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Theatrical Muse #221
Mar. 14th, 2008 07:48 pm"Never pray for justice, because you might get some."
-Margaret Atwood.
Justice is a concept that Dani has been nurtured on, so far as Jack Reese is capable of nurture.
For years, her understanding of what comprises justice (J-u-s-t-i-c-e, sound it out, there’s a good girl) is muddled. What she sees and what she is told don’t fit.
When Dani sees men and women with her face, with her mother’s face, arrested en mass by people with her father’s face, her father’s smell, her father’s uniform, she is told this is justice.
When she visits a local prison on "Take Your Daughter to Work Day", and sees men that look like pictures of her grandfather, uncles, and cousins, she is told this is justice.
When she asks why those pictures have all been packed away, she is told nothing, and wonders if it has to do with the cells and the bars and the dead look in the men’s eyes.
She wonders if someday justice will come for her. She wonders what form it will take, whose eyes it will have, and what language it will speak.
When Dani shoots her first suspect, she is told this is justice. She is told that people have been saved, that he had a loaded gun, that he’d done things to that little boy.
She is told that this is justice, and for the first time, she thinks she understands what that word means and feels succinct and focused in her understanding.
When Dani is lying in a room that smells of death, waste, excrement, and dope, that focus is gone, and she does not take the time to wonder on the nature of justice. By her second day in that room, she doesn’t think of anything but the smells and the feelings and God, she’s so sick.
Three days later, after Karen’s pulled her out, when she’s sitting on the edge of a couch and her hair’s wet and her nerves are on fire, Dani wonders if this is when justice comes for her, and she waits for it.
Twenty-one months later, and Dani’s still waiting.
-Margaret Atwood.
Justice is a concept that Dani has been nurtured on, so far as Jack Reese is capable of nurture.
For years, her understanding of what comprises justice (J-u-s-t-i-c-e, sound it out, there’s a good girl) is muddled. What she sees and what she is told don’t fit.
When Dani sees men and women with her face, with her mother’s face, arrested en mass by people with her father’s face, her father’s smell, her father’s uniform, she is told this is justice.
When she visits a local prison on "Take Your Daughter to Work Day", and sees men that look like pictures of her grandfather, uncles, and cousins, she is told this is justice.
When she asks why those pictures have all been packed away, she is told nothing, and wonders if it has to do with the cells and the bars and the dead look in the men’s eyes.
She wonders if someday justice will come for her. She wonders what form it will take, whose eyes it will have, and what language it will speak.
When Dani shoots her first suspect, she is told this is justice. She is told that people have been saved, that he had a loaded gun, that he’d done things to that little boy.
She is told that this is justice, and for the first time, she thinks she understands what that word means and feels succinct and focused in her understanding.
When Dani is lying in a room that smells of death, waste, excrement, and dope, that focus is gone, and she does not take the time to wonder on the nature of justice. By her second day in that room, she doesn’t think of anything but the smells and the feelings and God, she’s so sick.
Three days later, after Karen’s pulled her out, when she’s sitting on the edge of a couch and her hair’s wet and her nerves are on fire, Dani wonders if this is when justice comes for her, and she waits for it.
Twenty-one months later, and Dani’s still waiting.
