He said, “I’m glad you showed up.” The judge saw the few people that were there other than me; I was sitting, and waiting.
My mom said, “I wonder why he didn’t see you also?”
“I don’t know.” I said. Maybe she was right, I thought. Then shortly, the deputy called my name. I stood up; I kissed my mom on the cheek. The deputy asked me to put my hands behind my back, and he handcuffed me. A female deputy entered the courtroom and searched me. I had removed all my jewelry already. I had also smoked a bunch of cigarettes, and drank a soda on the way to my mom’s house.
I did not look back while I was taken away, I did not want to see any more pain in my mother’s face. Besides, out of fear, she was already gone.
Eyes were burning a hole in the back of my head; I wondered whose eyes. I went with the deputy to a desk in the basement. She counted my money.
“That’s 50 dollars, right?”
“Yes.” I said.
“You have a forty-five day sentence.” she said out loud, after reading my paperwork.
“I’m returning to complete my sentence,” I told her. I got the feeling she didn’t realize I had a stay of sentencing. I wanted her to know I was not just beginning. I had already served 10 days prior on my sentence.
“They will take care of it out at the main jail.” she said. I was right about her not knowing all of my circumstances.
She asked me to remove my shoes, they could be used as a weapon. They were clogs with wooden heels. I guess I looked offended. “Not just you, someone could take them from you; not everyone is stable in jail.” The deputy explained.
I was far from stable right now. She gave me some foam shoes to cover my feet. I went into the holding cell. I saw this skinny Asian woman I had seen when I had come here for court on the day my sister died. We were waiting in this same cell together for court.
I said to her, “I thought you were being released that day we were here?”
“I was. I’m back for the same thing again, Cocaine.” She said.
Four days, I thought. It’s powerful; one thing about it, when you use it you think of nothing but cocaine. I knew. I never stole from my family, ended up in jail or psychotic over drugs before. Why was my sister’s bottom so low? I managed to keep my job but, I didn’t like myself anymore. I realized what I do effects the people I care about and then some. I thought Lady knew this after our last conversation, we had together in person.
I thought about the women in jail as I looked around the cell. I had met a lot of women and they seemed no different from me. I found something else to do besides drugs, and to care about. I wanted my son to respect me, so I set a better example. I thought I made the past just that. I thought I accepted my mother for what she was, but I learned when I was released I had not. I still want her to be different whenever I am around her.
Just then some girl who looked like she couldn’t have been more than eighteen asked the deputy, “Can I have some milk? I’m allergic to water.” I could hear a male inmate singing in the background, “I’m just an old lump of coal but soon I’ll be a diamond.” I laughed, thinking, this place is a trip.
As the day went on inside the holding cell, I talked to various women about their cases. None of us had planned to be here.
We arrived at the main jail around 7:00 pm. I was tired and emotionally drained. I felt physically ill; I knew something was wrong. I had hoped my Lupus was not resurfacing. I had been in remission for over a year, with minimal symptoms. Stress triggered Lupus, and I was stressed. I hadn’t been this stressed since I found out I had it 3 years ago and could no longer work in the same profession. I decided I would do again, what I had done then, start again – change. Every time I think I have happiness by the tail, it gets away somehow. I’m tired from holding on to the lion’s tail.
CHAPTER 18
I saw the doctor like everyone else during the booking process at the ‘Main.’ They started me on antibiotics immediately. I had a lung, and right ear infection. I finally had time to be sick. I had a medical hold not to go to The Farm, which was determined during booking. Lupus patients have joint problems associated with them. The medical staff was uninformed about Lupus, like most people, and had made an error in sending me to The Farm the first time.
I finally made it up to a bed in the same cell I had been in before. H7, bed 25 this time; home for the next few weeks. It was around 2:00 am. I made my bed and was just about to lay down, when I was called for a medical pass.
I went downstairs to the basement, they gave me an inhaler to use and more antibiotics. The nurse asked about my Lupus meds.
“I’m not taking any.”
She scheduled me to see the doctor anyway, in the morning. It was already morning.
She said, “Better to be safe, stress triggers Lupus.”
“I know.”
“Were you ever in the Health Care field?”
“Yes.” I had worked for a state mental hospital for 14 years, on a skilled nursing unit. The clients are physically and mentally ill. What a combo – I loved it though. I had been diagnosed with Lupus and was now a Graphic Artist and writer, mostly a writer.
“There are a lot of health care providers coming down with Lupus,” she commented.
“It’s not communicable.” I told her.
“I know that’s what they say,” she said. “Why are you here? You don’t have to answer that,” she checked herself. “I just want to know if you are going to be here for a while?” I thought my chart would have informed her why I was here. How would she know if I was dangerous?
“About two more weeks,” I answered. “I was driving on a suspended, licensed.” I didn’t mind answering her.
“Why don’t they let you go?” she asked. I smiled thinking about it. “This is not going to help your health. They are playing with fire.”
“How do you know, so much about Lupus?”
“I have it,” she told me. “They could give you community service or something.”
Done that I thought. “Well, I’ve been sentenced; there was an error in my paperwork. I did community service before, but was never credited. Therefore, my driving license was suspended.” I explained.
“You don’t seem like a criminal; you still care about yourself.” She made this comment as if she knew something I didn’t. What did she see in me? I had wondered if my mother ever saw it. “I’m going to give you something to help you sleep when you get back to your cell. Here is your pass. Good luck.” She said.
“Thanks.” I took the medication, turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 19
Some of the women had been here with me before. Sandy came over to ask me how much time I had left. She’d been my bunkie before and Sandy knew I was released for the funeral.
“I thought sure they would let you go.” So did my mom.
I told her, “I don’t know. About two weeks if I’ve figured the kick and credits right.”
She suggested, I put in a snivel to ask for an SE, sentence ending, date. Finally, I slept. I woke up sometime later that day in the afternoon. I had missed breakfast and lunch. I was relieved and worried at the same time. My first concern was that my sentence be sorted out. I didn’t want to spend any more time here than I absolutely had to. Sandy had told me there had been errors with some of the release dates. I put in a snivel, sending it with Laura to drop in the box for me on her way into the dining room for dinner.
I wasn’t feeling well, and I didn’t want to eat. I laid back and thought about everything that had happened to me lately. Then, I went and got a magazine out of the day room. After I read it, I decided to make a calendar to mark off the days. I was already stir crazy. I wanted it above my face, underneath the top bunk, so I could look at it while I lay on my bunk and mark off my days. Anything, I had to think of something to help myself cope. I wished I knew why the caged bird sings.
I had learned in LA County Jail that toothpaste works like glue, white paste only, not blue or green. I had
blue. I had to find a pencil and paper first. I asked Sandy but she didn’t have paper or pencil only white toothpaste. My bunkie heard me ask Sandy and offered me the use of her pencil and a sheet of paper. I thanked her when she handed it down from the top bunk.
I asked her, “When do we order commissary?”
“Tomorrow she said. Well, you order tomorrow but get it the day after that,” she finished.
“Damn” I said. Well, the worst, of what I was going through was over I thought. What’s a couple of days? I just have to get through the next few weeks of jail, grieve, and get on with life.
I realized the convenience of things I took for granted like clocks, windows and privacy. I can only have what I buy off the commissary list. The list was important to us; our only freedom in jail. I was wealthy in jail. My mother and Mary put money on my books I didn’t expect to have. I found out after I ordered commissary and got my account balance two days later when I received my stuff.
I had been asleep for days. I had not been out of the cell for a meal in five days. It will be wild in jail tonight. Commissary night is always wild from all the coffee going around. I realized caffeine really is a drug.
I starting tearing out magazine pictures I liked. I decided to make a collage under the above bunk to help with my sanity. The calendar was a bad idea, counting only made it worse. The pictures were of all the things I missed on the outside and thought I needed. I had to be careful not to get caught with anything personal not on the list, it’s considered contraband. It’s a write up for posting pictures anyway. I didn’t want to lose my three-day kick.
I took the risk, it was more important to me that I feel better. I got back my snivel and my sentence ending date was ten days over what it should have been. I asked some veterans to calculate for me what the time credits are. I filled out another snivel and suggested the error.
CHAPTER 20
I wondered what I was doing in jail. I could hear some woman screaming “My name is Will Robinson, I’m lost in space!” I thought I should call the outside and let everyone know that I was fine. I did.
I called my mother, she asked why I hadn’t called. I told her I was sparing everyone’s phone bill. I told mom about the error with my sentencing and I was not sure when I was getting out. After she had asked about my release, I spoke to my son and told him I would be in jail for his birthday.
“Oh man.” he said.
“We can do something later. I’ve left a hundred dollars with Maya so you can do what you want or buy something.” He was happy to hear that; I could feel him smiling over the telephone. I told him not to blow it all – I really didn’t care if he did.
I went back to collecting pictures when I hung up. I was saddened by the fact I was going to miss my son’s birthday. I went to my bunk and cried a little.
A lady on the side of me asked, “You okay?”
I said, “Well I’m going to have to be strong for it.” We talked a little and I realized I had been asleep most of the time. I didn’t know she had been there the whole time. Marcie was her name; she asked if I was kicking.
I said, “No.”
“I was kicking so bad when I got here,” she reminisced. “I’m here for driving on a suspended license.”
“How much time did you get?” I asked.
“90 days.”
“Great.” I said. I felt better at not being singled out.
Marcie looked at me, puzzled. “I thought 60 days was bad?”
I laughed looking back at her and reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry, I thought my sentence was harsh, yours is worse.”
Marcie whispered, “Shhh,” and put her finger over her lips. “There are women here still waiting to go to prison for years. Sometimes they are in a bad mood over this and get irritated with short timers.”
“I’m not guilty.” I said, thinking this separated me from them that she spoke of. “This is the second time I’ve dealt with this.”
“You are not unique,” Marcie said, and sobered up my judgment with her comment.
I asked, “Do you like lemon-flavored drink mix?” I hated, lemonade but it was the flavor I had received with my commissary. We agreed we should be able to pick the flavor we wanted. It was our money.
Marcie didn’t have any teeth so I traded her a bit of honey for a chocolate bar. I was running out of dried soup, she didn’t have any. Our hot water spigot was broken anyway. I was tired of running the shower for hot water.
Marcie persuaded me to come out of the cell for a meal. I needed to turn in my new snivel. I went out for dinner. I saw Cookie in the vestibule. She went to hug me, and the deputy stopped her. Hugging isn’t allowed.
I told her, “I’ve been back for days. But I was sick and haven’t left the cell.”
“I know, I could hear your name when they called you for meds.” She was in the cell above me now. She had got into it with some chick and they moved her.
“Fly some birds down, for me. When are you leaving for prison?” I asked.
“Soon, I hope. I don’t have any money on my books and I’m tired of the food here. In prison the food is better, and so is everything else. Prison seems like a country club compared to jail,” she explained. All I knew was when I got out of here, I was never coming back.
I made a deal with her, “Make birds and I’ll sort it with commissary items on the list.”
“Cool.” she said.
I dropped in the snivel when I entered the dining room, but did not eat. A deputy commented on my hair color on my way back to the cell. I was surprised.
“It really suits you. It looks great.”
“Thanks,” I said. It won’t in about a week when my roots are showing, I thought. I did not even consider that I couldn’t bleach my hair or pluck my eyebrows. I learned from one of my sidecars, you can pluck your eyebrows with a string. I didn’t believe it until she did mine. I was too embarrassed to ask her to do my chin. Madelyn had just gotten out of prison and was rearrested for a charge that was not concurrent with her prison sentence. If she had filled out a ‘cop out sheet,’ she would have been able to serve her time concurrent while making a plea from within prison with this form. Instead, she was rearrested before she was ever released and sentenced to jail for the remainder of her time. How fucked up, I thought.
Madelyn was doing her time in her sister’s name; she had used it in the past. I had to remember around the deputies in mail call, not to call her the wrong name. It wasn’t long before she was doing eyebrows for commissary, I was acting as her agent. We would laugh at night while we stayed awake talking, eating our commissary, and throwing shoes at mice.
Madelyn told me one time she stayed awake for a month doing speed. She used to sell it. She had drugs all the time.
I said, “You should have been hallucinating from sleep deprivation alone.”
“My brother used to swear he could move cars and trees.”
I started laughing. ‘Deputy no Badge’ told us to be quiet.
Madelyn said, “You’re in jail bitch, wake up and do your time.”
The whole cell starting laughing aloud, all 18 bunks it seemed. Madelyn continued to tell me the story about her brother, while ‘Deputy no Badge’ argued with someone else.
“After he bought from me he would do a big line, stand in front of my house and push the tree.” I laughed. “He would mark the spot with an X where he was going to move the tree. I would go out when he was not looking and move the X, so he would think he moved it.” Madelyn looked like somebody’s mom, and she was. I know she was a good mom, because she was a good mother to me in jail.
Grandma Mary was comforting a lady that was crying. She was served a letter, informing her she had lost custody of her son.
“I feel sorry for her.” Madelyn said.
“I don’t have any sympathy for her,” I said. “She should have thought about that when she was getting high.” My sister, at the height of her drug usage, signed her son away to his father so he would be taken ca
re of; kids don’t ask to be born.
“You’re a mean Angel.”
“No I’m not. I’m a real Angel.”
“Maybe she didn’t have anyone to help.” Madelyn defended.
“Then she really didn’t have any business getting high. Because, you get high means all of a sudden your kids don’t count?”
“We all have a need to alter our consciousness at times. The kid is there no matter what is your state of mind.” I couldn’t sympathize with her.
Madelyn and I decided we would make a spread. Some lady came up to me and asked if I buy aspirin off the list.
I said, “No.”
“If you buy me one, I’ll give you something in exchange for it. We can only buy two aspirin at a time.”
“All right.” I agreed to it.
We helped each other and talked because we didn’t have the people we cared about with us. When I got low of funds, I would write one of my poems for someone to put in a letter and I’d get a soup or something. Most of the time I did it free. I was being published behind bars. I helped one of the women write a letter to the judge in her case asking for an amended sentence.
I told her “Just cause I claim to be a writer doesn’t mean I can write.”
“I’ve read some of your poems. I put one in a letter to my family; it expressed what I couldn’t say myself,” Deputy no Badge, said.
I was honored. The greatest compliment I could have received as a writer had just been given to me.
“I wondered why you were here,” she said, as I worked on the letter.
“I told you why, a suspended license.”
“I mean, why you are really here,” she reached across the table and touched my hand. I was uncomfortable with her, suddenly this was too emotional for me right now. “This is why, you help make the best of a bad situation.”
Family Tree the Novel Page 8