Something Like Hope

by Shawn Goodman

  “No, Ms. Williams, I didn’t take your sandwich. I been busy at my desk working, see?”

  I put on my most innocent face, which I must admit isn’t very innocent. Then I sat back to watch the show. All the other girls watched too. They’re all bored and mean-spirited, just as eager to see a fight as I am. Ms. Williams closed her eyes ever so briefly in silent irritation. She knew what I was doing but couldn’t help playing along … her role in my game. And that’s exactly the point, it was my game.

  Ms. Williams’s long fake eyelashes gently touched her cheeks, and in that instant, she looked pretty and perfect and soft. I wanted to freeze the moment and think of her like that always, her beautiful dark complexion, her woven hair coiled neatly on top of her small round head. Her hands rested firmly on her full hips, and I thought she looked like a mother who was angry—a good mother, who gets angry but would never hit you or say nasty things. She just wants you to know she’s angry and then everything will go back to normal.

  I let myself go further into the daydream and imagined Ms. Williams as my mother. She was angry with me but ready to forgive. She said, “It’s okay, Shavonne. I know everything that happened and it’s okay. I still love you. You’re my baby! I’ll always love you. No matter what.” In the dream she smiled and placed one small hand on my cheek. It felt warm and good, like stepping into the sun when you’re cold. It was so real I forgot where I was.

  I forgot all about the Center and the other girls. I wanted to fall down on my knees and say to Ms. Williams, “Please …” Please what? Will you be my mother? Will you love me? No. I wasn’t playing that. Hell no.

  I stopped this thinking because it’s pathetic. Ms. Williams isn’t my mother and never will be. My mother is on drugs. She is a prostitute. And in that one heartbeat, the fantasy went away and I fell hard, like I was a piece of soft fruit hitting the tile floor. I snapped out of it in time to realize that I was in trouble. Because Ms. Williams is no one to be trifled with, which is exactly why I was messing with her. Everyone knew damn well that I took her sandwich. And I knew that my small and stupid lie would send her over the edge. In here it’s always the small stupid stuff that sends a person over the edge.

  This was when I failed to notice the signs of attack from Ms. Williams. I didn’t see her pretty head move from side to side, as if to say, “Oh no, girl … you just crossed that line and now look out ’cause here it comes.” I didn’t even hear the first words out of her shapely lipsticked mouth. All I caught was the end part, when she found her rhythm and the words became bullets, tearing me apart like a paper target.

  “… lyin’, cheatin’, selfish, ungrateful, ignorant, grimy, sandwich-stealin’, disrespectful … ’Stead of doing what you gotta do to get yourself outta here, you blame everybody else … and never think nothin’ ’bout your own child and who’s gonna be her momma when they lock you up for good in prison!”

  That was the signal. It was my turn, and I was going to act out my part. As the rage rose up—because what she said was the truth (especially the last part)—I flipped over my desk and screamed, “Shut up! Shut up!” The desk hit the floor with a terrific crash. That’s when the giant, Kowalski, grabbed me from behind. His hot meaty hand gripped my shoulder, and I jerked my arm away violently. I wasn’t even thinking, just reacting, and my elbow connected with something solid. I hoped it was Kowalski’s face. But then a woman shrieked in pain and I realized, too late, that I had hurt Ms. Williams. Someone big and strong hooked my arms behind me and threw me down, face-first. Both of my front teeth broke and blood filled my mouth. It tasted metallic and then salty. The pain was instant and searing. And I realized that that was what I had been waiting for—a kind of release. That was what I needed. Pain. Punishment. Resolution. Call it whatever you want.

  I screamed and thrashed until the other guards arrived and cuffed my hands behind my back. Somebody put their knee into my spine because I was trying to buck them off. Then I was still. Peace overtook me, though I knew it would be short-lived. All the shit that was building up faded away. The bad voices faded away. The bad memories faded away. The Center faded away. I closed my eyes and dreamed of nothing, the kind of dream you have before you’re born and after you die.

  7

  I’m at my formal hearing for the sandwich incident. Ms. Williams’s face is bruised. She’s got on a lot of makeup to cover the marks, but I can still tell because she doesn’t look as pretty. Her face is lopsided, with one eye and one cheek swollen. I get this sick feeling in my stomach when I see her because I don’t want to think of myself as someone who would do that. But I did. The proof is right in front of me.

  Ms. Williams has nothing to do with my problems. She’s not responsible for me being locked up or how I feel. If she’s guilty of anything, it’s being nice. She was with me when I gave birth to my daughter at the county hospital. She held my hand and let me squeeze hers as hard as I could and said in a soft, sweet voice, “It’s okay, baby. You can do this. I know you can, Shavonne, because you’re strong and because you already love this baby.” She really said those things to me and this is how I pay her back—with a messed-up face.

  I want to stand up and say, “Yes, I did it. I am bad and violent and psycho. I deserve whatever punishment you give me. I’ll take it even though I know it won’t make up for what I’ve done.” Because I don’t know why I do what I do. It doesn’t make sense, and this scares me. But then I think of my daughter, Jasmine, and how I’ll never get to see her again if I plead guilty straight up. So I do what I’m best at: I lie.

  I say to the whole committee, “I did it. I stole Ms. Williams’s sandwich. But I only did it because I was so hungry because I was pregnant. Or at least, I was pretty sure I was pregnant.”

  I tell them that I had sex with one of the guards (not true) and missed two periods (partly true, because I missed one due to stress). I say that the guard told me to keep my mouth shut because he could get fired or go to jail (this is a total lie).

  I say that I stole the sandwich on impulse because I was hungry and it smelled good. (The guards aren’t supposed to eat on the units in front of us. Mention of this casts doubt on Ms. Williams, just like in those court movies where the evil lawyer wins the case by discrediting the witness.) I wasn’t able to sleep, and then I passed some blood but it was different from my period, I add.

  Then come the questions. Some of the people here know I’m full of shit, but they have to ask anyway. The director, Mr. Slater, says, “Didn’t you tell anybody? What about your roommate?”

  I answer quickly to get it over with, wondering how long I can go on with this story—and how long it will take for it to catch up with me (because it always does). “No, I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Nobody? Not even your counselor?” Slater again. He’s furious that there’s a problem he can’t make go away.

  “No. Nobody.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was scared. I kept hoping that, somehow, it would go away.”

  “How do you know you are pregnant? As far as I know, none of the nurses did any blood work.”

  “I know, believe me. I’ve had a child before, Mr. Slater. I know what it feels like. Do you want me to give you the details?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. But it is necessary for you to tell us who the father of this alleged baby is.”

  “I’m not telling you his name.”

  Everybody in the room sighs. They don’t want to go through all this. They want to finish their shifts and go home.

  Mr. Slater gets a nasty edge to his voice. “Why? Because you want to protect him? Let me tell you something, young lady. You’re in no position to protect anybody else. You should be worrying about yourself.”

  “He told me he’d deny it. Besides, I don’t want to get him fired. He said he loves me.”

  Slater rubs his temples. It’s too illogical for him, this feminine drama. His face is red, and I can tell he wants to scream at me. He might even want to slap me aro
und. It must take tremendous control not to.

  The nurse takes over the questioning and asks me about an exam. “We’re going to have to get you in to see a gynecologist, Shavonne. Today.”

  “No!” I shout. “Nobody’s looking inside of me. Give me papers to sign if you want, but I’m not letting anybody check me out. If you don’t believe me, fine. Give me any kind of punishment you want, but I’m not going through any GYN exam. Hell no.”

  It’s an awful lie but I think it will work, which is all that matters right now. To prove me wrong (and charge me with Assault), the Center will have to do an investigation. That, in turn, will look bad for Mr. Slater, no matter what the outcome. It’s bad PR. So I give them a way out and tell them that I just want to get back to normal and that as far as I’m concerned, nothing really happened. I make it easy for them by saying, “How about I take back the whole thing? Can you drop it then? I’ll say it was just a lie, and you can punish me for lying and that will be the end of it.”

  Mr. Slater’s eyes get wide and he flashes a big fake smile, like he’s so happy that we’ve reached an understanding. He says, “Of course you should recant if it’s not true. Is that what you’re saying?”

  As I play along with the sick game I worked so hard to set up, it occurs to me that I am getting further and further away from my release. Why do I keep messing up so badly? At the end of the day, sitting in my room with Cinda braiding my hair yet again, I face the truth: I have spent my last three birthdays locked up in different placements. I have a child who doesn’t know me. And there are so many other bad things I can’t even write about. Actually, I think I am falling apart.

  8

  I enter Delpopolo’s office and sit across from him. He doesn’t look as tired this time. He greets me politely.

  “Hello, Shavonne.”

  “Hello, Mr. Delpopolo.”

  “It’s been almost two weeks.”

  “Yes, I guess it has.”

  It goes on like this for several ridiculous minutes. Then he stops the chitchat. He folds his arms on his chest and leans back in the office chair. I hear the spring groaning under his weight. I imagine the tension in the spring increasing until it explodes. It will snap under the pressure and shoot into the wall at about a hundred miles per hour. But the spring holds. And the real tension is in me, because I can’t stand the silence, the waiting.

  “What? What do you want?” I say.

  “I don’t want anything.” He is calm and still. He looks genuinely confused by the tone of my question. Or is he pretending? It’s hard to tell.

  “You had me brought down here and you’re not even going to talk to me?”

  “What are you expecting me to say?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to ask questions or give me some lecture about what’s wrong with me?”

  “No. I’m not supposed to do anything other than meet with you every week, so long as you’re willing.”

  He’s playing games with me. He’s trying to get me to talk first and tell him why I’m messed up. But I’m not telling him. I’m not telling anyone. I say, “Come on, Mr. Delpopolo. Ask your questions and let’s get this over with. You want to know about the hearing. If it’s true or not, right?”

  I am expecting him to lie, to say he’s not involved and Mr. Slater never asked him to talk to me. But he doesn’t lie.

  “Okay. Fair enough. I doubt there’s any point in keeping things from you. I was asked to talk with you about the hearing, but we don’t have to. It’s your business.”

  “What do you mean it’s my business?”

  “It’s your business. It doesn’t concern me.”

  “If one of these guards raped me and got me pregnant and I lost the baby from being hit and thrown on the floor, that doesn’t concern you? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “If you tell me that story, then it concerns me. But you haven’t told it to me. Until you do, I’ll let the others handle it.”

  The exchange goes on like this for some time. He’s careful with his words, like he’s trying not to disrespect me, and I start to think that he might be okay. That maybe he’s got no agenda, he isn’t lying. Or maybe I’m so desperate to have someone to talk to that I’m falling for his stupid shrink tricks.

  I want to believe that he can understand. That I can tell him more. I want to tell him about me. I want to tell him the truly awful things and have him say, “It’s okay, Shavonne. It’s not your fault. You’re going to be just fine.” Maybe he can hear what I have to say and handle it. But then again, how could he? Why am I thinking like this? I’m all mixed up and I want to cry. But instead I flip out. “Get the fuck out of here,” this voice inside of me says. “Get out now. You’re in danger. Something bad is going to happen if you don’t leave.”

  I hear this voice sometimes when there’s a lot of stress. I think it wants to help me, but I’m not sure. I don’t always listen to it. But this time I do. It tells me to scream, so I scream and scream and scream. It sounds like I’m angry, but I’m really scared. I don’t know what is happening to me, and I don’t know what to do anymore.

  9

  There’s a new guard here named Cyrus Jacobs. He’s a real hillbilly. He wears a long scraggly goatee and talks with a southern twang.

  Cyrus says he’s from the South, but he won’t say exactly where. The Center has this rule about employees “disclosing personal information” to residents. The idea is if a guard tells about his family or something, one of us could use it against him. They also say it blurs the “boundaries,” which is not professional. The Center is very big on “boundaries.” Not many of the guards follow these rules, but I guess Cyrus does.

  I wouldn’t pay any attention to Cyrus if it weren’t for his interest in the pair of geese out on the pond. Every day when we walk across the grounds for meals, he makes us stop to look at the birds.

  “They’re Canada geese,” he told us once. The birds are enormous and loud. Nothing like the pigeons and plain old ducks I used to see before I arrived at the Center. Cyrus just stares at the geese and forgets about his job. This is dangerous, since he’s supposed to be watching us to make sure we don’t break the line and run away.

  Just as some of the girls start getting edgy (no doubt thinking about running), Cyrus calls us over and says, “Hey, girls, you see them geese?”

  Tyreena, big, black, and bold as hell, puts one hand on her hip and says, “Yeah, so what? What’s the big deal about a couple of gooses? Man, it’s cold out here and you gonna stop and ax us about some dang birds?”

  The way Tyreena tells it, she is locked up for infidelity. That means she caught her boyfriend cheating and taught him a lesson by cutting the girl’s face up with a utility knife. If you ask her about it, she’ll say, “My box cutter taught her stank ass not to be pokin’ her titties where they don’t belong.” Nice. But believe it or not, in her world, Tyreena was playing by the rules. Seeing another girl edge in on your action is more than enough reason to go after her with a knife. I’m not saying I’d handle the problem that way, but plenty of girls would.

  Cyrus breaks his gaze from the pond and returns to earth. His voice stiffens. “Fall in line, then, girls. Walk!” He’s all business for the next few minutes, and he looks like his feelings are hurt. Then, just before we go inside to lunch, he stops the line and says, “Tyreena, those geese are mating pairs. They mate for life. They’re here to nest and raise their young. I want to tell y’all this because some of y’all might be here long enough to see their babies get born, if the foxes and coyotes don’t get ’em first. It might be fun to watch and it could make the time go faster.”

  As we enter the cafeteria, most of the girls roll their eyes or suck their teeth in disgust at the idea of some backward hillbilly cracker fuck trying to engage us hardened city kids in some nature goose freak show. Tyreena, never one to let another have the last word, says, “What you mean they mating pairs and they mate for life? What you mean, Cyrus?” Tyreena exagger
ates every sound in his name to make fun of it, challenge him, and question his credibility. Tyreena is no one to mess with. She’s not very bright, but she can be tough as hell both with words and with fists.

  It interests me to watch Cyrus handle himself in this small drama. The whole cafeteria is quiet with suspense. This bumpkin has been challenged, and no one, not even the other guards, is going to help him out. Sink or swim, Cyrus.

  Finally he says, “It means they’re faithful to one another for the rest of their lives. It means that if one dies, the other will be alone until it dies.” The silence continues. I can tell what everyone is thinking. For life? Really? That’s incredible. Unimaginable! Because no one is faithful. Not parents, teachers, guards, boyfriends, or girlfriends. No one. What’s it feel like to know that someone in your life is that faithful? Is that what real love is?

  I want to pull Cyrus aside and ask him these questions. Maybe he knows. Maybe this stupid-looking guy learned all this from hunting and fishing and watching geese. Maybe he knows something that no one else does.

  But the other girls don’t seem to be thinking these things. They just look at Tyreena as if to ask, “Well, ain’t you got nothing more to say? You gonna let the cracker have the last word?”

  When she talks, Tyreena is indignant. “You mean to tell me that man goose gonna stay by hisself if his woman goose dies? I don’t believe that. You believe that, Kiki?”

  Kiki does not. Kiki and Tyreena are girlfriends, meaning they are gay (at least when they’re in lockup). Kiki is good-natured, gullible, and likable. She’s very pretty, too. In the Center, she’s considered a good catch.

  Cyrus closes the argument by adding, “It’s true. I didn’t make that up. Check with your life science teacher if you don’t believe me.” Cyrus seems to miss the real point of the argument. It has little to do with the truth of what he said.