A Slice of Life

I've been trying to cleanse my karma with kind thoughts but it's hard when all you want to do is smack someone in the mouth. Cracker stands too close to me just once more and I'll do it, don't give a shit about her Boy. Can't stand when someone touches me. Asking for an ass kicking is what she's doing. It's not like I'm all frigid or something, it just ain't there with her and me. I'm easy to get along with, in all these years haven't had but one real problem and in the end it was Obie who got her ass kicked good. I done too many favors for the girls in here, no one likes to see me get booked on. That's right, I got friends in here. If friends is what you want to call them. Sometimes they're friends, sometimes they spook out and want to kick your ass. It's this place--it makes you crazy;if you ain't already. Sometimes a good fight is what everybody needs. Take our minds off of being locked up. But I don't like to fight, ain't down with that violent shit. But I got to keep keeping on. Not much choice in here. Nowhere to go when your brain wants to explode with the inside terror of three hundred women. Yelling, bitching, beating up the newbies for their smokes. Ain't it all grand? Just another day at the Club. Day 6572. Keeping track is a pain but if I lose just one day, forget to count it, I'll be lost. Kept me pretty sane these eighteen years, who knows I might still be whole when the system finally pukes me out in another nine or ten. Start my life over. Shit. Never had a life. Got more education than most of the bitches riding the system train but who wants a daddy killer working for them? Maybe I can work in a stanky dry cleaners, maybe some shit-hole hamburger place will take me cause I can talk halfway decent and make correct change without the stupid machine telling me what's what. My parole coordinator says I have a way with words, (p.c., that's what she wants me to call her but she's just another bitchin desk monkey like the others). Ain't that a hoot? Gloria says maybe I could work in a real professional office, cause I learned to type that last year in high school and can spell most my words pretty decent. A nice Catholic girl education I got. Give me an edge in life you know, with the Man upstairs. Never think He noticed me until I stuck my daddy with that knife, where was He when the shit was going down? Suffer the little children, ain't that in the bible? And the people from the church, they were all there at the trial saying I'm damned for taking a life, well where the hell were they when all the shit was going down? The hell with them. I'm not buying any of that shit. Can't think of what's going to happen if I ever get to heaven. Them shiny gates gonna slam in my face because I got a crazy man for a daddy? Shit. It was him or us and I got a mighty strong desire to live. I might be in jail but I'm still sane and my mom lived the last years of her life not afraid to go to sleep at night. Shit, what was I talking about? I get all sidetracked with all the shit that leads back to the stupid bastard. I guess I'm always writing about getting out of here, hating the bullshit of this place. Gloria says when my parole comes up I'll get out for sure if I can just make the panel believe I feel real bad for killing my dad, but I'm not sure I can lie that good. Can't she see I'm not the kind of bitch that kills for fun, who don't care who she hurts? Killing isn't something I meant to do. I remember once my pet cow died, all frozen one winter in the barn because I forgot to give it a blanket or water or something and I cried forever. And this little kitten was so sick I kept it in my room with me and gave it cod liver oil and did everything the vet said, trying to save its scrawny life after its mother left it out in the rain and ran off. I held that little shaking kitten and it died in my hands and I couldn't believe it, when you love something so much and you can't do nothing to save it. Shit. It still gets me crying just writing about it. I ain't no killer. Its weird, sometimes I think about the stuff they took away from me when I got put in here and I wonder if they really are saving it somewhere for me or if they just threw it away figuring I'd never feel the free sun on my face again I did such a horrible thing. I remember exactly what I had, too, and it better all be there if I get out of here. Levi's blue jeans, white cotton button-down shirt, Nike tennis shoes no laces (they took them long before), underpants but no bra (nothing big enough to need holding up there), a necklace my sister gave me right before the trial for good-luck (lot of good that did me), a notebook with lots of swear words written in it from the days spent sitting at that stupid desk waiting for the jury to tell me I'm guilty when I already knew I was, I told them so the day the cops came to get me. It wasn't no surprise when they finally said "Okay you stupid bitch, you killed your daddy, now you got to pay." My stupid lawyer said I'd get off easy, the jury liked me, I looked like such a little girl when I was already sixteen by the time we went to trial. Tried as an adult, it was a big story in the newspaper. Innocent. Not of killing my father of course but maybe they would see I was protecting my mother and all that and let me go pretty easy. But I had that knife between the mattress for two weeks, and that was premeditation. It was insurance, I said, cause I knew one night he'd visit my room and choke me until I was blue. The jury saw it different. They sat in their stupid chairs, looking straight ahead, afraid to look me in the eye when the foreman read the verdict. When I heard him say LIFE I puked on the floor. I'm glad I made those people in the jury feel real bad, seeing me throwing up and screaming and saying I was glad I killed that stupid bastard should've done it years before. I like to think they still remember me in their dreams, puking and stuff all over, and feel bad that I got the shaft when it was my dad who really needed to be put away for good. Which is sorta what I did I guess. But jail is where he should've been and then I couldn't have killed him and maybe would have had a halfway normal life instead of fighting with Cracker cause she thinks I'm sweet and wants me to be her girl. Strange as it is, Boy thinks that's okay, sharing Cracker don't piss her off, she just wants to be loved I guess. But this is the millionth time I said no and she still comes on. I'm thinking of telling Roger, being the block high guard or whatever he likes to be called, maybe he can put the pressure on Margie who will tell Cracker it's a reality check and back off. For all you stupid people out there you should know Margie and Roger have a serious thing going. Like who don't know? And Margie is definitely the bitch in charge around here, you do what you're told if it comes from Margie's mouth. But if I ask her for help she'll say "no" just to be a hard ass, just so Roger can try to warm her up and be sweet and then she'll listen to him. I think Roger kind of likes me. He's always asking me about that bestseller I'm supposed to be writing. If they only knew I'm just writing my stupid thoughts and nothing else they would just shit. Yeah, ain't it funny--people think I'm so smart because I got some education. Still I'm not smart enough to get Cracker off my ass. It's Margie who's smart like that. She can make the newbies piss themselves just by looking at them. Margie owes me anyway for that petition I wrote for her to get on the outside work crew. She couldn't ever write so polite and correct to make herself seem smart enough to work at the concrete mixer place. Now she can fill orders and write receipts because she learned it on the job. She has skills because of me. My redeeming quality, says Gloria my parole coordinator, is that I will help other people when they need it. How redeeming can it be? I got put here for helping my mom stay alive and nobody ever really did thank me for that. No one ever really tried to make the shit stop around our house. Mom and Dad were so high on their hatred they never even noticed me or Lisa being eaten alive with the fear. Back then the cops never did anything to stop a man when he got it in his head to beat up on his wife. Lisa says the laws have changed some since then but it's too late for us I guess. The cops would come to our house and see us crying and Mom all bloody or beaten up and they just turned their backs, wasn't nothing they could do, they said. My brothers, all grown up with families of their own, wouldn't believe us when we told them what was going on at home. Like we're gonna lie that the crazy bastard tried to run us over with the car when we tried to walk to Juanita's and Jerry's house after he pulled the cables on Mom's car so we couldn't escape. Anyway, I must have written all of this a million times in all my journals since I started writing them. My sister must puke when she gets another one in the mail to keep for me until I get out or whatever. She knows all the stories anyway, she probably doesn't even open them anymore. I never ask and she never says. The counselor I have to see once a month says writing helps me sort the pain of what happened to me all those years ago, he says it's good therapy. I say it helps pass the time and I got a lot of it. A "life" time. Remembering all the shit never makes me feel better, it twists up my insides to this day, it ain't never going away. Not so much cause I killed my dad. I had to do that. But all the crazy shit that went on for years before that. It ain't right to put a kid through all that, that's why no matter what I ain't having no kids. I would screw them up for sure. If I ever get out of here in one piece I'll just pack up and go wherever. The only family that gives a shit about me is Lisa and she would understand if I had to go. My brothers said they won't ever speak to me again, since I took away their wonderful father who beat them up too when they were teenagers, kicked them out of the house and didn't give a shit that they had nowhere to go, no underwear or books for school. He was just the best, the kind of father who ran over your bike because you left it in the driveway for the millionth time and he said he would the next time he came home from working hard all day. What else did they expect us to do? It was like a war and it felt like Kill or Be Killed. They heard the stories we all told at the trial about him beating up my mom and picking her up by the neck and throwing her down the stairs. And sneaking upstairs in the middle of the night and choking her until she passed out always telling her one day he'd do it for real and she'd be dead. Going out to the barn with a shotgun telling her he was going to kill himself, he couldn't take this anymore, and firing a shot into the ground so she would come running, crying afraid he did do it and he just laughed at her and walked away. He was evil. He wanted to destroy her and the boys just turned away saying Mom is crazy, she always has been because that's what Dad always told them. He never could respect my mom so neither did my brothers. They abandoned us to a monster. Me and my sister didn't do nothing wrong but we had to suffer. There are times I wonder who I would be if things would've been different. Thirty-three this year, I might have been married with five kids by now. I always loved kids. I wanted to have a bunch of them and teach them and love them and never get divorced because I picked the right man to marry and we loved each other and never yelled and definitely never hit each other. Dreaming again. There ain't no man out there who don't hit. All the women in here say the same thing. That's why I think Lisa decided to be a lesbian. That's what she likes to be called. In here they're called dykes, the ones who really really only want to be with women. Most of the others are just playing with the cards laying on the table, it's a way to get off when you can't get signed up for conjugals. Lisa says she knew she was a lesbian when she was five years old. I don't know how she could figure it out that soon but I'll take her word for it. And after what we went through I wouldn't blame her if she turned out to be an axe-murderer. Ha, that's a joke. Seeing a crazy man coming at you with the promise of pain in his eyes and shouting death louder than a jackhammer sorta spoils you for the pretty stuff. I'm not sure which direction I go, never really had a chance to get to know any other men besides my dad and brothers and if they're all thats out there then I guess I'm a lesbian too. Lisa's sorta a drifter, living here and there but usually tries to visit me at least twice a year. And she sends me letters every week. They keep me in touch with what's going on Out There. She never talks much about her life in them, just the surface stuff, never about the real deep stuff I really want to talk about. Like how is she with Mom being passed away, I know they didn't much get along well, but shit, she was our mother. Lisa had it harder than me when it came to Mom. She looked a little bit too much like my dad, had his bad temper too and they bumped heads a lot, Lisa never backed down our whole life I think. I wish we were still close like when we were kids. Went everywhere together, played all day and hardly ever had a fight. Before the divorce stuff started we had a pretty normal life. Or we might have been too young to know how families were supposed to be. I remember once when I was like six years old Jerry took me to the zoo with his girls. After the zoo he took us out to lunch and let us eat pie before our sandwiches, and he didn't get mad when we couldn't even take one bite of the sandwich, just had it wrapped up and took it home. He laughed a lot and played with us and never once was mean. I know I'd never been anywhere with my dad before, we were too much trouble I think for him because he ignored us most the time unless we made a mess or too much noise or was sitting in his chair and then it was a lot of yelling and confusion, me and Lisa trying to make his hand miss our little running butts. But at least to my kid brain it seemed normal. Lisa says we was never a normal family. I'll take her word for it but the stories the other women tell in here sound pretty much the same as mine. I think Lisa wants to put all the crazy shit behind her and talking about it makes her crazy herself. So instead of she talks about the new stuff out in the world. Like computers. The things they can do with them--things I just can't believe. She says just about everyone uses one. A lot has changed since I've been in, there are times I wonder if I will just stand there stupid looking at all the new computer gizmo stuff and get brain overload and just die right there. Whatever. I can't look too far ahead of me or I might get lost in my head and end up going from this crazy house to a real God damn crazy house and spend the rest of my days screaming at the little people who live between the walls and tickle my ears and nose when I'm sleeping. Ha. That's another joke. (I ain't that far gone yet and if you're reading this Lisa don't you worry, I managed to hold on through worse shit than this, this is a walk in the park compared to those years we spent living on the edge of Mom and Dad's hell.) Shit, just got the five-minute warning until lights out. Got lost in the writing again, hope I don't dream tonight I'm really tired.