Prison Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Yeah, what?”

  “It’s already taken care of.” He winked. “It’s a done deal.” David turned and headed for the stairs back to North block.

  My teeth squeaked as I raised my hand to eye level and turned it palm up. I closed one eye while sticking my middle finger up. I used it as a target site, aiming for the middle of David’s back. In a whisper I said, “Blam! Blam! Motherfuck! Blam! Blam!”

  PART III

  I SAW THE WHOLE THING,

  IT WAS HORRIBLE

  MILK AND TEA

  BY LINDA MICHELLE MARQUARDT

  Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility (Ypsilanti, Michigan)

  Sometimes the most significant moments in our lives happen when we make no choice at all. This was one of those moments. Her feet must have been only two feet from the ground as her body dangled like a rag doll from the door hinge. There was chaos: screams, officers running, hands shaking, fellow inmates praying, everyone watching with morbid curiosity as her limp body crashed on the cement floor, cracking her skull. Not that it mattered; she was already dead.

  Damn! I was jealous. If only I didn’t have amazing sons, parents who love me unconditionally, and friends who have stood by me. They are my curse that binds me to this prison. They are the people I continue to try to please, the ones whom I emulate and love. They are my ties to earth and this current hell. If only they knew how long twenty-four hours is in here. How years slip by, but a day can feel like eternity. Time is not real, but it is the only real thing I know, the only real thing I have that is mine.

  My neighbor, three doors down, was carried away in a body bag. If only I could escape as she had, like the seven others before her. It’s almost a certainty that this prison, Women’s Huron Valley—what I call “Death Valley”—is cursed, that there’s a dark prophecy about it that hasn’t yet been fulfilled. It’s not just inmates hanging themselves; seemingly healthy officers are hauled away in ambulances, never to return. One was pronounced dead from a brain aneurysm. Strangely, no one noticed her car parked in the middle of the lot, wrecked by a crash she was involved in on the way to the prison. It was as if she needed to arrive here before the fog of death in this valley sucked out the last of her breath. Visitors drop dead in the visiting room without explanation. No more visits with that inmate’s sister. Death surrounds this place, and I crave it like iced tea on a summer day.

  * * *

  Death brought me here, and death could set me free. It’s been ten years to this very month since I’ve killed.

  Click, click, click. That damn gun was empty, yet I could still hear him screaming, You fucking bitch! deep and harsh, echoing in the room.

  Adrenaline like I have never felt rushed through my veins.

  Get out, get out, get the boys out! my only thought. There’s no turning around this time.

  Never would I have imagined me—a Catholic schoolgirl raised in a loving, middle-class family with a stay-at-home mom, college-educated, mother of three children—becoming a murderer and a prisoner. But some of the most significant moments in our lives happen with no choice at all. There are many like me sprinkled among the addicts, the criminal-minded, and the socially inept. We keep the balance and are a testament that the most horrible things can happen to the kindest people, and the kindest people can do the most horrible things. I did a horrible thing.

  It is a mother’s most basic instinct to protect her children, and that is what turned me into a killer. There was no choice. The morning I shot him to death, we were up before sunrise, fucking. I was on top, straddling his body, riding him as rhythmically as the waves crash onto the shore. His hands were on my hips, thrusting me a little harder, both of us sweating to the grind. He suddenly lifted me off his fully erect dick and rolled over without a word. Dead silence filled the room, except for the sound of our heavy breathing.

  Are you kidding me? Not this again.

  His favorite mind game was to make me feel guilty because he could not get off. The routine was to kiss the back of his neck, slither down his body, and finish him off with a blow job. Five times a day he demanded sex, which seemed excessive for a man who couldn’t cum. Like clockwork, every day, it was my duty, and always my fault.

  On that day, I got up and left him to tend to his own needs. I could hear my oldest son pouring cereal downstairs, and I went to join my children. Big mistake—huge!

  * * *

  Earlier that year, he had taken me to a total of four gynecologists, trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I used to sneak into the bathroom and place K-Y Jelly up as far as I could, because God knows I could no longer get wet with him. When all the doctors insisted I was perfectly healthy, he felt humiliated, still insisting I was the problem. Once he finally admitted the doctors were right, he tied me up by strapping my arms and legs to the dining room table. I was bound, naked and trembling, and beads of sweat bubbled up on my stomach when I saw him plug in the hot glue gun. That glue dripped onto the inside of my thigh, and I screamed as if I was giving birth. Next came my vagina. I was gasping for breath, pleading, twisting like a fish on a hook.

  “Please, please don’t. I’m sorry. It’ll get better. I promise, I’ll do anything. We can do it right now! Please, please don’t do this!”

  * * *

  To this day, that pain is indescribable. But it was not nearly as painful as what came next. He sliced that dried glue from my lips as if it were rotten sushi. I passed out.

  Apparently, he had decided that if I wasn’t “working” properly for him, I was never going to be attractive to anyone else, ever. As if I wasn’t faithful. Hell, I had three young children, worked, and put up with all of his madness on a daily basis. Over 2,102,400 minutes of nonsense. The glue incident took only about forty-five of those. I was exhausted.

  * * *

  I’m still exhausted. Every day I try to bring something positive into my life and into someone else’s, even in here, at the Valley of Death. For years I was a positive role model for those less equipped, but it seems impossible lately. I’m even losing my sense of humor, which has always been my favorite coping mechanism. After a decade, here I am: sarcastic, crass, cynical, and impatient. I can hardly stand myself.

  The daily routine is easy and familiar. Like an abusive relationship, prison is full of the mentally ill, there are officers on power trips, and there are strict structures that lack any form of common sense. Even though you are never alone, you are lonely. No one is able to speak the real truth about what is happening or about how they are feeling. Worse yet, you are unable to help others in any natural way. There is no comforting, consoling, or human contact allowed. You learn that all souls in prison are damaged and there is not one person you can trust, even yourself. There is nothing normal about hell except death.

  * * *

  Three Doors Down was lonely. She didn’t last eight weeks here at Death Valley. My bunkie at that time had lasted thirteen years of her life sentence. Still, she has unsuccessfully tried to take her life at least five times that I’m aware of.

  When I first moved into the cell she was quiet, living mainly in her own mind, consumed by her thoughts of what was and what could someday be. Slowly, we started to talk. She shared intimate details of the abuse she’d endured as a child—graphic details similar to those in the book A Child Called “It.” We became like sisters: shared food, shared secrets, shared the TV, laughed and cried together. She became my prison family and gave me an odd sense of purpose.

  Then one day, out of the blue, after two years of living together, it all changed. The significant moment that I had no control over happened. She stopped talking, started sucking her thumb, started banging her head against the wall at lockup time. Her tantrums grew violent. The officers gave her tickets, not expecting this behavior from her. She lost over fifty pounds within two or three months. She looked like a walking skeleton, and I pleaded with the officers to call mental health. Together, we colored pictures with crayons to relax. I made a swing out of a sh
eet and would swing her at count time so she would stay in the room. I cooked three different foods, and when she refused each one, I fed her milk and cookies. These episodes would last days, sometimes weeks.

  On the days she was an adult, she was increasingly frustrated and angry. Overwhelmed by all of it, she took a handful of blood pressure pills. That was her first suicide attempt. She was fine, and only received a substance abuse ticket. I continued to plead with the officers to move her to the mental health unit, telling them that she was a danger to herself. Finally, she was cuffed and moved. I watched as she looked at me with contempt, as if I had turned her in for the murder she is serving time for. I felt relief then; now, I only feel regret. She wanted her iced tea like I crave mine. I didn’t save her like I thought—I tied her to this hell.

  Six months later, she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. That made sense. At Death Valley, she attempted suicide four more times. The last time, she hung herself with a bra and was cut down by the brain aneurysm officer. She is now on medication. She walks around like a zombie on good days and remains violent on the bad ones. She’s a shell of the person I knew, truly the epitome of the walking dead. Now a level-four prisoner, she is considered strictly a management problem instead of a mentally ill patient. There is no true help in the penitentiary. I bet she hates me for saving her.

  * * *

  I hate him for not killing me. Odd that this is my reason for hating him, after all the other reasons he’s given me, but it’s true. He is resting in peace and I am separated from my sons, which is exactly what he wanted. Either way, he won. I am still as trapped as I was with him; I’m just here at Death Valley. I am so exhausted lately, the same way I was at the most intense time of his abuse. I believe the Monster realized at some point that his torture was just not working anymore, that I was too tired and it didn’t have the same effect. He needed to harm those I loved to get a reaction from me.

  I recall him telling me that lions will sniff out the cubs that were sired by another and then eat them if they are not their own. My two oldest sons were from a previous marriage, and he acted as if I should have known he was out in the world, waiting for me to find him. Somehow he believed I was a possession that he owned, and that I had wandered off before I’d even met him. I was perfect and damaged all at the same time. He convinced himself that if I were to get rid of my two sons, we could somehow live happily ever after with our own child. Twisted realities filled my world. They still do.

  * * *

  My current bunkie is also mentally ill, a time bomb. She has extreme highs and lows. Unlike my previous bunkie, she never gets tickets for her behavior. Since crazy is the norm for her, all of the officers tolerate her outbursts. It seems unfair and unreasonable to the rest of us, but there is no logic applied here in hell. This lady sings nonstop all day long, which is why I call her American Idol. It’s the nicest name I can come up with.

  Her greed drives everything she does, and she hides behind some false sense of Christianity where she truly believes Jesus has saved her and only her. He will someday heal her from all her medical and mental issues; the rest of us are confused dykes or lying crackheads. She refers to people as “humanoids,” as if she isn’t human herself.

  One of American Idol’s favorite testimonies is when she was on crack and the Holy Spirit came down and raised Big Mike up, levitating him as she preached. She said it didn’t matter that she was on crack. She is a “head cracker” and a servant of God, even with the drugs. I couldn’t care less about her religion or her past—I am not judgmental—but living with her makes me question if I am becoming the killer I am accused of being.

  This bitch won’t stop singing. She wakes up from her sleep to make noise, and I contemplate crushing up her blood pressure pills to quiet her. American Idol is enough to drive a sane person crazy, and I’m pretty sure I should be there already, considering my past.

  * * *

  Looking back, I see the progression of it all. Having our son is when the most significant change took place. Still, there were early signs I had missed. Apparently, if you’re an educated person, this can be held against you, as if there is some Abuse 101 course in college that prepares you to recognize the warning signs. There isn’t. By the time you are in an abusive relationship, it is harder to escape than most people realize. I tried many times.

  Once I attempted to get away, but he threatened to kill my parents. I remember him saying, as sweet as can be, “I know I’ll at least see you at their funeral, baby. You might as well come home now.”

  I did. I naively longed for a happy, blended family, and I did everything I could think of to fix him and us. I begged for us to attend counseling, for him to seek help with his depression, for us to work through things together. We took vacations without the children, and I never burdened him by leaving him to take care of them. They were never alone with him at the end, ever. I followed all his rules. I was faithful and obedient, and eventually feared him to the point where I lost all reason.

  The year after we had our child, he needed to travel home to Georgia. He’d passed the bar exam and was being sworn in. Did I mention he was a licensed attorney in three states and had a master’s degree in medical anthropology? Still, he’d never had a job—he died at the age of thirty-two and had never worked a day in his life.

  Right before he left, he explained to me how we should get married. He told me that I needed to give my two oldest sons away, that I should just forget they were ever born and start a new life with him in Georgia. He wanted to go back to his home and “rule the country.” He believed he could be somebody there and I could have a big Southern home and everything would be perfect. The part I never understood was the fact that he was so kind and patient with my boys when we first started dating—it was one of the most attractive qualities he had. How did he become this beast? When it came to the children, I never bit my tongue, and the very idea of abandoning them was insane. This, of course, provoked his rage even more. I told him he was being absurd. He said, “Those fucking cum-crunchers you call sons are going to go one way or another!”

  I thought he had walked out to calm down. I heard the sound of liquid pouring, so I assumed he was making himself a Jack and Coke. He snatched me into the kitchen and I realized he wasn’t calming down at all. When I yanked back my arm, he kicked me into a wall and I fell on the floor. Next thing I remember, he was explaining to me how easy it would be to remove my skin when I was dead.

  The Monster was lying on top of me with my elbow in a bowl of boric acid. My teeth were clenched, my eyes watering uncontrollably. This was new—not the pain, not the torture, not the reason, but the method. He was creative. I lifted my head toward him, groaned from the pain, and began kissing his neck, slowly twisting my tongue around his bulging vein. Then I bit.

  “You bitch!” He released my arm.

  I ran into the bathroom, not knowing what to do with the acid eating my flesh. I rinsed it in cold water and the sink filled with blood. He came in and said, “Baby, let me take care of you.” He placed ointment on gauze, wrapped the wound, and gently tended to it with seemingly genuine concern. I didn’t say a word. Tears continued to stream down my face. He made popcorn with extra butter—my favorite—and we watched a movie as if nothing had happened. Today, that elbow has the softest skin on my body.

  * * *

  Of course, these days I can’t even see my body. At Death Valley, there are no mirrors. American Idol never leaves the room; therefore, there is no alone time to care for or tend to myself. Every day, I drag my clean clothes into the shower area since there’s no privacy in my cell. Naked in the shower, I’m surrounded by women. Four other showers are running at the same time, women are coming in and out and in and out, calling for a spot, humming, arguing, complaining. Fuck!

  If she would just leave the room, just for a while, maybe—just maybe—I could regroup. Maybe I wouldn’t be so tense when that spine-chilling noise comes out of her mouth, that noise she
calls singing to the Lord.

  My neck pain is beyond chronic from all of this tension. I keep telling myself: She is ill, it’s not her fault, this is temporary. The problem is, “temporary” can mean years in prison. The reality is she’s not moving, I’m not moving, staff is not empathetic or accommodating, and neither of us is going home anytime soon. I am trapped in this cell with American Idol at Death Valley, and I cannot take it.

  * * *

  The Monster couldn’t take my rejection of him. He lay there quietly—too quietly—as I wrapped my robe around my naked body. One day I chose to be a mother first, not his sex slave. I got up and didn’t get him off. It felt amazing.

  Before I even got to the second step to go downstairs to the boys, I could hear the click, click from him cocking the gun. I stood still, my stomach in knots, my throat tight. I looked up at him standing at the banister, naked, his eyes crazed with rage.

  “Baby, what the fuck do you really think you’re doing?” he said.

  I could barely breathe, much less answer. As I turned to walk back up the steps, he grabbed my hair and pulled me into our room.

  “I asked you a question, baby. What were you thinking? You’re choosing those cum-crunchers over me? No one comes before me, no one!”

  I still didn’t speak. I just stood there with my hair in his hand while he waved the loaded gun in my face. Every time he asked me a question—and every time I didn’t answer—he became more enraged. My throat was too tight. My hands were trembling. This felt like the moment he had been waiting for, the reason he had purchased those bullets.

  “Guess what, bitch? You chose the bastards over me, but you won’t have that option again. Whichever one of them hasn’t drunk the milk in his cereal bowl, that’s the boy who gets it first.”

  The Monster had a rule that the boys needed to clean their plates no matter what. This included his own son, after a year: if he didn’t eat all the food the Monster prepared, he would force-feed him until he puked, then get pissed and say his son was becoming too picky, just like the other cum-crunchers of mine. I made every effort to serve food everyone liked just for this reason, but no one, including me, ever drank the milk in the cereal bowl if we could get away with sneaking it into the kitchen and pouring it down the drain. We had the oddest rules in our house.