by Beth Harden
#
Brennerman is equally flabbergasted to learn of Willis’s good fortune in front of the Board. He had no idea that the words of recommendation on his psychological assessment would have carried so much clout.
“I asked Ms. Tilton directly what most influenced their decision in his favor,” says the therapist.
“And…?”
“She said without doubt it was because he was one of the very few in the system who had successfully defended his case for an overturn. The fact that his sexual misconduct charge had been dismissed and his sex score dropped played to their emotions. This was one of those ‘make good’ stories that everyone likes to get behind.”
‘”Unbelievable!” I say, resting the back of my hand against my forehead as if I was suddenly overtaken with a fever.
“I know! It sort of restores your faith in mankind, doesn’t it?” Brennerman says with a rapid eye blink and twitch at the corner of his terse lips. I recognize this as his attempt at unsuppressed joy. It is the most animation I’ve ever seen out of this man. The greatest irony of all is the fact that I was the one who had propelled him right to the front door without even meaning to. I am my own worst enemy.
#
The neighborhood is middle-class on the whole. At one end, the street dwindles down to tiny bungalows and squat ranch houses but the majority of homes are solid little colonials stacked from red brick. The address was easy to pick off the release form that was faxed through to our Records office. Angelica Nunez comes to the door. She’s looks to be in her thirties but it’s anybody’s guess. Spanish women age well compared to their withered white sisters. She wears a black halter top and leggings that swell at both hips and thighs. She’s the type of woman who looks better with flashy makeup, the kind she likely started the day with before the sweltering humidity drained it from her face. Ms. Nunez does not hesitate to welcome me in. We have an appointment after all.
The living space is open and modern in contrast to the conservative exterior. It looks as though someone’s hard-earned paycheck has been exhausted at the local home goods store. Everything is bright and chipper. A red enamel tea pot sparkles on its brass stand and beside it on the composite counter is a pewter tray with a set of ascending sized table spoons carefully laid out and linen napkins rolled up inside shiny seashell rings. It looks as if she is expecting the local women’s auxiliary group to show up rather than hosting one nosy parole manager who’s second-guessing her choice in men. She has a right to be skeptical since she already had the paper in hand saying this is a home fit for a felon. A request for a second inspection is not a typical step in a process she is well familiar with. There’s things she’s not saying, but when you love a man who runs street, you gotta be willing to jump through the same hoops and do time along with him.
“Do you want to see the room?” she asks impatiently. When I nod, she walks ahead of me towards the back of the house. The nylon fabric of her leggings thins and shines with each stretch of her fleshy rump as it strains to gain momentum. She rambles slowly along on this impromptu tour, lifting her dimpled arms and flicking her hand half-heartedly at the major sights of interests, the clean but tiny galley kitchen and the cluttered half-bath with wet towels draped over the shower rod. I’m startled suddenly by the unexpected sound of happy children at play. It never occurred to me that there would be kids in the mix. I stop, fixated on the sing-song of muffled voices behind the closed door.
“My babies are playing dress-ups,” explains Angelica. “Our bedroom is down here. As I told the other officer, there aren’t any guns or alcohol round this place.”
“You have how many daughters?” I ask.
“Three girls,” she replies.
“How old?”
“Nine, twelve and thirteen,” she answers, bored at having to repeat herself.
“May I meet them?” I ask. Angelica nods subserviently as if she has no say-so in the face of a badge, though mine holds no power on these premises. To her, all of us are cops. She‘s hesitant at first, but sees no good reason why she shouldn’t open the door on the left hand side of the narrow hall. Two girls sit cross-legged on a twin bed. A heap of skirts and black velvet hangers decked with Juicy Couture tops swing off the footboard. Pink handbags and silver sandals are strewn in a haphazard trail from the louvered closet doors to the main event by the mirror. There, the teenaged sister is posed in front of the long looking-glass, her hands clamped at her waist. She casts a darting glance in the direction of the intruders and then resumes her modeling act, dipping one shoulder in and locking her hip to one side. The stretchy purple skirt waffles loosely around her pert bottom. In a year or so, the elastic grab of the fabric will be plumped out with the swell of hormones. Her breasts are poking playfully at the thin silk camisole she has forgotten to yank down over her pudgy belly. Her siblings squeal and clap. The show is still for them; no men allowed. Not yet. Something jolts through my memory. That color she is wearing, lavender, the shade of lilacs before they are deflowered and stripped of their beauty. A vision of me twirling in bare feet in front of a dressing mirror gauging the shape of my sex in a brand new lingerie set. A balmy night with the scent of warm earth through the open window. A storm door flung open. I shake my head to rouse my focus back to the present.
“These are his daughters? Mr. Willis’s, I mean?”
“Yes, the two oldest,” says their mother. The relationship between Terran and Angelica is not clear to me. She senses my confusion and stalls.
“Girls, y’all gotta wash up soon for supper!” she shouts, refusing now to engage, signaling with her indifference that unless I have any other mandatory points on my checklist, this little drill is over.
“How old are you, Angelica?” I ask directly.
“Twenty-nine,” she replies defensively. As if she’s not old enough to be a good mother. As if she hasn’t made a good home here without a man.
“And Willis’s date of birth is what again?”
“Uh, I don’t know. March, I think,” she mumbles.
“But he’s your husband, right? How do you know when to get him a birthday card?” She’s puzzled by this line of questioning and backs away with accusing eyes. I follow her, looking down at the folder I brought with me for added credibility.
“Let’s see. It says here his birthday is August 18th, 1963. Wow! That makes him 51 this summer,” I announce. Angelica sets out in a purposed line towards the front door intending to escort me out. I keep talking, hoping to distract her enough to catch her off balance and trip her up.
“You know what they say. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You believe that’s true, Angelica? Men are pretty set in their ways by that age, don’t you think?”
“He’s a reformed man,” she states confidently, though there’s nothing in her look that proves she believes it.
“How do you know he’s changed?” I ask her.
“They told me. The people at Hazen. They said so,” Angelica insists. She heads to the refrigerator and removes a slip of paper. Small ladybug magnets drop to the floor in her hurry. “See? It’s from the jail. It says he’s learned his lessons.” She waves it my face, the bogus copy of the domestic violence program evaluation that I signed into life. Willis must have mailed it to her, proof that he was a good risk when he coerced her into taking him back. My stomach drops like it’s on a swing seat that has just reached the highest apex and yanks backwards on its chains. I feel sick.
“You people get paid real good. I gotta believe y’all done a real good job of fixin' him.”
“You need to stand up for yourself and protect these girls. You know what he’s capable of and what he’s done, don’t you?” I push harder.
“Please, ma’am. Everything’s okay as long as I don’t stir the pot. This is an issue between spouses. Y’all don’t need to get involved.”
“Who is he to you, really? I know Mr. Willis’s case in depth. In fact, I’ve read all of his police reports and pre-sentence investigations an
d there is no mention of you as his common-law wife or his victim.” I flip open the folder in my hands. “It says here Vonnie Lugo is the party who filed a restraining order against Terran. Is Vonnie his real wife?
“His ex,” says Angelica flatly. There is no spit in this statement. She’s losing ground. It’s become so tiresome protecting others from their own dysfunction.
“You know her then?” I ask, pressing into the wound that is nearly visible to those who have the insight and stomach to look for it. I know the scope and depth of that kind of injury by sense, by heart. Angelica finally buckles under.
“She’s my mother,” she whispers just loud enough to finally be heard without naming a name. His name. Angelica has kept the vow of silence that was exacted from her time and again by the man who was supposed to love her the way daddies do until it’s time to give her away proper. But after he was done making her a woman, nobody else wanted her.
. “What’s on the line if you do speak up?” I ask. Her eyes dart quickly towards the girls’ bedrooms and back to me. She can’t say the words.
“And you trust him to keep his word? You believe that he won’t harm your precious daughters? Are you certain that he hasn’t already?”
“Stop, miss,” Angelica pleads but she’s cracking now. I know her youth just isn’t strong enough to hold up all the lies. She’s already dirt tired of keeping face and picking back up each and every time he knocks her down. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if she’s considered hooking up with women if she ever finds a way out. He’s taken all the sex out of her; it’s not that she worries about any longer. Next thing he’s going to take is her life.
Click! I hear it go off in my head. Something is different. It sounds like the pop of a dial on a washing machine. The timer is still beating even after all action of the drum has been suspended. It circulates slowly until it comes to a peaceful stop. The small ticking pulse that wends down and no longer controls anything is just a reminder that time will soon run out and the cycle will come to an end. The restless churning of the cylinder inside my head always trying to wash things off, redistribute the weight, regain proper balance and slush off all the messy, clinging dirt is all hushed now.
“Don’t worry, Angelica. Your destiny is not to be a victim. I’m sure of that,” I tell her. She flashes a nervous smile as the youngest girl comes running and slaps her eager arms around her mother’s fleshy waist.
“Come play with us, Mama,” she whines.
“Shush, baby. Just a minute now. I’m talking to the nice lady, here.”
“You go on and join them. I’ll all through here,” I say. She’s still young enough to catch up on all that playing she never did.
#
“Feeding time at the zoo. All hands on deck,” shouts our Unit Manager. Problem is it’s the last dash of summer and the majority of counselors are off on jet skis or a Sailfish somewhere. The entire teaching department has been on break for the past month. That leaves only five of us counselors to do the dirty work of servicing two thousand customers. I knot the disposable plastic apron around my waist, don the throw-away hair net and begin sweating profusely. The temperature in the building is already up into the nineties. With a pair of roller skates, we could have dashed the trays from kitchen to customer windows and knocked out all the orders in less than two hours, but the tips would suck. I’m assigned to handle the three blocks on the east side of the main hall which includes my own. The officers in both I and J units accept the food carts at the door and are willing to take over door-to-door delivery from there. Must be the officer’s mess was serving up 5-hour energy shots or an extra shot of something else. There is a God after all, I conclude.
I’m halfway down the corridor on my third run down to my own block when I feel a rippling wave of amplified heat crawl up my torso. Irritation prickles my skin. It’s like a momentary out-of-body experience. For a split second, I see myself the way the world must at this moment. Look at her, the middle-aged cafeteria lady with a trail of perspiration crawling down her spine, a splotchy face with another sun spot planted front and center. You can tell her age by the leathery skin on the back of her hands. Yes, these are hands that have worked and feet that have more than paid their share. I hope they would feel sorry for me and think this decent-looking dame deserves better than plodding like a Percheron pulling a weighty load of gruel. She’s too old to be doing this, they must think; but they need to understand it’s far too soon to give up my grip on a career designed for young people, most of them retired well before the shaky world of peri-menopause descends. They are lucky enough to wage the battle against hormones while snipping rhubarb and trailing their painted toenails off pool floats, all because they were smart enough to sign up right after college. Not me. At that age, I was consumed with trying to thread shoelaces through stubborn eyelets and putting letters to a line that turned out to be a laughable stab at a rudimentary alphabet. Blame the man that sent me skidding backwards to relive my infantile crawl up through the Erickson’s developmental stages. It’s because of that bastard that I’m here in the first place. What irony! Here I am hustling hard to make sure he gets his adequate calories and is well fed before he walks out of here. In a matter of days, he will be gone and I will muddle on slogging this slop to other rapists and killers for years to come.
A rush of rage overtakes my senses. My lungs squeeze out thin oxygen in short, sharp pants. I can’t think straight. Goddamnit! I unlock the interview room and wheel my rolling cart of aspartame beverages into the room. Two yanks of the pull chain and the oscillating fan begins a sweep back and forth. I close the door and stand still relishing the relief. We’re into a scheduled shakedown, a seasonal house-cleaning that will last four more days. I despise the thought of it and I loathe the fact that it’s taken me all of my lift to hate the man who robbed me of the emotional tools to conjure up such intensity of feeling, for good or bad. Instead, I’ve been a pegged marionette that jumped when people jerked and danced when people pulled; but when left to my own ability collapsed into a knot of balsa wood and string. I will never be any better than this, never less broken than right now. Try as we might, we can’t help dragging the whole bloody mess of our past into our future. As it turns out, fate and faith are equally powerless to save us. It is time for this flawed puppet to step up on my own wooden feet. An alien sensation begins a slow crawl up my brain stem. For once in my adult life, a sweep of peace overtakes me. All the rattle and din of clanging voices and competing consciences stilled for one defining moment. Here in the peace of this private secret hideaway, I suddenly and unequivocally know what I need to do. Malcolm X was right. This stark environment is the breeding ground for brilliant revelations. I agree with my late activist brother who might have spurned me for the shade of my skin but not for the color of my world. As he himself said so eloquently, ‘I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against.’
I can’t stay in here any longer. The men will be missing their meal and that could start a fucking riot. I mop the back of my neck with a Kleenex, shut off the fan, and step back out into the hallway. One deep breath and it’s back to the food frenzy. I make my way down to home turf, H-Block, pushing the awkward food cart and dragging the rolling plastic palette of Styrofoam juice cups behind me. The feeding station is arranged in a central position at the front of the unit. The officer pops out the tiers one at a time and the men shuffle by in steady formation. In a matter of minutes, high fructose corn syrup and the saccharine film of artificial orange drink have left a sticky residue on my forearms.
We have this down to a science. I stack a juice on top of a container and they reach for the combination while flipping their ID into full view. Low-sodium, high-protein, double portion designations stand out in colored stickers on the back of the laminated badge. The clamshell containers are marked in corresponding colors to ensure that the special-needs diets go to the right persons. The juice cups are standard and uniformly poured. The top shel
f of the mobile food cart is filled with a couple dozen of the saccharine-sweet beverage cups. I dispense the orders efficiently, acknowledging the men I know by name and responding to their polite thank-you’s with a nod and a smile.
“Mr. Tejada.”
“Thank you, Miss.”
“Here you go, Mr. Quinlan,”
“Ma’am.”
“And one for you, Mr. Willis.” I hand him his entrée and reach up into the compartment for one of the special drinks that is a hard to find flavor. I give him a wink. It’s a myth, the notion that good parents never play favoritism with their children. Whether or not we are linked by a common genetic threat, some are people we would choose to be friends with. It’s true for counselors and clients too. Each inmate gets the same treatment but there are those who touch us in a different way, who think in a similar vein, whose soul is deep and who see the world from the same plane we are standing on. A person we would strike up a lively discussion with over a mug of IPA or a chocolate martini and find ourselves still lingering with when the lights go up and the bar tops are being washed down. And while we must disguise the preferential attraction and restrain it, it’s no secret to the ones who have found favor with us. Terran Willis might have been one of those guys if things had been different.
“Gratitude, Counselor,” he says and strolls off a happy man.
#
Sick call has been inundated with urgent requests. The hospital wing is already flooded to capacity and the medical team is just as quickly transporting the more seriously ill to area hospitals. Prisoners from multiple housing units have been affected. Initially it was thought to be the fallout from a bad batch of Pruno that had made its fermented rounds affecting the men in various states of intoxication. Efforts to locate the forbidden tonic were intensified but the officers on shakedown duty came up dry. Thirteen guys from H- Block have already been afflicted along with dozens more from neighboring blocks. The stricken inmates first languished on their bunks with an ashy pallor, but within hours were clutching their bellies with faces contorted in pain. Severe nausea was quickly followed by persistent vomiting. At that point, the nursing staff had kicked into high gear and reached out to their contracted hospital facility. If the sickness was not caused by a sour mix, then the next best guess was that it might be E-coli breeding in rancid meat or produce. The summertime heat could have taken its toll on the compressors and fans in the refrigeration units; or it might be blamed on the indifferent food service workers who kept opening the doors to the walk-ins allowing warm air to raise the overall temperature in excess of the required 45 degrees. The Warden ordered his Food Service Supervisor to quickly get a read on the climate in there and narrow down the suspect food items.
