Deepa Ambekar - The Shirt

 

 

So, I'm walking back to the visitor center of a federal prison. My hands are sweaty, my stomach's churning and my heart's beating really fast. I wasn't nervous, because it was the first time I was there. In fact, I've been to prisons before. I'm a public defender, so it's not uncommon for me to go to jail and visit my clients. But it was the first time I was going as a visitor, a friend and a loved one. 

 

Seven months prior to that day, my friend Michael, who I was going to visit, was arrested for immigration violations on a tip from a scorned ex-lover who had sent a letter to Homeland Security. He was picked up, because 20 years earlier, he was deported, reentered the country to be back with his two children, his wife, actually no, his girlfriend, his several siblings and parents. He was now awaiting sentence for reentry charges, which held a maximum sentence of 20 years of incarceration before he would be deported back to Guyana. I knew that once he was transferred to a sentencing facility, he would be sent anywhere within the US, so it was the last time I'd be able to see him. I had waited seven months to finally get on his visitors list and I was going to have my last hour to say goodbye to him. 

 

I got to the front area. The officer turned her attention to me and she shoved some papers at me. She asked for my ID. She takes two seconds, she looks at me, she's like, “Ma'am, you can't wear that outerwear in there.” And I was like, “What?” I was dressed in a cardigan with a long maxi summer dress. And I was like, “But ma'am, this isn't outerwear. It's innerwear. In fact, I'm wearing it inside here in case it's a little over air conditioned, I just want to make sure that I'll stay warm.” She's like, “Ma'am, I don't care if that's outerwear, innerwear or underwear. You can't wear that in there.” I was like, “Fine.” So, I took it off and I threw it in my locker. 

 

He stood against the locker hoping to blend in. And then another woman, who is another visitor a little bit older, comes up to me and was like, “Ma'am, you know you can't wear that in there.” And I was like, “Well, what do you mean? I mean, they just took my cardigan.” And she's like, “They're not going to let you in there. You have bare shoulders.” And I was like, “I don't know what to do.” I looked up at the clock and it was 02:30, and they stopped processing visitors by 03:00 and I couldn't possibly make the hour and 45-minute round trip that I had made there to go home, change. And there certainly weren’t any bodegas around there. And I was like, “What was I going to do?” 

 

The fact that I had bare shoulders was going to stand between me and saying goodbye to my friend. And I started crying. So, the woman took my hand and she's like, “It's your first time, isn't it? Don't worry, it gets easier.” She turns to her grandson, who is about 10 years old, next to her and says, “Johnny, go to the car and get this lady a shirt.” And a few seconds later, Johnny comes back and gets me a long sleeve shirt. And the lady explained to me, “I just keep a wardrobe in my car. I never know when the officers are going to let me in, so I always have extra clothing to let me in.” 

 

Just then, my number gets called to go in. I turn to the woman and I say, “Well, how am I supposed to get this shirt back to you?” And she's like, “Don't worry, sweetie. Just pay it forward.” So, I was like, “All right.” I put it on and I go back to see Michael. It was a short hour. We tried to talk about neutral subjects, talked about like, we're going out to dinner. It was nothing major. And at the end of our visit, I tried to choke back the tears, so he wouldn't see me cry, and I just said, “See you later,” so I couldn't grasp the finality of the situation. 

 

I leave the visiting area, and I'm in the glassed enclosed area to be processed out with hand stamps and everything. There's a small girl next to me, maybe about four years old, and she's crying. She's crying, not tears of a temper tantrum or someone stole her toy, but tears of sorrow. She goes to her mom, who's standing next to her, was like, “Mommy, I miss daddy. I want to hang out with him some more.” And the mom squats down and says to her and whispers in her ear, “Just yell really loudly that you love him. He'll hear you.” And so, she presses her sticky little hands and her wet face against the window and she screams, “Daddy, I love you.” I look down at this girl and I'm disgusted. 

 

I'm a public defender, and there's a lot of people that are bothered with what I do or disgusted by my clients, because they're charged of really heinous things. But I have always been proud of what I did. I try to keep people out of jail, but it wasn't until that moment when I saw that girl that I was disgusted with what I did, that I had any part of this system, that I had any part in this girl's sorrow. I left the prison. I took off my shirt and I came home. 

 

A couple weeks later, I took my shirt into work, primarily, because I didn't know what to do with the shirt. It was just kind of sitting on my coffee table for a number of weeks. So, I brought it into my office and I put it into my bottom drawer. A few weeks after that, I get an email from a colleague that she had sent to a couple of the attorneys explaining that one of her clients, a 17-year-old girl, had just been released from jail and was going to a shelter and needed clothing. So, I open up the bottom drawer in my office, and I looked down at that shirt and that shirt was the only piece of goodness, kindness and humanity that I felt that day that I went to go visit Michael. So, I took that shirt, I gave it to my colleague, which she gave to her client to pay it forward. Thank you.