In Sickness, in Health ... and in Jail

by Mel Jacob

  ‘How are your sons? How old are they now?’

  ‘They’ve been on your mind a lot, have they?’

  ‘Constantly.’ I was sprung.

  It was difficult to articulate my feelings, because I didn’t know what I felt. When friends or family asked me, I filled the conversational gaps with anecdotes about the kids or navigating the prison. I didn’t want to talk about the depths of my inner life, because at any given moment I felt an entire spectrum of emotions or nothing at all. Inside felt murky, like the dirty water that follows a flood. I couldn’t make out any shapes in it and I certainly couldn’t see the bottom.

  ‘Not good,’ I said eventually. ‘Pretty impressive description, huh?’

  ‘It’s not about being impressive, it’s about being real,’ Steph said gently.

  I couldn’t give her anything else. As quickly as the clamshell had opened, it had shut again. Looking back, I can see I was in survival mode and thought that if I let my guard down, if I got emotional, everything would crumble. If the egg cracked at the wrong time or in the wrong place, it would create a gooey, unusable mess. I had to be strong for the kids and reasoned that it was far better to be hard-boiled.

  So I kept it light. I told Steph about Lexie’s conversation at the preschool. Steph listened, engaged and interested. Pen poised. She laughed in all the right places.

  My little deflectionary excursion had relaxed me somewhat but I should have known better; I knew that anecdotes never washed over her. She listened carefully, gleaning for clues to what I was revealing or what I was trying to cover up. She usually said something like, ‘I noticed that you made a certain expression when you did this,’ or ‘I’d like to revisit something you said about that.’

  That session was no different. ‘And what does it mean to you—in other words, how did it make you feel when Lexie spoke about jail to the preschool mother?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . embarrassed, mortified. I can still see the look on the mother’s face. She had no idea what to say . . . Makes for a good story, I s’pose.’

  In a previous session, Steph had pointed out how I often tried to steer the conversation away from things I found confronting. During each appointment, I became more aware that the seemingly personal or revealing things I said served as conversational red herrings. To keep people at a distance. I was like one of those deceptively shallow beaches. The kind that make people into quadriplegics.

  ‘And what does it . . . how did it . . . make you feel that the woman was shocked?’ Steph asked.

  ‘I mainly felt for Lexie; I didn’t want her to feel put down or ashamed, like I did.’

  A long pause followed, and just when I really wanted to jump in with singing or yodelling or chanting, anything to break the silence, she spoke. ‘Like you did. What did you mean by that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’ Wincing at my own defensiveness.

  It was always the same. This was the part I hated most. I started the hour desperately wanting her to like me, and then, when her line of questioning honed in on something specific, something I didn’t want to face, I turned on her.

  A hundred and seventy-five dollars for a cup of peppermint tea, and a bit of conversation. It’s a bit rich, I thought. And I only get a bit back from Medicare. I might do better buying myself some fancy shoes and chatting to a friend.

  ‘You know, when Patrick first called from Surry Hills, he told me he was watching TV, and the kids said, “Why does he get to watch TV during the week?”’

  Steph laughed before gently bringing us back to her point. ‘It’s interesting that you said, “like I did”. Past tense. Did you feel ashamed when you were a child?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe sometimes . . . a bit.’ My throat was dry and the pitch was noticeably higher. A trait I associated with lying. ‘Like everyone, I s’pose.’ The room suddenly felt small and hot. ‘Can I have some water, please?’

  ‘Of course.’ Steph stood on her long, long, legs, and for a moment she almost lost her balance and reminded me of a newborn foal. The request for water bought me time and as I waited I stared at the paintings. They both featured abstract splodges of colour: one green and blue, and the other yellow and red.

  ‘Do you think everyone feels ashamed as a child?’ She was like a dog with a bone.

  ‘I imagine there are times when all kids are embarrassed,’ I said.

  ‘But you didn’t say embarrassed, you said “ashamed”. Were you ashamed as a child?’ Steph asked, holding my gaze.

  ‘I had a good childhood. No beatings. No child services.’

  ‘And yet, you used the word shame. Why do you think that is?’

  It was agony. ‘My mum and dad got married young because of me. Shortly afterwards, my dad got sick and they struggled.’

  ‘Financially?’ Steph asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you felt ashamed?’ She would not let this drop.

  I hadn’t thought about this often but I was surprised to find how many memories were there, just beneath the surface. The flip clock on the side table next to me displayed 11.27, and yet I felt like I had been in there for weeks. It occurred to me that if Einstein had seen a psychologist, he might have discovered relativity even earlier.

  ‘We were in government housing . . . housing commission . . . until I was eleven and then my parents bought a house on the other side of town.’ Steph wrote a couple of notes and motioned for me to continue. ‘This meant I changed schools. Within the first week, or sometime early on, a girl in the year above asked me where I lived. I was really proud of our new house, and the fact that it had three bedrooms, so my sister and I now had our own rooms, so I told her. She started laughing, like hysterically, and then called over a bunch of other scary-looking girls with extremely short dresses and dark eyeliner. “She’s a ‘Wollom,” the girl said to the others.’

  ‘A what?’ Steph asked.

  ‘A Wollom, cause that’s where all the losers and the druggos and povos lived . . . in Wollombi Road.’

  I looked out the window. Since I had started seeing Steph again, her office had relocated to the front of the building, which afforded me the best vantage point of her Lexus 4WD, and led to further deliberation about just who was benefiting from our psychology sessions.

  ‘And then what happened?’ Steph asked.

  ‘After that,’ I continued, ‘I noticed that some houses further along the road—not all of them, some people were very house proud, just poor—had windows boarded up and furniture strewn across the front yard. And at night, groups of people would sit in the gutter and drink, and others would pour petrol or lighter fluid along the road and chase the flames.’ I’d never talked to anyone about this before, and as I did, I realised that I had carried the shame with me my entire life.

  ‘Did the teasing continue?’ Steph asked.

  ‘All through high school.’ In fact, it intensified. ‘Back then, the reputation of the area had grown and it was commonly known as The Bronx. And in high school, things like where you live and the clothes you wear, and what your parents do for a living, are such a big deal.’

  ‘What springs to mind as you think about this?’ Steph asked.

  ‘There was this one girl who lived in my neighbourhood. I think her parents might have had problems with drugs or something, because they used to lock her out of the house, which is what some of them did when they wanted to get high. At school, I did everything I could to hide the fact that I lived in my neighbourhood. I left the address section blank or whited out my address on permission slips, and only after I knew someone really well did I invite them over. Anyway, this girl knew where I lived and she knew how terrified I was of people finding out. So she became very evangelistic about it.’

  I sipped my tea again. ‘She used to follow me to and from school. Getting to school wasn’t a problem, because I could vary or stagger the time, but in the afternoons when the bell went and everyone was dismissed, she would run ahead and wait for me. And on t
he way home, she’d throw stones at my back and yell out, “You think you’re so good, but I know where you live!”’

  ‘So in your situation now, with Patrick, do you feel ashamed? Are you afraid that people will find out?’

  A couple of people had already asked me that and I’d said I wasn’t. ‘I suppose I am,’ I said to Steph. ‘On the first day after he had . . . gone away, at school pick-up, it felt like all eyes on were on me.’

  ‘Do you think they were?’ Steph asked.

  ‘I told myself they weren’t but when I talked to a school mother at a friend’s house, I was surprised to learn that she knew.

  ‘“Fraud?” she’d asked me. And it was good to know that she didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion Patrick is an axe murderer, but the fraud assumption didn’t feel all that great either. After that, I felt paranoid. My mother always told me it doesn’t matter what people say but . . .’

  ‘Go on,’ Steph said.

  ‘A few years ago, I was back where I grew up in the Hunter Valley looking at buying an investment property. I asked the agent about one pictured in the window. “You wouldn’t want to buy in that area, people over there have two heads!” he said, referring to the street I was raised in.’

  Our sessions were fifty minutes and at the forty-minute mark Steph would gather the various threads of our conversation into a recap. The remaining time would be spent on strategies. This session’s strategies were as follows: (1) Tell people on a need-to-know basis. Friends, schoolteachers and the kids’ friends’ parents all should know, so they can support Nick and Lexie. (2) Say yes. People want to help and it’s okay to accept those offers.

  FOURTEEN

  MRRC Silverwater

  8 February 2013

  Beauty,

  Every morning I wake up and there is a gap before I remember what happened and where I am. Most letters and postcards I have written in the past (not many, I know) have all started with ‘having a great time’. Not this time. Surreal, like bad dream.

  Learning jail craft. Like bush craft but with the resources in here. Hot water made by DIY foil prong and inserted into power point. Water passed to others through space under door in a plastic bag.

  In a 2 out (2 person cell) now and my roommate’s (cellie) name is Charger. Everyone started asking me if Charger had been to the toilet (actually, they said, ‘Has he taken a sh*t?’) Said I better things to do than document bowel movements but, truthfully, nothing better to do.

  Inmate: Want to keep it all to yourself? (????)

  Inmate: Why not let others have a taste? (????)

  Found out all waiting for heroin (called H in here).

  Drugs are everywhere. In yard yesterday, bored out of my mind. Seemed like another miracle when tennis ball came flying over fence. First thought: handball comp.

  Inmate: Is that your ball?

  Me: Is now.

  Inmate: Don’t touch it. Get your family to throw one over for you.

  Me: (confused) My family can throw one over?

  Inmate: Yeah, just make sure it is no more than 5 grams.

  Me: Can you get different sizes?

  Inmate: What the eff are you talking about? (Hear that on hourly basis.)

  Found out they hide drugs in balls and then glue them back together. Use dead birds for same. Curious: do they look for dead birds or kill living ones? Either can’t be easy. Understand why tennis balls so popular.

  Came as a surprise that Charger can’t read. Couldn’t believe my luck when I found the Good Weekend mag (horse on front) in communal area. Read your story over and over. Think I know off by heart now.

  Charger: (threw letter onto my bed) I’ve got something you can read.

  Me: I’m good.

  Charger: Read it. (Started reading silently.) Aloud.

  Me: Don’t like reading aloud. (Twigging, then reading) Dear Tony . . . Of all the effing eff ups this one has to take the effing cake.

  Charger: Did she write effing?

  Me: I’m just abbreviating. I don’t swear.

  Charger: What the eff (didn’t abbreviate) do you mean you don’t effing swear? Just effing read what’s on the effing page!

  Me: It’s against my . . . principles . . . if you want to get someone else to read . . . (tells me to keep reading).

  Letter says (girlfriend?) thinks he is an idiot because he’s charged with home invasion and torture. Read ahead and spoiler alert: she is leaving him, seeing his mate and has plans to sell his bike on eBay. Try to convince Charger he doesn’t need to hear it. He psychs himself up like an Olympic weightlifter and clenches fists. Break news that she has been seeing Helmet (Charger says he is a dead man). He goes psycho and punches wall and storms out.

  Hope he knows the phrase ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’. After dinner (3pm in here) he comes back. Has calmed down and thanks me for reading. Says that relationship is going through a ‘rocky patch’.

  Only 3 phones in unit. (1 broken, so only 2). Five men dominate one and the rest of us (approx. 60) share other. Decided to be proactive. Collected names and made a roster. 60+ men over the moon. Then . . .

  Inmate: Are you effing crazy? Why are you picking a fight with the bikies?

  Me: I’m not picking a fight with anyone.

  Inmate that looks like bikie approaches.

  Bikie: We own the phones. Comprende? (Sounded clichéd, like a B-grade movie. Didn’t argue, he was size of large fridge.)

  Finally understand significance of shoes. Inmates allowed to wear shoes they are arrested/sentenced in (explains attire in court). So brand names (Nike, Adidas etc) is mark of cool. I only have basic prison issue. Can buy more expensive (still green issue but not cool apparently) with buy up but prefer to use money on phone calls.

  Sorry I couldn’t be there for Lexie’s first day at sessional kindergarten. I have never missed any of her other firsts and to miss this is so, so hard. Please take lots of photos.

  Miss seeing you, my sleeping beauty next to me. I look forward to hearing your voice when I call (not much now with no roster).

  Love,

  Paddy

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Is Dad a bad person?’ Nick asked.

  ‘No, he’s not a bad person. Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because you said the people in there—’ he responded, pointing to a correctional centre nestled in the industrial area of Emu Plains—‘are bad.’

  I had taken the back way to the larger supermarket in Penrith, which just happens to be the site of a women’s prison.

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t say that. Maybe I said they did something bad.’

  ‘No, you said they are bad,’ Nick insisted, tapping on the car door.

  ‘Yeah, you did,’ Lexie said, weighing in even though she would have only been a toddler at the time.

  I had a vague recollection of the conversation. Nick had asked why all the women tending cows in the front paddock of the centre were wearing green. Maybe I did say they were bad people. I couldn’t remember. Maybe it was a way of keeping the topic at a safe distance, a neat and convenient way of simplifying it for the kids. Before Paddy’s arrest, I’d never engaged with the plight of prisoners. If I read or saw something about appalling conditions, or the perils of privatisation, or sentencing inequity, it didn’t stir a fire within, or even prompt another thought, other than to change the channel. If I’m really honest, I suppose I thought they should have considered that before they broke the law. But saying that prisoners were bad contradicted my beliefs about human nature: that all of us are a mix of good and bad.

  ‘If they put all the bad people together, won’t it just make them all really, really bad?’ Lexie asked, wiping what was left of her iceblock on the fabric of the car seat.

  ‘Don’t wipe it on the seat,’ I said, so she proceeded to wipe it on her clothes, and it amazed me that someone could be so astute and so disgusting. ‘Not necessarily,’ I continued, unsure how to proceed. She had a point. ‘Most of the people in prison are just like us, b
ut they broke the law.’

  ‘What laws do you have to break to get into prison?’ Nick asked, brow furrowed.

  ‘All sorts of things. Stealing, fraud, which is tricking people with paperwork, or lying.’

  ‘Can you go to prison for lying?’ Nick asked, with a considerable amount of self-interest.

  ‘Not just any lie, but if it’s a crime, or helps someone get away with a crime, then, yes, you can.’ Nick looked relieved. ‘But people can also go there for being violent, or robbing banks, or killing people.’

  ‘Is Dad in there with murderers?’ Nick asked, alarmed.

  I hadn’t thought through that last statement. ‘No, of course not. There are different sections for people who have done violent or dangerous things.’ I knew this was a big, fat lie but I also knew that Nick would have an aneurysm if I told him the truth about MRRC.

  ‘Are they separated by walls or bars?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Nick, but the really dangerous or disruptive ones would have to be separated.’

  ‘Like Rory,’ Lexie said. ‘He has to be separated in class. And when that doesn’t work he has to sit outside, but we can still see him making faces in the window.’

  ‘Slightly different situation, Lex, being separated in class and separated from society,’ I said. ‘Kids don’t go to prison.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ Nick said. ‘In The Simpsons, they call it juvey.’

  ‘Not when they’re six years old. A lot of people who end up in prison haven’t had the best start in life. Their parents might be abusive or on drugs, so they end up on the wrong path.’

  Nick found this funny. ‘“Excuse me, sir, can you show me the path that leads to prison?” “Yes, you turn left and then right, and follow it all the way along.”’

  ‘I think Rory is on the path to prison.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Lex,’ I said, glaring at her from the front seat.

  A conversational hiatus followed but there was still the sound of Nick’s incessant tapping. ‘Prison is the worst punishment there is,’ he announced, after careful thought.