Angel in a Trench Coat

I drempt last night of innocence.

This cop had come to question me, about what I do not remember. I wasn't worried or defensive about the topic, whatever it was, because I honestly had nothing to do with it and was simply a witness he was asking questions of, it wasn't a big deal.

But as he questioned me, this detective in street clothes, it became clear he knew a lot about me, had done his homework. I'd go to share some small thing about my life to give context to what I was saying to him and it was clear he already knew this small, personal thing. I suppose I should have noticed and started to be worried, but I didn't, not yet. Then I brought up the murder.

I had been living in a very large home in Champaign that was being shared by five or six people back in '94, when I first moved to the Champaign-Urbana area, that much is real. But in the dream, a woman had been murdered in that house while I was living there. When I brought up the murder I was very calm at first, very mater-of-fact about how I had been part of that household at the time, just a side note brought up as part of another point. But his response, "yeah, we are still looking for a left-handed person connected to that", sent chills down my spine. I knew that all but one of the people involved in that murder had been caught, and that other had never been found or mentioned by those already convicted, but that evidence pointed to one more person being involved. I am left-handed.

Was that what he was really here about? Was he here to trick me? Did he think I was the missing murderer? The conversation went on as if he had never mentioned it, as if it was just a conversational aside too unrelated to our topic to even comment on, but I strongly suspected it was done on purpose, to get a rise out of me. I felt guilty, horribly guilty. Was I involved? Had I been an accomplice?

I drifted away as the detective kept talking, nodding and commenting at the correct places, but my mind went back to that time. The problem was, my memory of that time was so cloudy with the haze of confusion and shock that sometimes happens around events of trauma. I was afraid I had been an accomplice of some kind. Not that I had committed the murder itself, but that I was made to help carry out the body to be hidden and had never told the cops, had covered for the murderers. My conscience felt blood-stained and shamed, but I did not know why, I had no clear memory of ever doing anything that day, though I had been in the house when it happened. I had only my conscience to go by, and it felt filthy.

The conversation with the the detective continued as I search inside myself and then ended politely, as he moved on to interview another potential witness who was waiting in the next room. We were in my grandma's house, I had not noticed it before, that creepy house that was full of good memories for me and yet this constant ghost of knowing these walls contained the history of all the rageful abuse my grandfather had showered on my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles. And I begin to feel suspicious of myself. I looked back at my life and it wasn't just that murder, I had been close to many acts of violence, it was suspicious, perhaps I had been a part of all of them. Perhaps I was pretending to be an innocent bystander to all of these events but beneath my hazy denials I was actually part of the violence in each one. Perhaps I was guilty, guilty, guilty.

I went after the detective and asked if I could speak to him again. We were in the narrow entryway of the house, where the shoes were always lined up on each side, in neat rows. I asked him, "If, hypothetically, someone where to share information about someone else that might have been involved in a crime, would, oh, never mind . . .". I wanted to know if I shared information about what I knew, if that violent person could come after me or if they would protect me from them, if the police would make sure that the violent, guilty one wouldn't get to me before the cops got to him. Why was I asking this? I didn't know myself, I suspected me of being about to share some false testimony to send the cop off in some other direction, to make me look innocent of being the bad, bad person I was.

As I am talking to the cop, I realize two things. One, I am naked from the waist up. Two, I really am scared of turning over some knowledge that might help in that old murder case - what I thought I was making up I am not, there is something buried in that haze of memory that is coming to the surface and I am trembling with it, not wanting to remember because I fear if I tell the police, I will be at risk, someone might find out what I said and hurt me. And then I think, "why even tell him? He must think I am a horrible criminal, he knows enough about me to know I was nearby or a witness to all those crimes, he won't believe me if I say I knew nothing but have remembered a random detail that might be of help to the search for the missing murderer."

But I do tell him, words just come as I wrap my arms around myself and shake. "I wasn't the only left-handed person in that house," I say quietly, staring at the wall next to his head but unable to look at him directly. I go on. "I was in the house. I did hear something. There was this man, I don't think I ever knew his name. When the police questioning me were going over the list of who was living in the house at the time or who hung around often his name wasn't there, I knew because everyone you listed was someone I could put a face to."

"So many people came in and out of that house, especially that third floor, those attic rooms, I didn't know all of them. I am not sure that guy even lived there, officially, at any time." I pause for a minute, just long enough to steal a look at the cop, and he is listening, nothing mean or distrustful on his face. "My husband, now my ex-husband, and I, we hid in our rooms. We had these two rooms on the second floor and a little tiny bathroom. We hid, huddled together, but we felt so exposed. We knew something was going on, everything felt dangerous and hushed, but we didn't know what. The two doors to our suite were close to the stairs to the third floor, and there were many hushed male voices coming down those stairs."

"I should have called the cops, but I didn't know back then you could call 911 about something like that. That I could just say, 'hey, I heard this short female scream and then this thump on the floor above me and I don't know that anything bad happened but I have a bad feeling,' I thought I'd get in trouble for making a non-emergency call to 911, that they would just tell me to go check it myself."

"I would have too, if I had done anything at all I would have convinced myself I was being foolish and that someone upstairs might have just fallen on something, might even be needing help, and that I should go up there and offer to help. And then I would have run into those men, carrying her body." I was trembling thinking about it, dazed again as I was that day, scared like a child gets scared of monsters under the bed. People tease about that, but I remember that fear and would never tease a child about it, it was the kind of fear that makes you sweat and chill.

I looked up at the detective, wanting something but not knowing what, too far gone now to try to protect myself from how exposed I was, physically and emotionally, looking for something from him. His eyes were not hard, I even sensed some kindness in them - had it been there all along? Was it my own expectation that he was looking to find me guilty for my past that had made me think he was trying to trick me into confessing to something?

His exact words escape me now, but he told me they knew about the other left-handed person in the house, that they knew it was a man, that they had a vague description of him but nothing else, that he had never suspected me but wanted to see what I knew. His words were gentle and with that, with his gentleness, it came to me that I really was innocent. I had not done anything wrong, I was never a part of the murder or any of those other things I witnessed just because I had not prevented them or done something afterwards about them. In none of those circumstances was I in a position to do anything, if I had done anything I was likely to have gotten hurt myself at worst, just disbelieved and ignored at best.

There is a sense of lightness since I woke up from that dream today. The cliche is true, "I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from me." Not from my shoulders, but from my chest and stomach. I feel like my lungs are opening more deeply, more easily, are taking in so much more oxygen with so much less effort than before. I feel wrapped in great and gentle arms, like a child that has found solace in a parent's embrace and is believed, cherished.

'What was that dream all about?' I asked myself. I suppose I don't really need to know, but as I ask myself things float to the surface. Times that I was in the house when a friend's parents were drunk and slapped her so hard so many times that blood was coming from her mouth. Times that a friend's parents said horrible, shaming, untrue things to her in front of all of us at her birthday party and I wanted to kill them. So many times that you'll get told by your parents were nothing, but you knew they were murder. And I never knew I felt so guilty, that I had felt such shame for not protecting them all, until now, when the responsibility has been lifted from my shoulders by Spirit dressed in a detective's trench coat. I still want to be able to go back and stop those things from happening but I no longer feel shame. I just feel like having a good cry.