In 2020, I went to work at Epic Youth Services, a CRC crisis residential center for youth aged 12 to 17, male and female. There was a semi-secured side of the SRC, and a residential crisis center that physically mirrored the RCRC.
There, I met Dora. She was sitting, at ease and casual, in a chair on the SCRC side. The staff showed me how to key in, and the door silently shut behind me. On a cheap futon couch, a young male was doing his best impression of a thug. He occupied as much space as his adolescent body would allow, knees painfully wide apart, arms thrown out over the back of the barely-there purple couch. He would periodically cup his chin and do the slow all-mouth lick of his lips, periodically stroking a non-existent beard. Dora imitated his posture with less space. She possessed strength and power by her very expression and seemed about to laugh. She was older than me by a few years. Long black hair, tall and thin, no makeup, dark skin.
When I think about the first interaction I had with Dora and the last, the first with this kid saying that he knew the doors weren’t like juvie, where he spent a good portion of his time, here, all that would happen is a weak-ass alarm would go off if he pushed on the bar for a while, and then he could run. I was surprised to hear this because I hadn’t been given that information, and my response was to stay silent and look as bored as Dora. Her response was to lean back, cross her arms, and laugh.
I remember her saying well, go ahead. You know what’s going to happen. I’m not giving you your shoes. He stared at his socks, then sat up and pulled them back under the couch. She finished with then I’m going to chase your ass across that field. When I catch you, I’m going to beat your ass, so if you’re perfectly okay with getting out of here with no shoes on, trying to outrun me, and then getting your ass kicked, go for it.
At that point, I realized therapeutic techniques here had a lot of leeway. None of us were therapists, but we were expected to follow a treatment plan, and beating a kid’s ass had never been mentioned in any I had reviewed. I decided it had to be a bluff. I liked her attitude. I’ve always said that I do what works when I’m trying to determine how to handle something. He didn’t run, so it worked.
She was amazing. In her personal life, she made so many bad choices, the least of which was simultaneously having a boyfriend and a husband. Once I met them both, I was rooting for the husband. It was an interesting paradigm, but it created a lot of drama in her life. She seemed to prefer it that way. She had a big, aggressive rottweiler named Jade. Her sister, Maria, also worked at Epic. Dora was smart, violent, witty, funny, exasperating, and manipulative—she was never dull. Oh, and she’s also dead.
She gave me some good advice at the beginning of my three-year stretch. There was a girl named Cassie who had a four-year degree and whose husband was a correctional officer who allegedly beat her regularly. I didn’t find that out till later. She got hired at the same time I did, and we went through training together. Being very ambitious and competitive, she decided to take some swings at me verbally and emotionally. She tried to show her impressive ability to do the job by tearing me down. Now, this can work because it’s uncomfortably close to my mother’s parenting techniques, so she was getting to me.
After the first two weeks, I decided I would quit because I didn’t have the education. That was the main thing. I didn’t understand some of the things that Cassie was referring to in diagnosis’. She would just fold her arms and announce, “Well, this is clearly a textbook case of blah, blah, blah.” In a word, I allowed her to intimidate me without attempting to understand her fear. I just reacted.
I don’t like being intimidated. And apparently, Dora didn’t like seeing me intimidated because a few weeks later, we ended up having a discussion outside, smoking cigarettes in the dark parking lot. She listened to me say why I needed to quit, how I couldn’t do the job, and how this was a mistake. And she asked me one question:
Are you f****** any of these people?
First of all, Cassie’s female and I’m straight, so that was confusing, but the only answer I could give was, well, no, I’m not f****** any of these people.
So the next question was, why do you care? You don’t go home with these people, you don’t sleep with these people, you don’t owe these people anything, they don’t pay your bills and you’re letting some little blonde b**** straight out of school tell you how it is? F*** her. You’re good at what you do. I’ve been watching you, and I think you’re good. So, who do you believe, Cassie or me?
Looking back, I don’t know how much of that was manipulation because I’m more assertive than most people. Dora needed some good staff members who would act, not react in a bad situation, and that’s okay if that’s why she did it because it worked. I started thinking yeah, why the f*** am I listening to Cassie? Cassie is a moron.
Now, Dora made a lot of moronic moves herself, as did I. We were both pretty self-destructive at times, products of messed-up childhoods.
She tried to get me to go to Texas with her a couple of years later. She and her husband were going to drive a big rig to Texas. She described it as a “drop-off”. I assumed, as she knew I would, that the truck was the item being delivered. I don’t remember why it seemed like the kind of adventure my boring life needed, but I was talked out of it by David, another staffer, a great guy who had known Dora all her life. She had been like an aunt to him, and he liked me, and we were good friends, so he took me to the side and said whatever you do, don’t go to Texas. It’s not a good idea. You’re going to get in trouble. It’s not a good thing; she’s not telling you everything. He added, do not tell Dora I told you.
So I said no, and a couple of years later, after all our paths had gone in very different directions, supposedly Dora and her husband were arrested for transporting drugs across the border from, guess you guessed it, Texas to Mexico. I’m pretty sure she did time for that. When she got out, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she died before I could see her again.
My last contact with Dora was at her funeral. I watched Dora’s father, who is in his seventies, cry. He didn’t speak English, so I didn’t know what he was saying. I had meant to see Dora alive one more time, but our lives had a way of getting in the way.
Rest in peace, my friend.