Vol. 71, No. 6, June 1998
The H-line Transfer: One Attorney's
Journey from Private Practice
to Public-sector Employment
The author practiced law for 18 years in a private firm overlooking
the Capitol Square. In making the transition to public-sector
employment, she gave up the convenience of reserved parking in
the firm's adjacent lot and gained a rich and full bus-life
on Madison Metro's H-line.
By Teresa M. Elguézabal
You think you've considered everything until you wake up one February
morning and you no longer have that reserved parking space in
the law firm's adjacent lot. You gave it up along with the career
that law students dream of. You cashed in the partnership at that
venerable firm with ceiling-high windows overlooking the Capitol
Square.
"Have you lost your mind?" some have asked.
"It feels so right," you replied.
"You left the firm that takes ACLU cases even though they don't
pay?"
"It's freeing," you said.
Day One. It's the first day of your state job. You stretch your arms back
from under the comforter and bump into the wall between the spindles
of the headboard. You push against that wall, extending your arms
and reaching with your toes, then glide down deeper for five more
minutes.
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Riding the H-line, Teresa Elguézabal muses about changing directions
in her career and about her new bus-family. "This is what you
missed during those years of backing out of your attached garage,"
she writes. "With a flick of the thumb on the remote, you closed
the door and drove straight to your reserved parking spot. You
can't get this on your drive through the pleasant part of town.
You cross your arms and lean back, satisfied with your rich and
full bus-life."
Photo: Andy Manis |
All set to leave for work and you realize, again, no more parking
space next to your office door. So you quickly leaf through the
bus schedules you picked up over the weekend and study the routes.
The E-line winds through the familiar drive: north on Seminole
Highway past the Arboretum where the crabapple trees bloom in
frozen fog, past Nakoma Golf Course surrounded by pretty Tudor
and Colonial homes. But that route requires a hike to the nearest
stop. Maybe in spring and summer, you think, and settle for the
H-line instead.
Week One. When you climb aboard the bus most of the seats are empty. The
driver continues southeast. After crossing the railroad tracks
near the Post Road and Todd Drive intersection, crowds huddle
at each stop. They climb up the steps and scramble to find a seat.
They live in brown, two-story apartment complexes along the way:
Whispering Pines, Ridge Wood, and Southridge Village. Many passengers
are students living away from the high-rent district of campus
and downtown. Yet plenty are heads of households who live in these
two-bedroom units where their children have to share a room.
For years, you repeated that telephone number three, four, up
to five times a day. It's no wonder it's imprinted in your every
cell, right down to the fingertips. It's that same involuntary
memory that pulls you towards the old law office now. |
Week Two. At the stop in front of the apartments, a man climbs in and
takes the empty space next to you. Smells of cooking waft from
his direction. They seem to have saturated his down coat. You
place the spices, turmeric with a hint of ginger. He has wide
gaps between his top front teeth. While you look straight ahead
so that he can't tell you've noticed the faults in his teeth,
he turns and speaks.
"Which department is your job?" he asks. He must have seen you
get off the bus at Park and Johnson the day before. You notice
his clipped sentences, the roll of his Rs. Like you, he learned
English as a second language.
You tell him you just changed work after 18 years at a private
law firm. You're now an investigator for U.W.-Madison.
He questions your decision, too. He doesn't even ask, "Investigator
of what?"
"Isn't law firm nice job?" He speaks in a lilting voice and holds
consonants at the end of words like he doesn't want to let them
go.
You explain that you'd been a lawyer for too long, that sometimes
a change, any change, is good. He listens intently to your practiced response that
things aren't always what they're cracked up to be; that the adversarial
system depletes the soul; blah-blah.
"How many kids you have?" He changes the subject.
"I have one daughter and my husband has two," you say. "All three
are grown up," you add.
"I have two girls, one boy," he says gesturing with two fingers
then one.
"Does your wife work?" you ask.
"Nurse. University Hospitals," he says. "She takes car."
You look straight ahead again thinking that's the end. It dawns
on you that he talks like curry the way curry would sound if
it talked.
"How long you have this husband?" The man wants to know more.
"Excuse me?"
"How long you have this husband?" he repeats.
So you tell him. You tell a perfect stranger, "Six years."
Week Three. Across the aisle you spot a girl, no older than 14, who takes
small and fast bites from a breakfast burrito. She chomps at the
rolled tortilla she holds in her fist. She leans her head into
the burrito each time she bites. She chews real fast, leans and
bites, then chews real fast again. She reminds you of how you
imagine a mouse eats quickly so as not to be caught. She finishes
and reaches into her bag. You expect another burrito because one's
not enough for a young girl, but she takes out a large paper cup
and inserts a straw through the plastic cover. At least she's
having a large orange juice, you think, until she sucks on the
white straw and it turns dark. At the corner of Park and Regent
she gets off the bus, and you turn to watch as she crosses to
Regent Street to transfer to a bus heading west. You wonder who's
at home when she leaves in the morning and if there's orange juice
or milk in the refrigerator.
Week Four. One seat ahead and across the aisle, two students discuss the
difference between case precedent and cases that have persuasive
merit. They talk of the rule against citing unpublished decisions.
A man old enough to be their father leans across the aisle toward
them.
"You must be discussing a legal writing assignment," he says.
The students nod and the man smiles with approval.
It occurs to you that in the 18 years you spent as a lawyer, you
could have started and finished law school six more times. The
thought sends shivers up and down your spine.
While the bus idles at the red light at Park and West Washington,
you feel a pull at the side of your waist. Some invisible magnet
is drawing you east towards the Capitol Square. The pull is so
strong that it hurts. It feels as if that part between ribs and
hip bone where it's soft and unprotected is being suctioned
from left to right. Something wants to take you there. You blame
it on those law students you overheard. But the other day you
automatically dialed your old office number when you meant to
call your husband at home. Give yourself a break, you said at
the time. For 18 years, you repeated that telephone number three,
four, up to five times a day. It's no wonder it's imprinted in
your every cell, right down to the fingertips. It's that same
involuntary memory that pulls you towards the old law office now.
When the light turns green and the bus speeds away, that pain
on your side fades to an ache.
Week Five. The Down Syndrome woman gets on the bus with her large purple
duffel bag. Each day one of the students at her stop carries it
on for her. As the bus pulls away she kisses her hand and blows
at it in the direction of one of the apartment buildings. "Bye-bye,
baby," she says in that tone adults assume when talking to small
children. "Mama loves you. Be a good girl," she says as she blows
another kiss. "Bye, sweetie. Mama be back."
Two stops down the road, the burrito girl gets on and takes a
seat next to you. You wait for her to pull that McDonald's bag
from the backpack she places on the floor in front of her. When
it doesn't come, you ask: "No burrito this morning?" You grin
with familiarity. She looks back, unsmiling, and grunts, which
you take to mean, "Don't mess with me so early in the morning."
Instantly, you wipe the smile from your face and get real sober.
She smells tough as stale cigarette smoke. When she leans over
for something in the backpack, her layers of sweatshirts ride
up exposing the small of her back. You notice that where you have
cellulite, she has baby fat.
You resist the maternal urge to pull her shirt down, to cover
her skin, to rub her back and say, "There-there." After she roots
around in her backpack, the girl sits up and adjusts herself.
She yanks her shirts down and pulls up on the right sleeve that's
been covering her hand. That's when you notice the suture marks
against her white skin on the soft inside of her wrist. It's a
two-inch brown stripe that resembles a child's drawing of tiny
railroad tracks. You wonder if it's a tattoo, or the mark of some
gang rite, or worse. The slash doesn't run across the wrist. You've
heard it's more deadly to cut parallel to the arm. While you're
thinking, the girl hauls up on the strap of her bag, slings it
over her shoulder, and she's gone.
Week Six. Going home it's a different mood. When you get on at Park and
University, the state office workers from GEF I and GEF II are
already on. They sit together at the front and pass around pictures
of someone's son's wedding. The driver says he wants to see the
pictures, too. He remembers the boy from when he rode the bus
with his mother not that many years ago.
It occurs to you that in the 18 years you spent as a lawyer, you
could have started and finished law school six more times. The
thought sends shivers up and down your spine. |
One office worker says she's been updating her position description.
Keeping her fingers crossed, she hopes for that next pay upgrade.
Her friend says she plans to take her four hours of floating holiday
on Good Friday.
So that's how they get around it! The union negotiated a half-day
floating holiday to make up for the loss of the Good Friday afternoon
holiday that Judge Shabaz struck down as unconstitutional.
A third woman says she plans to combine that half-day floater
with 12 hours of comp time she's built up. "That will give me
two free days," she says, dancing her feet on the floor. "Free,"
she says, as if God had tacked two extra days to her 1998 calendar.
You envy her sheer pleasure. In a split second you see the beauty
of it, too. It's that confluence where union contract and wages
and hours laws and classified staff rules flow together. From
that pool, the lady fished out two days. It has a certain magic
about it; a little miracle. Well ... it's at least like finding
a $5 bill in the pocket of pants you hadn't worn in a year. It's
free. Free money. Free time.
This is what you missed during those years of backing out of your attached
garage. With a flick of the thumb on the remote, you closed the
door and drove straight to your reserved parking spot. You can't
get this on your drive through the pleasant part of town. You cross your
arms and lean back, satisfied with your rich and full bus-life.
A life you all but forgot while you surrounded yourself with insurance
executives, summary judgment motions, shifting burdens of proof,
embezzlers, Rule 12(b)1, excessive entanglement clauses, billable
hours, firm retreats, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, illegal
searches, bar luncheons, a revised compensation plan, noncompete
covenants, expert witnesses, adequate consideration, work product,
separation of church and state, and a few falsely accused.
Fondly, you think of the man who talks like curry and the Down
Syndrome woman who blows kisses out the window of the bus. You
offer a silent prayer for the girl with the scar on her wrist.
The light is green when the bus approaches the corner of Park
and West Washington traveling south. But you turn in the direction
of downtown. You place yourself gazing out of your old office
overlooking the Capitol Square. As the bus rolls past, you crane
your neck to continue the gaze. You anticipate the grace of tulips
that bloom every May, the Wednesday Farmers Market, and the Concerts
on the Square. For a second, your mind wanders over to the adjacent
parking lot. And you say to reserved parking, "Bye-bye, baby.
Mama loves you."
But there's no going back.
Teresa M. Elguézabal, U.W. 1979, now works at the U.W.-Madison
investigating complaints of discrimination and sexual harassment.
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