After I finish, I’m sent back to the waiting room, where I review my notes from Officer Crane’s lecture until I’m called for my interview by Gabriel Robles, a man in his early fifties wearing a mauve shirt and a gray ponytail. He is friendly, very warm. In the tiny interview room he pulls out my chair for me, saying it’s quite heavy. Robles is from personnel. His name is printed on a card in front of him. The other member of my board is Detective E. Waters, a tall woman in her middle thirties. Her body has the same kind of chiseled perfection as Officer Crane’s. I can see the muscles in her tan face. She is wearing a dress with a print of lavender hibiscus and a lace inset in the top that looks like something she must have bought for Easter Mass. My father has warned me in advance that the routine is pretty much the classic good cop/bad cop, and by the tension working in her jaw I can see which side she’ll be coming down on.
“We were very interested in your employment history,” Robles says.
I admit that it’s not exactly conventional. It gets confusing, how much money did I make when.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, smiling. “We’re nontraditional. I have a degree in sociology. Detective Waters was a speech pathologist.”
I nod appreciatively, wishing I could interview them.
“So you write novels,” Robles says. “That’s something. What are they about?”
I’m vague and he asks me to be specific.
“And do you know these people?”
“I make them up.”
“Just out of your head? Out of nothing?”
“That’s right.”
“So you just sit down to write,” he says, leaning towards me. Detective Waters looks bored, but I’m not the one encouraging this line of questioning. “No one tells you what to do, you pick all that out yourself?”
“That’s right.”
Then they talk about how interesting that is, how much fun it would be, and it’s true. It is fun.
“So what have you done to prepare for the Police Academy? Have you read your father’s reports?”
I tell them I have not.
“Your form says you swim and run. Why don’t you tell us about that.”
I skim over the details of my new physical life, knowing that it must all seem like small potatoes to Detective Waters.
“How do you think your work experience has helped to prepare you for a job with the LAPD?”
“I’m very self-motivated,” I say. “I’m great at making decisions. I think things through. I’m rational and calm.”
“Yes,” he says, “but have you thought about the fact that you’re joining an organization that is nearly paramilitary? That you have to operate in a system of authority where you always have to do what someone tells you, even if you don’t think they’re right?”
“Yeah,” Waters adds, not so nicely. “I was wondering about that.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I say, “and it concerns me. I went to Catholic school for twelve years. I have some experience with authority. I haven’t taken a lot of orders as an adult. All I can say is that I’ve thought about it and I’ll try.”
“Why do you want to be an officer now?”
I tell them I’m not getting any younger. I tell them about my family, how I have recently realized that I want to follow my lifelong dream to be a cop. Do they buy this?
They want to know if I’ve had any experience with real danger. How do I know I’d be so calm? Again, Waters nods in an exasperated way.
I make a quick mental scan through the safety of my life. There is not a flicker of danger, the slightest threat of injury. The truth is I loath danger. I avoid it at all costs. “I’ve lived in and out of New York over the last ten years,” I say helplessly. “I’ve ridden the subway at night. I know from crazy.”
They like this answer. To an Angeleno, New York is still two steps removed from a Mad Max movie. I tell them I know who to face down and who to ignore. I consider telling them that I know whom to face down and whom to ignore, but even though it would be grammatically correct, I don’t think it would further my case.
They give me two scenarios that are straight-up Officer Crane, one a mild infraction urged by an older partner, the other a case of violence against a child. I give the right answers. I would have given them without the prep session. I know what my father would have said.
They ask for my closing statement. I tell them my father, as they know from my paperwork, was a police captain. I have an uncle who is an assistant district attorney and an uncle who is a firefighter, all in L.A. I tell them I have civic blood and my time is now.
“Off the record,” Robles says, “how does your father feel about all of this?”
Leave it on the record: he’s thrilled.
I return to the waiting room, where I wait about sixty seconds before getting the news that I’ve passed the oral and should go back to room B. The Danielle-Steel-novel proctor tells me to show up for the physical abilities test—the PAT—at six o’clock the next morning. Yet more paperwork: she gives me a medical form, a background form, and a Xeroxed letter of congratulations from Willie Williams that tells me not to quit my present job until I have been officially accepted. In the time I’ve been off in my oral exam I feel a shift has occurred between me and the police department—we’ve gone from me wanting them to them wanting me.
In the car, I tell my father everything and he nods enthusiastically. He tells me stories about oral boards he’s been on where people sweated through their suit jackets, or when a candidate was so top flight they wouldn’t give him a chair so as to make the interview that much more uncomfortable, or half the board would face the wall and never look at him. By my father’s reckoning, Waters and Robles were my friends.
We eat a salad that night and sit outside after dinner while Jerri waters the plants. We talk about police brutality during investigations. I ask my father questions, personal questions, and he answers them all readily. “But that’s not something you can ever write about,” he says.
I am starting to see how this is going to be a problem.
I am in bed by a quarter past nine. At ten o’clock I take a sleeping pill.
The alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m. My left leg has been tight for three days from the sprinting I’ve done and I try to stretch it out. My father knocks on my door at 5:20. He wants to go. Am I sure I don’t want breakfast? He has made me a little bag on a string to wear around my neck, not much bigger than a quarter, to put quarters in so that I can call him when the test is over. Every year when my sister and I left California, he made index cards for us. He wrote down every phone number where he might possibly be reached and taped a dime next to each number. After we got back to Tennessee, I would peel the dimes off my card and spend them. My sister saved her cards just the way they were. She still has them, dimes and all, one from every year.
I think we’re leaving the house too early, but when we arrive at the Academy at 5:35 the parking lot is already full. Cars are parked down either side of the street. All week, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been having a convention in Dodger Stadium, which is across the road and an ocean of asphalt away from the Academy. They’ve been baking in the bleachers in their white shirts and dark suits. Early as it is, there are women standing on the sidewalks holding signs in both English and Spanish about the fate of our souls. They proselytize in our general direction, not because we are trying out to be police officers, but because at this hour of the morning we are the only available audience.
My father kisses my cheek, wishes me luck.
Two hundred fifteen people have come to take the PAT this morning. The test is given every two weeks, and the last time only forty people showed up. There’s no telling why this has happened. Not only is the crowd of test takers record-breaking, several of the instructors are no-shows. We wait in lines that wind around the picnic tables, swatting at the gnats. A
ll decked out in our running shoes and running shorts, we look like a cattle call for a Nike commercial. I make friendly chat with the young women on either side of me. I lend them my pen. One tells me a long story about trying out for the police academy in another city but that her last employer, Robinson’s department store, wouldn’t release her work records because she’d had a fight with her boss on leaving. She had to hire a lawyer to sue them, but by then it was too late and she had to start the process over.
The two black women who ran the show yesterday are back. We move wherever and whenever they tell us to. One walks back and forth on top of the picnic tables. “I don’t want to see your green cards,” she says, waving a stack of green cards. “You don’t need them, don’t show them to me. You need a picture ID, people. Don’t tell me you don’t have a driver’s license. You drove over here, you better have a driver’s license.”
I wonder if I’m the only person here who got a ride from her dad.
We fill out white forms confirming we feel well today and understand that we do not have to take the test now. It describes what we will be asked to do. The girls from the training-prep class whom I had watched go over the wall are there in matching T-shirts this time, their names on the back. They lean against each other, making jokes. “See the arms on that one,” the Robinson’s girl beside me says, and points to the girl who looks like she’s made a commitment to one-handed push-ups.
After an hour we are told to go down to the parking lot, and the neat line breaks apart. People who got there at five a.m. are no longer in the front. In the parking lot, the instructors beg us to leave. Anyone who leaves will have priority next time. Go. Go. About twenty-five people bail out, including the girl beside me who says she didn’t know about the six-foot wall and figures she should practice anyway. They ask for people who are from out of town and will be flying out tonight. A preposterous number raise their hands. “We’ll be doing spot checks on airline tickets,” they threaten, and the crowd laughs. Next they ask for anyone who lives north of Fresno. I raise my hand and say I live in Boston. This qualifies me for the north-of-Fresno group. We go back to the picnic tables and form a new line.
Behind me are a group of Marines who’ve already had their background checks. They make no attempt to lower their voices. “The officer asked me, ‘How many times have you driven drunk?’ and I said, ‘Officer, I am very unlucky. The only two times in my life I ever drove drunk I got caught.’ ” Another pipes up. “You want to know how many times I drove drunk? ‘I’m a Marine, sir, do you mean how many times did I drive my own vehicle while drunk or how many times did I drive a military vehicle while drunk?’ ” They talk about their time in Somalia. One admitted during his oral to stealing two sleeping bags from the Navy and was told he had to return them with a letter of apology and get a letter of receipt.
After we sign in there is more waiting around. Today’s T-shirts are esoteric: EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL “PAU HANA” MOBILE UNIT ONE. I am wearing a shirt from the University of Iowa, a reminder to myself that I went to graduate school.
The track at the Police Academy has been ripped out to make way for a new drainage system, and so we’ll have to run in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. We file out the front gates of the Academy and make our way up a long and steep drive. This is the day the World Cup soccer match between the United States and Romania will be played in Pasadena. At noon it will be 120 degrees on the field. At 8:00 a.m. in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, I’m guessing it’s already 95. The smog is a thick woolly blanket over the city. It hurts to breathe and I’m not doing a thing. There are approximately 180 of us in the parking lot. No shade, no water. They call out names and numbers, one to thirty. I am twenty-eight. This is a brilliant piece of luck—it means I will run with the first group when it is 95 and not 110. I pick up my neon-orange rubberized vest with a giant “28” on the back and snap it on. I turn around, as per instruction, and my name and number are recorded. We are to run around pylons that form a circle in the parking lot. One lap is one-tenth of a mile; we must complete a minimum of ten laps in order to qualify, and we must not stop running for the entire twelve minutes. They will shout out our number every time we pass. When they call stop, we must stop dead in our tracks or be disqualified. Go.
I begin to run with the pack. Did I ever compete athletically in high school? Did I run against another Catholic girl? I can’t remember. If I did, it was a long time ago. I know this: I have never run against Marines. On the first lap I begin to pant in shallow breaths. I feel faint, not from the heat or exertion, but from the fear of fainting. I am going to faint in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium in front of cops and Marines during the first lap of the first event of the test. I never wanted to be a cop. Dizzy and nauseated, with lungs full of L.A. smog, I trot. “Twenty-eight!” they call when I pass. People pass me. I pass people. I have not kept count of my laps. I try to remember the Charles River, the shady banks sloping down towards the water. Every pylon I corner is a deal with God. I no longer care about passing this test or pleasing my father. I care nothing about writing this book. I care about not passing out. When they call “Stop” I stop and put my hands on my knees and begin to hack. I cough continually for the next half hour. The Marines are coughing, too. I spit into my hand because I taste something so acrid I think it must be blood. No blood.
We are told to stand still and straight with our backs to the proctors so they can record our numbers. I have completed eleven and one-eighth laps. The best of our group did thirteen and a half laps. Two of the four women in our group didn’t make ten. We unsnap our vests and lay them on the ground in numerical order for the next group. It is eight-thirty. This means that the last group of runners waiting in that shadeless parking lot will finish at eleven-thirty, about the time the soccer players are beginning to bake in Pasadena.
An event must be completed within the stated time in order to receive a qualifying seventy, though as many as a hundred points can be earned for exceptional speed. There are four events, meaning a minimum combined score of 280 is needed to pass. Hypothetically, one event can be failed completely if the others are completed in such astonishing time as to gain the needed extra points, but it is clear to all of us that failing one event means failing everything.
The wall jump is next. Our group of thirty trundles back across the road to the Academy, hacking. Our leader is Desrae, the woman who gave the test yesterday in her smart mules. She’s wearing tight, cuffed denim shorts today and a midriff top. She tells us to move it. One out of three of all women tested do not make it over the wall, as compared with one out of twenty men. As number 28 I have a prime spot, enough time to rest but not dead last. We have seventeen seconds to run fifty yards, with a hairpin turn around a pylon, then jump the wall without touching the metal posts on either side, then run an additional ten yards (this last, I assume, prevents people who fall over the wall and can’t get up from passing the exam). Desrae trots over the path and makes a small hop in front of the wall to imply getting over. We are all clear. She holds up her stopwatch, saying very politely, “Jim, are you ready?” When he says yes, she says Go.
This is my first chance to really get a good look at my group. Of the twenty-six men, I would guess twenty are currently either in the military or in another police force. Twenty-five of them are in extraordinary physical condition: tall, broad-shouldered, young. Of the women, two are roommates in Oakland and play on the same softball team. Of these two, one is a remarkable athlete, a small, wiry Latina who goes through the paces effortlessly. Her friend is larger, paler, and wears glasses. She came in under ten laps on her run, as did Janet, the fourth woman, who is also soft-looking and tall. Though I don’t take a poll, I strongly suspect I am the oldest person in our group. The men are vaulting the wall. The pale Oakland softball player hits the blue guardrail with her foot and is disqualified. The group is extremely supportive, clapping politely and giving the occasional cheer for a job well done. The
crowd roars with encouragement as I pull over the wall. I complete the course in sixteen seconds. The men and the Latina woman do it between ten and eleven seconds.
For the next event, the bar hang, we head down to a set of obstacle courses carved into the side of the hill. I had thought this would be my worst event, though now I’m convinced nothing will be as bad as the running was. We have to run fifty yards around a pylon to the bar, jump up and grab it, and then hang for one minute. The timing begins once we stop swinging. This is harder than it sounds. There are three fixed bars, not unlike the ones I hung from in school yards back in Cambridge, with runners going out in a staggered order. The first bar has tape on it, making it the most desirable, but that’s just luck of the draw. The women from Oakland tell me to crush a leaf on my hands to make them sticky, that it will help keep me on. I wonder which leaf is sticky enough to glue my body weight to a bar for a minute. The real problem seems to be the swinging. Jumping means swinging. The trick seems to be briefly hitting your foot against the pole to still yourself. When the Latina woman is called, she hangs so effortlessly we are mesmerized. She looks like she’s just standing there with her arms raised. There is no strain on her face. “It’s because she’s so little,” the huge Marine next to me whispers. One Air Force man stationed in Savannah has been exceptionally nice to me. “It’s all in your head,” he says after coming off the bar. “You just have to clear your mind. Count slowly, one, one thousand one, two, one thousand two . . . by the time you get to thirty in your head it’s time to drop.” And people are dropping. Men struggle, grab and slip off. One falls at 59.4 seconds. The temperature is rising by leaps, and I leave my hands open in my lap, palms up, hoping to keep them dry. The crowd cheers people according to their bar number. “Hang on, number one!” they shout. “You can do it!”