By Crane-Station
Note: While Fred is completing a post on expert witnesses, here is a nonfiction post on incarceration. This essay is published in an anthology along with two others. The online essays are each stand-alone, and they alternate between jail and prison in no particular order.
barn at winter by Crane-Station on flickr. jail art done at Ricky’s World.
In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus
Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.
Inmate names are changed.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
McCracken County Jail Cell 107, winter, 2008
Meg announces to the cell that she is on her period.
“So?” says Christie.
“So, I get out in two weeks, and I can get some dick!”
Meg lives in a motel on the outside, where she trades her body for drugs. She has nine children; many of them were born while Meg was in jail. After Meg is released and after she gets her ‘dick,’ her tenth child will be born in prison, but we do not know this yet.
She has made the comment about getting some ‘dick’ to be mean, because she knows that the rest of the cell occupants are serving lengthier sentences than she has ever had to serve, and that we will be unable to know a man’s touch or have sex, and she will.
When the announcement about dick does not elicit much of a response, Meg starts in on Christie, who, having been denied drug court and now faces 24 years for nonviolent drug-related charges, is desperately depressed. Christie stays on her bunk all the time now, crying.
One of Christie’s felonies, by the way, is for a cold check in the amount of something like one dollar and seventy-two cents, whereas Meg, who will walk out of the jail and get some dick and get pregnant two weeks from now, has a lengthy history of theft and possession charges that, for some reason, she has never had to worry much about, in terms of serving any time.
Rather, during her frequent yet brief accomodations in the McCracken County Jail, she busies herself with the passive-aggressive practices of constant manipulation and torment of fellow inmates who will be serving lengthy sentences entombed in cement with no hope. Each time, Meg leaves, and gets some dick, among other things.
Meg says to Christie, “I think you are overreacting.”
“I can’t help it,” says Christie. “I’m not overreacting. I feel really, really, really bad inside. People notice that there is something wrong. I can’t quit crying. I don’t mean to be such a bitch about it. I just don’t know what to do about it. I sleep 15 hours a day now. I can’t handle this.”
“It’ll be all right,” says Meg, who, two weeks from now will be having sex.
“You don’t know that,” says Christie.” I’m sorry. This isn’t me, but I just don’t know what to do.”
Christie cries.
Down the hall, Harry yells from his isolation cell, “HELLLLP! PLEEEEASE! Somebody! Let me out! Helpme helpmehelpme helpmehelpme Helllllpp…”
Sally is on the phone, calling her mother “a fucking whore.”
Sally calls her mother every five minutes or so, and treats her like a disobedient child. She says, at maximum volume, “I love you! Shut your fucking mouth, you’re nuthin’ but a lazy whore.”
Sally’s mother shouts back. Sally also screams at her 17-year-old son on the phone. She holds the receiver and says to us, “He ain’t got his books for home school yet. Can you believe that shit? My mother ain’t even got his books! She ain’t nuthin’ but a useless whore, don’t do nuthin’ but lay on her back all day.”
Because Sally is currently a guest in the jail, her son is supposed to be homeschooled by Sally’s mother, who is addicted to Vicodin and who never completed the eighth grade.
The son is also apparently very sick, with some kind of severe illness that Sally cannot define. Munchausen by Proxy I think to myself, although I never say it. I think this to myself privately because Sally also self-reports severe, undefined illness in herself, and the mother is dysfunctional, and there is too much collective severe-yet-undefined illness in a young group of closely connected people. Sally looks healthy and robust. It is Christie, crying on her bunk, unable to get up, that I worry about.
I like Sally, and we get along well. I do not agree with how she speaks to her mother or her son, but Sally is amicable to fellow inmates, and she has a delightful sense of humor.
Meanwhile, Meg has come back to the cell from a brief visit to the jail library. The library is a jail cell with mostly paperback romance novels and religious materials, and a remarkable dearth of literature. Meg sets an arm load of romance novels onto the steel table, and then starts gossiping about YaYa, who was in the library, gossiping about Amy. YaYa is not here to defend herself.
Meg says, “I just wanted to hit her.”
I say, “She’s pretty big. Maybe that is not such a good idea. You know, hitting her.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Meg taps on the wall to the cell next door, to arrange for her delivery of drugs for the evening, in the form of the inmate-next-door’s psych meds. Everything went okay for her first delivery, and I secretly hope that everything will continue to go okay, because when Meg is on someone else’s psych meds, she usually shuts up.
They make some arrangement.
Later, I am doing exercises on the floor next to the steel door when the steel door flies open, nearly hitting me, and there stands Tiffany, the sergeant, and she is irate. She says, “Who got the note from Carter!?”
“Who’s Carter?” I say.
“Who got that note from Carter!?”
Just then, we realize that Meg’s drug arrangement has not gone as planned. Carter, the inmate next door who was on psych medication, had wrapped two pills in paper and ‘fished’ them underneath her cell door and into our cell, under the door. But it did not work, because the note got stuck.
Tiffany leaves. Meg goes off on Carter. “Dumb bitch, she shoulda knocked.”
We watch while guards come to the cell next door, remove Carter, and take her to the hole.
Meg smiles, giggles, and laughs, as though she had nothing whatsoever to do with the note or the pills in the note. She dismisses the whole incident, and gets on the phone to make arrangements with someone on the outside to smuggle cigarettes into the jail. Later, she tries to get me to make an appointment with the nurse and lie about some ailment, so that Meg can get Tylenol pills, or any pills. I refuse.
When I refuse, she makes fun of me, of my trial, of my conviction, of my lengthy sentence, and of the fact that she will be getting dick two weeks from now and I will not be getting any dick until it is too late for me to have sex, because I am too old.
In my mind I try to come up with reasons for meanness and lack of empathy among warehoused humans in the same predicament, and I wonder if people in the train cars during the holocaust were mean to each other. What is it, exactly, that brings out such hate? Perhaps it is overcrowding or demeaning, dehumanizing treatment, or lost confidence in ‘the system,’ or female jealousy, mental illness, lack of stimulus, or hormones, or frustration and separation from love, touch and family. Maybe it is a combination of everything.
I fold my cranes out of scavenged paper. I move them around. I adjust the towel on my head. I go into the bathroom and climb onto the steel toilet and look through the slit to the dumpsters outside.
I return to the steel table. I put the tiny cranes with the big cranes.
I stay silent.
Great writing. When I have a chance I will visit Frog Gravy site.
Thank you for stopping by, Brown.
Deeply evocative!
Very much appreciate the read, thank you.
Wow Crane. I know individuals that have been locked up and jail and prison culture is something that one cannot really either relate to, understand, etc. You hit it, it is a combination of a lot of things. It institutionalizes, makes it a survival type experience, and so on regardless if all the individuals are in the same predicament.
“In my mind I try to come up with reasons for meanness and lack of empathy among warehoused humans in the same predicament, and I wonder if people in the train cars during the holocaust were mean to each other. What is it, exactly, that brings out such hate? Perhaps it is overcrowding or demeaning, dehumanizing treatment, or lost confidence in ‘the system,’ or female jealousy, mental illness, lack of stimulus, or hormones, or frustration and separation from love, touch and family. Maybe it is a combination of everything.”
Yeah, it really is a what-happens-here-stays-here secret society. One of my goals with Frog Gravy was to bring the truth- the day-to-day truth to the passing public, because I believe the public is entitled to it, particularly since the US incarcerates more people than Stalin’s gulag. So many people have been touched by ‘the system.’
The Caging of America article, New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik
@Crane,
That was a heavy and enlightening article. It really touched on things that I have discussed with others regarding heavy-handed policing in certain communities, lack of judicial discretion, etc. Yes, the U.S. incarceration rates are higher than anywhere in the world from my understanding. Yes, many people have been touched by the system including their families. I tend to appreciate specialty courts (e.g. Drug Courts), because if applicable, that’s what the individual needs as opposed to being incarcerated where they are not getting the proper treatment.
I talk about drug court, what I have observed anyway, in other posts that I will share. Bottom line is, the concept is good, and some people do succeed but I have seen some spectacular failures where people end up doing way more time than if they had committed murder. This is not an exaggeration. Many chose to sit the original time instead. I will put up the essays where this is addressed.
I was thinking along those lines, too, at first and it made me think of the “crabs in a barrel” sydrome. But then I realized that the insult hurler seemed more like some was already given her “get of the barrel” date.
some = someone who
BTW, she remains in prison today, unfortunately.
Sometimes–when I’m depressed–I make paper cranes, too.
Wow, though. Somehow your words make me feel a ‘fog of gray’–like heavy steel all around me.
No worries–I’ll shake it off in a bit.
I’m so glad you are out of there, and can feel the light now.
Thank you nan11, and yes, folding cranes is incredibly therapeutic. The plight on release? It’s the thousand-yard stare. For a long time. Many of the people I knew who were released returned, and I am not surprised. It is a system that banks on failure.
Thank you so much for the read and for the comment.
Sometimes, in people with low to zero self-esteem, sexual acceptance or prowess is all they feel they have to hang on to boost their superiority. Can’t yet say if it’s loss of confidence in a system or not.
I will say that women are conditioned to be catty, imo.
Excellent point. Women’s incarceration is very different than men’s. Mental illness is almost a given. I did not see many physical fights, and I never saw a shank, but I did see, day in and day out, a lot of hurtful verbal stuff and assorted types of cruelty.
The other thing is, jail is very different than prison. You get an idea of that in Frog Gravy.
Much appreciate the read, thank you.
It was an interesting read, so, no, I thank you for sharing that. I have zero first-hand experience of incarceration.
@Crane,
True. I remember watching a show called “Locked-up Abroad” I think it was named, and one episode where a female got caught doing drug stuff, the conditions was rough. I don’t recall the place she was at. I know we are speaking of U.S. conditions, but it seems to be somewhat universal as it relates to a large segment of the female inmate population having some sort of mental illness, emotional issue, etc.
I do not know what the conditions are in other countries, but in the US, she would likely do her time in a county jail, which is the hardest time anyone can do outside of prolonged isolation in supermax. I never dreamed in my life there would be a day when I would beg to get to prison but I did. Warehousing nonviolent drug offenders in county jails is highly profitable, so believe it or not, nonviolent people do the hardest time, the exception being the federal supermax detention facilities such as Marion or ADX Florence or Pelican Bay, for example. The US has turned jails into prisons for the majority of nonviolent drug offenders.
That caught my attn: “women are conditioned to be catty”, well yeah, but do you think that catiness is only in the female domain?…
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>>it/ apparachicha// that have stolen our… “republic”… well, duh,
If you remember the issues of the 30′s through to the 50′s and beyond… about the great problem of what the “Commies” would do to our… ” way of life… etc… ”
Some may be able to see that what that is, and what it is: Is: that something much worser than commies, might be the corporate… so called… faux free market and media max social engeneering, and total mind fucking of the pops.
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Well, this is a good point, because no doubt there is much cruelty and exclusion outside of the prison setting, is society at large. However, given the overcrowding and other factors, prison is all of the broader dysfunction distilled as if cooked under reflux; it is more concentrated and complicated with crisis and family separation.
For example, I knew a woman who lost her 19-year-old son in a drowning accident, and she had to attend his funeral in shackles, for 1/2 hour. She was a bitch on wheels, and I can understand why. This is just one random example to illustrate my point that prison is unique and separate from the outside. There is no escape from the constant given of pain and stress, whereas on the outside, one can be alone, be with a loved one, take a walk, and so on.
ed nelson, Do you think what we term “Catty” is harmful? How far it should go, before considered a painful way to make others feel they are not liked, unwelcome, etc.
Crane~~on a lighter note, it sound to me like she had more than ‘dick’. With all those kids she had a few Toms and Harrys. Sry, couldn’t resist.
True.
Crane~~BTW, the daughter I lost was a guard in an ‘all male’ Federal prison here in Canada. We shared a lot in the twenty years she was there. Just prior to her passing, she transferred to a Minimum Security Institution for prisoners. Some of the inmates she dealt with sent homemade get well cards to the hospital. Inside of everyone, there is goodness and emerges at the strangest times.
First, I am so sorry for your loss, and extend deepest sympathy, how you must miss her.
Absolutely there is much good, and I saw a lot of it. I came to trust and love some of the inmates like sisters, and I am grateful to this day that our paths crossed. A night teacher told us that he taught in the prison because it was the most rewarding thing he had ever done. I heard the same thing from priests. Truly, truly there is so much good in people- and you will see this in Frog Gravy because I wrote a lot about it.
Crane~~I always have believed that if you want to see if their is ‘goodness’ in a person, just show that person a little kindness. Lend them an ear and listen intently to show you care. Some people are starved for attention that they were unable to get elsewhere. It will make both of you feel good. I know a smile can work miracles applied at the right time. Guess I am an old softie but there are times when I need to extend my talons or petrify the naysayers with my droll humor. Nite nite.
So true, mainstreamfair.
First, truly sorry for your loss MSF. Regarding your below comment,
“Inside of everyone, there is goodness and emerges at the strangest times.” Well maybe not everyone lol.
In any event, this kind of piggybacks off of the discussion we were having earlier regarding the existence of evil and are people born evil, bad, etc. The thing is, there are “good” people that are incarcerated. Can a person still be good but have done something bad? Does it depend on what they have done? Food for thought for conversation purposes.
Crane wrote,
“I never dreamed in my life there would be a day when I would beg to get to prison but I did.”
You know what, you are not the first person I heard say this. Wow.
Crane wrote,
“Bottom line is, the concept is good, and some people do succeed but I have seen some spectacular failures where people end up doing way more time than if they had committed murder.”
From the research I did on a paper some time ago, it does seem to be a positive alternative to incarceration. Of course some of these programs can be difficult to accurately assess in some areas, but overall pretty successful. Oh I believe you at your last statement. It’s crazy.
Crane-Station, quite an experience, I would be way too nervous to have done such, but thank you, this is how we know more and understand. Unfortunately they all have come to live a desperate life amongst their own meanness. Meanness however also prevails on the outside, and that may be why many end up where these women are. Daily abuse, bullying, personal attack by those who think they are righteous in doing so can eventually add to a strained personality where one more little push can take someone over the line in our society, yet, those who bully, and attack most often are the ones searching for more attention. I have found that to live what we preach is better than suggesting the other person do it. Attention getters are usually the ones who verbalize kindness while they or we ourselves are doing the harm, without apology. Inflicting hurtful untruths and accusations against the unsuspecting, ones they do not know and will never meet, which makes it easy and fun because they know they will never face their victim. We tend to always point finger at parenting when someone turns to bad acts. I disagree to a great extent and see it more as a society of jealous behavior and excessive extension of “the little white lie”. For some SICK reason people get satisfaction out of inflicting pain and hurt on others, without apology, just as you witnessed in those very close quarters. Do you think meanness is more prevalent in women prisons than in mens? More deadly for inmates?
” Do you think meanness is more prevalent in women prisons than in mens? More deadly for inmates?”
No, and no. I do not think so. Of course, I have never been in a men’s prison, but my understanding is that the men may tend toward physical violence, whereas women are verbal (which can be very cruel and hurtful).
That said, I would defer to a man who has been incarcerated to answer.
I never saw a shank or a weapon of any kind. I did witness a physical fight in prison that sent one woman to the hole and the other to the medical ward (BTW she was in worse shape than Mr. Zimmerman, left the scene on a stretcher.) The fight dynamic was interesting. The victim was a well-known annoying egregious bully in the prison. The person who delivered the spectacular ass-kicking, upon finishing the delivery put her hands behind her back and waited for guards with the handcuffs to arrive to take her to the hole (called “cell block” in prison). She received a standing ovation from the prison as she was being escorted away. No one was sorry. You see, as I have said, prison is sort of a community at large, distilled.
Crane Station,
Re: Barn at Winter
I am reminded of P. Buckley Moss
Just curious…how is the county jail the harder time than a traditional prison?
I recently approached a woman who appeared to be in distress.
I learned she had just been released from the Pinellas County Jail.
Her “crime” was “possessing a stolen shopping cart” which she used to transport and store her possessions.
There is something so wrong with a society that has criminalized
homelessness.
C-S, your drawings are lovely.
Your writing has honestly jarred me – moving and much-needed stories for telling, thank you.