Flash Floods and Mud Slides

My scheduled date was for release on the 1st of November. I was up at 6am to shower, blow dry my hair, make sure my clothes were squared away. All my jewelry was off, nothing in my pockets except my id. One more trip to the potty, wash my hands, and put Vaseline on my lips. 8:50am the phone rings and I walk up to the cop shop knowing that my name is one of the first to be called. Tammy stayed overnight at a motel in Chowchilla. I grab my pass and race out the door, walking as fast as I can to make the gate before the yard opens. Thankfully, a copper was at the gate and I breezed right through. Life is going perfectly, and this is just a celebration of that. I get to spend this beautiful fall day with my best friend.
I get through the pre visitation search quickly and hurry into the visiting room. I locate Tammy standing up and headed in my direction as I check into the cop shop which is required before you can go to your family.
Tammy and I collide in a huge hug. Immediately I notice that something is wrong. Her face is not radiating the joy we feel at my going home; rather it is the face that precedes bad news. True enough she says, “Lets go outside”
No
We need to go outside
No, nothing good happens out there. (Going outside means that she needs to tell me something serious and that is the only place we can get a little privacy. It is were she told me that Grandma died, that I had lost my 9th circuit appeal, that both her boys needed surgery, that the woman who raised me had died, ect.) Great Grandma died right?
It may seem bad but this was a better alternative than something having gone wrong with my date.
Tammy started to cry and my worst fears were confirmed deep down in my chest.
I said, “I’m not going home am I?”

Time keeps on slippin...

There is a common misperception that prisoners have nothing but time on their hands, that they are handed everything for free. In fact when a convicted person is sentenced it is called being given time. The girls ask, How much time to you get? Then the comparison starts of who got screwed and who got lucky. On October 31, 1995, I found myself sitting in a dirty beige room. A wood enclosed Bench at the head of the room. Two more desks sat in front of the judge’s bench. Ten feet in front of that were two regular wood tables one to the left, the defendants table and one to the right the prosecutors table. Further to the right was the now empty jury’s box. The jury of my peers (the youngest being 49) is gone to sleep at home instead of the cozy box. To my left is another desk that is the bailiffs, from here he keeps a watchful eye on me and my family. A railing runs across the room behind me. Behind that the room is nothing but rows of chairs and a giant eagle hung up on the wall like the sentry of all that is good and holy. On this day the honorable judge Wayne Westover, dressed in his black robe was handing down my sentence.

God Who?

My faith has been built over this twelve year struggle. God knows everything right? Is in control of everything, therefore he knew I was going to be hurt and left, and that I was going to hurt and love, yet where was his compassionate loving hand through the first twenty plus years of my life? Would I , hell could I love a God who allowed my life to play out as it has thus far, believing that it is for the best? You see either God is in control of everything or he is not! He is not just in charge of the good things and all the bad things I did and was done to me are the work of people or the devil. God the god in the bible is the alpha, and the omega, the beginning and the end, either I was going to trust that he had all of this fucking shit under control and it was going to work out, or all the people myself included where full of shit and stupid for believing in God who picked and choose who he would help out!

God Who?

God skipped the first twenty or so years of my life. How can he of been present when My mother chose to kill herself. Where was he when I was being beaten to a bloody pulp. Where was he when Tom started touching me. Where was this all knowing all powerful lover and protector of my soul when tornado dad was beating me down physically, mentally, emotionally. Where was God when all the kids at school hated me choosing to spend their lunch hours chasing me around the play ground trying to jump me. Where was God when I heeded my dad’s yelled directive to get the fuck out because I had a boyfriend. The first I had brought home up to that time. Where was good when I made the decision to plan and carry out the attempted murder of an innocent woman I liked. Where was God in this deep pit I have found myself in. This tiny room with one window if you could call it that. About 6 inches wide and two feet in length. Covered in a dirty yellow grate that allowed a modicum of sun in, but to see out I had to put my eye up to the dirty grate peering through one of the holes that punctured the protective covering. How many hours I have sat on my bed a hard metal bunk with a slim 1 inch plastic mattress placed upon that. Covered in threadbare sheets and scratchy dark wool blankets. The grumbly toilet less than a foot from the edge of the bed; the sink and mirror a foot from that and the door a foot from that. I laugh to myself at all the old tv shows I saw where the prison paced back and forth as a way to manage there time, yet that is not a reality here. In one possible two if you take small steps you reach the other side. Able to touch one side of the room with your left hand and the other side of the room with your right. How did I end up here? What the fuck?

Time Keeps on Slippin...

My world trembled a little bit when I heard the first words come out of good old Wayne’s mouth, 25 to life. The next words from God in heaven were “Stayed”. On and on it went until for what seemed like hours. On the news that night I was told by pretty little reporters that I could be expected to see freedom once again anywhere from 5 to 25 years. Not one was accurate about how much time I would spend in the big house. Hell, as I sit here writing this remembering what it felt like to have my time given to me, the relief I felt that I could finally get moving toward my future whatever that was going to be.
For the past year and 9 months I had seen amazingly great and amazingly horrible reactions to the issuance of time. Some women came back onto the module and they were happy beyond measure that their attorney had found some loop hole and they were being released that night. Others, one red head in particular was so destroyed by her sentence of thirty days that, that evening when we had been released for day room. She walked up to the top tier, almost directly over the cop station, climbed over the rail, and jumped trying to kill herself. I was on the top tier on the other side of the module and was too far away to get to her to stop her and could only watch. Jumping off the tier was a quick trip to the hospital, pain meds and escape from their current reality. Of all the women who used the leap of the tier as their method to escape their time not one of them succeeded. They simply added a broken back of broken feet to the already complicated situation. Also they usually went to the psych ward which was even more restrictive than E module, causing their movements to be scrutinized even more, less freedom.

Storm Shelter

The only benefit of being the oldest girl in the children’s shelter is being allowed entrance into the children’s storm shelter baby room. Each of the babies in this room had been abused or mistreated by their caregivers. I could understand that right? One day I was in the baby room, which was markedly the sunniest place inside the storm shelter. There was one little baby boy, his skin was dark, whether by birth or by the burns his mother had put all over him, I don’t know. My inner sun felt pulled to this squalling bundle of pain. The nurse in the room cautioned me that any touch was severely painful to this little boy, yet my heart was pulled to him. I gently bent over his stark white crib, he seemed so tiny, fragile, and lonely. Everyone seemed to steer clear of him in fear of causing him pain leaving him abandoned to human touch. I slid one hand under his scarred head and my other hand slid around his body as I picked him up. I brought him into my chest, holding him next to my heart, all the while humming to him softly as he screamed in pain. Within a minute his heart wrenching screams subsided as his inner storm passed. I held him all day long, and hated to put him back down. I fed him that day, pouring my overabundant and under given love to this beautiful little boy.

Storms

Storms take all shapes and sizes. My beginning was a storm of failed gender and Mom giving up on her life. This storm blew out as they always do and right on its heals the next storm blew in. This storm was young too, had fire red hair and an even redder temper. This storm blew across my nose in the form of her fist because I had forgotten to brush my teeth before preschool. Something a wise four year old should have remembered to do. Her storm raged even redder as she saw the blood mixed with tears running rivers down my tiny face. How dare I make her feel guilty for making her unleash her storms ferocious power on me to correct my erroneous ways. The enraged red headed storm finally blew out when the sun’s rays found a crack in the storm shining light into my darkness. The sun came to me in the form of a nosy neighbor, Laura, who spoke the light of truth in the face of the red headed storm making the red headed storm flee. Yet, just like every other storm she left destruction I her path. Her winds magically carried away every possession within the house, but the house remained only an empty shell. Her winds managed to pick up my tiny clothes, tiny toy trucks, and my tiny little girl furniture. Tornado Dad took off after the red headed storm like a mad storm chaser he finally catches up with her. Only to be given one more wallops as all storms do, in the form of a hard ceramic coffee mug meeting Tornado dad’s cranium.