Briefly Perfectly Human by Alua Arthur

Author:Alua Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Hexagon-Shaped Peg

Sometimes, we’re blessed with unexpected guardian figures in life. Here you are, running away from some all-consuming truth, and then, life serves you up someone who narrows their eyes at you and names the very thing you’re avoiding so desperately. Usually, they are tough but compassionate. They come to you in the spirit of guidance, not shame. They are doula figures, patrolling self-denial’s wilderness to point you, gently but firmly, toward the path of truth of self.

For me, this person was Silvia Argueta.

I vividly remember when I first met Silvia. A senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a first-generation Guatemalan American, and the first person in her family to go to college, let alone become a lawyer, she was a force in her own right, and I was drawn to her immediately. Immigrant sees immigrant, even though at her height—four feet eleven inches, never rounding up to five feet because that would be a lie—I often only saw the top of her head. During my tortured tenure, she became a mentor and close friend.

When Silvia’s father died, I attended his funeral. When she spoke to a medium afterward, hoping to reach him, the woman asked to speak to the tall smiley Black woman in the office. Meaning me. The next day, Silvia knocked on my door and told me about the medium’s request as if she were relaying a sandwich order. I was spooked, but I talked to the medium anyway. (Apparently, my grandma I’d never met wanted to say hi.)

When I was repeatedly frustrated by the inequities of the benefits programs, Silvia listened to me bitch, my tears brimming about the injustice of it all. But in that first meeting, she got right to the point with me.

“Why are you a lawyer?”

The question unnerved me. It was so direct and, in this setting, so obvious, though I hadn’t thought about it since my law school application essays—and even then, I bullshitted. “Well, um. . . .” I sniffled, fiddling with the rings on my hands, trying to conjure up something to appease this firecracker. “I want to impact justice somehow and help people and be there when people most need someone there and . . .” I trailed off, hoping I was convincing her. But I’m a terrible liar. All of this was true, but it didn’t explain why I’d chosen the practice of law.

I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was a lawyer because I had been a “gifted” child expected to do big things with her life, and being a lawyer sounded good, and I wanted to make my family proud.

I couldn’t tell her that I had not been brave enough to stop and understand what I wanted, and that despite the tremendous amount of work that law school and the bar exam had been, I had just taken the path of least resistance. It sounded silly even to me—when “the path of least resistance” involves putting yourself through

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