by Beth Harden
“The rest of you, do me a favor. Just raise a hand or speak up when you are called,” I tell them.
“Ortega.” Hand up. Number 445601. Registered.
“Bowman.” One reluctant finger lifted. Number 453617 is accounted for.
“Euclid.”
‘Miss, you gotta give me some space. I no good on some days.” A wild-eyed jungle man with a romp of unkempt blue-black curls claims this unique moniker.
“Roger that,” I say. “Denton?”
“I prefer Dent, Counselor Abrams. Is it Miss or Missus?”
“Counselor is fine,” I say. “I bet there’s a story behind that one,” I say. He grins.
“Willis!”
“Present.” A quick peek at a statuesque, dark-skinned man in the far corner.
“Mr. Briggs.”
“Gemini, ma’am.” Right up front and center. A painted female face with kind eyes.
“Harper.” A pause. “Harper?” I repeat.
“People call me The Reverend here, Miss.” He’s waiting for me to ask why, begging me with a not-so-subtle look to open this can of worms right here and now and see what squirms out. I’m not biting.
“Amen to that.” I say.
“Crespo.” A stream of Spanish ensues. Lots of “a’s” and soft “h’s” and a simultaneous “he say” interpretations from the guy across the room.
“No Anglais?” I ask. My South American friend shakes his head vehemently.
“Me? No Espagnol. Maybe, un poco,” I say apologetically. That includes a smattering of Spanish terms like joder and conos caught in drifts from the showers or handed to me by Chulo so I would know if and when the men were discussing me disrespectfully. Another long litany of excitable gibberish ensues. His un-official translator cocks an ear in his direction.
“He say he understand, but not write or speak English.”
“Tell him he can stay. Someone in the block can help him with the homework,” I say. Chulo will be my tutor on this end of things. One would think that with Spanish fast approaching the majority mark in this country, the State (if truly interested in the betterment of our struggling families) would have thought to issue teaching materials in this tongue. Even Lowe’s store is better equipped to guide the bilingual crowd up and down their home improvement aisles. This issue is one the government has chosen to leave to Immigration to unravel if and when they show to scoop up the lost and found.
“Okay, gentlemen. The paper in front of you is a contract which is your commitment to being in this program. It basically talks about the expectations on participation, homework, rules of conduct and…”
“Miss! I shouldn’t be in here,” someone interrupts. It is the younger Hispanic with bronze skin and a wreath of tangled tattoos wrapping around from the nape to the notch of his neck.
“Hold up,” I say. “The first rule is that we speak one at a time, take turns and give each person equal time. Everyone here has something important to offer and we all lose out if we can’t hear it. Let’s see…” I look around. There are very few free-floating objects in here. Pencils, pointers, rulers, and paper clips are all fodder for sticky fingers to create a clever weapon.
“Here.” I reach into my water-stained leather briefcase, pull out a dry-erase marker and lob it like a women’s softball in his direction. Startled, his quick hands snag the object.
“We’ll follow an old Native American tradition. Whoever holds the ‘talking stick’ has the floor. The rest of us will show our respect by giving him our full attention,” I say. Respect, the mother of all words for those who live life on the streets. It is the ultimate measure of a man. Its antithesis is disrespect and is the flagrant step over the line which causes all manner of riots, stabbings, curb-stompings, shootings and murders on the daily. The bar has just been raised.
“Alright, Mr. Ortega. What were you trying to ask?”
“I don’t belong here, Miss. I never put my hands on no woman. I wasn’t raised that way,” he says emphatically.
“Somehow you were flagged to be put on the list. I don’t have your file in front of me but I’m willing to double-check to make sure you were coded properly.” This appears to appease disgruntled Denier Number One. I can see him visibly release the hostile lift to his shoulders.
“Me neither,” echoes another.
“Mistakes are made sometimes,” I admit.
“You’ll check it out for me, then?” Ortega asks, hopeful that he’ll be able to skate out of this requirement and still play pavement hoops with his shirtless cellies.
“Why don’t you stay with us for this first class? I’ll look into it and let you know on Thursday?” I reply. I like to make them feel they have some choice in the matter even though they have little to no recourse. Sure, Ortega can refuse to come, but then he loses his good time and potentially forfeits any hope of any early release. If an inmate becomes verbally resistant or irate, I can slap with him with a disciplinary ticket and send the guy packing, but I see no wisdom in emasculating a man in front of his peers when he can be led around to the desired outcome with a circuitous steer.
“Anyone else feel like they shouldn’t be in this class?” I ask, surveying the room for raised hands. Three guys nod their heads. “So, let me ask you this. How many of you feel like the system has wrongfully charged or convicted you and that you are actually the victim here?” Four more join the affirmative with raised hands. That’s all but two. I’m not surprised; everyone in prison is innocent, according to those who can’t walk out the doors .
“Statistics show that the majority of domestic violence crimes are committed by male perpetrators against female victims; but we know the cases of women who are abusive towards their men are increasing in number.” Their ears perk to attention. One rotund Caucasian in his thirties pulls up out of his slouch. His belly bulges over the table top and rims of perspiration encircle his neckline and ripple in his rolls of flesh. His ginger-colored hair is cropped down to a bristle and splotches of eczema erupt on his cheeks.
“Massachusetts is a woman’s state,” Dent states with a flourish of saliva spray. There, it’s out. It was just a matter of time.
“Let’s face it. Women really know how to push your buttons, am I right?” I pose the question in earnest, leaning in towards the crowd. This is the tipping point, the critical juncture where they will either conclude to band against me or relax their guard.
“Counselor Abrams, it must be hard for you to sit here with us and talk about this. Being a female and all.” The empathetic speaker has a trill to his voice and large pointed breasts that poke at the thin fabric of his knotted shirt. His eyebrows are plucked to a razor thin sweep, his lips painted and pursed. He is well on his way to converting his last Y chromosome into an X, but the process has stopped short of his groin; otherwise he’d be sitting over in Bardston in a burgundy jumpsuit.
“No, Gemini. I don’t take this personally. To me, it isn’t about gender. It is simply one human being victimizing or controlling the other. It goes both ways on the spectrum and should be treated the same.”
He hesitates with his head cocked to one side, pressing his full lips into a puzzled pout as if he’s trying to decide exactly which gender he’s going to throw his hat in the ring with; that is, if he had been allowed to keep his jaunty beret which now lies crumpled in a property box in the basement.
“Have any of you gentlemen heard the phrase ‘the Rule of Thumb’? Do you know where that saying came from? Anyone?”
Not one man in the group comes up with a ready definition.
“At least one interpretation is that this was a pre-Colonial guideline that allowed a man to take a stick and beat his wife, his maid, his cook, even his cow for God-sakes, as long as the flogging instrument was no broader than his thumb. I say this because it’s important to know our social history in order to gain some perspective on the topic. A hundred years ago in this country, it was a man’s world. Women were property along with children and animals, but the rol
es of the sexes began to change. Anyone know what happened during and after World War II?”
“Lots of sex,” says the Rev. It makes me wonder if his self-professed priesthood prohibits that activity. By the looks of his devilish leer, I doubt it.
“The dames went to work in the factories while their men were off to war,” says Serge.
“Right. And what do you think happened in many of these homes when the men returned home?”
“The females didn’t want to be put back in their place,” says Dent.
“Sure. They were making all the decisions, earning paychecks and acting as head of the household. I would imagine that there was a great deal of friction going on behind closed doors. And what big movement took hold in the 60’s?” I ask.
“Women’s lib,” says Zimmer. He’s just the right age to have been peering out of his fourth floor walkup as the bras were tossed from the balconies of the neighboring brownstones.
“My point is the pendulum has swung. At one time, it was all the way over to the one side and then as victim advocates and activists started to holler, it swung in the opposite direction. So now, Mr. Dent, it feels like this great Bay colony is, as you coined it, a woman’s state. All a female has to do is lift that phone, cry wolf and the cops are coming to lock someone up. And as we all know, that someone is you guys.”
The eleven men who will be my audience for the next eight weeks have just been unknowingly disarmed. The floodgates are open.
After the class is dismissed, the men amble back down the corridor to pass the metal detector sweep. I lock the classroom door and follow on their heels. A group of inmates have just been released from the library and is waiting in line for the officer to check ID’s. I hear the terse exchange of heated voices and assume it’s a hostile confrontation between inmates, which is more likely to happen when housing units mix. A dozen or more men hug the corridor wall facing the officer’s desk and watch intently as a staff member and an offender erupt into a heated confrontation.
“You’re done here,” bellows Officer Laurence.
“You want a piece of me?” seethes Inmate Watson, a notorious and particularly litigious convict. This little encounter will be yet another coup in his building number of lawsuits that are bulging in the Administrative Remedies file cabinet up at headquarters.
“I’ve seen your shit for over twelve years now. You may play the game with others, but I don’t give a fuck. I know what you’re really made of.” Too late. Officer Laurence has just unknowingly added his name to the burgeoning legal folder Watson keeps in his foot locker.
“Open up your office,” taunts Watson. “Let’s go in and settle this man to man.”
“You piece of shit,” yells Laurence as he waves briskly to his buddies for assistance.
“Next time you see your mama, she’ll be riding my big black dick,” shouts Watson as they wrestle him into cuffs.
“My mother would never be seen with a nigger!” Laurence gets in the last word before Watson is escorted out of the wing. Officer Laurence whips around and gapes at the snickering spectators. “Okay, men. Let’s move along. This isn’t a circus!”
Once the scuffle is over, I feel the worry seep in. Who could blame a man, now hobbled and cowed ,from retaliating with a swift shank to the ribs or a rampage of terror the next time he is free to do so? But it isn’t the fear for my safety that bothers me. That concern got tossed to the wind as soon as I stepped into the arena. A certain cavalier attitude is a prerequisite in those who elect to sign a hazardous duty contract. Like dogs that sense fear in a person and react with intimidation, weakness is sniffed out and often snuffed out. Respect begets respect was the mantra my training lieutenant drilled into the minds of the young cadets in my class, a living creed that navigated him through a quarter-century of dealing with high-risk criminals without ever putting a hand on his cap-stun gun. Unfortunately, most of the brash rookies only nod in agreement before graduation. As soon as they take their posts, the recruits are indoctrinated by the surly seasoned officers into the cynicism that comes from being disappointed and dinged by human nature and corrupt politics on both sides of the fence. I understand their distrust of prisoners. It is a game of sorts, a wariness adopted by competing males. But whenever I witness the ugly spectacle of human hatred such as this flagrant provocation thrown in the face of an inmate, I become unnerved by it. I’m terrified to slip back towards doubt. I’m fearful that I won’t be able to sustain the belief that men can change, that good can somehow traverse the slippery slope of injustice, pitch its flag on the summit and defy all that lies beneath, threatening to shift and erode my solid footing and throw an avalanche of evil underfoot.
#
The Way Life Should Be, the proud signage beams. True when it comes to the scenery, but ever since the Maine Board of Tourism pitched the massive billboard near Kittery, it was not the way the roads should be. All the way to the Kennebunk rest area, the lanes are thronged by ‘rusticators’ from New Jersey and New York with half the contents of their garages strapped to their roof racks. Twin his-and-her bicycles with wheels spinning madly in the coastal breeze. Kayaks knife through the air current overhead. Small utility vehicles that had never set rubber off-road waxed to the max and jammed with DVD players and I-Pads, as if Maine didn’t have a Best Buy of its own. I decide to dodge all the delays and turn off the interstate, but Route One is even worse. Traffic is traveling thirty miles an hour at top speed. A line of cars brakes to give Joe Schmoe a good gawk at the Godzilla-size lobster that’s crawled up over Renny’s Roadside shack. Brake lights pump again for the shadowy moose on the hillside, which turns out to be a stack of rotting chairs left to decompose.
The five -hour drive stretches out to seven. I knew this would be the case on a Friday afternoon in July with a fair forecast ahead of us, but there was no point going back home to wait it out. While we are only two-hundred-and fifty miles apart, my family and I might as well be in different time zones. Once I relocated to the greater Boston area, my parents rarely crossed the bridge over to the Portsmouth side. My mother confined her driving to small round-trips to the IGA supermarket and Dad drove for a living, so he was never too gung-ho to jump back in the driver’s seat on his free time. His road trips always took him north and west in the opposite direction. It was probably better that way. The world that begins just south of the New Hampshire Liquor Store on Route 95 is not one I could ever picture them in. What I do for a living was more easily accepted when it was an imagined picture in their minds that could be colored and edited at will.
The Maine I recognize and claim as my own doesn’t show its face until after Augusta. By then, the faint-of-heart have turned off to coastal destinations well before this mile marker. Mostly truckers, hunters and anti-social naturalists continue straight on up towards Orono and Baxter State Park. I take Route 3 which begins its winding crawl through forested hills and the stark open blueberry fields. The socio-economic level plummets by the mile. I typically give no advance warning whenever I go back to our beloved farmhouse. It’s a childish little prank aimed at preserving the surprise factor, but a safe bet since there is no risk in arriving to an empty house. Mel Braum’s customary habits are as predictable as the tide that crests up over the granite boulders, pulls away and barrels back. Some days the routine is a calm drill; other times, it carries on with a fierce urgency but it never deviates from its prescribed path eroded over years of following the familiar.
I arrive at the midway point of the peninsula a few miles shy of Gust Harbor’s eclectic collection of bait shops, banks and bakeries. The hard-packed dirt road comes up all of a sudden, pitching its thin tack through a tight line of pines. I turn in and make my way slowly down the mile-long dead-end. Dale is out cutting brush near his new homestead on the west side of the clearing. The pond where his kids now splash and fight has overflowed its borders with the flood of rain that’s been spring up here this year. Snapple Creek, we call it, the color of fructose-filled iced tea. I turn off
the ignition and coast my Altima over to the turn-out where four-wheelers have carved an entrance into the woods. My brilliant Tuscan Red vehicle is hard to conceal and is jarringly out of place. I walk up the gravel drive drinking in the aroma of dank juniper and listening to the underpinnings of the silver poplars that rustle lightly. This is the sweet reward of coming home.
Mom is in the kitchen leaning over a cast iron skillet. A cloud of Crisco and citrus blows out through the screens. She is oiling cabinets and frying potatoes at the same time. Somehow her energy is never diminished by the weather or ordered by logic. She is always busy, always moving, cutting things up or paring things down. Hooked in the rabbit hutch as a baby, my first view was through a grid of tiny wire squares at a woman flapping back and forth to the clothesline. She rocked me in the garden cart as a toddler, bumping the handle up and down with her knees as she snipped brown pansies onto my sleeping head. When the demands of the day loomed too large, Mom put us all out into the dooryard and locked the screen handle. Even in late October with hands as red as boiled lobster claws, we’d be there banging on the door. After long minutes, out came a ration of paper plates with peanut butter sandwiches and a breath of heat before the latch was refastened. It was nothing like neglect. We understood that our mother needed to clear the kitchen of small hands and feet so that she could find order in her home. Not until I was much older, up on a stool by the electric fry pan watching strips of sole brown and curl like pieces of stale bread, did I read something in her movements. She was doing three things at once, hopping from sink to stove with a ruck of clutter that followed her from left to right and back again. Every task dragged out in its importance until there was more to do than when she started. Large decisions, the things that really mattered, she couldn’t face and left unfinished, but the details were worked and reworked, done then overdone like the fish.
