by A.R. Rivera
8
-Angel
I toss myself onto my thin bunk and close my eyes, glad to be out of that suffocating room and back in this little cell that is no less cramped, but feels a little more comfortable. I've been out of there for over an hour and still have sweat rings on the underarms of my jumpsuit.
Taking a deep breath, I let my mind drift. It was tough and wonderful talking about him, but I haven't gotten to the hard parts yet. I still don't understand how I got from that reasonably happy girl to waiting to die. I mean, I know how it unfolded, I just don't understand how it could happen to me. And I'm stuck in it.
This situation leaves me nothing to smile about. I used to think of my nomadic life as a curse, but I would give anything to go back and live there again. To just pick up and go like I used to. If one of my foster parents said I couldn't do something, I would just wait until they went to sleep, or went off to work. Then I would cut and run: do whatever the hell I wanted for as long as I wanted to. Then it was wasting time in juvenile hall-which was like a freaking vacation compared to some of the places I stayed in-or doing time in a shitty group home until they placed me with another foster family. I was disposable, but so were they. That was my way of dealing: at any moment if things got too heavy, I could always walk away. Life got heavy a lot back then.
Then, I met Jake. He changed the way I thought about my life and the choices I was making. The way I looked at myself. He saw something in me. He valued me, I know he did. It seeped into every word he said and flowed from his eyes like a great, winding stream. His care was steady and I grew to need it like my next breath.
I am rotting in this place, decomposing on this thin cotton bunk with its one scratchy blanket and concrete walls-it makes me wish for the one thing I thought I never would. That I had never seen him, never talked to him or heard his voice singing my name. I almost wish I never felt the love he gave and took away. Because being here, knowing all of that is gone is the worst kind of punishment. Being trapped in this place makes even the best, sweetest moment's sting with bitter loss.
+++
My freshmen year in high school, I learned to speak French in two weeks by reading a French-to-English dictionary that the teacher handed out and forgot it a month later. I took a semester of Spanish and quit because it was too remedial; my brain absorbed everything in the text book before we had our first major test. I've retained that easier than the French, but still forgot most of it. I was like that with algebra, too. When I looked at the problems, I knew the answers, but struggled for that A because I didn't know how I knew the answers and couldn't show my work on paper. Most times I can look at a puzzle and know how the pieces fit together without having touched a piece. Fat lot of good that's done me.
All of that stuff that never mattered, I could perform easily. I can still memorize nearly anything on a page, written words and visual aids, too, but most times, that ability doesn't apply to names. And sometimes I blank-out on entire conversations. So many times I have been talking with a person, trying to open-up and let them in on my idiosyncrasies, only to have them tell me they already know. I told them just yesterday or a half hour ago, don't I remember?
Now, I spend most of my days feeling like a dumbass trapped in a fog.
But according to my medical records, I was always an extraordinarily intelligent child, speaking in full sentences by age two. I was reading chapter books by age three. I skipped preschool and kindergarten, hopping straight into second grade.
Then, the accident that did far more than fracture my skull. It took time to heal. By the time I was well enough to return to school, I was the same age as everyone else in my class. And ever since, for as long as I can remember, I've struggled with recall. How's that for irony?
Yet, here I am, six years after the most traumatic night of my life, wishing for the strength to forget, dying to remember, and being asked to give every filthy detail.
The assholes in overcoats: my lawyer, the lady with the tight hair bun, and the quiet man with the sodas, seem especially interested in the most painful parts.
As much as I love revisiting the time I spent inside Jakes world, I know that telling these new strangers what happened won't help anything. It never made a difference before and nothing with me or my case has changed so, I don't see what's so unique about right now. But this is how it goes for me: I have to do what they tell me.
My lawyer showed up at Canyon View a couple months ago, trying to tell me that I had to appear in front of this review board, even though it's only been a few months since the previous appeal was denied. Obviously, it's to review my case-like that's never been done before. But he swears there's a good reason for it and that it's in my best interest to play along.
I don't know why the state wastes its' time or money on this shit. No matter what I tell them, no matter how much truth I give them, it can't make a difference. I am convicted; have been for the past six years. But I still have to talk to them because it's all about the routine. Making sure every T is crossed so they can pat themselves on the back and say, "We done good."
Everything in these places is routine. You wake up every day at the same time and go to bed at the same time. Your meals are all planned out and served up at the same time on the same day of a different week. You wear the same clothes, sleep in the same bed. And if you're not in your cell when the need strikes, you have to ask to go to the bathroom. They usually make me hold it.
This routine review comes up every year. It starts with phone calls between doctors and the lawyers. Then, a couple people request my presence at one place or another. They tell me to revisit the places and people I'm dying to forget, but never will. They want to know all about my relationship with Avery-which is stupid because I don't have one. Then, my lawyer calls again or visits, and he's always wearing a stupid jacket. Even in August. Then, after a little more time passes, I get a lengthy letter explaining why I don't matter. They take three pages to say what could easily be summed up in four words: you're full of shit.
If the case reviewers do not come to me, I have to go to them. That means waiting for the transfer order to go through, before I get carted off to stand before the next set of judges. Though, there are no robes or gavels in these hearings, there is always judgment and a hefty price for reliving those days.
This is how it is for me: I am confined by their rules.
I hate seeing it. Not that I don't, because I do. Constantly. Vividly. My memories have never stayed shut up in that box. They constantly flail around me, like small birds caught up in a heavy gust of wind. Or dust particles from the musty air vents.
Every day is the same as the one before, except now, I have to take everything I have internalized and spew about how and why I came to be the monster. A number on a shirt. A problem on a sheet of paper. It's because my life is fucked beyond belief, because nobody I knew ever really gave a shit, except the people I destroyed, and the ones that destroyed me. Why do they want me to clarify the difference between what was and is when no matter what I say, they tell me it doesn't matter?
I meditate on the question, slowly drifting into oblivion.
+ + +
