I drew a speech bubble for the cop, “Ahhhh, no!” and I titled my drawing : “Mom Beats the Cops”.

“Useless fucking system,” my mother growled. I thought she was talking to me, my first lesson for the day which I understood to be something about incompetence and dishonesty within the legal process. But I wasn’t sure if I had just learned something about how wrong the system was or about the limits of my mother’s pushiness.

GOING TO COURT BY KATIE ELLISON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 24