After Court Adjourned, I Had Nothing Left to Rule On

Every Sentence Gets Weighed

My name is Gu Heng. I'm forty-eight, and I've been a civil court judge in Boston for fourteen years. Stripped down, my job is one thing: listen to people talk, then decide. Who is testifying and who is performing, which sentence is fact and which has been watered down — a sentence enters my ear, gets weighed, then filed. After fourteen years, the habit has grown into my bones and won't come off. A friend tells gossip over dinner and I start sorting the chain of evidence. My daughter calls about her internship and, halfway through, I catch myself listing the issues in dispute — then I remember: she didn't call to file a brief. She just wanted her mother to hear her out.

My body surrendered before my mind did. My shoulders and neck are permanently stiff, and by afternoon my temples pulse like someone knocking softly from inside. At last year's physical, the doctor kneaded my trapezius and said this muscle feels like it's been holding something heavy for years. I said: it has. A courtroom. You just can't see it. This spring, during the closing season, I sat through four hearings in a day. Afterwards the clerk leaned in and whispered: Judge Gu, you've been rubbing your temples all afternoon. At home I looked in the mirror: the collar of my robe had pressed a red line into my neck, like a seal stamped on skin. That night I lay awake a long time, thinking about something very simple. I had decided eleven cases that day. Not one of them was about me.

No Clerk in This Room

That afternoon had been booked before the closing season even began. It's funny — the screening here was far more serious than I expected. You can't simply book. You fill in a form, you wait for review, and the questions are thorough: How do you sleep? Old injuries? Anywhere that shouldn't be touched? I stared at that form for a while. I have handled tens of thousands of documents; this was the first time a document examined me — and with more patience than many litigants' files ever get. A few days later the reply came, restrained to a single line: Your time has been set aside. I read that line over and over. So this is what it feels like, to have a place quietly, firmly held for you.

Then I walked into the room and promptly opened court in my head. Lighting: pass. Temperature: pass. The way the towels were folded — I was scoring the third item when I laughed out loud in the dim room. Gu Heng, you bring your case files even when you lie down. The therapist asked me nothing at all. Just one sentence, quietly, before beginning: Whatever you say or think here will not be written down. There is no record in this room. I went still. In court, every word I speak is followed by the clerk's hands — word for word, on the record, forever retrievable. Here, for the first time in fourteen years, whatever I said would not count. A palm settled on my shoulder — warm, heavy — starting from the hardest knot in my trapezius and moving slowly down. As the ache rose up in layers, my mind still tried to file it: is this relaxation, or — never mind. For the first time, I didn't name a feeling. It just spread, like water left on sand after the tide goes out, quietly finding its own level. When my breathing evened out, when my temples stopped knocking — I couldn't say. I only know that in that room without a record, I did something rare: I ruled on nothing.

No Reasons Required

Afterwards, I sat in the dressing room for a while. Three missed calls waited on my phone, all from the courthouse. In the old days I would have started my review in the car: Was the afternoon worth it? Should I change the treatment next time? Time spent should produce something audible. That day I didn't. I put the phone face-down in my pocket and drove home, across the Charles River, the wind thinning the clouds above the bridge. I had written judgments for eleven cases, each with reasons, each with grounds. That one afternoon was the only thing I didn't want to give reasons for. It was simply good. It needed no argument, and no one's approval.

That evening my daughter called again — the same internship troubles — and I listened to her talk for twenty minutes straight without once saying "I think you should." She paused. Mom, you're being unusually easy to talk to today. I smiled at the window and didn't explain. Some skills are trained in a courtroom, and so are some habits. If you want to hand over one whole afternoon and rule on nothing at all, the screening takes a little time — set your place aside early on the booking page and take it slowly, there's no rush. I've already set mine aside, for after the closing season ends.