by Susan Wilson
“I think he likes me.” Meghan looked up from the dog and saw Rosie’s crumpled face, and her heart broke for the inmate.
“He does. He’s going to love you.” Rosie wiped away the tears, and Meghan watched her make the transition from emotionally overcome to being a good soldier. This was what she had been working for; this was what she would do. “Let’s go over some of his basic stuff today.”
Shark
He is used to being handed over to the person who takes him outside to ride in a car; to meet other people, other dogs. To be mindful of sitting quietly and not barking when it’s not appropriate. He likes the person who takes him out, but he likes his person inside better. And now, there is another person, another woman, one who doesn’t squat to greet him, but requires him to go to her. She never gets up, but rolls around, and he has begun to adapt his repertoire of tasks to meet her commands. She is so good with the tug-of-war toy. Really spot-on. Shark finds himself sorry when she rolls out of the room at the end of the session. And he is banging his tail against walls and furniture at the start of the day when he thinks that she might be coming to play with him. He recognizes that new word Meghan as identifying this person, and whenever his inside woman says it, he gets a tail-thumping thrill. He loves Rosie, but he connects to Meghan in a way that he doesn’t understand but accepts as correct.
Meghan
They were allotted three hours per day to work together. Two weeks, fourteen days only. It was assumed that by the time their sessions were complete, the dog and Meghan would have perfected their partnership. By the end of week one, it already looked that way, but neither Meghan nor Rosie suggested that the mission had been accomplished. They were both enjoying the process too much. Shark enjoyed the process too much. Even though the focus was on the dog’s training, conversation had begun to flow between the two women, and within three sessions, Meghan felt as if Rosie completely understood her. She didn’t lavish sympathy on her; she pushed Meghan to work harder. Maybe it was having been raised with a handicapped brother, or maybe it was just her nature, but Rosie didn’t give Meghan any passes; if she said, “Don’t praise him until he’s done the job,” Meghan obeyed. In return, Meghan didn’t shy from asking Rosie—quite against the rules—what had put an intelligent woman like her in a place like this. So Rosie told her.
It occured to Meghan that she had very few female friendships. Good female friendships. Maybe none. With all the moving around she’d done as a kid, she’d learned early on not to form attachments. Some pals were better correspondents than others, but even the good ones tended to peter out; or maybe it was that she let go, more so than that they were spun out of her orbit. Her military friendships were deep, but equally temporary. And her wounding had further separated her. She was on one side of a divide from those who had never lost their purpose. Or had it taken away from them. Maybe that was why she felt such kinship with Rosie. She, too, was looking out over a chasm.
“And you?” Rosie asked after telling her story. “What happened?”
Even Meghan’s parents hadn’t heard that story. They knew what had happened, but not how. They knew, approximately, where, but not the details of the blinding, choking, terrifying helplessness. The losses. The way Meghan had been rendered null and void.
Shark rested his chin in Meghan’s lap, then shifted to Rosie’s, back and forth as he tried mightily to be of comfort to a pair of women who exuded equal amounts of anguish. At first, he thought that they were hurting each other, and he whimpered. But then he began to understand. As a mother dog will sacrifice her food for her pups, these beloved humans were gifting each other with their hearts.
* * *
At home at Carol’s, one day away from finally leaving Mid-State Women’s Correctional Facility with the dog, Meghan and Carol talked about Rosie’s situation. “She’s really a victim of abuse,” Meghan said.
“Don’t you think that maybe that’s what they all say?”
“No. She never actually called it that. Just told me about how controlling her boyfriend was, how he separated her from her family when they needed her.”
“Was that enough for her to kill him?”
Meghan can feel herself getting mad. “First of all, it was an accident.”
“Again, isn’t that what they all say?”
“Carol, are you playing devil’s advocate, or do you really think I’m that poor a judge of character that I could be taken in?”
“A little of both.”
Meghan took a breath, sipped her predinner glass of wine. “I haven’t told you what he did, what she found out he did. It’s pretty heinous.”
Meghan was no stranger to awful things done to living creatures, human or otherwise—IEDs, missile attacks, car bombs that killed women and children, the killing fields of war. But for a grown man to be so cruel as to snuff out the life of a small dog hit her hard. Rosie had knelt beside her, and it seemed to Meghan that she was telling this story for the first time. She kept her eyes on the ugly tile floor, only raising them to Meghan at the very end. Meghan could see that the image of that little dog’s body had never faded for Rosie.
* * *
They had one more day together. Tomorrow she’d bring Shark home. And within a few weeks, Meghan, with Shark’s help, would launch herself back into the world. She had a plan. And she would never forget what Mary Rose Collins had done for her.
Rosie
The day that Shark and Meghan “graduated,” I was a wreck. Even LaShonda, whose dog, Mimi, had graduated the day before, was beginning to lose patience with me. On that day, I’d handed her a coveted roll of toilet paper to stanch her tears, but the next day, she’d gotten word that a new puppy was coming her way, so she had something to look forward to, and her tolerance of my weepiness was growing thin. “Come on, girl. Be proud. You and me been together now a long time and this is the first time I seen you cry.”
“First time I’ve wanted to.”
LaShonda leaned down to get in my face. “Be freakin’ proud of what you’ve done. This is a good thing. Don’t make what’s her name, Meghan, sad on this day.”
I was proud of myself, of Shark, and of Meghan. I wouldn’t spoil the day for her. “You’re right. I’ll behave.”
I got one of LaShonda’s extremely rare smiles.
As Shark and I walked into that activity room for the last time together, Meghan was there, and she looked as nervous as I felt. Then I got it. I wasn’t just saying good-bye to Shark. I was saying good-bye to the only person who actually could be called a friend, making Shark’s loss doubly grievious.
In the outside world, people lose touch all the time, but usually there is a grace period, a few years when communication is strong, then grows weaker, then is done. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear from my old high school friend Brenda Brathwaite, but the contact had devolved to a card at Christmas. Thinking of you. But she wasn’t on my approved call list.
It is said that as long as one person remembers you, you’re never entirely dead. Right then, my one person was Meghan. And she was being exuberantly licked in the face by Shark. How long before he forgot me? A day? A week? As I had so often observed, the greatest divide is between prisoner and free.
Edith Moore, impeccably dressed as always, put her hands on the handles of Meghan’s wheelchair. “Time to go, Captain.” And Meghan Custer and my first dog, Shark, left me behind. As they rolled out of the activity room on this ordinary Thursday afternoon, it was over. No grace period.
Shark
The air in the room was heavy with human distress. He couldn’t quite get a read on it. There was that exclusively human sound of laughing. He wagged his tail at that. But then there was this undercurrent of sighing, shallow breaths that suggested something being held back. And then his inside person handed his leash to the person who never stood up. Alert to every nuance of human body language, he still couldn’t quite parse what was happening. And then he understood. His inside person, Rosie, was commending him to the sitting p
erson, Meghan. His loyalties were being reassigned. He knew that he had achieved some benchmark of behavior, because everyone was happy with him. He was told repeatedly what a good boy he was.
And what a good boy he needed to be.
Part Two
Rosie
The clang of a closing prison door sounds exactly the same whether you are entering or leaving. When I entered Mid-State Women’s Correctional Facility, it was that sound that I could not get out of my ears. The aural representation of utter loss of control, of the complete subsuming of my free will. It sounded my punishment. Today, that clang should represent the return of my independence, my life. But instead, when the bolt strikes the plate, I am as afraid as I was on the very first day of incarceration six years ago.
I stand in a long corridor. At the end of it is a door that I may push open. I have been handed the things that I came in with and I am dressed in a rumpled skirt and blouse that barely fit, as if I had never chosen them once for their flattering style. I have no pantyhose so my flats stick to heels that have worn only sneakers and white socks. I feel exposed. Is this how a slug feels, its rock being lifted away? Dirty and vulnerable and unprepared.
I was in an empty room working with my latest dog, Lulu, when I heard “Inmate Collins, report to the warden’s office.” Because the training classroom was quiet, the announcement was distinct. It is never a good thing when an inmate is singled out by name; like when you’re kid, it is never a good thing to be called to the office. I thought that maybe Edith Moore was there, although Lulu was nowhere near ready to be paired with a trainee. I leashed Lulu and we set off together.
Warden Hinckley’s door was open, and the guard nearest to the office put out his hand to take my dog. This was unusual. Generally, the dogs were with us no matter where we went. I would have refused, but I had learned over the years that resistance is always punished. I didn’t want to lose the privilege of being one of the three women in this place allowed to be a part of the puppy program by being shortsighted or stubborn. The guard could hold the leash for the ten minutes I might be in with Warden Hinckley.
You can imagine my surprise when the warden stood up, as if this were a social call and he a gentlemen. He gestured to the hard chair that served as a guest chair, not that anyone who ever sat in it was a guest, a word freighted with the concept of free will. I sat. Then he sat down in his chair and smiled at me. Only one thing crossed my mind at his odd behavior: He was going to tell me that my time with puppy program was over. I was so certain that I could feel the anticipatory tears of heartbreak burn behind my eyes even before he spoke. I was doing so well with Lulu; within the next couple of months she would, like my first dog, Shark, and my second dog, Harry, be ready to fulfill her potential as an assistance dog. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done that would merit losing this one thing that made getting up in the morning worthwhile. Except, of course, my continued rebuffing of Officer Tierney’s advances. Had he decided to make trouble for me after all?
“Mary Rose Collins, you’re being released today.”
By this time, my pulse was beating a tattoo inside my ears, and when he said, “You’re free,” I didn’t hear him.
“I’m sorry?” I must have looked like a dolt. Charles had always hated it when I didn’t understand something he was telling me. He’d accuse me of not paying attention, or, worse, not being interested in what he had to say.
“Rosie, your conviction has been vacated.” He didn’t add “congratulations,” but I thought that he meant that. This was the outcome I had longed for but, after six years, no longer expected.
“How?” The word sticks, I could barely manage to get it out. “Who?” I couldn’t form complete thoughts.
“You’ve been advocated for.”
I wasn’t sure this was a real word, and the grammar was suspect, but I took his meaning. Someone had come to my rescue.
“By whom?”
“The Advocacy for Justice.”
“What’s that?” I’d heard of the Innocence Project and the recent success of the podcast investigations, but this wasn’t familiar. More important, I had to ask, “How, why, did they choose me?” And why hadn’t anyone told me? The questions just kept piling up, and I could barely get them out. The warden stroked his red tie and shrugged his round shoulders in a classic gesture of indifference. If Warden Hinckley knew anything about this miraculous turn of events, he wasn’t saying so. “Look, Rosie, just be happy and get the heck out of here.”
I stood up and found myself having to touch the edge of his desk to keep my balance. “What do I do now? How long do I have before I leave?” My practical side edged its way into my thinking. I had to arrange things. I had to make plans. I had to finish Lulu’s training. I couldn’t just, oh my God, just leave, could I?
“You can take half an hour to pack your stuff and reclaim your personal property from storage. There’s some paperwork. But then, Rosie, you’re free to go.”
When I walked out of the warden’s office the guard was gone. And so was Lulu. I ran down the corridor, into the dayroom, but she wasn’t there. I saw the guard, back in his glass-fronted office. “Where’s my dog?”
He just kept his eyes down and had a smirk on his fat face. He pretended he couldn’t hear me. I started banging on the plate glass. “Where is my dog!”
“Rosie, what’s goin’ on?” LaShonda and her latest dog, Emmy, stood there. LaShonda looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“He’s taken Lulu.” My hands dropped to my sides. Is it possible that some good news is too powerful to absorb all at once? That the fact of my release was buried beneath concern over Lulu seems to me now to have been a coping mechanism, a way for my mind to catch up with my new reality. Some people might have passed out from the shock; I freaked out about my missing dog. “Oh, my God, LaShonda, they’re letting me go.”
* * *
So now I stand outside the clanging gate. And I have no idea what to do.
The sun is blinding, and I wonder if my sunglasses are still in the purse that has been sitting in some basement locker for years. No. They’re gone. An expensive pair of Maui Jim shades evidently too tempting to resist “confiscating.” I have what money they handed me, plus the twenty-dollar bill in my wallet that I put in there the last day of my other life, a symbol of blind hope that I would need a cab to get home because I wouldn’t be convicted. An expired driver’s license is the only other thing in my wallet. Idly, I wonder if I can get it renewed, and just the idea of going to the DMV gives me the willies. I don’t think that I can be comfortable in any sort of institutional setting just yet.
Needless to say, there is no one to meet me, not that I was expecting anyone. Who would come? As far as I know, no one even knows that I’ve been released. Did anyone reach out to my family? Wouldn’t they be here, waiting for me, if someone had? I’d watched out the window when my fellow inmates were set free. I’d witnessed the moment when they were once again embraced by someone who loved them. Sometimes it was a boyfriend, or a husband. Most times, I’d seen mothers and sisters come to collect the prodigal child. Most heartbreaking were the children who wouldn’t come. They’d hold back, shy in front of this person they hadn’t had in their lives for who knew how long. Their mother would open her arms, and there’d be this aching pause before the children fitted themselves back into her life. Would any of my brothers, silent these six years, come fetch me home? The bigger question is, Where is home for me? Certainly not New York. I was never at home there. I was a barely tolerated foreigner in that world. Likewise, if I never see Connecticut again, I will be quite happy. Home, to me, must be Boston, must be my ragged, beloved chunk of Charlestown. But how will I get there? Who will welcome me back?
I glance back at the big stairway window that looks out over this area. There is no one standing there watching me leave. Oh, wait. Yes there is. LaShonda and Pilar are standing on the stairwell, and they both wave to me. LaShonda lifts Emmy and makes the dog wave, too. I feel a wash o
f emotion rise from my gut to my eyes. I will never see them again. I am just like all the other parolees. I don’t want to look back. I will never look back. But, I do wave and blow a kiss before I turn away.
The prison isn’t within walking distance of anywhere, but I have to start. Once I reach the end of the long prison drive, I will have to decide which way to turn. I have no idea where I am, deposited in this strange land as I have been, blind to the surroundings of my incarceration. Before I reach the pavement, a long, green, old-fashioned car pulls up to the curb. I recognize it as a vintage Oldsmobile. All fins and chrome. The driver leaps out. “Miss Collins?” He’s a tiny man, and he looks like a little kid driving his old man’s car.
Instinctively, I step back, look to see if any of the guards are watching. Of course they aren’t. I am no longer their concern.
“Yes.”
“I’m your lawyer.” He comes toward me; one hand barely bigger than my own is already poised for a handshake. I step back, catch my heel against the curb. Quick as anything, he grabs my hand and pulls me back into balance. He might be a small man, but he looks me right in the eye. “Pete Bannerman. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”