In Honor of Gayle Hoffman z'l

If You Knew What I Knew
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.
You might think you're having fun
Rolling down the street,
Constantly forgetting something to eat.
Your pants are getting bigger
Your brain is getting smaller.
Why can't you just go home?
To a cousin
A brother
Your mother
My friend.
Don't end up like me.
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.

This story begins at the beginning of time and proceeds backwards and forwards, up and down, left and right. A time capsuled buried 28 years ago in Sudbury Massachusetts. My mother was 32, my father, 31, my brother Josh, 7, me 4, and Gayle, my foster sister was 12. She still lived with us then and had not yet been consumed by her life. The occasion was birchat hachammah-the sun celebration which we just commemorated again last week. Once every 28 years we on the earth and the sun stand facing each other in the same stance as we did at creation, at the dawn of time. Every 28 years we stand in the exact same places and begin a lengthy dance of near and far, facing and turned away all over again.

I remember her smell in the bathroom after she would shower, her skin darker than mine, hair straighter, eyes bigger. Yet to me, she was my sister. I knew no difference between her and any other "sister." I was too young to understand "foster" and "temporary."

I was 6 when they took her. I did not know then that they were DSS and that Gayle did not truly belong to us but was on loan to my family. But I understood I had lost something and that something was more than Gayle herself, but the future she might have had if she had stayed. What would have happened had Gayle never left?

28 years later we open the capsule. A letter written on a plain 3x5 index card in mother's handwriting lists our names and our ages as they should be now. Father 61, mother 62, brother 35, me 32 1/2, Gayle 40. Somehow part of and somehow apart from us-listed in the order we came to the family and not in the order we came to the world. As if, that is the center point, joining this family is the moment you become something...something whole...something found.

Gayle leaving at 13
Me not going to first grade-fear that once i left home, someone else would be gone for forever. We plan and things never quite go like they think they will. Like you go to school and plan everyone will be there when you get home. You plant a time capsule and think everyone

The article said she began hooking at 13 after she left us and went back to her mother who was supposed to be well enough mentally to raise a thirteen year old daughter.

The article said she began smoking crack at 14 maybe 15

The article said that the shooting happened 12 years ago. She was prostituting herself for $30 to buy drugs. It sounds like a bad after-school special when I tell it except she is not a fictional character, she is my lost sister. Lost to me, lost to our family, the center point, lost to herself...She John was a cop. It was not a sting, he was just a guy buying sex from a 28 year old with dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes eight days after graduating from the police academy. I imagine him feeling proud and powerful with his service revolver in hidden somewhere in his clothes, his new badge firmly clipped to his wallet, buying sex, walking the streets of Queens and into the home of a young woman. And when the moment arrived, his power and prowess failed him. The transaction a bust. No services rendered. The two of them next out on the street, he mocking him for his inabilities, him stumbling from the top of the world to the bottom of the deepest, darkest pit of shame, and embarassment. Suddenly the powerless prostitute is mocking the almighty police officer for what he could and could not do.

I'll teach you a to never disrespect anyone like that again he said, pulling the service revolver from its hiding place, shooting her in the neck and immediately she crumbled as her legs lost their functioning, her spinal cord seered into. In the street she laid, screaming wordless screams. Four more shots to her arms and legs. Irratic shooting of the demoralized in a vain attempt to regain his sense of balance, his place in the world, his strength.

She testified, he went to jail and a year later, she called. Quadraplegic from a nursing home. Her 2 sons now in the care of her brother, her tone optimistic, you were such a brat Rachael, she teased me. This ancient, happy voice on the other end of the line, my sister returned. That was 11 years ago. I was 21. Home from college. She was found but then I lost her again. No call ever returned, no visits ever made...

A time capsule dug up and a life unearthed. My mother reads the card today that she qrote 28 years ago and cries. Sad for those whose expectations were not met, for those whose lives did not extend the 28 year period as the earth and sun turned and rolled. A moment of blessing that we are all here. And then she goes looking, finding the story of Gayle. And then the finds the end of the tail.

"AN EX-COP imprisoned for shooting a prostitute who mocked him after he failed to perform sexually could be charged with her murder now that she has died eight years later, the Daily News has learned.

Gayle Hoffman was paralyzed in March 1996 when rookie transit cop Rolando Hernandez shot her just eight days after graduating from the Police Academy.

Hoffman, 34, died six months ago in a Long Island nursing home from illnesses directly related to her gunshot wounds, authorities said."

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2004/10/20/2004-10-20__ex-cop_may_pay_in_hooker_s_.html

"I could have adopted her" my mother wept. And now she is truly lost to the world.

If You Knew What I Knew
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.
You might think you're having fun
Rolling down the street,
Constantly forgetting something to eat.
Your pants are getting bigger
Your brain is getting smaller.
Why can't you just go home?
To a cousin
A brother
Your mother
My friend.
Don't end up like me.
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.

(Poem written by Gayle Hoffman)