For the Love of Jail

When he first said the words, I thought he was joking.

“Do you think I could stay here until I am 18?”

I look at him, certain I have mis-heard.

“What?”

He looks down at his drawing and then back up at me again. 

“Do you think I could stay here until I am 18?” 

 The other kids laugh. “I know a way you could stay here until you’re 18, all you have to do is assault someone or steal something.” The boys burst out laughing. 

“That’s enough, boys!” They are right though, it’s not very hard to stay if you really want to. 

The boys stop and go back to working on their art projects. 

“Why would you want to stay here until you’re 18?” 

He doesn’t answer for awhile, occupied with shading the picture he’s drawing. 

Finally he looks up and shrugs. “It’s just nice in here. I am never hungry. I get to eat everyday. Plus you guys are so nice.” 

I sit silently. Every day I struggle with how poorly the kids are treated. I find myself frustrated with the way my co-workers talk to the kids and I become angry when I look in the cells and see the kids shivering because they only get two blankets and a thin mat on a hard concrete floor. 

“You actually like it in here?” I ask one more time, just to be sure. 

“Yeah, it’s nice.” He says again, looking at me like I must be deaf. “It’s better than my house.” 

I get up and go talk to the boys who are laughing at him again—dumbfounded that a child would want to spend the last four years of his childhood in juvie, just so he could eat every day. The boys know I am serious and apologize for laughing. They think he’s joking, and just can’t believe he would want to stay here. 

“Come look at my picture,” he says, calling me back to his table. “I’m done.” I walk back over and I look at his drawing—it’s a joker. His eyes stare mischievously at me like there has been a cruel trick played. It bothers me. It is like the joker has played the cruel trick on the artist. 

I look at the boy and he smiles. “You have done an amazing job on this.” His face lights up, and he is proud of what he has done. 

“Maybe we can find you a foster family,” I say softly. “A place where you will get to eat everyday…” 

He shrugs, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am—that it’s just one more wish in his life that will probably never come true.

a locked up grief

I heard it when I first walked in, it was a small, quiet sound, barely audible.

“Can-n-n I-I-I please talk-k-k  t-to you-u-u?”

Over the radio I hear, “Go check on 204, she’s pushed her help light.”

I walk up the stairs and peer in through the small opening in the door. “Hey what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t see her face, I just heard the muffled voice and I could see the tears falling onto the front of her orange jumpsuit.

“I just need to talk to somebody before I start punching the wall.”

Several kids earlier who had been visited by their families and had particularly bad conversations had gone back to their cells and punched the cement walls so hard and so many times that their knuckles became bloody and swollen.

Once in an area away from the other girls we sat down and the story poured forth faster then my ears could listen.

“My mom and aunt came earlier today and they told me that my uncle passed last night …” The story was a horrific one and I did not know how to console her. 204’s uncle had fallen out of a window the night before and his four year old daughter had witnessed the tragedy. So traumatized, by seeing her father’s body, bloody and flattened on the pavement, she had been taken to a mental hospital several hours away, because of the shock she had gone into.

“My uncle raised me. He was only 22 years old, and his daughter… I should have been there. If I had been there none of this would have happened.”

I tried as best I could to lend a listening ear—to be someone who cared about her, in the midst of all of her pain. But her story was so tragic and my eyes kept filling up as she told me bits and pieces of her life through her sobs.

“When I was very young my father would beat me with his belt buckle until I was black and blue. When my mother kicked him out my uncle came to live with us and he was the man in the family he taught me about life. I just don’t know what to do now that he’s gone.” She said wringing her hands over and over in her lap.

I wished I could take her hands and hold them and tell her I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved so dearly, but instead I told her that I was so impressed by her maturity in talking to me instead of breaking her knuckles on the concrete like so many of the others had.

“My brother, he’s here right now too, when he was walking in the hall I saw that his hands were bloody. I know he’s been punching the walls. Do you think I could please visit with him? I know he is taking this so hard. You don’t know how hard it is to be locked up in a room with concrete walls and not be able to be with any of your fam–”

“Are you almost done in there?????” the radio blared.

I turn down the volume on my radio and I am forced to tell her our time is up. “I will try and get a visit with your brother,” I tell her, knowing full well the odds are stacked so much against her. I walk her back to her cell and secure the door. My steps back to the control room are heavy.

“Hey guys,” I open the door to two other staff. One is a supervisor. “So do you guys know what happened with her family?”

“Yeah, I heard,” my red headed co-worker replied, smacking her gum. “I heard that he got in fight with his girlfriend and he got pushed out of a window. Ha! The girlfriend’s words were so slurred when she called the family they could hardly understand her. No one really knows what happened, but he was probably drunk.” The way she said it as if the man deserved to die made me want to throw-up. “And, anyways,” she said “it was just her uncle.” Everything in me wanted to reach across the room and slap her. Don’t you know anything about native culture? That aside, haven’t you ever lost someone you loved. I wanted to scream this at her, but somehow I kept my composure.

“Well, anyway, I was wondering if we could get her a visit with her brother in B pod?”

They both looked at me.

“He’s not her brother, he’s her cousin…” my supervisor said complacently. “Anyway, we can’t authorize that unless we call the assistant director at home.”

“Sooooo…..???” I was shocked that they were not considering this a brother and sister relationship since the two had lived together since they were babies.

“So, it’s not going to happen.” My supervisor said as he opened the door to leave.

By this point I was irate. “So we’re not going to take into consideration the pain that these two are feeling and the fact that they have grown up together since they were infants???”

“I just don’t think its necessary….” He said, looking a little annoyed.

“And besides,” the red headed smacked, “She doesn’t even know what really happened and she’s just being emotional.”

That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. The insensitivity.  The gall. “No. She’s just hurting,” I said as I slammed the door. Angrily I stomped down the hall, wanting to say a whole slew of other things, among them Isaiah 10:1-3a:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help?”

For some reason that verse had a whole new meaning and I wanted to recite it to them loud and clear over the radio as I sat in the break room…but I had said enough. So I turned down my radio and pretended for a few seconds that I lived in a place where people cared about those who are different from them and believed in kids who have had the shittiest of lives.

Scars

Scars. Horrific, beautiful, disgusting, created, monstrous scars. My scars. They are perfect, but they’re my flaws. They are hideous, but they are stunningly, beautiful. This one is from a cigarette—my mother’s. She loved me so. This one is from a steak knife. I lost the fight and I was the one with the switchblade. 

Don’t my mind my hands. I know they’re shaking. Don’t mind them, its just my meds, they make me have the shakes. anti-depressants, Anti-Depressants, ANTI-DEPRESSANTS! But I’m still depressed. And my hands—they won’t stop shaking.

Look at my scars. My scars. This one is from a barbed wire fence. I shouldn’t have been crossing it. This one is from a cigarette—my step-father’s. I have a few from him. My scars. This one is from a fist—a bully at school. His fist hit my lip. Whatever. They’re mine. I don’t have a lot of things you know. This one is from my ex-girlfriend. You know how girlfriends get sometimes. No big deal. These are my scars. They are mine and they are all I’ve got.

…

“Who are you? Have I seen you at a party?”

“I bet you’re not even 21.”

“Can I have your number?”

“There is no way you’re married.”

“Oooooooooooohhhhhh….damn……you’re hott!”

At one point in time I was told that I was “too young and too pretty” for this job….now I’m just too damn hott…..of course it’s all in your perspective.  A lot of these kids also think that beating up their mom, taking guns to school, and having possession of over 70 different types of drug paraphernalia is “cool”.

I have been on the job three weeks. Only three weeks, and I am both horrified and amazed. I am amazed at how young these kids are and how incredibly good most of them are with structure and rules. I am horrified at how they got here and the homes they come from.

Last week I walked a girl back to her cell after visiting with her mom. She was angry and crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“I could punch through this wall right now. I am so f*cking pissed off.”

“Ok, ok. What’s going on?”

“Why does she come to visit me if she hates me? She says I’m a failure, that I’m worth nothing. She says I’ve screwed up too much and that I’ll never get out of here. She says I’ve ruined her life.”

She sobs her sorrows away as she sits in the corner of an empty shower stall. I want so bad to hug her and wash all of her pain and brokenness down the shower drain. But the no touch policy keeps me in the camera’s view and I just tell her that she is worth more than she knows.

The other day I sat with some boys as they had their hour of recreation.

“How old are you?”

“12”

“How old are you?”

“I’m 15. I’ve been in and out of here for years. Don’t mess up man. Don’t come back here. You’re still young, you have time to change. When you get out, don’t come back.”

You’re still young he says. At 15 he feels like he’s used up all of his chances. If only he could be 12 again, he would do it all over…..

“Are any of you daddies….?

“Yeah”

“How old is your baby?”

“Three”

“How old are you?”

“16”

Sixteen years old and already a daddy with a three year old. Oh God, I think to myself, be with that child….and be with that three year old too!

There is too much pain and too much heartache in this place. It is so hard to even know where to start when the problems these kids have, have so little to do with themselves.

Brothers

“Crackhead, shut up!”

“Why you calling me a crackhead, I didn’t say anything to you!”

“Seriously guys, no one’s a crackhead here.”

“Have you seen his face? Can you honestly say he’s not a crackhead?”

“Come on, come on, go start your chores….” Two brothers. Normal brotherly fighting. Normal brotherly love. I smile. They remind me of me and my brother.

“How’d you come to be in F-town anyway” I asked the older one (hippie kid) earlier today.

“Well…It’s a long story….” It was long story. A story about a boy who loved his little brother. Two weeks ago hippie kid had devised a plan to runaway. “I’ve never done anything like this before, and all I could think about the whole time I was planning it was, ‘Mom’s going to kill me.’”

“So…”

“Well, My brother was in a home. A home for kids with behavior problems. He’d been there for months. Everyday I asked my mom when he was coming home. I told her, ‘family should be together.’ She kept telling me that it would just be a few more weeks.” After months of hearing his mom tell him it would be just a few more weeks, hippie kid decided to take matters into his own hands. Calling his little brother, while pretending to be his mother, they figured a way to “trick” the careworkers at the facility…and it worked.

“Wait, a second….” I said, not really believing him. “Then how did you get here?”

“We walked.”

“You walked?” I did the math in my head, it was a couple hundred miles. “You walked the whole way? “

“Yep, when we got hungry we would ask people if we could do yard work for them and then they would pay us a few bucks…It took awhile, but we made it here. My mom said she used to live in a place where it snowed, so that’s why we came here.I wanted to see snow” Their story matched up with police reports. Their mom had been looking for them. One day when they were walking through town a police officer stopped them and asked why they weren’t in school. They said they were over 18…the officer didn’t buy it. They are going back home tomorrow. ” I did it because family should be together,” his eyes were intense as he spoke, more intense then his 16 years should have allowed. “I did it because me and my little brother shouldn’t have to be apart.” And he’s right. They aren’t like the kids we normally have in here. They are quieter, more respectful less criminal history and (despite blowing soapy dish water all over each other during chores and calling each other crack heads when they’re mad) they are the most sincere kids I have seen in a very long time. They just want to be together.  They just want to be normal brothers, even if it means giving up food, shelter, and a clean background check. And honestly, I respect them for it.

Not Pimpin’

“Not pimpin””, he says with flare. The other kids burst out laughing. One girl spits tomato soup and water all over him; I am laughing so hard I’m crying. He laughs looks at his shirt, now covered in dripping red liquid, and says,”Spitting tomato soup to the person on the left of you–not pimpin’!” The hysterical laughter continues. The kids are beside themselves–except for one. He sits in the corner looking at them like they’re crazy. Every once in a while he tries to insert an inappropriate joke, but the other kids are caught up in the “not pimpin’” comedy act. Finally the innappropriate joker shoves his chair back and runs outside. The other kids don’t notice. I follow him. Outisde I sit on the swing next to the inappropriate joker and ask him if he’s upset. He shrugs, picks up a grasshopper and tears its legs off then places it on an ant hill and watches them swarm aroudn their new found dinner. He doesn’t seem to care about anything I have to say. He tells me that he hates when the other kids say “not pimpin’”. He is visiblly agitated as he fidgets with whatever catches his attention.  I talk about possible resolutions to his frustrations, but he seems uninterested. I tell him I’m going back inside and he eventually follows.

Inside it is a disaster. The other kids are now even more annoyed with him because he ruins their fun. The night continues on with all the bumps and curves (and even a few extra) that you could expect with five teenagers having to live in a “family” that’s not theirs.

At the end of the night as I sat in the office watching the kids sneak in and out of their bedrooms, I thought about how “not pimpin”  life really is for them. Inapproriate joker is on more meds then a 90 year old man. He wants so much to be accepted, but he doesn’t have the skills to interact. His mom seems insane and the abuse he’s experienced is undeniably awful.

“Not Pimpin’” is barely half way through his teen years and has been charged with things that turn my stomach. On the average night he’s fighting me about chores, bedtime and why he has to eat vegetables.

Somehow, though, every once in awhile I see a glimpse of a kid. Just a kid. I see it when inappropriate joker goes to his room to play with lincoln logs. I see it when “not pimpin’” realizes how much joy there is in making people laugh, rather then cry. I see it when I pick up a Runner from school and he’s hardly able to contain his excitment about getting 14th out of 87 in his latest meet. Those are the good times. The times when I love where I am and what I get to do.

And then “Not Pimpin” pushes the book case over onto another kid, Inappropriate Joker thinks I’m sabatoging his meds, and Runner tells me I’m a MOTHER F***** and that I should go to hell.  Those are the times I want to pull my hair out. Those are the times when I wonder why I spent four years, getting two degrees, to babysit teenagers. But in the midst of the pity party for myself, every once in awhile I remember to stop and look at it all through the eyes of these kids, who have had the shittiest of lives.Their eyes remind me that joy can be found every so often in the chaos of it all and that it is good to find a way to laugh even when life is just “not pimpin”.

untitled

I feel sad, incredibly unexplainably sad. I have felt it all day. There must be something in the air.

“I need to talk to you in private,” she says. I wonder what has brought this on. Everyone in the office seems a bit off. We go into a private room and she shuts the door. The look on her face tells me it is something big.

“It’s been a rough day,” I tell her. “I feel sad and drained. I don’t even know why; expect that I’m leaving soon. I feel like I am in mourning.”

She looks at me and kind of sighs. “I have more draining news for you: Our program is being cut.” I think I heard her wrong. I look up. But the look on her face tells me it is true. Somewhere deep inside of me I had a hope that the budget cuts would not affect us, but they did. The news came down while I was out.

“How bad?” I ask.

“There is only money for three positions.” She looks away.

There are 15 caseworkers, most of whom are single moms.

She looks distraught. More so then I ever have seen her. “We have 300 families on the program.” She says quietly. “If only I had worked harder to find more grant money.” Her eyes well up. She can’t bear it. 

I offer what little condolence I have. I think of all the nights she worked late. I think of all the time she has put into the program and how much she has poured herself into everything she has done. I am lost for words.

“You did everything you could. This is not your fault.”

She gives me the weakest of smiles and composes herself. She is a strong woman, one which I could only hope to be like someday.

I feel sad, incredibly, explainably sad. I am sad when I think of the hundreds of families who will go without services and the incredible women whom I have met who will be without jobs in a month.

I mourn the end of my internship, but these women mourn the loss of the sweat and blood they have poured into this program for years. When I think of their loss, I find I have no words…

My Parents

“Your parents must be awfully proud of you,” he said smiling. I brushed it off, it was a nice compliment, my ego was stroked. “Well, yes,” I said, “I hope they are.” I started thinking though, I know, and have known, most of my life, that my parents are proud of me. From the time I was little, when I played soccer as goalie and made the winning save, to the time when I graduated from college, I have known. I have known that my parents are proud of me. I have known that in some way or another my parents would find a way to be proud of me even if I wasn’t doing things that were worthy of it. The last couple of day I have been wondering. I’ve been wondering if my parents know that I am proud of them.

I wonder if they know that I am proud of their courage. I wonder if they know I am proud of their discipline. I wonder if they know I am proud of their strength.

When I was little I can remember my dad giving me spankings. I hated spankings. They were the worst thing in the whole world. Looking back I think it had very little to do with the pain of the “whacker” and more with my dad’s deep anguish in the fact that he felt like he needed to discipline me in a way which I hated. I can remember him crying (more then I was) because it hurt him so much to have to do it . I am proud of my dad for giving me boundaries. I am proud of my dad for telling me why he disciplined me. I am proud of my dad for caring.

I am proud of my parents for moving to a completely foreign country with four children. I am proud of my parents for not always believing everything the church told them was true. I am proud of my parents for understanding things they never learned in school.

When I was little I can remember my mom spending hours each day homeschooling us. Some days were rough. One particularly hard day in fourth grade during English lessons I remember a yelling match between my mom and me. It escalated out of control and soon books and threats of boarding school were flying across the room. I remember my mom crying and saying she couldn’t do it anymore. I am proud of my mom, with an associates in Agriculture, teaching four kids for the last 21 years. I am proud of her for never giving up. I am proud of her for pouring her entire life into ours.

I wonder if my parents know I am proud of their love. I wonder if they know I am proud of their decisions. I wonder if they know I am proud of their stories.

Don’t get me wrong…my parents have a whole slew of issues that I could pick apart and analyze to death. My dad is what some would call a workaholic and my mom hasn’t always been the best at communicating with me. But I am proud of my parents for not pretending to be perfect.I am proud of my parents for knowing they are not always right. I am proud of my parents for not wanting to stay where they are.

I wonder and can only hope I will ever have the guts to do all the things my parents have done. I wonder and can only hope someday my kids will be as happy with their parents, as I am of mine. I wonder and can only hope my parents know I am proud to be their daughter.

crusty, old and jaded

 ”Crusty, old and jaded ,” my mind screams at me. “That is what you’ll be.” I get up. I want to vomit. The stories are so horrific.

“Emily, I went into her house, and she had bruies all over her neck and body. She was purple.” As she says it her eyes glaze over and her face contorts in a motion that makes me think she wants to cry, but can’t. “It was rape, I know it. He forced himself on her. One minute he was telling her she was beautifula and next he was using her as a punching bag as he had sex with her.”

She sits across from me, telling me her stories, she is irrate. She wants the woman  to file a police report, but she knows it will never happen. She wants to be her savior, but the job is an impossible one.

“You should have seen her. I wish you just could have seen her. She was so bruised,” she looks away, and then back at me again. “Why did she let him in?” She asks me this at least 10 times in the next hour. I have so many answers for her, but they’re all text book. Answers like, this is all she has ever known, she just wanted someone to “love”, she’s in a cycle of abuse. But all these answers mean nothing to this woman who is trying to help in a situation so horrific. She is burnt out. She has given all there is to give and she has come up empty and she is starting to feel crusty, old and jaded.

I am afraid–afraid of what this profession does to people. I am afraid of how it sucks the marrow straight from your bones, making you feel empty and brittle. I am afraid of not being able to understand why a woman is stuck in a cycle of abuse. I am afraid. I am afraid of becoming what I am afraid of.

Today I talked to a veteran in this line of work. She told me, ” Make it as right as you can and let that be good enough.”

Perfection is not attainable and its silly to think that it could be. I can never be the savior that I wish to be. It’s not my job, and I never want it to be.

“Help them stop smoking,” B.W. tells me, “It is so much better then giving them morphine when they are dying of lung cancer.” She is reffering to helping people through prevention rather then crisis intervention. At first I didn’t fully understand what she meant, but I’m starting to think it might be the key to not becoming crusty, old and jaded. That’s my thought at the moment, anyway………….

Tired

I feel tired…so so tired. But I feel alive, incredibly unexplainably alive. I feel exhausted, like I want to hide in a sea of blankets. But I feel ready…ready to take on anything, like a child in his superman suit. I feel insightful and optimistic, but I feel dumb and disillusioned. I am happy and sad. I see yellow, but I see black. I see beauty in a child’s face, but I see bruises. I look at the color purple, blue and I see pain.

 I am like the children I see everyday. So many emotions and no way to get them out. I have no language to express them. I feel like all I can do is grunt and scream and cry and throw my head against the wall in a tantrum. Even then my thoughts come out in confused, garbled sentences. I scratch and I bang on the walls in my head, only to find that I cannot get out what I need to say to express these raving conflicting thoughts. So many thoughts. There are too few words. There are no right words.  There are no words! I have no words to express what I feel so I just type, type, type. I do not even know what I type, but I type because it makes me feel alive. It brings me out of my sea of blankets, it makes me feel like I am wearing my superman suit. How? I do not know, I do not understand. Just let me type. I need to type. It releases something in me. Something like the toxicity from my weary bones. It runs from my shoulders, down my arms, and out through my fingers. It feels good. It feels incredibly, refreshingly good. I do not understand it, but if I did, I don’t think I would like it half as much. Some things just have to be.