Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “What is this fucking shit, man?” he said to the man sitting next to him.

  “Dog shit. See, they keep a big black dog—like a Doberman or something—downstairs in the kitchen just to shit us dinner. Saves the taxpayers a lot of bread.”

  “Yeah,” he said, pushing the food around on his plate. He could almost smell the dog shit. The other inmate had long, stringy hair past his shoulders and tattoos covering almost every inch of his exposed flesh. He looked like a biker. On one muscular bicep he sported a Harley-Davidson tattoo. The Latino sniffed and realized it was the man he was smelling and not the food. He picked up his fork and started shoving the substance on his plate into his mouth. “You stink, man. Smells like that dog been shitting on you.”

  The man stood and tried to topple the table, grabbing it under the lip with two tattooed hands. He looked like a fool. It was bolted to the floor. Instead he tossed his metal dinner plate in the air like a Frisbee and threw his head back laughing. Then he growled and suddenly reached down and grabbed the other mans shirt near the collar. With one hand he lifted him off the bench and held him several feet off the ground.

  “Put me the fuck down, you stinking piece of dog shit,” he yelled, his stomach rolling over and over in fear and humiliation, his bowels rumbling, ready to explode. The other men were laughing and crowding around, obscuring the commotion from the television monitors.

  “Look what we got here,” the biker said, holding his shirt now with both hands, moving him from side to side, causing his legs to swing in the air. “Looks like we got us an Oxnard cockroach. What we need is a little sombrero. This fucker’s so small, we could use one of those little hats they put in them drinks and put it right on his greasy little beaner head.”

  They were all laughing now, hooting and hollering, slapping their sides. A small older man with neatly trimmed hair reached out suddenly and squeezed his balls, a sly expression on his face. He tried to kick the mans face but missed and kicked out at air. Sweat was popping out of his pores, soaking his shirt, dripping onto the tile floor. Just then a shrill tone went off, the man instantly released him, and he fell. He started to get up, pushing himself off the floor with his hands, when a black shoe came from the sea of legs and rushed toward his chest, connecting and knocking him on his back, taking his breath away.

  The loudspeaker blasted: “All inmates return to their cells. I repeat, all inmates return to their cells at once.”

  Suddenly he was alone in the middle of the floor, on his back, dazed. He saw Willie walking toward him. The big black man bent over and offered his hand. “Get the fuck away from me, man,” he said, his voice weak and cracking. The guard was standing outside the quad, staring at him through the bars.

  “You hurt?” the guard asked.

  He didn’t answer. This was all her fault. He got up and headed to his cell. His chest throbbed where the man had kicked him, and the disgusting man who had grabbed his balls was smirking at him, winking at him from his cell. The biker walked up behind the small man and draped an arm over his thin shoulders. Together they smiled at him. The biker’s teeth were yellow and cracked. The little man was the biker’s woman. Willie had told him that the two men had known each other for years from San Quentin and had set up housekeeping on the outside when they were released, living like man and wife. The little man had robbed a bank to get back inside after the big man had violated his parole. How they got in the same cell, he didn’t know. They must have paid someone, one of the jailers. Because he couldn’t pay, he’d ended up in a cell with a black instead of a homeboy. He didn’t steal—most of the time—it wasn’t his style. Stealing was dishonest. He hated thieves. They were the real scum—the lowest of the low. Anyone could steal.

  The biker probably stunk because he had AIDS, he thought. People with AIDS always smelled. It was because they were always shitting and sometimes there was no toilet paper in the cells. In here, everyone knew everything, even when you took a crap.

  He held his head up and threw his shoulders back, spitting as he walked by their cell. “I’m gonna fucking slice you, man,” he said under his breath. “One day I’m gonna slice you both like ripe tomatoes. I’m gonna carve your assholes out and feed them to my cat, man.”

  The two men laughed. Soon all the men in the quad were laughing and banging their cups against the bars. They were laughing at him. He was an object of ridicule now. The harassment would be relentless. Unless he killed someone and risked going to the slammer for life, he’d have to endure it until he was released.

  And he would be released. It was just a matter of time.

  She’d been the reason he’d been late to dinner, he thought, tasting the bitterness on his tongue like he’d been eating with a rusty fork. If he hadn’t been late, this would’ve never happened, he would have never mouthed off to the biker. The other inmates didn’t know him. They didn’t know what he was capable of, what he’d done, what he could do.

  But she would know. Soon, he thought, walking into his cell. She’d know soon enough. He stood there, his body rigid with rage, staring out over the common room, seeing nothing, waiting for the electronic doors to clang shut. He’d teach her humiliation. He’d teach her to cry. In his mind he saw tears as red as blood running down her cheeks, washing over the freckles, staining her face a bright pink. The image he saw reminded him of a statue of the Virgin Mary—one of those miracles they talked about all the time where tears mysteriously fell from the statue and people came from all over the world, thinking they would be cured from some disease. He chuckled, his shoulders moving up and down. A miracle. She’d pray for a fucking miracle, he thought, feeling better now. When he finished with her, people could come and look at her and take pictures of her. Maybe they’d put her picture on the front page of the newspaper. Then people would know him, fear him, give him the respect he deserved. Then they’d all know what he could do.

  After lockdown, in the dark, he heard Willie talking from the bunk below. “I seen your back, boy. When you takes off’n your shirt, I sees it. You been whupped. An’ you cries. In da night, you cries.”

  He pressed his hands over his ears. Lies…it was nothing but lies. It wasn’t him crying, it was them.

  “Don’ you be ‘fraid now. I ain’t gonna hurt ya, you hyeah me? Sees, I was grown in Alabama an’ my daddy was whupped. I ain’t nev’r gonna hurt a man been whupped. Dat man been hurt enuf.”

  He tasted his own salty, silent tears, his fingers closing on the crucifix around his neck, his mind erasing the words Willie had just spoken. He closed his eyes and dreamed he was swimming in a sea of frothy violet blood. It burned his eyes. He tried to reach the surface and then found that the blood had changed into millions of long tentacles. Around his neck, thick strands strangled him, choking him until his eyes popped out of his head and immediately disappeared in the mass of tentacles. Around his legs and feet he felt the rope-like cords cut into his flesh.

  He was drowning in a living, swirling mass of red hair.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lily’s heels sank into the soft dirt as she walked to a position behind the plate at the community center playing field and laced her fingers into the wire fence. Shana was pitching and she made eye contact as her right arm moved back for the pitch. The other parents in the bleachers wore down-filled jackets and sipped steaming coffee from Styrofoam cups. Lily wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to stay warm.

  Her daughter was charismatic. That was the only way to describe the type of popularity that she had been blessed with since the first grade. A ball of energy, beauty, and quick wit, she had been the most adorable little girl Lily had ever seen. And she had been Lily’s life. Up until the last few years, no matter what was going on in her career, Lily saw her entire universe spinning around Shana. Her daughter had been the one who convinced Lily that there was goodness in the world, real goodness. She had taught Lily how to smile, laugh, cry tears of joy. And she was slipping away, growing up, changing into a woman. She didn’t need Li
ly anymore. She had her father to meet her every need. Whereas Lily had always been John’s baby, his little girl in many ways, Shana was now all he cared about.

  The problems with Shana were more than just the Oedipal phase of puberty. John was turning her own daughter against her for reasons Lily just couldn’t understand. Was it because she had told him she wanted to become a judge? John had always dreamed of her entering private practice, where she would “make a ton of money” and he could retire and spend his time managing their investments. A position on the bench might be prestigious, but the salary was only a notch above what she presently earned. John didn’t understand. He told Lily she was a fool, insisting that she wanted the judgeship for the power alone, simply to feed her ego.

  Shana had been only a few months old when Lily decided to enter law school. It was a major decision. Lily was working as an admitting clerk at a local hospital and John at a personnel agency. His salary varied from month to month, and the only way they could afford to get by was for Lily to continue working. John encouraged her to go, talking constantly about all the money she would make and how they’d never have to pinch pennies again. “You go to law school,” he had said, “and I’ll open my own personnel agency. We’ll have it made.” Lily worked the graveyard shift and attended classes during the day. She left her daughter with the sitter only during the hours she was in class. The remainder of the day and evening, Lily carried her around with her, constantly chattering to the baby just as if she were an adult.

  To this day, Lily could remember the exact second Shana had started to talk. It wasn’t so remarkable, she only said “da da” like all babies say. Then she started chattering away like a magpie; all the words Lily had said to her seemed to pop back out like magic. The more the child talked, the more Lily talked to her. She knew all kinds of legal words. People would ask her what her name was and she would smile and say, “plaintiff.” Thinking she had said “plain tough,” they would roar with laughter. Shana would clap and giggle and say it again.

  Lily never once spanked the child. She read every book she could get her hands on relating to parenting and used them all. “We don’t bite children,” she would say to her, “but we can bite an apple.”

  Although Lily slept only a few hours a day, napping when Shana napped and nodding off at work in the early morning hours, she was happy. She had no time to worry about her relationship with her husband. Her grueling schedule left little time for him. He didn’t appear to notice. She accepted a position with the district attorney’s office about the time Shana went to school. Every morning Lily would make her lunch and walk her to school before work. Her classmates loved her. She knew how to share, loved to make children and adults laugh, and was a regular Pippi Longstockings with her carrot-colored hair and freckles.

  In a way, those first words, plain tough,” also applied to little Shana. She feared nothing. Lily wanted it that way, wanted her to be able to protect herself against anyone and anything. Just as she taught Shana how to share and be kind to others, she tried to teach her to be strong, brave, and mature. “When I’m not here,” she would tell her, “or your daddy’s not here, if anything bad ever happens, then you must pretend you are a grown-up and do exactly what a grown-up would do and believe you can do it, because you can.” Shana would always blink her eyes and smile when Lily made her speech. She looked for occasions when she could prove herself to her mother, knowing it would make Lily smile with approval. With Lily’s encouragement she climbed trees, played ball, would stomp on a spider rather than scream, and once punched a neighbor’s dog in the nose when it growled at her. Then she ran all the way to the house and leaped into Lily’s arms, bursting with pride. To John and Lily, she was the golden child, the magic child.

  As the years went by and the magic persisted, Shana learned to see it and use it for the power it afforded her. Seeking to bask in her light, her fans would do her homework, give her money, let her wear their new clothes before even they had worn them. Shana had started to change a few years before. John’s influence grew stronger. Shana began snapping at her parents at home and developed quite a temper. Lily refused to tolerate it, but John undermined her and allowed Shana to order him around like a child. The fissure between them as parents widened.

  Lily tried to talk to her, to use the old psychology tricks, but nothing worked. Finally she had sat down with her and discussed her behavior at home.

  “You just don’t understand,” Shana told her. “All day long I have to smile and be nice to everyone. Sometimes when I get home I can’t control it any longer.”

  She had to defend her turf as the most popular girl in school. Other girls would get envious and make up stories about her. Like a politician constantly seeking reelection, she would have to seal her position, take polls, make certain her constituents would vote for her. On one occasion a girl punched her in the face after school. Shana punched her back and got expelled. Lily told her to give it up, but she couldn’t. It was a hard thing to give up, this being on top. Like Lily, Shana was tenacious and driven to control the world around her.

  Just the past month Shana had come home in a particularly nasty mood and Lily had broached the subject again. “Most people have a few good friends in their life that they enjoy. Why do you have to persist in having ten or fifteen? Why is it so important that everyone like you?”

  “You don’t understand,” Shana said. “It’s not like that at all. They need me.”

  Lily shook her head, incredulous. “That’s absurd. They don’t need you. What are you saying?”

  Then she had thought about it. “Are you saying that someone has to be a leader? That if that person isn’t you, it will be someone else?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Shana said. “See, Mom, I don’t smoke or listen to death rock or go all the way with boys. I get good grades—pretty good, anyway—and I give people advice, listen to their problems. Girls get into fights with other girls and I get them to make up.”

  So that’s the story, Lily had thought. Sounded like her reasons for being a district attorney and wanting to be a judge. Since she had defeated the demons of her childhood, she had held the reins in her own two hands and had taught her daughter to do the same.

  The short brunette at bat swung and connected; the parents in the stands screamed as she raced the short distance to first base. The next batter hit the ball as well, but was tagged at first base. The game was over and Shana’s team had won.

  The girls moved to the dugout, the majority getting as close to Shana as possible. Post-game activity had changed since the year before. Instead of going for the cookies and sodas the team provided, a number of girls were taking out brushes and lipsticks from their purses.

  John infiltrated the group of girls, putting both hands around Shana’s waist and lifting her into the air. “I’m so proud of you,” he said. They both saw Lily a few feet away and smiled. They weren’t smiling at her. Lily knew they were flaunting their closeness, showing her that this was their private moment, one they didn’t care to share. Placing Shana back on the ground, John stared straight at Lily and draped his arm over Shana’s shoulders, walking with her the short distance to the dugout, pulling her close, glancing back again to see if Lily was still watching, the other girls crowding around John now as well as Shana. Lily winced, locking her fingers on the wire fence. They both looked away.

  A few minutes later, John headed in her direction, stooping to pick up a few bats on the way. The baseball cap made thick crevices appear in his forehead. At forty-seven, he was eleven years older than his wife. Even though his hair was thinning to the point where more scalp showed than hair, he was still an attractive man, with a robust laugh and a bright smile, displaying rows of even white teeth in his tan and masculine face. His expression was not pleasant, though, nor was it the adoring look reserved for his daughter.

  “Made it, huh?” he said flatly, tipping his baseball cap back on his head. “Pried yourself away to catch the last five minutes of the ga
me. You sure you’re not missing something at the office? I mean, you don’t want your family to get in the way of your big ambitions to be judge, now, do you?”

  “Stop it,” she said, looking around to see if anyone was in earshot. “I’ll take Shana home in my car.” She turned and plodded through the dirt in the direction of the dugout.

  Shana’s face was flushed with excitement. She stood almost a head above most of the other girls. Her long red hair had more gold tones in it than Lily’s, and she wore it in a pony tail pulled through the back of her baseball cap. Her wide-set eyes were such a deep shade of sapphire that they almost matched the navy blue lettering on her uniform. High, pronounced cheekbones gave her face an ethereal, elegant quality far beyond her years. With the right makeup, clothes, and photographer, the right push-up bra, Lily thought, Shana’s face could be on the cover of next month’s Cosmopolitan magazine.

  One girl followed as she broke away and headed for the car. “Call me in thirty minutes,” Shana said. Once they were home, the phone in her room would ring for the next hour, each girl calling at a preselected time.

  “Oh, this is my mom. Mom, this is Sally.”

  Sally stood there with her mouth gaping. “You look so much alike. I can’t believe it.”

  Shana got into the car and slammed the door, her eyes cutting to her mother with resentment. Lily felt her heart sink. Shana had always been so proud that they looked alike. She used to tell Lily how all her friends thought her mother was so pretty. Lily remembered how she’d gaze up at her and ask her if she’d be that tall when she grew up. The past week, Shana had screamed at her that she was a giraffe, the tallest girl in school, and ended the tirade by saying it was Lily’s fault.

  She tried to start a conversation. “That was a great job of pitching out there. Sorry I didn’t get to see more of the game. I rushed, but the traffic…” Shana stared straight ahead, refusing to answer. Lily swallowed. It was going to be one of those days. “How was school?”