LJ Idol Season 9, Week 22: Sweep the Leg
“Please take a seat outside of courtroom 1B. The commissioner will be with you shortly,” the woman behind the sleek, black desk says, offering you a brief smile while slipping your civil notice back into your hands. You nod, give her a shaky smile in return, and turn on your heel.
Courtroom 1B. You know exactly where that is. You spent over an hour waiting on the gray plastic bench in front of its doors once, bereft of your phone and any sort of way to entertain yourself except via your panicked thoughts. Today, you’ve come prepared -- a notebook and pen sit inside your laptop bag, waiting for you to pull them out. Along with them sits several pages of emails you printed out that morning in preparation for this morning’s hearing.
A hearing you don’t even know if she will be at. Except, now you know the both of you will have to wait outside of the courtroom. In the same space. For an undetermined amount of time. As you settle onto the bench, you wipe your sweaty palms on your pants leg and pull out the notebook and pen.
Writing by hand is slow, your words clumsy and disjointed as you try to figure out this patch of dialogue. You want to edit, scratch everything out and start over, but you stop yourself, looking up as you see the bailiff coming through the courtroom doors. “Your name?” she asks as she approaches you.
“Alicia,” you say, clearing your throat. She looks down at the roster and checks something off, taking your notice with her. She then glances down the hall, raising her voice and calling Evelyn’s full name.
“I haven’t seen her,” you say after a minute, shaking your head. And maybe she won’t show. Maybe she never checked her mail -- maybe she never checked her email, either, the one you sent her Friday night to let her know that her court notification was in her mailbox.
When another ten minutes pass and you don’t see her walking down the hall, you feel yourself relax. She isn’t coming.
She isn’t coming.
When the commissioner calls you in, you slip the notebook away into your bag, and you take your seat at the small desk on the right. Evelyn would have sat on the bench to your left.
But she’s not there. She’s not there, and the commissioner throws two options at you -- hold Evelyn in contempt, or issue a continuance, since it appears the court has the wrong address listed for her. You opt for the latter.
If you’re lucky, she’ll ignore her mail a second time, and she’ll miss the next hearing, too.
***
The papers were not in my mailbox and I did not see your email until today. I sent the check but as far as I know the DCSE never received it, as I have not seen a charge for it against my account. I see you have cashed august’s alimony check so we’re good there. I have dropped off a check for august and september’s child support. That is to say, I gave a check to DCSE directly.
Is there a case number for the contempt citation you filed?
It’s Wednesday, two days after your contempt hearing, and she’s just now checking her email and messaging you about it? You blink at the messages, then shake your head.
A continuance was issued. You should receive notification in the mail. It’s all you’re willing to say to her. All you’re going to say to her, as it’s not truly your responsibility to ensure she checks her damn mail. Nor is it your responsibility to tell her that your new hearing date is in roughly a twelve days.
She can figure that shit out for herself, after all.
Except, as the hours pass, you chew your lip. When did she send those payments? Were they sent before you filed for contempt? After?
Does it really matter?
***
“Maybe I should have waited,” you muse to Sarah over IM a couple of days later. “Like, maybe I should have given it another month before filing for contempt.”
“Once you gave her the ultimatum and the date there was no option for waiting another month,” Sarah types back, and you can almost see the slight frown on her face as there’s a pause between that message and the next. “She obviously knew because she paid a bunch of shit right before the day you went to file.”
“Oh, I meant waiting a month before even giving the ultimatum, dude,” you explain. “To establish more of a pattern of paying late.”
Bob settles into your lap, your cell phone in his hand as he watches youtube videos, without you so much as having to show him how to navigate the app. Sarah must be thinking on the other end, because she doesn’t say anything at first. And then:
“Being able to wait another month would have made it easier for her to claim you must not need the money all that much.”
“True, but...” And you try to explain. Maybe waiting a month longer would help prove that it was, in fact, Evelyn being irresponsible with her payments -- instead of Evelyn simply taking a bit of time to get her act together. Maybe waiting a month will make you look less vindictive and less of a bitch, all over a few late payments. After all, there are plenty of deadbeats out there who don’t pay their support payments at all -- and at least Evelyn is paying, even if it’s late every month.
“If this is really what you believe then she's still got her arm up your ass way more than I realized so I don't know what to say about any of it.”
The words hit, hard. For a moment, you can’t breathe and tears sting your eyes and the last thing you want to do is talk to Sarah, anymore. So you close facebook and let your son continue to play on your phone, anything to keep yourself from lashing out entirely.
Minutes pass, and you post an entry for another writing community before reopening facebook and saying, quite simply: “Fuck implying I’m still her puppet, dude.”
Because you’re not. You’re not. She doesn’t have control over you anymore. You got your Protection from Abuse Order, specifically to sever her control and give some back to you.
And yet...
Evelyn sent you all of six sentences, split over two text messages -- and the first thing you thought after responding to them was, “Well, at least she’s paying me.”
The second thing was, “Great, now I’m going to look like a vindictive bitch for filing for contempt when she’s really not been that late with her payments every month. Especially when it could feasibly be out of her hands that some of them have been getting to me late.”
The third was a more reasonable, a more accurate, “Our PFA says she has to pay monthly -- not whenever the fuck she wants. She’s still in contempt.”
And up until this point, you haven’t questioned your decision to file for contempt all that much. Sure, you questioned the decision prior to filing -- but you’ve also since decided that filing was the best course of action you could take. This fact didn’t change, not even when you sat in front of Courtroom 1B, waiting anxiously for your name to be called all while praying that somehow, Evelyn wouldn’t show.
Six sentences.
And she’s been inside your head ever since.
Courtroom 1B. You know exactly where that is. You spent over an hour waiting on the gray plastic bench in front of its doors once, bereft of your phone and any sort of way to entertain yourself except via your panicked thoughts. Today, you’ve come prepared -- a notebook and pen sit inside your laptop bag, waiting for you to pull them out. Along with them sits several pages of emails you printed out that morning in preparation for this morning’s hearing.
A hearing you don’t even know if she will be at. Except, now you know the both of you will have to wait outside of the courtroom. In the same space. For an undetermined amount of time. As you settle onto the bench, you wipe your sweaty palms on your pants leg and pull out the notebook and pen.
Writing by hand is slow, your words clumsy and disjointed as you try to figure out this patch of dialogue. You want to edit, scratch everything out and start over, but you stop yourself, looking up as you see the bailiff coming through the courtroom doors. “Your name?” she asks as she approaches you.
“Alicia,” you say, clearing your throat. She looks down at the roster and checks something off, taking your notice with her. She then glances down the hall, raising her voice and calling Evelyn’s full name.
“I haven’t seen her,” you say after a minute, shaking your head. And maybe she won’t show. Maybe she never checked her mail -- maybe she never checked her email, either, the one you sent her Friday night to let her know that her court notification was in her mailbox.
When another ten minutes pass and you don’t see her walking down the hall, you feel yourself relax. She isn’t coming.
She isn’t coming.
When the commissioner calls you in, you slip the notebook away into your bag, and you take your seat at the small desk on the right. Evelyn would have sat on the bench to your left.
But she’s not there. She’s not there, and the commissioner throws two options at you -- hold Evelyn in contempt, or issue a continuance, since it appears the court has the wrong address listed for her. You opt for the latter.
If you’re lucky, she’ll ignore her mail a second time, and she’ll miss the next hearing, too.
***
The papers were not in my mailbox and I did not see your email until today. I sent the check but as far as I know the DCSE never received it, as I have not seen a charge for it against my account. I see you have cashed august’s alimony check so we’re good there. I have dropped off a check for august and september’s child support. That is to say, I gave a check to DCSE directly.
Is there a case number for the contempt citation you filed?
It’s Wednesday, two days after your contempt hearing, and she’s just now checking her email and messaging you about it? You blink at the messages, then shake your head.
A continuance was issued. You should receive notification in the mail. It’s all you’re willing to say to her. All you’re going to say to her, as it’s not truly your responsibility to ensure she checks her damn mail. Nor is it your responsibility to tell her that your new hearing date is in roughly a twelve days.
She can figure that shit out for herself, after all.
Except, as the hours pass, you chew your lip. When did she send those payments? Were they sent before you filed for contempt? After?
Does it really matter?
***
“Maybe I should have waited,” you muse to Sarah over IM a couple of days later. “Like, maybe I should have given it another month before filing for contempt.”
“Once you gave her the ultimatum and the date there was no option for waiting another month,” Sarah types back, and you can almost see the slight frown on her face as there’s a pause between that message and the next. “She obviously knew because she paid a bunch of shit right before the day you went to file.”
“Oh, I meant waiting a month before even giving the ultimatum, dude,” you explain. “To establish more of a pattern of paying late.”
Bob settles into your lap, your cell phone in his hand as he watches youtube videos, without you so much as having to show him how to navigate the app. Sarah must be thinking on the other end, because she doesn’t say anything at first. And then:
“Being able to wait another month would have made it easier for her to claim you must not need the money all that much.”
“True, but...” And you try to explain. Maybe waiting a month longer would help prove that it was, in fact, Evelyn being irresponsible with her payments -- instead of Evelyn simply taking a bit of time to get her act together. Maybe waiting a month will make you look less vindictive and less of a bitch, all over a few late payments. After all, there are plenty of deadbeats out there who don’t pay their support payments at all -- and at least Evelyn is paying, even if it’s late every month.
“If this is really what you believe then she's still got her arm up your ass way more than I realized so I don't know what to say about any of it.”
The words hit, hard. For a moment, you can’t breathe and tears sting your eyes and the last thing you want to do is talk to Sarah, anymore. So you close facebook and let your son continue to play on your phone, anything to keep yourself from lashing out entirely.
Minutes pass, and you post an entry for another writing community before reopening facebook and saying, quite simply: “Fuck implying I’m still her puppet, dude.”
Because you’re not. You’re not. She doesn’t have control over you anymore. You got your Protection from Abuse Order, specifically to sever her control and give some back to you.
And yet...
Evelyn sent you all of six sentences, split over two text messages -- and the first thing you thought after responding to them was, “Well, at least she’s paying me.”
The second thing was, “Great, now I’m going to look like a vindictive bitch for filing for contempt when she’s really not been that late with her payments every month. Especially when it could feasibly be out of her hands that some of them have been getting to me late.”
The third was a more reasonable, a more accurate, “Our PFA says she has to pay monthly -- not whenever the fuck she wants. She’s still in contempt.”
And up until this point, you haven’t questioned your decision to file for contempt all that much. Sure, you questioned the decision prior to filing -- but you’ve also since decided that filing was the best course of action you could take. This fact didn’t change, not even when you sat in front of Courtroom 1B, waiting anxiously for your name to be called all while praying that somehow, Evelyn wouldn’t show.
Six sentences.
And she’s been inside your head ever since.