociologist and he would've had theories about how to keep young poor men of color like himself from danger. Instead he left this country forever, taking nothing with him and finding nothing there. Despite his promises, I've heard nothing of him since, and know I never will.

His mother died and was buried in New York City a few months before he was deported. She, too, had been a decent woman he told me. There was always good food on the table since she worked twelve hour shifts as a maid in other people's homes and never complained because she just loved people. Unfortunately, at the end of the day she had little time and strength for his problems. She'd already solved so many. But he'd never blame her. He wanted to visit her grave and say I'm sorry.Good-bye. He never had the chance.