by Jerome Gold
That odd look again.
“The bottom line is that you can’t visit Caitlin on Thursday night anymore.”
I called Caitlin. She had not been told that I was prohibited from coming over on Thursdays. I suggested Monday nights when I left work at nine, but she had practice with Ed Horgan’s Christian rock band. She was playing drums, but wanted to switch to guitar. I suggested Tuesdays at four, but she had basketball practice then. Then she suggested her coming over to Wolf on Sunday evenings after most of the kids were locked down. Jan agreed and I called Jenny and she agreed, provided I had Caitlin back at Serpent by ten. Caitlin had a lot of parents now, I said.
“That’s just how it is, Jerry,” Jenny said.
“I meant it to be funny,” I said.
Daniel told me he didn’t like to think about his losses—his friends who had been killed. I asked him if thoughts of them didn’t leak through.
“All the time. Maybe that’s why I rap.”
“What can you do to distract yourself, besides rapping? You can’t rap all the time, can you?”
“Fight. I enjoy fighting.”
“You need to find something else, because if you don’t, you’re going to go to prison again.”
“What else can I do?”
“What about football in the fall when you get out? Have you thought about martial arts? A lot of people like the discipline of karate or tae kwon do. And you can practice the forms without a partner.”
It was as though I hadn’t said anything. He said his brother used to pay him to fight. They’d see someone from another gang and Robert would say, “Bet you can’t beat him,” and Daniel would—for five dollars. A couple of times he made twenty-five dollars in a day.
The same man who prosecuted her came out to talk to Caitlin about her mother’s boyfriend’s raping her.
“How was it to talk to him?” I asked.
“How would it be? He asked all these questions about what he did to me, and I told him. It wasn’t fun. I don’t like to talk to men about my body.”
After a while, I asked, “What did you think of him as a person? The prosecutor, I mean.”
“He was all right. He talked more than he did before, when he was prosecuting me. That helped. It went all right.”
“He seemed more sympathetic?”
“Yes.”
I called Norah at her group home. She said she would be paroled in a couple of months. She sounded excited but apprehensive. She’d been in the custody of the state for almost a third of her life.
I read Karin’s case notes on Caitlin on-line. Caitlin was having nightmares again and was having trouble getting to sleep. Karin suggested she talk to the campus psychologist. Caitlin said she didn’t want to talk to psychologists anymore. Karin said she didn’t think talking with a psychologist would hurt her, especially as Caitlin’s nightmares sounded scary. Caitlin said she’d think about it.
It was obvious that Karin had read nothing I’d written about Caitlin.
Caitlin hadn’t been over in a couple of weeks. When she came on Sunday night, we had a cup of tea and caught up with each other. Her sister would be visiting her next week; Caitlin hadn’t seen her in a while. She was still on both the boys’ and the girls’ basketball teams. The last time we talked she was feeling overwhelmed by all of her activities, but she had dropped out of Ed’s band and this reduced the demands on her time. She felt she was in control of her life again.
In her case notes, Karin talked about Caitlin’s frustration with Sonia and her inability to tell Sonia what was bothering her. Karin suggested Caitlin work on “sticking to her values” and being honest with her friends. She said Caitlin was struggling with her “cheerleading statements” because she felt stupid when she said them. She gave Caitlin the assignment to list cheerleading statements and then to “observe and describe” each statement.
We went through a mail-order catalog and Caitlin admired some of the basketball shoes. We talked a little about her game. The girls’ team lost their last two games. She felt she was doing her job on the court, and one or two other girls were doing theirs, but the rest of the team seemed not to know what to do. It was as if they hadn’t even gone to practice. She asked if she could come over earlier from now on so she could spend more time at Wolf.
We had a situation where a new boy, Christopher, hit Peter, then got away before Peter could come back at him. Peter was engorged on his own rage, especially as Trace was yelling at him that he had been punked, that Christopher had punked him. What I would have liked to do was slam Trace and allow Peter to go after Christopher. What we did was take Peter down because he represented the immediate threat, and lock down everyone else. But it was Frank who was locking them down while Bernie and I restrained Peter, and Christopher simply ran past Frank and out of the zone into the living room and kicked Peter whom we had just handcuffed. It was everybody’s good fortune that Security came bursting through the doorway at that moment and grabbed Christopher and put him on the ground and handcuffed him and shackled him and dragged him out of the cottage. It was particularly my good fortune that Security arrived when they did because after that boy kicked Peter I got up to go after him, intending fully to hurt him, already picturing to myself how I was going to do it.
I was writing the incident report, my mind drifting now and again to fantasies of revenge against Christopher and against Frank for letting him out of the zone, when Clara walked into the cottage. She was Officer of the Day. She wanted to know what had happened. Then she asked why the kids weren’t out of their rooms.
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, I thought. But I said, “We’ve just started the paperwork.”
“One of you can do the paperwork while the others watch the kids.”
My body was still humming with adrenalin and I still had the copper taste of it in my mouth, but I didn’t say anything.
“Who was it who kicked the boy?” she asked.
“Christopher. We’ve had him for a couple of weeks.”
She made a face. “I remember him from the last time he was here. It’s too bad he’s not better looking. Maybe he wouldn’t be so aggressive then.”
She was crazy.
“You can let Frank do the paperwork.”
Bernie was sitting beside me at the staff desk. He’d been working on the log entry when she came in. Now he put his pen down and looked at me. I pushed my chair back.
“Frank wasn’t involved, or just barely. But, hell, whatever you want, Clara.”
“What do you mean, Frank wasn’t involved? Where was he?”
“In the office at the computer where he is now. When the fight started, he locked the kids down.”
“I’m not saying you have to do this. It’s just a suggestion. But the Superintendent thinks the kids spend too much time in their rooms. You don’t need two people doing paperwork.”
“It gets done a lot quicker with two working on it,” Bernie said.
“But while you’re writing, the kids are locked in their rooms.”
“They’ll be out a lot sooner if we can get this done, and then there will be three of us to monitor them. This is a cooling-off period for them too, you know.”
“They’re in their rooms, ruminating on what happened. They’re not cooling off. They’re getting angrier.”
You don’t know shit, I said silently.
I said, “Clara, why don’t you just tell us what you want. You want the kids out of their rooms before we’ve completed the reports? Fine. Just write me a memo, please—here, I’ll give you a memo pad—telling me that’s what you want, and we’ll do it.”
“I’m not going to write you a memo.”
“Then tell me clearly what you want and I’ll log it and let you read it and then I’ll log that you read it. Okay?”
She didn’t speak. Finally she said, “Where’s Jan?”
“She’s at a meeting. I don’t know which one.”
“Oh, that’s right. The mental health thing.
I’m supposed to be there too. I’ll let myself out.”
When she had locked the door behind her, Bernie said, “I’ve got to hand it to you, how you kept your cool.”
“I’ll tell you something. I keep my letter of resignation in my wallet. All I have to do is fill in the dates and sign it. So Clara can push if she wants to. If she pushes hard enough, I’ll leave. Let her carve another notch in her gun. Don’t tell Jan what I just said, okay?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
I said, “I think she’s out to get Jan.”
“I think she’s out to get you.”
“Maybe. But that may just be a way of getting at Jan. Do you remember a couple of months ago when that girl exposed her breasts to Daniel and then that other boy who liked her heard about it and went after Daniel?”
“Oscar.”
“Yeah. Oscar. You and Dick did the write-ups while I did the investigation. Remember? Clara and Don Martino came down a week or so later and interviewed us and Jan and Layton. They taped mine. Did they tape yours?”
“Not unless they used a hidden recorder.”
“Well, the one they used with me was in plain sight. They taped Layton too. Do you remember any of the questions?”
“Not really. But I remember they were interested in how long the kids were locked down. They claimed the kids were in their rooms for six hours, or something like that.”
“Right. Daniel and that other kid had that fight and we locked everybody down. And then we found out that Donita had flashed Daniel, and Kyla told this boy, Oscar, who had the hots for Donita, and that was why he assaulted Daniel. So we had a lot of questions. Did Donita take it on herself to show her boobs to Daniel, or was it his idea? Who were the witnesses? What did they see? Were they lying? Why did Kyla tell Oscar? Was any of this something we had to inform CPS about? I talked to half the kids in the cottage. And it did take time. It didn’t take six hours, but it took two or three, and we had the kids eat lunch in their rooms, because I was still investigating and we didn’t want them talking to each other. So they were down three to four hours. And one of the kids complained. And that, I think, gave Clara the opportunity to go after Jan, or me, or maybe just whoever she could get.”
“How do you know she wanted to get Jan?”
“Ah ha! Excellent question. And here’s my excellent answer. A week or so after all this, Clara gave me a copy of the transcript of my interview with her and asked me to sign it. She actually handed me a pen and stared at me until I said I would have to read it first. She asked me when I thought I would have it read and I said an hour or two, and she grabbed the pen out of my hand and left.
“It was a good thing I read it. Some questions were omitted and some answers were deleted and what was left was worked around so that it looked like I was answering certain questions when actually I was answering others. One question asked what our procedure is when a fight breaks out, and I was quoted as saying that we have no procedure.”
Bernie made a “tch”-ing sound with his mouth. “Every cottage I’ve worked in uses the same procedure. You restrain the kids, you lock the others down, you call Security, you move one or both kids out of the cottage for a couple of hours—”
“I know. And that’s more or less what I told Clara. But that isn’t what was on the transcript. Another question I remember was: Who do we notify when we lock the cottage down? The transcript had me saying I didn’t know.”
“Jeez, Jerry.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you things like this.”
“No, it’s okay. The more I know, the better. But it is going to be harder to keep on working here.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No. Go on.”
“Well, to cut it short, I refused to sign. When she came back to the cottage, I gave it back to her and told her I wouldn’t sign it because it wasn’t accurate. She just said okay.”
“I hope you made a copy.”
“I made two. One for me and one for Jan. But you know what? The transcript of Layton’s interview was as distorted as mine, but he signed it anyway.”
“Because Clara told him to.”
“That’s what I think too. He does what he’s told. Well, at least he told Jan what he did. If Clara hadn’t done to Layton what she tried with me, I’d think I was her target. But two of us… I think it’s Jan. If Clara can show that we’re not following procedure, or that there is no cottage procedure, she can slam Jan. Now she can slam Layton too, if she wants to, because he signed off on that transcript that had him declaring his own incompetence. Why she would want to do any of this, I don’t know. But she’s always after someone. Do you remember that cottage director at Crane who left a couple of years ago? I don’t remember his name. He told me he was leaving because of her.”
I could hear the breath coming out of Bernie’s lungs. “We’d better finish this paperwork and get the kids out.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve applied for a job in parole. I’ve had some doubts, but now I’m glad I did it. Don’t say anything to Jan.”
“I won’t. I don’t know why I’ve stayed as long as I have. My father left me some money when he died. I don’t have to be here.”
“I know why you stayed. But I don’t know why you’re here now. Not that I want you to leave. You’ll be missed when you go. And not only by staff.”
“Thanks, Bernie.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
In her case notes, Karin blamed herself for Caitlin’s frustration, writing that Caitlin was upset because she, Karin, had not validated her emotions when she was feeling vulnerable. Karin and Caitlin discussed “Opposite Action” and how to use it to get through the moment.
Peter said he knew something was wrong.
“What do you mean? Something is wrong with you? With the cottage? With both?”
“I don’t know. I just know something’s wrong and I don’t know what it is. I’m different from other people, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
Caitlin hated doing DBT. It was stupid, she said. She liked Karin but resented her for forcing her to do DBT. “Observe and Describe. Distract. Opposite Action. Cheerleading Statements. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She did them, and even pretended to find value in them so she could keep the privileges she had acquired—playing basketball and staying up later than the other kids and coming over to see me and Layton—but she hated the DBT exercises. Doing them made her feel small again.
The people from DOC drove down to talk with Caitlin and Sonia. They told both girls they would be transferring to Purdy after they finished high school. When they spoke with Caitlin alone, they told her they would take her at the end of September, a week after her eighteenth birthday. She had until then to finish school. If she wanted to take college courses when she was at Purdy, she had to pay for them herself. If she wanted to make a phone call, it was three dollars and fifty cents a minute.
Although it was a Thursday, Jenny called me from Serpent Cottage and asked me to talk with Caitlin that night. I went over after I got off shift. A few minutes after we sat down, Caitlin began to cry. She said she wasn’t going to go to college, that she couldn’t afford it. She couldn’t even afford books or postage to mail her assignments in. She didn’t even want to graduate from high school. Purdy could take her now, as far as she was concerned.
“You’re scheduled to graduate in February, not September,” I said.
“I know that! I’m not stupid!”
“I know you’re not stupid. But are you sure you didn’t misunderstand something? I can’t imagine them taking you only a few months shy of graduation.”
“I didn’t misunderstand! I know what they said! I was there!”
She said both Karin and Layton were trying to persuade her to plan a career, to go on to college, but she didn’t believe she could have a career. They compared her with other people who had done well, but she didn’t want to be compared with anyone. She w
as intensely angry with Karin for forcing her to do DBT exercises. She hated being forced to do something because it reminded her of her mother’s forcing her to do things. She wanted to be able to control her own life and she didn’t want to go to college.
I said I would support her in whatever she decided to do.
She thanked me. Neither Karin nor Layton had said that to her, she said.
I suggested she take college classes—
She butted in, saying, as if I did not comprehend: “I can’t afford it and nobody will ever hire me anyway.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “I’ll talk, then you’ll talk. Okay?”
“Go.”
“What I’m saying is that you can take classes that interest you, or that you think might be fun, and not worry about a career.”
“What I’m saying is that I won’t be able to afford it, Jerry.”
“I can.”
“How can you?”
“I have some money. I don’t spend everything I earn. While a few hundred dollars is a lot to you, it isn’t to me.”
“I can’t take your money, Jerry.”
“Don’t decide now. Think about it for a while. You have time.”
We stared at each other. Then both of us burst out laughing.
I saw Jenny on my way down to Wolf to begin my shift. We walked together. She said Caitlin’s mother had been transferred to a prison out of state in anticipation of Caitlin’s and Sonia’s move.
I talked to the Purdy liaison to Ash Meadow. Then I talked with Caitlin.
“You’ll be able to finish high school here. That’s in February, right? I know—they told you they were going to take you in September. But I talked with Darlene a couple of days ago. She says you’ll be transferred after you complete high school. Sonia, because she’ll finish in August, will go in either August or September.
“But you won’t be going to Medium Security. You know you have to spend four years in Maximum Security. They’re not going to count your time in detention, only the time you’ve spent here. They’ll give you credit for all the time served in Ash Meadow as time spent in max.