The Judge: a Parable
- Oct 30, 2020
- 4 min read
by Jennifer Savran Kelly
In a sunny white cottage on a sunny green hill lived a judge, with his wife and two young daughters. The villagers admired the judge—how he looked out for his family, treated his neighbors kindly, and held a diploma from a prestigious university. Some said, however, that he drank too much and was a mean, violent drunk.
Whatever people believed, one thing was true. Every day the judge sat in his chambers in his full black robe and received complaints that no other judge would entertain because they lacked credibility. Which is to say they came from women. And because the judge listened to them, most of the villagers conceded that he was, basically, a good man.
As talk of the judge’s generosity toward women grew, more and more flocked to his chambers to complain about how they were being treated—in the streets, at their places of business, and even at home. Which is to say they were being abused. At first, the judge took these to be isolated incidents, the freak perversions of a few sick minds. But as the months wore on, he was visited by more women than he even imagined could live in the village.
Wives, waitresses, school teachers, librarians, cashiers, police officers, nurses, dancers. They came from everywhere and showed no sign of stopping, each one’s story more vivid and cruel than the last. With heads down and eyes turned away, some women wiped off makeup or moved clothing aside to reveal bruises like giant purple roses and broken bones that had so misshapen their limbs they bordered on grotesque. Some bled right on the carpet.
Which was why it always pained the judge to tell them they had no case. They didn’t go to the doctor soon enough or waited too long to speak up, or they didn’t think anyone would believe them over the highly respected men they were accusing, did they. Yet women continued to come because he was the only one who listened. So one by one, he re-covered their wounds and let them cry on his shoulder.
One day, after a woman told him of the unspeakable things her own father had done to her, the judge was struck by the power of her tears, filled with a rage that only the tears of a woman who had been so wronged could possess. Predicting that such tears could instill great power in him, he wrung her tears from his robe into a glass vial. Then, stringing a piece of twine around it, he tied it to his belt. From that day forward, he kept the vial hidden beneath his robe, and after each woman departed his chambers, he used it to collect her tears.
Many months later, there appeared an unusually composed woman, a scientist with an elegance of manner, who told him the most disturbing story yet. One day long ago she’d been brought to a house where she believed there would be a party. Instead, she found herself in a bedroom with two men, and before she understood what was happening, one of them had pinned her to the bed, forcing his hands into her most private places. When she tried to scream, he nearly suffocated her to death.
Agitated, the judge listened. But the worst part of her story was still to come.
It was you, she said, who attacked me that night.
Stunned, the judge said she must be mistaken. But her face sent a chill up his spine.
The woman held firm to her story.
Why didn’t you come forward before? No one will believe you, he said.
I wanted to forget. But now, all the women you invite into your chambers—you’ve become too powerful and I can’t let it continue.
The judge grew faint. He had a family to think of, a career. He couldn’t let anything get in the way. So, like he did with all of the women, he dismissed her.
The next day the judge was indicted.
Through streets lined with protesters, some convinced of his guilt and others on the side of his innocence, the judge walked to the court—his court—to stand trial. His rational mind assured him that the woman had no case. But still he feared she was telling the truth.
During the trial, the woman spoke with a quiver in her voice but a steadiness of manner as she unraveled a horrible nightmare of hands, torn clothing, diabolical laughter, lost breath, and, finally, escape. The judge stood no chance against such testimony, so during recess he hid in the bathroom, pulled out his vial of women’s tears, and drank it in one gulp.
Back in the courtroom, with a fury like no one had ever seen, the judge defended himself. The cruelty, he shouted through borrowed tears. The gall. The dishonor the woman had dared to bring to his family. By the time he was done, the entire courtroom was weeping, and the jury declared him innocent.
But while it was true that it took a man’s voice to lend credibility to countless women’s pain, the judge had not considered the full impact of his folly. Centuries have taught women how to relegate suffering into the deepest corners of their hearts in order to move through their days without going mad. The judge may have stolen their pain, but he lacked their terrible wisdom. Which is to say that after the trial ended, his tears did not. He tried to go back to his life, but whenever he looked at his wife and daughters, at the people in his courtroom, his tears turned to sobs and his sobs turned to screams, until the torture was more than he could bear. One day he disappeared, never to be seen again.
Many believe the pain consumed him. Others say the tears drowned him. But a growing number of villagers swear that if you listen by the forest at night, you can still hear screaming.
Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/her/they/them) lives in Ithaca, New York, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. She has written for film and print, and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW, GREEN MOUNTAINS REVIEW (online), IRON HORSE LITERARY REVIEW, GRIST: A JOURNAL OF THE LITERARY ARTS (Online Companion), and elsewhere. Her novel-in-progress ENDPAPERS won a 2018 award from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
