A continuation of Te V. Smith’s earlier feature.

I quickly switch on the power to the back up recorder in my bag, while displaying the sacrificial victim -always keep a spare device when trying to expose illegal legalities- careful to conceal my activities from the person towering before me, a 6’2 black man with the roughness of life sketched into his knuckles. His ability to hold back the natural instinct to shutter his eyes reveals the harshness of such a fight; the learned skill of controlling your reactions and emotions while overworked and underpaid. Now a security guard with decades of painted struggle on his face, all brushed aside for the stroke of the clock as it strikes 1:00pm.

We walk past cubicles and confused expressions down the dim hall faintly scented from the monthly janitorial services, the echo from our shoes as loud as the conversation of excitement and anticipation I’m having within. Mid-walk, my curiosity gets the better of me and I ask, “where are we going…did I do something wrong” and even “have I won a reward for most interesting character” in an attempt to pull some semblance of emotion from him. The discomfited silence of the guard is broken by a kind gesture for me to enter a door held open by a middle-aged woman I now recognize as one of the women with name-tags behind the protective glass in the waiting area. We’ll call her Ms. Ann.

Ann: “Have a seat please!”

Me: “Have I done something wrong here? I was only asking questions and listening to answers.”

Ann: “You’ve not done anything wrong by my book, but you’re not really supposed to be talking about those things in the open like that, and as a matter of fact, I’m not even supposed to be talking about these here with you now.”

Me: Eager to uncover the reason behind such a secluded conference, but still careful not to challenge the power structure in the room, I ask…”If I’ve not done anything wrong and if we’re not supposed to be here, with all respect… Why are we here?”

Ann: Sitting down in front of me I observe the apprehension and pain in her knees and even more the affection and fatigue on her face. For the first time since I’ve been writing about this particular experience, before me stands an employee with authentic human emotions and expressions. “I don’t want things to get any more misrepresented. I know you’re some sort of writer or something. I saw the recorder in the waiting room and you taking your notes. Talking is fine but recording of any kind is prohibited in a government facility. I only wanted an opportunity to share with you what we go through on the other side of the glass, if that’s alright with you young man?”

I nod in agreement and position my recorder on the table, take out my notepad and lean forward in my chair to reassure her and the guard standing beside me who has still yet to break his stance as the enforcer of my full cooperation and earnest concern in the truth of the matter.

“I along with my co workers feel for the people out there, we really do! However, there’s nothing we can really do about it. We have to do our jobs or we’ll be in the waiting room right beside them. What people don’t know is that we’re instructed to lessen the humanistic feel and basically see them as case files and numbers. You don’t know that there are certain small triggers that these poor bastards out there have no clue about, but if done can cause their paperwork to be lost, held up or deleted all together just to reinforce who has the power and who needs who.”

“The little bit of help we give is still a stretch and we’re doing all we can in there, dealing with the ‘higher ups’ and dealing with people who have every right to be pissed. But it ain’t our fault so we in-turn get angry with them and all it take is two months of working here to turn the sweetest person into a bitch from the hours of 9am to 5pm.  Before long it grows into what you see today. It’s a war out there and we prepare for battle every morning. They come in ready to fight as well, and there’s no way to stop it. We’ll always be forced to face each other and fight each other even though none of us has the power to help the other… It’s a god damned shame.”

…

There are stories of raiders who would enter a village to occupy it, enslave the people and divide them in half, giving the first half authority over rations of food for the whole. The genius is to tell the first half to give less than what was originally available, while the raiders promised privileges and even freedom for their obedience. After some time had passed, these raiders would leave and to control the now privileged slaves would give the second half weapons and watch them war with one another until they ultimately destroyed one another and in the process, eliminated all evidence of “the problem,” leaving land, natural resources and the remaining remnants of a bruised, broken and physiologically, spiritually and physically battered people to work for an allowance of all things that were originally theirs by right.

Standing on the outside of this pink building watching as more and more women, children, and men filed in and out, each carrying more despair from when they arrived, I think now that it is not childhood memories of dollhouses and dresses and warm comfort, but rather it reminds me of the washing down of the blood of a people so distracted by despair to notice the fatal wounds.

My last line…

How long must this low last? I have a flight to catch soon. Tomorrow New Orleans.

Te V. Smith | Contributor

Te V. Smith is a poet, musician, writer and singer who has shared stages, studios and street corners with the likes of HBO, VH-1, Current TV, and several European Colleges and Universities.

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• tevsmith.net